Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A lookup algorithm based on multiple tables for high-speed routers

The IP address lookup in the communication link technologies is becoming a major bottleneck by exploring the exact matching and the parallel hashing in each prefix length. In this paper, we present an algorithm for IP address lookup and collision resolution to reduce memory space and solve collision for high speed routing based on multiple table indexing structure. Our scheme makes possible direct access in a designated IP prefix without replicating the forwarding table entries, and provides efficient collision resolution for fast route lookup with only small memory. Simulation results indicate that our algorithm provides a faster lookup than the conventional lookup schemes.
Compressive Deformation of Polycrystalline UO2

The deformation of polycrystalline stoichiometric UO2 in compression exhibits a low-temperature (<1200°C) behavior that is distinct from its high-temperature behavior. The data for both temperature regions fit either an Arrhenius equation, =ν exp [-ΔH(τ)/RT], or the relation =Aτn/T exp [−ΔH0/RT]. At low temperatures, the activation energy and volume, the shape of the yield-stress-temperature curve, and the grain size-strength relation suggest a Peierls mechanism as rate-controlling in the deformation process. At high temperatures (≳ 1300°C), a different dislocation mechanism becomes rate-controlling for coarse-grained material, whereas very fine-grained (1 μm) material exhibits Nabarro-Herring deformation.
Towards a Metric Suite Proposal to Quantify Confirmation Biases of Developers

The goal of software metrics is the identification and measurement of the essential parameters that affect software development. Metrics can be used to improve software quality and productivity. Existing metrics in the literature are mostly product or process related. However, thought processes of people have a significant impact on software quality as software is designed, implemented and tested by people. Therefore, in defining new metrics, we need to take into account human cognitive aspects. Our research aims to address this need through the proposal of a new metric scheme to quantify a specific human cognitive aspect, namely "confirmation bias". In our previous research, in order to quantify confirmation bias, we defined a methodology to measure confirmation biases of people. In this research, we propose a metric suite that would be used by practitioners during daily decision making. Our proposed metric set consists of six metrics with a theoretical basis in cognitive psychology and measurement theory. Empirical sample of these metrics are collected from two software companies that are specialized in two different domains in order to demonstrate their feasibility. We suggest ways in which practitioners may use these metrics to improve software development process.
RUTTING AND FATIGUE PROPERTIES OF CRUMBED RUBBER HOT MIX ASPHALTS

Australian researchers sought to measure the performance of crumb rubber (hot mix) asphalts, after many years of successfully using crumb rubber binders in sprayed seals. Rubberized asphalts resisted rutting better than conventional (unmodified) asphalt and about as well as polymer modified binder asphalts. Wheel tracking performances were similar for dry mix and wet mix asphalts, but the fatigue life for dry mix was three times as long as wet's. The type of rubber crumb used to make binders did not affect wheel tracking very much, but had a significant effect on fatigue resistance.
Preparation and properties of low-cost graphene counter electrodes for dye-sensitized solar cells

With the advantages of excellent electrical properties, high catalytic activity and low-cost preparation, Graphene is one of the most expected carbon materials to replace the expensive Pt as counter electrodes for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). In this paper, graphene counter electrodes were obtained by simple doctor-blade coating method on fluorine tin oxides (FTOs). The samples were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscope (SEM). Then the low-cost graphene electrodes were applied in typical sandwich-type DSSCs with TiO2 or ZnO as photoanodes, and their photoelectric conversion efficiency (η) were about 4.34% and 2.28%, respectively, which were a little lower than those of Pt electrodes but much higher than those of graphite electrodes. This law was consistent with the test results of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Low-cost graphene electrodes can be applied in DSSCs by process optimization.
Spectroscopic Analysis of C20 Isomers by the U(2) Algebraic Model

The vibrational energy levels of C20 isomers are calculated considering the local Hamiltonian of Morse potential using the U(2) Lie algebra. Here each bond of the molecule is replaced by a corresponding Lie algebra. Finally the local Hamiltonian is constructed considering the interacting Casimir and Majorana invariant operators. By constructing the Hamiltonian, we calculate the local mode vibrational energy levels of C20 isomers and thus compare the accuracy of algebraic model with PM3 model.
A Summary of New Findings on the Biological Effects of Selenium in Selected Animal Species—A Critical Review

Selenium is an essential trace element important for many physiological processes, especially for the functions of immune and reproductive systems, metabolism of thyroid hormones, as well as antioxidant defense. Selenium deficiency is usually manifested by an increased incidence of retention of placenta, metritis, mastitis, aborts, lowering fertility and increased susceptibility to infections. In calves, lambs and kids, the selenium deficiency demonstrates by WMD (white muscle disease), in foals and donkey foals, it is associated with incidence of WMD and yellow fat disease, and in pigs it causes VESD (vitamin E/selenium deficiency) syndrome. The prevention of these health disorders can be achieved by an adequate selenium supplementation to the diet. The review summarizes the survey of knowledge on selenium, its biological significance in the organism, the impact of its deficiency in mammalian livestock (comparison of ruminants vs. non-ruminants, herbivore vs. omnivore) and possibilities of its peroral administration. The databases employed were as follows: Web of Science, PubMed, MEDLINE and Google Scholar.
Online convex optimization-based algorithm for thermal management of MPSoCs

Meeting the temperature constraints and reducing the hot-spots are critical for achieving reliable and efficient operation of complex multi-core systems. The goal of thermal management is to meet maximum operating temperature constraints, while tracking timevarying performance requirements. Current approaches avoid thermal violations by forcing abrupt operating points changes, which cause sharp performance degradation. In this paper we aim at achieving an online smooth thermal control action, that minimizes the tracking error. We formulate this problem as a discrete-time optimal control problem, which can be solved via online by using an embedded convex optimization solver using a receding horizon approach. The optimization problem considers the thermal profile of the system, its evolution over time, current and past time-varying workload requirements. We perform experiments on a model of the 8-core Niagara-1 multicore architecture, which show that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art thermal management approaches by enabling performance speed-ups of up to 2.5x and improvements up to 12x and 3.4x in relation to frequency and temperature variations over time, respectively.
PLAN: A Policy-Aware VM Management Scheme for Cloud Data Centres

Policies play an important role in network configuration and therefore in offering secure and high performance services especially over multi-tenant Cloud Data Center (DC) environments. At the same time, elastic resource provisioning through virtualization often disregards policy requirements, assuming that the policy implementation is handled by the underlying network infrastructure. This can result in policy violations, performance degradation and security vulnerabilities. In this paper, we define PLAN, a PoLicy-Aware and Network-aware VM management scheme to jointly consider DC communication cost reduction through Virtual Machine (VM) migration while meeting network policy requirements. We show that the problem is NP-hard and derive an efficient approximate algorithm to reduce communication cost while adhering to policy constraints. Through extensive evaluation, we show that PLAN can reduce topology-wide communication cost by 38% over diverse aggregate traffic and configuration policies.
Moderating Effects of Familiarity and Experience in the Relationships of Trust with Its Antecedents and Consequences

The fall in citizens’ trust in public institutions is one of the biggest challenges they face since it has effects on a wide range of variables (commitment, loyalty, etc.). Amid these variables there is one whose relevance in the literature has increased recently, namely the user’s intention to continue to use the services provided. Among the formulae put forward to set this right is the role played by transparency yet, although initially it was considered that simply rolling out transparency programmes would lead to the intended outcome, subsequently several works established the non-existence of this relationship or even a decrease in citizens’ trust. One possible explanation for such disparate consequences could be the way in which familiarity or experience affects trust-generating processes. Consequently this research seeks to analyse the impact that familiarity or user experience has on the relationship between transparency, satisfaction, and trust and between this and continuance intention for the case of the UNED, the largest public university institution in Spain.
Process mining: discovering and improving Spaghetti and Lasagna processes

Process mining is an emerging discipline providing comprehensive sets of tools to provide fact-based insights and to support process improvements. This new discipline builds on process model-driven approaches and data mining. This invited keynote paper demonstrates that process mining can be used to discover a wide range of processes ranging from structured processes (Lasagna processes) to unstructured processes (Spaghetti processes). For Lasagna processes, the discovered process is just the starting point for a broad repertoire of analysis techniques that support process improvement. For example, process mining can be used to detect and diagnose bottlenecks and deviations in (semi-)structured processes. The analysis of Spaghetti processes is more challenging. However, the potential benefits are substantial; just by inspecting the discovered model, important insights can be obtained. Process discovery can be used to understand variability and non-conformance. This paper presents the L* life-cycle model consisting of five phases. The model describes how to apply process mining techniques.
Bayesian techniques for neural networks — Review and case studies

We give a short review on Bayesian techniques for neural networks and demonstrate the advantages of the approach in a number of industrial applications. Bayesian approach provides a principled way to handle the problem of overfitting, by averaging over all model complexities weighted by their posterior probability given the data sample. The approach also facilitates estimation of the confidence intervals of the results, and comparison to other model selection techniques (such as the committee of early stopped networks) often reveals faulty assumptions in the models. In this contribution we review the Bayesian techniques for neural networks and present comparison results from several case studies that include regression, classification, and inverse problems.
Snoek Relaxation in bcc Metals and High Damping β-Ti Alloys

The Snoek relaxation, a specific point-defect induced anelastic relaxation phenomenon, is characteristic of an internal friction peak in bcc metals with interstitial solutes. Such internal friction mechanism has not been applied in the development of high damping alloy while grain boundary and twin boundary featured anelastic relaxations are applied in some high damping alloys. In this paper, the fundamental principles and experimental results concerning the Snoek relaxation are reviewed, and the feasibility to apply the Snoek relaxation mechanism into high damping alloys is discussed. Due to the peak-shape behavior in the Snoek relaxation type damping, composition design of a high damping alloys should takes temperature position, broadness and also peak height into account. Ti-Nb-O and Ti-V-Cr-O alloys are designed and fabricated by CCLM casting in our laboratory. It is conformed that the damping behaviors of the alloys are of Snoek relaxation type showing obvious frequency and temperature dependence. While the broadened damping peak caused by the substitutional solutes is advantage to improve the temperature stability of damping capacity, a large concentration of interstitial solute and texture control are required to improve the reduced damping capacity.
The Evolution of Pepsinogen C Genes in Vertebrates: Duplication, Loss and Functional Diversification

Background Aspartic proteases comprise a large group of enzymes involved in peptide proteolysis. This collection includes prominent enzymes globally categorized as pepsins, which are derived from pepsinogen precursors. Pepsins are involved in gastric digestion, a hallmark of vertebrate physiology. An important member among the pepsinogens is pepsinogen C (Pgc). A particular aspect of Pgc is its apparent single copy status, which contrasts with the numerous gene copies found for example in pepsinogen A (Pga). Although gene sequences with similarity to Pgc have been described in some vertebrate groups, no exhaustive evolutionary framework has been considered so far. Methodology/Principal Findings By combining phylogenetics and genomic analysis, we find an unexpected Pgc diversity in the vertebrate sub-phylum. We were able to reconstruct gene duplication timings relative to the divergence of major vertebrate clades. Before tetrapod divergence, a single Pgc gene tandemly expanded to produce two gene lineages (Pgbc and Pgc2). These have been differentially retained in various classes. Accordingly, we find Pgc2 in sauropsids, amphibians and marsupials, but not in eutherian mammals. Pgbc was retained in amphibians, but duplicated in the ancestor of amniotes giving rise to Pgb and Pgc1. The latter was retained in mammals and probably in reptiles and marsupials but not in birds. Pgb was kept in all of the amniote clade with independent episodes of loss in some mammalian species. Lineage specific expansions of Pgc2 and Pgbc have also occurred in marsupials and amphibians respectively. We find that teleost and tetrapod Pgc genes reside in distinct genomic regions hinting at a possible translocation. Conclusions We conclude that the repertoire of Pgc genes is larger than previously reported, and that tandem duplications have modelled the history of Pgc genes. We hypothesize that gene expansion lead to functional divergence in tetrapods, coincident with the invasion of terrestrial habitats.
THE κ ANDROMEDAE SYSTEM: NEW CONSTRAINTS ON THE COMPANION MASS, SYSTEM AGE, AND FURTHER MULTIPLICITY

κ Andromedae is a B9IVn star at 52 pc for which a faint substellar companion separated by 55 ± 2 AU was recently announced. In this work, we present the first spectrum of the companion, “κ And B,” using the Project 1640 high-contrast imaging platform. Comparison of our low-resolution YJH-band spectra to empirical brown dwarf spectra suggests an early-L spectral type. Fitting synthetic spectra from PHOENIX model atmospheres to our observed spectrum allows us to constrain the effective temperature to ∼2000 K as well as place constraints on the companion surface gravity. Further, we use previously reported log(g) and Teff measurements of the host star to argue that the κ And system has an isochronal age of 220 ± 100 Myr, older than the 30 Myr age reported previously. This interpretation of an older age is corroborated by the photometric properties of κ And B, which appear to be marginally inconsistent with other 10–100 Myr low-gravity L-dwarfs for the spectral type range we derive. In addition, we use Keck aperture masking interferometry combined with published radial velocity measurements to rule out the existence of any tight stellar companions to κ And A that might be responsible for the system's overluminosity. Further, we show that luminosity enhancements due to a nearly “pole-on” viewing angle coupled with extremely rapid rotation is unlikely. κ And A is thus consistent with its slightly evolved luminosity class (IV), and we propose here that κ And, with a revised age of 220 ± 100 Myr, is an interloper to the 30 Myr Columba association with which it was previously associated. The photometric and spectroscopic evidence for κ And B combined with our reassessment of the system age implies a substellar companion mass of 50 MJup, consistent with a brown dwarf rather than a planetary-mass companion.
Tai chi exercise in patients with chronic heart failure: a randomized clinical trial.

BACKGROUND Preliminary evidence suggests that meditative exercise may have benefits for patients with chronic systolic heart failure (HF); this has not been rigorously tested in a large clinical sample. We sought to investigate whether tai chi, as an adjunct to standard care, improves functional capacity and quality of life in patients with HF. METHODS A single-blind, multisite, parallel-group, randomized controlled trial evaluated 100 outpatients with systolic HF (New York Heart Association class I-III, left ventricular ejection fraction ≤40%) who were recruited between May 1, 2005, and September 30, 2008. A group-based 12-week tai chi exercise program (n = 50) or time-matched education (n = 50, control group) was conducted. Outcome measures included exercise capacity (6- minute walk test and peak oxygen uptake) and disease-specific quality of life (Minnesota Living With Heart Failure Questionnaire). RESULTS Mean (SD) age of patients was 67 (11) years; baseline values were left ventricular ejection fraction, 29% (8%) and peak oxygen uptake, 13.5 mL/kg/min; the median New York Heart Association class of HF was class II. At completion of the study, there were no significant differences in change in 6-minute walk distance and peak oxygen uptake (median change [first quartile, third quartile], 35 [-2, 51] vs 2 [-7, 54] meters, P = .95; and 1.1 [-1.1, 1.5] vs -0.5 [-1.2, 1.8] mL/kg/min, P = .81) when comparing tai chi and control groups; however, patients in the tai chi group had greater improvements in quality of life (Minnesota Living With Heart Failure Questionnaire, -19 [-23, -3] vs 1 [-16, 3], P = .02). Improvements with tai chi were also seen in exercise self-efficacy (Cardiac Exercise Self-efficacy Instrument, 0.1 [0.1, 0.6] vs -0.3 [-0.5, 0.2], P < .001) and mood (Profile of Mood States total mood disturbance, -6 [-17, 1] vs -1 [-13, 10], P = .01). CONCLUSION Tai chi exercise may improve quality of life, mood, and exercise self-efficacy in patients with HF. Trial Registration clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00110227.
Space Launch System Scale Model Acoustic Test Ignition Overpressure Testing

The overpressure phenomenon is a transient fluid dynamic event occurring during rocket propulsion system ignition. This phenomenon results from fluid compression of the accelerating plume gas, subsequent rarefaction, and subsequent propagation from the exhaust trench and duct holes. The high-amplitude unsteady fluid-dynamic perturbations can adversely affect the vehicle and surrounding structure. Commonly known as ignition overpressure (IOP), this is an important design-to environment for the Space Launch System (SLS) that NASA is currently developing. Subscale testing is useful in validating and verifying the IOP environment. This was one of the objectives of the Scale Model Acoustic Test (SMAT), conducted at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The test data quantifies the effectiveness of the SLS IOP suppression system and improves the analytical models used to predict the SLS IOP environments. The reduction and analysis of the data gathered during the SMAT IOP test series requires identification and characterization of multiple dynamic events and scaling of the event waveforms to provide the most accurate comparisons to determine the effectiveness of the IOP suppression systems. The identification and characterization of the overpressure events, the waveform scaling, the computation of the IOP suppression system knockdown factors, and preliminary comparisons to the analytical models are discussed.
Efficient object annotation for surveillance and automotive applications

Accurately annotated large video data is critical for the development of reliable surveillance and automotive related vision solutions. In this work, we propose an efficient and yet accurate annotation scheme for objects in videos (pedestrians in this case) with minimal supervision. We annotate objects with tight bounding boxes. We propagate the annotations across the frames with a self training based approach. An energy minimization scheme for the segmentation is the central component of our method. Unlike the popular grab cut like segmentation schemes, we demand minimal user intervention. Since our annotation is built on an accurate segmentation, our bounding boxes are tight. We validate the performance of our approach on multiple publicly available datasets.
Nitric Oxide Inhibits Al-Induced Programmed Cell Death in Root Tips of Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) by Affecting Physiological Properties of Antioxidants Systems and Cell Wall

It has been reported that nitric oxide (NO) is a negative regulator of aluminum (Al)-induced programmed cell death (PCD) in peanut root tips. However, the inhibiting mechanism of NO on Al-induced PCD is unclear. In order to investigate the mechanism by which NO inhibits Al-induced PCD, the effects of co-treatment Al with the exogenous NO donor or the NO-specific scavenger on peanut root tips, the physiological properties of antioxidants systems and cell wall (CW) in root tip cells of NO inhibiting Al-induced PCD were studied with two peanut cultivars. The results showed that Al exposure induced endogenous NO accumulation, and endogenous NO burst increased antioxidant enzyme activity in response to Al stress. The addition of NO donor sodium nitroprusside (SNP) relieved Al-induced root elongation inhibition, cell death and Al adsorption in CW, as well as oxidative damage and ROS accumulation. Furthermore, co-treatment with the exogenous NO donor decreased MDA content, LOX activity and pectin methylesterase (PME) activity, increased xyloglucan endotransglucosylase (XET) activity and relative expression of the xyloglucan endotransglucosylase/hydrolase (XTH-32) gene. Taken together, exogenous NO alleviated Al-induced PCD by inhibiting Al adsorption in CW, enhancing antioxidant defense and reducing peroxidation of membrane lipids, alleviating the inhibition of Al on root elongation by maintaining the extensibility of CW, decreasing PME activity, and increasing XET activity and relative XTH-32 expression of CW.