Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive Burst-Writes (ABW)

Main memory latencies have become a major performance bottleneck for chip-multiprocessors (CMPs). Since reads are on the critical path, existing memory controllers prioritize reads over writes. However, writes must be eventually processed when the write queue is full. These writes are serviced in a burst to reduce the bus turnaround delay and increase the row-buffer locality. Unfortunately, a large number of reads may suffer long queuing delay when the burst-writes are serviced. The long write latency of future nonvolatile memory will further exacerbate the long queuing delay of reads during burst-writes. In this article, we propose a run-time mechanism, Adaptive Burst-Writes (ABW), to reduce the queuing delay of reads. Based on the row-buffer hit rate of writes and the arrival rate of reads, we dynamically control the number of writes serviced in a burst to trade off the write service time and the queuing latency of reads. For prompt adjustment, our history-based mechanism further terminates the burst-writes earlier when the row-buffer hit rate of writes in the previous burst-writes is low. As a result, our policy improves system throughput by up to 28% (average 10%) and 43% (average 14%) in CMPs with DRAM-based and PCM-based main memory.
MTCLASS: Enabling statistical traffic classification of multi-gigabit aggregates on inexpensive hardware

Traffic classification on high-speed, multi-Gb/s links has up to now been demonstrated on complex Linux setups using multi-queue Ethernet cards, thread affinity, zero-copy buffers and specialized socket types. Although these approaches do work in principle, the complexity of the involved networking system ends up consuming almost all computational resources to pass packets between kernel and user space, leaving no CPU time to run any actual statistical classification algorithm. In this paper we present a new approach that harnesses a lightweight and inexpensive NetFPGA/1G to group incoming packets in jumboframes so that almost all CPU cycles of a commodity PC running a stock Linux kernel can be dedicated to run a statistical traffic classification algorithm. Experimental results show that our inexpensive setup can execute Support Vector Machine traffic classification in real time to aggregates of up to 7.44M pps. We make MTCLASS' source code available to the community under an open source license.
Multiple carbohydrate receptors on lymphocytes revealed by adhesion to immobilized polysaccharides

Phosphomannan polysaccharides and fucoidan, a polymer of fucose 4- sulfate, have been demonstrated to inhibit adhesion of lymphocytes to tissue sections that contain high endothelial venules (Stoolman, L. M., T. S. Tenforde, and S. D. Rosen, 1984, J. Cell Biol., 99:1535-1540). We have investigated the potential cell surface carbohydrate receptors involved by quantitating adhesion of rat cervical lymph node lymphocytes to purified polysaccharides immobilized on otherwise inert polyacrylamide gels. One-sixth of the lymphocytes adhered specifically to surfaces derivatized with PPME (a phosphomannan polysaccharide prepared from Hansenula holstii yeast), whereas up to half of the cells adhered to surfaces derivatized with fucoidan. Several lines of evidence demonstrated that two distinct receptors were involved. Adhesion to PPME-derivatized gels was labile at 37 degrees C (decreasing to background levels within 120 min) whereas adhesion to fucoidan-derivatized gels was stable. Soluble PPME and other phosphomannans blocked adhesion only to PPME-derivatized gels; fucoidan and a structurally related fucan blocked adhesion to fucoidan- derivatized gels. Other highly charged anionic polysaccharides, such as heparin, did not block adhesion to either polysaccharide-derivatized gel. Adhesion to PPME-derivatized gels was dependent on divalent cations, whereas that to fucoidan-derivatized gels was not. The PPME- adherent lymphocytes were shown to be a subpopulation of the fucoidan- adhesive lymphocytes which contained both saccharide receptors. These data reveal that at least two distinct carbohydrate receptors can be found on peripheral lymphocytes.
VirusFinder: a Web-based virus identification system using viral nucleotide signatures

VirusFinder was developed as a Web-based virus identification system using viral signatures. Nucleotide signature-based detection has been proven to be a rapid and accurate pathogen identification approach in natural outbreaks or acts of bioterrorism. Species-specific signatures of selected families of HFVs including arenaviruses, bunyaviruses, filoviruses, and flaviviruses have been identified by comparative genomics. The unique signatures for each individual species of HFVs were derived from the multiple sequence alignments and were then saved into the signature database after validation. VirusFinder was implemented using J2EE technology with an intelligent signature recognition algorithm. As such, species-level differentiation and identification of HFVs was automatically achieved given an input of unknown nucleotide sequences. Results show that VirusFinder is able to identify HFVs at species level with 100% accuracy.
Solving Linear Systems through Nested Dissection

The generalized nested dissection method, developed by Lipton, Rose, and Tarjan, is a seminal method for solving a linear system Ax=b where A is a symmetric positive definite matrix. The method runs extremely fast whenever A is a well-separable matrix (such as matrices whose underlying support is planar or avoids a fixed minor). In this work we extend the nested dissection method to apply to any non-singular well-separable matrix over any field. The running times we obtain essentially match those of the nested dissection method.
Situational Architecture Engineering (SAE) - Improving Strategic Change Through Architecture Methods

Market and environmental requirements call for constant changes in enterprises. To be able to record these changes in a structured way and to manage them it is helpful to use enterprise architectures as stable regulation frameworks. To support the development and the adaptation of the enterprise architectures there are numerous architecture methods (e.g. Zachman Framework, ARIS (Architecture of Integrated Information Systems), TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework), DoDAF (Department of Defense Architecture Framework), BEN (Business Engineering Navigator), Semantic Object Model (SOM)), however, they often lack the necessary flexibility to enable a construction process adaptable to the given situation. This article presents a first approach towards making architecture methods flexible: meta models of the architecture frameworks of selected methods are generated and integrated into a joint meta model. The latter supports the situational adaptability of the enterprise architecture as the architecture method applied has been adapted.
Physical properties of a denture base acrylic resins after incorporation of anionic charges

This study evaluated the influence of methacrylic acid (MA) incorporation on hardness, roughness, and flexural strength of a denture base acrylic resin. Thirty-two circular and 40 rectangular specimens were divided into four groups, according to the concentration of MA substituted into the monomer component of a heat-polymerized acrylic resin, as follows: 0% (Control), 10%, 20% and 50% (v/v). The following properties were assessed: Vickers hardness, surface roughness, and flexural strength. Variables were analyzed by ANOVA/Tukey’s test (α=.05). For the four incorporated MA concentrations (0%, 10%, 20% and 50%), the following results were obtained for hardness (19.0±1.4A, 19.6±1.3A, 19.6±0.9A, 14.2±0.6B VHN), surface roughness (0.26±0.05A, 0.17±0.01AB, 0.18±0.03AB, 0.13±0.03B μm) and flexural strengh (96.3±8.3A, 98.8±6.2A, 102.4±8.6A, 106.3±13.7A MPa). The incorporation of MA may cause slight changes in the structure of the tested material, as evidenced by the hardness test. However, the values for surface roughness reduced as MA concentration increased, suggesting that MA addition may improve the acrylic resin texture.
Antimicrobial resistance in humans, livestock and the wider environment

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in humans is inter-linked with AMR in other populations, especially farm animals, and in the wider environment. The relatively few bacterial species that cause disease in humans, and are the targets of antibiotic treatment, constitute a tiny subset of the overall diversity of bacteria that includes the gut microbiota and vast numbers in the soil. However, resistance can pass between these different populations; and homologous resistance genes have been found in pathogens, normal flora and soil bacteria. Farm animals are an important component of this complex system: they are exposed to enormous quantities of antibiotics (despite attempts at reduction) and act as another reservoir of resistance genes. Whole genome sequencing is revealing and beginning to quantify the two-way traffic of AMR bacteria between the farm and the clinic. Surveillance of bacterial disease, drug usage and resistance in livestock is still relatively poor, though improving, but achieving better antimicrobial stewardship on the farm is challenging: antibiotics are an integral part of industrial agriculture and there are very few alternatives. Human production and use of antibiotics either on the farm or in the clinic is but a recent addition to the natural and ancient process of antibiotic production and resistance evolution that occurs on a global scale in the soil. Viewed in this way, AMR is somewhat analogous to climate change, and that suggests that an intergovernmental panel, akin to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, could be an appropriate vehicle to actively address the problem.
Eurographics/ Acm Siggraph Symposium on Computer Animation (2008) Flexible Simulation of Deformable Models Using Discontinuous Galerkin Fem

We propose a simulation technique for elastically deformable objects based on the discontinuous Galerkin finite element method (DG FEM). In contrast to traditional FEM, it overcomes the restrictions of conforming basis functions by allowing for discontinuous elements with weakly enforced continuity constraints. This added flexibility enables the simulation of arbitrarily shaped, convex and non-convex polyhedral elements, while still using simple polynomial basis functions. For the accurate strain integration over these elements we propose an analytic technique based on the divergence theorem. Being able to handle arbitrary elements eventually allows us to derive simple and efficient techniques for volumetric mesh generation, adaptive mesh refinement, and robust cutting.
Sliding-Mode Control to Compensate PVT Variations in dual core systems

In this paper, we present a novel robust sliding-mode controller for stabilizing supply voltage and clock frequency of dual core processors determined by dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) methods in the presence of systematic and random variations. We show that maximum rejection for process, voltage and temperature (PVT) variations can be achieved by using the proposed sliding-mode controller. The stabilization of the presented controller is confirmed by the Lyapanov method. Experimental results demonstrate maximum 20% robustness against 20% parameter variations for a hardware of two core processors executing a JPEG decoding application.
Development and validation of a pretreatment prognostic index to predict death and lung metastases in extremity osteosarcoma

Background To develop a prognostic index to predict the 5-year overall survival (OS) and 5-year lung metastasis-free survival (LMFS) of patients with extremity osteosarcoma at the time of diagnosis. Methods We retrospectively evaluated 454 patients with extremity osteosarcoma at our center from 2005 to 2013. The cohort was randomly divided into training and validation sets. The association of potential risk factors with OS and LMFS was assessed by Cox proportional hazards analysis in the training set, and a prognostic index was created according to scores that were proportional to a regression coefficient for each factor. This prognostic index was assessed in the validation set. Results For the 5-year OS, 5 independent prognostic factors were identified: tumor size, Enneking stage, pretreatment platelet, alkaline phosphatase(ALP), and neutrophils. The multivariate Cox model identified tumor size, pretreatment platelets, ALP, and neutrophils as associated with the 5-year LMFS. A prognostic index for death and lung metastases was calculated. Three risk groups were defined for each survival point: low, intermediate, and high risk for the 5-year OS; low, intermediate, and high risk for the 5-year LMFS. The C statistic for the 5-year OS was 0.723 in the training set and 0.710 in the validation set. The C statistic for the 5-year LMFS was 0.661 and 0.693 respectively. Conclusion This prognostic index is based on routine tests and characteristics of extremity osteosarcoma patients and is a useful predictor of OS and lung metastases. This index could be applied to clinical practice and trials for individualized risk-adapted therapies.
Environmental Noise Retards Auditory Cortical Development

The mammalian auditory cortex normally undergoes rapid and progressive functional maturation. Here we show that rearing infant rat pups in continuous, moderate-level noise delayed the emergence of adultlike topographic representational order and the refinement of response selectivity in the primary auditory cortex (A1) long beyond normal developmental benchmarks. When those noise-reared adult rats were subsequently exposed to a pulsed pure-tone stimulus, A1 rapidly reorganized, demonstrating that exposure-driven plasticity characteristic of the critical period was still ongoing. These results demonstrate that A1 organization is shaped by a young animal's exposure to salient, structured acoustic inputs—and implicate noise as a risk factor for abnormal child development.
Integrative Analysis of the Caenorhabditis elegans Genome by the modENCODE Project

From Genome to Regulatory Networks For biologists, having a genome in hand is only the beginning—much more investigation is still needed to characterize how the genome is used to help to produce a functional organism (see the Perspective by Blaxter). In this vein, Gerstein et al. (p. 1775) summarize for the Caenorhabditis elegans genome, and The modENCODE Consortium (p. 1787) summarize for the Drosophila melanogaster genome, full transcriptome analyses over developmental stages, genome-wide identification of transcription factor binding sites, and high-resolution maps of chromatin organization. Both studies identified regions of the nematode and fly genomes that show highly occupied targets (or HOT) regions where DNA was bound by more than 15 of the transcription factors analyzed and the expression of related genes were characterized. Overall, the studies provide insights into the organization, structure, and function of the two genomes and provide basic information needed to guide and correlate both focused and genome-wide studies. Extensive analysis of the Caenorhabditis elegans genome reveals regions highly occupied by multiple transcription factors. We systematically generated large-scale data sets to improve genome annotation for the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a key model organism. These data sets include transcriptome profiling across a developmental time course, genome-wide identification of transcription factor–binding sites, and maps of chromatin organization. From this, we created more complete and accurate gene models, including alternative splice forms and candidate noncoding RNAs. We constructed hierarchical networks of transcription factor–binding and microRNA interactions and discovered chromosomal locations bound by an unusually large number of transcription factors. Different patterns of chromatin composition and histone modification were revealed between chromosome arms and centers, with similarly prominent differences between autosomes and the X chromosome. Integrating data types, we built statistical models relating chromatin, transcription factor binding, and gene expression. Overall, our analyses ascribed putative functions to most of the conserved genome.
Designing with a 2 1/2-D Attitude

Computer graphics gives us freedom to design highly interactive 3-D information spaces, but when will these be better? An analysis of human space perception reveals that the dimension of egocentric space towards and away from an observer is perceived very differently from the dimensions orthogonal to the line of sight. Because of the this property of perceptual space a strategy of designing with a 2½-D attitude is advocated and elaborated in a set of design principles.
Exact and heuristic approaches for the maximum lifetime problem in sensor networks with coverage and connectivity constraints

The aim of the Connected Maximum Lifetime Problem is to define a schedule for the activation intervals of the sensors deployed inside a region of interest, such that at all times the activated sensors can monitor a set of interesting target locations and route the collected information to a central base station, while maximizing the total amount of time over which the sensor network can be operational. Complete or partial coverage of the targets are taken into account. To optimally solve the problem, we propose a column generation approach which makes use of an appropriately designed genetic algorithm to overcome the difficulty of solving the subproblem to optimality in each iteration. Moreover, we also devise a heuristic by stopping the column generation procedure as soon as the columns found by the genetic algorithm do not improve the incumbent solution. Comparisons with previous approaches proposed in the literature show our algorithms to be highly competitive, both in terms of solution quality and computational time.
A Simulation Study on Model Predictive Control and Extremum Seeking Control for Heap Bioleaching Processes

Abstract Heap bioleaching processes are of increasing interest in the mining industry to recover metals from secondary ores. Recently, it has been proposed to use feedback control to improve the rate of mineral extraction. In this paper we compare two feedback approaches, namely Model Predictive Control (MPC) and Extremum Seeking Control (ESC), to improve copper extraction in a heap bioleaching process. Simplified linear models obtained in previous work are used to design an MPC strategy incorporating input constraints. ESC is tuned to maximise copper extraction rate using aeration rate. Simulation results run on a high complexity model of the process show that similar copper extraction rates can be obtained using either strategy. While better control efforts are obtained with MPC, ESC achieves similar results and shows potential for this intrinsically complex process, requiring little knowledge about the plant.
The Antiapoptotic Effect of Heme Oxygenase-1 in Endothelial Cells Involves the Degradation of p38α MAPK Isoform1

Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) protects endothelial cells (EC) from undergoing apoptosis. This effect is mimicked by CO, generated via the catabolism of heme by HO-1. The antiapoptotic effect of CO in EC was abrogated when activation of the p38α and p38β MAPKs was inhibited by the pyridinyl imidazole SB202190. Using small interfering RNA, p38β was found to be cytoprotective in EC, whereas p38α was not. When overexpressed in EC, HO-1 targeted specifically the p38α but not the p38β MAPK isoform for degradation by the 26S proteasome, an effect reversed by the 26S proteasome inhibitors MG-132 or lactacystin. Inhibition of p38α expression was also observed when HO-1 was induced physiologically by iron protoporphyrin IX (hemin). Inhibition of p38α no longer occurred when HO activity was inhibited by tin protoporphyrin IX, suggesting that p38α degradation was mediated by an end product of heme catabolism. Exogenous CO inhibited p38α expression in EC, suggesting that CO is the end product that mediates this effect. The antiapoptotic effect of HO-1 was impaired when p38α expression was restored ectopically or when its degradation by the 26S proteasome was inhibited by MG-132. Furthermore, the antiapoptotic effect of HO-1 was lost when p38β expression was targeted by a specific p38β small interfering RNA. In conclusion, the antiapoptotic effect of HO-1 in EC is dependent on the degradation of p38α by the 26S proteasome and on the expression of p38β.
Helping Women Shape a Career Path and a Life That Works.

This paper discusses a model that guides women in practicing key attitudes and behaviors that will help them to succeed in our new economy. It focuses on today's critical workplace competencies while encouraging a rich and textured personal life. It responds to four challenges that women need to pay attention to: acknowledging and capitalizing on their personal resilience; creating opportunities to demonstrate their skills; shaping a personal life that is alive and nourishing; and continuing to move toward healthy, long-term career and life success. The model uses 4 themes and 10 strengths to address these challenges, all of which are described in the paper. It also includes some guided questions that career development practitioners may find useful in career-focused discussions with their female clients. (MKA) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Helping Women Shape a Career Path and a Life that Works
Dynamic thread assignment on heterogeneous multiprocessor architectures

In a multi-programmed computing environment, threads of execution exhibit different runtime characteristics and hardware resource requirements. Not only do the behaviors of distinct threads differ, but each thread may also present diversity in its performance and resource usage over time. A heterogeneous chip multiprocessor (CMP) architecture consists of processor cores and caches of varying size and complexity. Prior work has shown that heterogeneous CMPs can meet the needs of a multi-programmed computing environment better than a homogeneous CMP system. In fact, the use of a combination of cores with different caches and instruction issue widths better accommodates threads with different computational requirements.A central issue in the design and use of heterogeneous systems is to determine an assignment of tasks to processors which better exploits the hardware resources in order to improve performance. In this paper we argue that the benefits of heterogeneous CMPs are bolstered by the usage of a dynamic assignment policy, i.e., a runtime mechanism which observes the behavior of the running threads and exploits thread migration between the cores. We validate our analysis by means of simulation. Specifically, our model assumes a combination of Alpha EV5 and Alpha EV6 processors and of integer and floating point programs from the SPEC2000 benchmark suite. We show that a dynamic assignment can outperform a static one by 20% to 40% on average and by as much as 80% in extreme cases, depending on the degree of multithreading simulated.