Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparative efficacy of gemifloxacin in experimental models of pyelonephritis and wound infection.

Gemifloxacin (SB-265805) is a potent, novel fluoroquinolone with broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity. In this study, the efficacy of gemifloxacin was studied in experimental models of Gram-negative pyelonephritis (caused by Escherichia coli or Proteus mirabilis) and Gram-positive wound infection resulting from Streptococcus pyogenes, Staphylococcus epidermidis or Staphylococcus aureus. Gemifloxacin activity against these pathogens was compared with those of amoxycillin-clavulanate, ciprofloxacin, cefuroxime, azithromycin, trovafloxacin, grepafloxacin, levofloxacin and tosufloxacin. Oral treatment was initiated 1 h after infection and continued once or twice daily for 3 days. Around 17 h after the end of treatment, animals were killed and the infected kidneys or the skin around the wound site were excised for the enumeration of viable bacteria. In the pyelonephritis model (either microorganism), gemifloxacin reduced bacterial numbers significantly (P < 0.01) compared with no treatment. No comparator agent had a greater effect than gemifloxacin. Notably, grepafloxacin and azithromycin were significantly less effective (P < 0.01) than gemifloxacin against E. coli pyelonephritis, and amoxycillin-clavulanate, azithromycin and trovafloxacin were inferior (P < 0.01) against P. mirabilis infection. In the S. pyogenes wound infection model, gemifloxacin, amoxycillin-clavulanate, cefuroxime and azithromycin reduced bacterial numbers significantly compared with controls (P < 0.01). Results for the comparator quinolones were not significantly different from untreated controls (P > 0.05). Gemifloxacin was also effective against staphylococcal infection, as were grepafloxacin and levofloxacin, while ciprofloxacin, trovafloxacin and tosufloxacin were significantly less effective against these pathogens than gemifloxacin (P < 0.01). No comparator agent had greater activity than gemifloxacin against S. pyogenes or S. aureus infections. These data demonstrate the potential benefit of gemifloxacin in the treatment of Gram-negative urinary tract infection and Gram-positive skin and soft tissue infection.
AN EFFICIENT SEMIPARAMETRIC ESTIMATOR FOR BINARY RESPONSE MODELS

This paper proposes an estimator for discrete choice models that makes no assumption concerning the functional form of the choice probability function, where this function can be characterized by an index. The estimator is shown to be consistent, asymptotically normally distributed, and to achieve the semiparametric efficiency bound. Monte-Carlo evidence indicates that there may be only modest efficiency losses relative to maximum likelihood estimation when the distribution of the disturbances is known, and that the small-sample behavior of the estimator in other cases is good.
Stories, Scripts, and Scenes: Aspects of Schema Theory

script theory perspective on human sexual behavior. Its basic from nonsexual aspects of life to specifically sexual experience” ceive the world as “cognitive schemas,” which he defined as: “A stories (scripts) were most satisfied with their respective scenes experienced as well as the set of expectations. This research studied the content of age schemas and different ways schematic and aschematic Stories, Scripts, and Scenes: Aspects of Schema Theory. Download as a PDF 107, Scripts in memory for text Bower, Black, et al. 90, Stories, Scripts, and Scenes: Aspects of Schema Theory Mandler 1984.
Information Transmission Among World Major Gold Futures Markets: Evidence from High Frequency Synchronous Trading Data

This study examines the international information transmission among three major gold futures markets namely COMEX, MCX, and TOCOM. Two well documented approaches, which are VECM and information share, are utilized to measure the process of price discovery under this trivariate system. The uniqueness of this study is that it employs synchronous intraday time series which can mitigate the stale price problem from daily observations. The evidences indicate that the three gold futures prices are cointegrated and driven by one common factor. New arrival information disseminates efficiently among the three markets and the pricing information transmission among exchanges is very rapid. However, the lead-lag relationship among markets still exists with the dominance of COMEX gold futures as the centre of price discovery.
Spatial load forecast for Electric Vehicles

In this paper the Electric Vehicle's (EV's) spatial load forecast is studied, highlighting their current situation in Hungary. The impact of electric vehicles charging on electricity consumption, which generates a concentrated power demand at specific points of the network, is modeled. The extra power requires the development of network capacity, the extra energy requires more power generation. It is a new task to forecast and model the new demand in time and space for the network - and generation planning.
A Full-Coverage Two-Level URL Duplication Checking Method for a High-Speed Parallel Web Crawler

For efficient large-scale Web crawlers, URL duplication checking is an important technique since it is a significant bottleneck. In this paper, we propose a new URL duplication checking technique for a parallel Web crawler; we call it full-coverage two level URL duplication checking (full-coverage-2L-UDC). Full-coverage-2L-UDC provides efficient URL duplication checking while ensuring maximum coverage. First, we propose two-level URL duplication checking (2L-UDC). It provides efficiency in URL duplication checking by communicating at the Web site level rather than at the Web page level. Second, we present a solution for the so-called coverage problem, which is directly related to the recall of the search engine. It is the first solution for the coverage problem in the centralized parallel architecture. Third, we propose an architecture, FC2LUDCbot, for a centralized parallel crawler using full-coverage-2L-UDC. We build a seven-agent FC2L-UDCbot for extensive experiments. We show that the crawling speed of FC2L-UDCbot is approximately proportional to the number of agents (i.e., FC2L-UDCbot is faster than a single-machine crawler by 6.9 times). Full-coverage-2L-UDC allows FC2L-UDCbot to be scalable to the number of agents since it effectively deals with the overheads incurred in a parallel environment. Through an in-depth analysis, we construct a cost model for estimating the crawling speed of a scaled-up crawler. Using the model, we show that FC2L-UDCbot can crawl Google-scale Web pages within several days using dozens of agents.
Soluble Mediators, Not Cilia, Determine Airway Surface Liquid Volume in Normal and Cystic Fibrosis Superficial Airway Epithelia

A key aspect of the lung's innate defense system is the ability of the superficial epithelium to regulate airway surface liquid (ASL) volume to maintain a 7-μm periciliary liquid layer (PCL), which is required for cilia to beat and produce mucus flow. The mechanisms whereby airway epithelia regulate ASL height to ≥7 μm are poorly understood. Using bumetanide as an inhibitor of Cl− secretion, and nystatin as an activator of Na+ absorption, we found that a coordinated “blending” of both Cl− secretion and Na+ absorption must occur to effect ASL volume homeostasis. We then investigated how ASL volume status is regulated by the underlying epithelia. Cilia were not critical to this process as (a) ASL volume was normal in cultures from patients with primary ciliary dyskinesia with immotile cilia, and (b) in normal cultures that had not yet undergone ciliogenesis. However, we found that maneuvers that mimic deposition of excess ASL onto the proximal airways, which occurs during mucociliary clearance and after glandular secretion, acutely stimulated Na+ absorption, suggesting that volume regulation was sensitive to changes in concentrations of soluble mediators in the ASL rather than alterations in ciliary beating. To investigate this hypothesis further, we added potential “soluble mediators” to the ASL. ASL volume regulation was sensitive to a channel-activating protein (CAP; trypsin) and a CAP inhibitor (aprotinin), which regulated Na+ absorption via changes in epithelial Na+ channel (ENaC) activity in both normal and cystic fibrosis cultures. ATP was also found to acutely regulate ASL volume by inducing secretion in normal and cystic fibrosis (CF) cultures, while its metabolite adenosine (ADO) evoked secretion in normal cultures but stimulated absorption in CF cultures. Interestingly, the amount of ASL/Cl− secretion elicited by ATP/ADO was influenced by the level of CAP-induced Na+ absorption, suggesting that there are important interactions between the soluble regulators which finely tune ASL volume.
Outcome of Surgery of Ruptured Anterior Communicating Artery Aneurysms

Background: Anterior communicating artery complex is the most frequent site of intracranial aneurysms. Anterior communicating artery aneurysms are the most complex aneurysms of the anterior circulation due to the flow dynamics of the ACoA region, frequent anatomical variations, and danger of severing the perforators with ensuing neurological deficits. The surgical trajectory should provide optimal visualization of the ACoA complex without massive brain retraction. Objective: To study the influence of early surgery and intraoperative planning on the outcome of ruptured anterior communicating artery aneurysms surgery. Patients and Methods: In this study thirty patients with anterior communicating artery aneurysms underwent surgery in a 3-year period. In all patients early surgery through a pterional approach was performed. Evaluation of outcome of patients was done using Glascow outcome scale. Results: The majority of patients (83.3%) were in grade I or II (Hunt and Hess scale). Outcome was excellent in fifteen patients (50%) and good in nine patients (30%). The mortality rate was 10%. Conclusion: Early surgery and selecting the suitable approach of surgery improve the surgical outcome of ruptured anterior communicating artery aneurysms.
Beyond Symbolic: Prolegomena to a Kama-Sutra of Compositionality1

Consider some of the obvious differences between a printed and a spoken version of the very same English sentence. Both contain the same words, but in the printed sentence they are static ink configurations, while in the utterance they are temporally extended sound patterns. In the printed case, words are combined by juxtaposition in space; in the utterance, by juxtaposition in time. The printed words are combined in a very discrete way there is, quite literally, space between each and all occurrences of a given word are effectively identical, whatever words happen to surround them. In the utterance, by contrast, juxtaposition is not discrete and context free; words flow into each other, and their physical shape is typically affected by their neighbors. Printed and uttered tokens of the very same sentence, then, are physically constructed or built up in quite different ways. These days, the most common technical term for building up a complex representation out of parts is composition, and so we can say that the two sentences exhibit very different kinds of compositionality, despite being syntactically and semantically identical4. This point has two very important consequences. First, compositionality itself comes in at least two, and possibly many, different kinds. Second, the very notion of compositionality can be a subject of study, quite independent of syntax and semantics. Whereas syntax and semantics focus on a language in the abstract, the study of compositionality focuses on the concrete implementations. How many kinds of compositionality are there? What are the fundamental issues? And, if our ultimate interests happen to be in cognitive science: what kinds of compositionality are typically found in mainstream artificial intelligence, in connectionism, and in natural cognitive systems such as
Novel Quadratic Gaussianity Measures and their Application in Blind Source Separation / Extraction

Various existing criteria to characterize the statistical independence are applied in blind source separation and independent component analysis. However, almost all of them are based on parametric models. The distribution model mismatch between the output PDF (Probability Density Functions) and the chosen underlying distribution model is a serious problem in blind signal processing. Non-parametric PDF estimates like the Parzen window applied to the popular Kullback-Leibler divergence produce computational difficulties. Hence we propose a new measure, the Quadratic Gaussianity Measure, which is associated with the Euclidean distance between the marginal probability density function and the Gaussian distribution. We show that it outperforms other Gaussianity measures in signal processing applications, such as standardized kurtosis tests because our novel Gaussianity measure is robust to changes in the distribution form.
CURRENT : A Test Generation System for I TestingDDQ

This paper presents an I test generation system for DDQ scan-based circuits, called CURRENT. A library-based fault modeling strategy is used to specify a realistic target fault set, which encompasses intra-gate shorts (for example stuck-on faults, gate-drain shorts) as well as inter-gate shorts (bridging faults). CURRENT consists of a fault simulator and a deterministic test generator. The fault simulator can be used to determine the fault coverage of a given test set or to generate test patterns for easy-to-detect leakage faults. The deterministic test generator is able to generate tests for hard-to-detect leakage faults and to identify redundant leakage faults. Furthermore, CURRENT is able to generate small test sets through the use of a new test set compaction technique, thus reducing the total test application time for I testing. Experimental results DDQ show that CURRENT is able to generate small test sets with a test efficiency of 100% for each of the benchmark circuits with up to 2,400,000 considered leakage faults.
Forward versus backward oriented stepping movements in Parkinsonian patients.

The primary purpose of this paper was to compare the effect of reversing the direction of step initiation in Parkinson's disease. Forward (FDS) and backward (BDS) oriented stepping initiation analyses were conducted on combined kinematic and kinetic data recorded on Parkinsonian patients (PD) and healthy age-matched subjects. Two successive phases were examined: a postural phase from T1 (onset of the center of pressure [CP] displacement) to T2 (onset of the malleolus displacement), which was followed by a stepping phase from T2 to T3 (end of the malleolus displacement; i.e., the end of the step). In healthy subjects, the duration of the postural phase remained unchanged regardless of the direction in which the step was initiated. The stepping phase duration and the first step length were reduced in BDS in comparison with FDS. In both tasks, the absolute value of the horizontal force in sagittal plane (Fx) remained unchanged. The maximal velocity of the iliac crest marker (estimated whole body center of gravity [CG]) in the sagittal plane (Vmax CG) remained within the same range regardless of direction of stepping. In Parkinsonian patients, the duration of the postural phase was markedly prolonged in both tasks in comparison with healthy subjects. The mean duration of stepping phase was approximately the same as in normal subjects, but the first step length was considerably reduced, as were horizontal force (Fx) and Vmax CG. This impairment, which was due to a decrease in the propulsive forces, was significantly more pronounced in BDS that in FDS.
Dynamic Maintenance of Approximated Solutions of Min{weighted Node Cover and Min{weighted Set Cover Problems

In this paper, we introduce new algorithms for the dynamic maintenance of approximated solutions of Min{Weighted Node Cover and Min{Weighted Set Cover. For what concerns Min{Weighted Node Cover, for any sequence of edge insertions and deletions, the algorithms maintain an solution whose approximation ratio (that is, the ratio between the approximate and the optimum value) is equal to the best asymptotic one for the static case. The algorithms require O(1) time for edge insertion, while an O(1) amortized time is required for edge deletion. For what regards Min{Weighted Set Cover, we present dynamic algorithms whose approximation ratio matches one of the two diierent and incomparable best approximate bounds for the static case. The time complexity for element insertion and its amortized complexity for element deletion are proportional to the maximum redundancy of an element in the approximate solution.
An Extended Matrix Factorization Approach for QoS Prediction in Service Selection

With the growing adoption of Web services on the World Wide Web, the issue of QoS-based service selection is becoming important. A common hypothesis of previous research is that the QoS information to the current user is supposed all known and accurate. However, the real case is that there are many missing QoS values in history records. To avoid the expensive and costly Web services invocations, this paper proposes an extended Matrix Factorization (EMF) framework with relational regularization to make missing QoS values prediction. We first elaborate the Matrix Factorization (MF) model from a general perspective. To collect the wisdom of crowds precisely, we employ different similarity measurements on user side and service side to identify neighborhood. And then we systematically design two novel relational regularization terms inside a neighborhood. Finally we combine both terms into a unified MF framework to predict the missing QoS values. To validate our methods, experiments on real Web services data are conducted. The empirical analysis shows that our approaches outperform other state-of-the-art methods in QoS prediction accuracy.
LSFS : A Lightweight Segment-Structured Local File System to Boost Parallel File System Performance

Parallel I/Os play an increasingly important role in today’s data intensive computing applications. Many research efforts focus on parallel I/O performance optimizations at the application level, parallel file system level, or in between, but very few at the local file system or disk level underneath. This lack of attention to local file systems and disks imposes potential limitations that are otherwise avoidable on the parallel I/O performance. In this paper, we design and implement a new lightweight, segment-structured local file system called LSFS to boost the local file I/O performance for parallel file systems. Parallel Virtual File System (PVFS2) is chosen as an example. Comprehensive experimental results show that an LSFS-enhanced PVFS2 prototype system can outperform a traditional Linux-Ext3-based PVFS2 for many applications and benchmarks, and in some tests as much as 230% in terms of I/O bandwidth.
Fast method for noise level estimation and integrated noise reduction

This paper describes a fast method for noise level estimation and denoising. Specifically, we address the problem of estimating the standard deviation of additive white Gaussian noise in digital images; the computed value is used to reduce Gaussian noise and eliminate defective pixels in a raw digital image. The method is particularly suitable for implementation in low power mobile devices with imaging capabilities such as camera phones, as well as digital still cameras (DSC).
Power loss reduction and power quality improvement in distribution systems using a modified converter of distributed generation resources

Distribution network is a conventional concept for introducing the distributed generation resources (DG). In this paper, performance of a distributed generation converter is enhanced with the aim of reducing the power loss and improving the power quality. Three basic issues introduced on topics of the grid-connected DG are as follows: 1) compensation of the harmonic contents regarding to nonlinear loads using the converter and avoiding them to be injected into the gird, 2) using the converter to compensate the reactive power load provided from the converter and avoiding the grid to be involved in reactive generation portfolio and 3) reducing the converter related power losses. Satisfying these requirement, power quality is enhanced and also the power loss can be reduced. In order to realize the mentioned factors, a specific structure of power electronic based converter developed by two voltage source inverter is proposed. These two inverters are parallel connected together and supposed to provide grid-connection of a one-phase distribution generation resource. Since the first inverter is operated with a low frequency switching strategy and the second has low magnitude current with high switching frequency, the total power loss will significantly less than that of individual high frequency inverters. The proposed structure is mainly designed to behave as an efficient interface injecting the active power of DG into the grid network. Moreover, this converter acts as an active power filter (APF) that provides a pure sinusoidal current at unity power factor into the network by compensating the harmonic contents and also reactive power required from the load. Consequently, the desired condition is satisfied by the proposed converter and then the power quality and power losses are improved. The performances of the proposed scheme are verified through the simulation analysis in MATALB framework.
Signal Processing Techniques for Musical Instrument Recognition

Musical instrument recognition has become very popular and interesting field in recent years. This field is growing with the advancement of signal processing. There are many types of features used for musical instrument recognition e.g. temporal features, perceptual features, energy features, spectral features. We can represent music signal in time, frequency as well as log frequency domain. MFCC is commonly used feature extraction technique for musical instrument recognition. This paper reviews different techniques used in musical instruments identification. A comprehensive analysis is given along with classification detail to summarize the techniques.
Using path-finding algorithms of graph theory for route-searching in geographical information systems

This paper deals with graph theory application in large-scale geographical data searching and visualization. We present a comparison of two path-finding algorithms of graph theory, i.e. blind-search and A* algorithm, that results into the selection of the second one for implementation within a geographical information system. The main goal is to process the terrain map representation in the form of a graph during route-searching between start and target positions, and during the visualization and animation of the results of this search. We show the implementation results on random city map and on real three-dimensional model of our university campus. Finally, we discuss further directions of current work.
Co-processing SPMD Computation on GPUs and CPUs on Shared Memory System

Heterogeneous parallel system with multi processors and accelerators are becoming ubiquitous due to better cost-performance and energy-efficiency. These heterogeneous processor architectures have different instruction sets and are optimized for either task-latency or throughput purposes. Challenges occur in regard to programmability and performance when executing SPMD computations on heterogeneous architectures simultaneously. In order to meet these challenges, we implemented a MapReduce runtime system to co-process SPMD job on GPUs and CPUs on shared memory system. We are proposing a heterogeneous MapReduce programming interface for the developer and leverage the two-level scheduling approach in order to efficiently schedule tasks with heterogeneous granularities on the GPUs and CPUs. Experimental results of C-means clustering, matrix multiplication and word count indicate that using all CPU cores increase the GPU performance by 11.5%, 5.1%, and 41.9% respectively. Keyword: MapReduce, SPMD, GPU, CUDA, Multi-Level-