Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
View materialization for nested GPSJ queries

View materialization is a central issue in logical design of data warehouses since it is one of the most powerful techniques to improve the response to the workload. Most approaches in the literature only focus on the aggregation patterns required by the queries in the workload; in this paper we propose an original approach to materialization in which the workload is characterized by the presence of complex queries which cannot be effectively described only by their aggregation pattern. In particular, we consider queries represented by nested GPSJ (Generalized Projection / Selection / Join) expressions, in which sequences of aggregate operators may be applied to measures and selection predicates may be formulated, at different granularities, on both dimensions and measures. Other specific issues taken into account are related to the need for materializing derived measures as well as support measures to make algebraic operators distributive. Based on this query model, an efficient algorithm to determine a restricted set of candidate views for materialization, to be fed into an optimization algorithm, is proposed. Finally, the effectiveness of our approach is discussed with reference to a sample workload.
High-quality Shadow Rendering with Parallel-Split Shadow Maps

In the process for treating irradiated nuclear fuel to effect separation of uranium plutonium other higher actinides, and fission products, in which nitric acid treatment, followed by solvent extraction, then backwashing the reduction of tetra- and hexa-valent plutonium to the tri-valent form, then a second solvent extraction by which the tri-valent plutonium remains in the aqueous phase while uranium goes into the solvent phase, the reduction step is performed by hydrazine with or without tetra-valent uranium nitrate and catalyzed by technetium in the tetra-valent form with or without technetium in one or more higher valency states. The technetium can be present in the system as an irradiation product or be added to the process stream in a combined form.
Laminar processing of stimulus orientation in cat visual cortex

One of the most salient features to emerge in visual cortex is sensitivity to stimulus orientation. Here we asked if orientation selectivity, once established, is altered by successive stages of cortical processing. We measured patterns of orientation selectivity at all depths of the cat's visual cortex by making whole‐cell recordings with dye‐filled electrodes. Our results show that the synaptic representation of orientation indeed changes with position in the microcircuit, as information passes from layer 4 to layer 2+3 to layer 5. At the earliest cortical stage, for simple cells in layer 4, orientation tuning curves for excitation (depolarization) and inhibition (hyperpolarization) had similar peaks (within 0–7 deg, n= 11) and bandwidths. Further, the sharpness of orientation selectivity covaried with receptive field geometry (r= 0.74) ‐ the more elongated the strongest subregion, the shaper the tuning. Tuning curves for complex cells in layer 2+3 also had similar peaks (within 0–4 deg, n= 7) and bandwidths. By contrast, at a later station, layer 5, the preferred orientation for excitation and inhibition diverged such that the peaks of the tuning curves could be as far as 90 deg apart (average separation, 54 deg; n= 6). Our results support the growing consensus that orientation selectivity is generated at the earliest cortical level and structured similarly for excitation and inhibition. Moreover, our novel finding that the relative tuning of excitation and inhibition changes with laminar position helps resolve prior controversy about orientation selectivity at later phases of processing and gives a mechanistic view of how the cortical circuitry recodes orientation.
Sequential and Cooperative Distributed SA-Type Algorithms for Energy Optimization in Embedded Systems

Reducing memory energy consumption in embedded systems is crucial. In this paper, we propose new sequential and distributed algorithms based on Simulated Annealing (SA) in order to reduce memory energy consumption in embedded systems. Our algorithms outperform the Tabu Search (TS) approach. In fact, our algorithms manage to consume nearly from 76% up to 98% less memory energy than TS. Execution time savings for the distributed SA version (from 65.63% up to 75.34% for a cluster of 6 PCs) are also recorded.
Galactic warp in the overdensity of the Canis Major region

Bellazzini et al. claim that Lopez-Corredoira et al. warp model is totally unable to reproduce the Canis Major structure in the red clump stars. However, slight variations in the azimuth of the Lopez-Corredoira et al. warp model, justified by the uncertainties in the parameter as well as the local irregularities with respect to the average model, derive a result much closer to the observations of the overdensity south/north. The bump of red clump stars with m K = 13-13.5 around l = 241°, b = -8°5 and the depth of the Canis Major structure are also explainable in terms of the warp with an appropriate extrapolation of constant height between Galactocentric radii of 13 and 16 kpc, as observed roughly in the southern warp, instead of a monotonically increasing height like the northern warp; and the observed velocity distribution of stars cannot exclude the warp possibility. A warp model is therefore still a possible explanation of the Canis Major overdensity, and the hypothesis of the existence of a dwarf galaxy is unnecessary, although still a possibility too.
Reducing Friction for Knowledge Workers with Task Context

Knowledge workers perform work on many tasks per day and often switch between tasks. When performing work on a task, a knowledge worker must typically search, navigate and dig through file systems, documents and emails, all of which introduce friction into the flow of work. This friction can be reduced, and productivity improved, by capturing and modeling the context of a knowledge worker’s task based on how the knowledge worker interacts with an information space. Captured task contexts can be used to facilitate switching between tasks, to focus a user interface on just the information needed by a task and to recommend potentially other useful information. We report on the use of task contexts and the effect of context on productivity for a particular kind of knowledge worker, software developers. We also report on qualitative findings of the use of task contexts by a more general population of knowledge workers.
Fitting an Origin-Displaced Logarithmic Spiral to Empirical Data By Differential Evolution Method of Global Optimization

Logarithmic spirals are abundantly observed in nature. Gastropods (such as nautilus, cowie, grove snail, thatcher, etc.) in the mollusca phylum have spiral shells, mostly exhibiting logarithmic spirals vividly. Spider webs show a similar pattern. The low-pressure area over Iceland and the Whirlpool Galaxy resemble logarithmic spirals.Many materials develop spiral cracks either due to imposed torsion (twist), as in the spiral fracture of the tibia, or due to geometric constraints, as in the fracture of pipes. Spiral cracks may, however, arise in situations where no obvious twisting is applied; the symmetry is broken spontaneously. It has been found that the rank size pattern of the cities of USA approximately follows logarithmic spiral. The usual procedure of curve-fitting fails miserably in fitting a spiral to empirical data. The difficulties in fitting a spiral to data become much more intensified when the observed points z = (x, y) are not measured from their origin (0, 0), but shifted away from the origin by (cx, cy). We intend in this paper to devise a method to fit a logarithmic spiral to empirical data measured with a displaced origin. The optimization has been done by the Differential Evolution method of Global Optimization. The method is also be tested on numerical data. It appears that our method is successful in estimating the parameters of a logarithmic spiral. However, the estimated values of the parameters of a logarithmic spiral (a and b in r = a*exp(b(theta+2*pi*k) are highly sensitive to the precision to which the shift parameters (cx and cy) are correctly estimated. The method is also very sensitive to the errors of measurement in (x, y) data. The method falters when the errors of measurement of a large magnitude contaminate (x, y). A computer program (Fortran) is appended.
Space-time receivers for GSM radio interfaces in subway tunnel environments

In this paper, we investigate how to increase the capacity of GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) radio interfaces in subway tunnel environments by means of antenna arrays and Space–Time (ST) receivers. We address the modeling, both theoretically and experimentally, of the multiple-antenna wireless channels encountered in subway tunnels. We demonstrate that propagation is conveniently modeled by a flat-fading channel, but there exist strong spatial correlations among channel components that decrease capacity and affect receivers' performance. Different space–time GSM receiving strategies have also been investigated. We first consider ST equalization techniques that only account for the noise and the controlled Intersymbol Interference (ISI) introduced by the modulation format employed in GSM. Then, we analyze the performance of receivers that incorporate ST coding capabilities and show the superior performance of iterative MAP (Maximum a Posteriori) receivers that interchange soft information among the equalizer and the ST decoder. All receivers are evaluated with experimental channels measured in the subway of Paris. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Medial temporal lobe atrophy predicts Alzheimer's disease in patients with minor cognitive impairment

Objectives: To investigate whether medial temporal lobe atrophy predicted outcome in patients with minor cognitive impairment and whether assessment of the medial temporal lobe could increase the predictive accuracy of age and delayed recall for outcome. Quantitative and qualitative methods of assessing the medial temporal lobe were also compared. Methods: Patients with minor cognitive impairment older than 50 years (n=31) were selected from a memory clinic and were followed up for on average 1.9 years. The medial temporal lobe was assessed in three different ways: volumetry of the hippocampus, volumetry of the parahippocampal gyrus, and qualitative rating of medial temporal lobe atrophy (MTA). Outcome measures were Alzheimer type dementia or cognitive decline at follow up. Delayed recall was tested with a verbal learning test. Results: Ten patients had experienced cognitive decline at follow up, of whom seven had probable Alzheimer type dementia. All medial temporal lobe measurements were associated with cognitive decline at follow up (p trend analysis between 0.001 (hippocampus) and 0.05 (parahippocampal gyrus)). Only the hippocampal volume and MTA score were associated with Alzheimer type dementia at follow up (p trend analysis respectively 0.003 and 0.01). All medial temporal lobe measurements increased the predictive accuracy of age and the delayed recall score for cognitive decline (p increase in predictive accuracy varied between <0.001 (hippocampus) and 0.02 (parahippocampal gyrus and MTA score)) and the hippocampal volume and the MTA score increased the predictive accuracy of age and the delayed recall score for Alzheimer type dementia (p= 0.02). Conclusions: The ability to detect patients at high risk for Alzheimer type dementia among those with minor cognitive impairment increases when data on age and memory function are combined with measures of medial temporal lobe atrophy. Volumetry of the hippocampus is preferred, but qualitative rating of medial temporal lobe atrophy is a good alternative.
Littlewood–Paley Theory and the T(1) Theorem with Non-doubling Measures

Let μ be a Radon measure on Rd which may be non-doubling. The only condition that μ must satisfy is μ(B(x, r))⩽Crn, for all x∈Rd, r>0, and for some fixed 0<n⩽d. In this paper, Littlewood–Paley theory for functions in Lp(μ) is developed. One of the main difficulties to be solved is the construction of “reasonable” approximations of the identity in order to obtain a Calderon type reproducing formula. Moreover, it is shown that the T(1) theorem for n-dimensional Calderon–Zygmund operators, without doubling assumptions, can be proved using the Littlewood–Paley type decomposition that is obtained for functions in L2(μ), as in the classical case of homogeneous spaces. }
A multi-criteria document clustering method based on topic modeling and pseudoclosure function

We address in this work the problem of document clustering. Our approach is based on the following pipeline. First, we quantify the topics in a document. Then, a number of clusters is set automatically. Finally, a multi-criteria distance is defined to cluster the documents. The advantage of this approach is that it allows us to have a number of multi-criteria clusters based on structural analysis of each document. We have applied our method on Twitter data and showed the accuracy of our results compared to a random choice number of clusters.
Nice class diagrams admit good design?

Analysis and design of programs by using tools has emerged to a standard technique in object-oriented software engineering. Many of these tools claim to implement methods according to the UML standard and some of the tools provide automatic layout of the diagrams drawn by the user or generated automatically from source code. In this paper we propose a set of aesthetic criteria for UML class diagrams and discuss the relation between these criteria, HCI and design aspects of object-oriented software.First we describe critics from the viewpoint of HCI to the UML notation and restrict ourself to changes which do not require nonstandard modifications to the UML notation guide, then we list quality relations between class diagrams and object-oriented software models. After that our set of aesthetic criteria, that reflect the highly sophisticated structural and semantic features of UML class diagrams, is explained. Finally, we show that an implementation and measurement of this proposal is realizable using a prototypical graph drawing framework.
An analytical study of Arabic sentiments: Maktoob case study

The problem of automatically extracting opinions and emotions from textual data have gained a lot of interest recently. Unfortunately, most studies on Sentiment Analysis (SA) focus mainly on the English language, whereas studies considering other important and wide-spread languages such as Arabic are few. Moreover, publicly-available Arabic datasets are seldom found on the Web. In this work, a labeled dataset of Arabic reviews/comments is collected from a social networking website (Yahoo! -Maktoob). A detailed analysis of different aspects of the collected dataset such as the reviews' length, the numbers of likes/dislikes, the polarity distribution and the languages used is presented. Finally, the dataset is used to test popular classifiers commonly used for SA.
Uncovering deep user context from blogs

People's utterances are fundamentally different to other documents because they are more immediate and less thought through. While this makes them more natural - noisy and unstructured - it provides an unrivalled opportunity to see "inside" the author, to collect some context. The data requires analysis methods that have a relationship to human information processing: socio-cognitively motivated semantic systems. Using HAL, a method validated by cognitive science, the text from a large number of blog entries was analysed to uncover changes in entries author's sense-of-self. Sense-of-self was measured through geometric projection of author's first-person usage onto key indicators of kin and negative emotion words. An example of non-clinical qualitative evaluation affirmed the utility and promise of the technique: that deep personal context can be uncovered from utterances through the appropriate analysis and inference.
Survival Motor Neuron Protein in Motor Neurons Determines Synaptic Integrity in Spinal Muscular Atrophy

The inherited motor neuron disease spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is caused by deficient expression of survival motor neuron (SMN) protein and results in severe muscle weakness. In SMA mice, synaptic dysfunction of both neuromuscular junctions (NMJs) and central sensorimotor synapses precedes motor neuron cell death. To address whether this synaptic dysfunction is due to SMN deficiency in motor neurons, muscle, or both, we generated three lines of conditional SMA mice with tissue-specific increases in SMN expression. All three lines of mice showed increased survival, weights, and improved motor behavior. While increased SMN expression in motor neurons prevented synaptic dysfunction at the NMJ and restored motor neuron somal synapses, increased SMN expression in muscle did not affect synaptic function although it did improve myofiber size. Together these data indicate that both peripheral and central synaptic integrity are dependent on motor neurons in SMA, but SMN may have variable roles in the maintenance of these different synapses. At the NMJ, it functions at the presynaptic terminal in a cell-autonomous fashion, but may be necessary for retrograde trophic signaling to presynaptic inputs onto motor neurons. Importantly, SMN also appears to function in muscle growth and/or maintenance independent of motor neurons. Our data suggest that SMN plays distinct roles in muscle, NMJs, and motor neuron somal synapses and that restored function of SMN at all three sites will be necessary for full recovery of muscle power.
Aerobic fitness reduces brain tissue loss in aging humans.

BACKGROUND The human brain gradually loses tissue from the third decade of life onward, with concomitant declines in cognitive performance. Given the projected rapid growth in aged populations, and the staggering costs associated with geriatric care, identifying mechanisms that may reduce or reverse cerebral deterioration is rapidly emerging as an important public health goal. Previous research has demonstrated that aerobic fitness training improves cognitive function in older adults and can improve brain health in aging laboratory animals, suggesting that aerobic fitness may provide a mechanism to improve cerebral health in aging humans. We examined the relationship between aerobic fitness and in vivo brain tissue density in an older adult population, using voxel-based morphometric techniques. METHODS We acquired high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging scans from 55 older adults. These images were segmented into gray and white matter maps, registered into stereotaxic space, and examined for systematic variation in tissue density as a function of age, aerobic fitness, and a number of other health markers. RESULTS Consistent with previous studies of aging and brain volume, we found robust declines in tissue densities as a function of age in the frontal, parietal, and temporal cortices. More importantly, we found that losses in these areas were substantially reduced as a function of cardiovascular fitness, even when we statistically controlled for other moderator variables. CONCLUSIONS These findings extend the scope of beneficial effects of aerobic exercise beyond cardiovascular health, and they suggest a strong solid biological basis for the benefits of exercise on the brain health of older adults.
Demonstration of MyAppCorner: creating personal interaction areas on a public screen

We introduce MyAppCorner, a novel interface for interacting with public multi-touch displays. The system aims to provide a personal space for the users and give them a sense of ownership. It allows users to create their own private window and drag and drop available applications from the menu into their window. The menu can also be dragged to different parts of the screen, hence making it easily accessible for all users. We present the design, development, testing and evaluation on MyAppCorner interface. The interface was integrated in a 72" and 62" multi-touch screens to give the actual feel of a public display. The system was then tested to help us discover its drawbacks and see if it supports multiple users and whether it meets public space needs.
Metal Abundances in the Hot Interstellar Medium in Early-Type Galaxies Observed with ASCA

We have analyzed ASCA data of 27 early-type galaxies, and studied the properties of their X-ray emitting ISM (Inter Stellar Medium) in detail. We found that overlapping lines and free-bound continuum cause strong coupling in the derived abundances of various elements. The abundance determination is also difficult due to the uncertainties in the Fe-L atomic physics, because Fe-L lines couple with O and Ne K-lines. However, when abundances of $\alpha$-elements are fixed, all the plasma codes give similar Fe abundances with a scattering of only 20-30%. To relax the strong coupling among the elements, we included 20% systematic errors in the Fe-L region of the spectra. Then, in X-ray luminous galaxies, the derived abundance of Fe and $\alpha$-elements both became $\sim 1$ solar within a factor of 2. This result relaxes the previous severe discrepancy between the ISM and stellar metallicities. The ISM metallicity in X-ray fainter galaxies is still uncertain, but we can at least constrain that contribution from type-Ia SN to the ISM abundance is lower than in X-ray luminous systems. These results strongly suggest that a large fraction of SN Ia products have escaped into intergalactic space.
AADP: Ad hoc address distribution protocol

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a wireless, mobile and infra-structure-less network with self-configuring nodes which route the messages on their own. Lack of infrastructure makes MANET unique and desirable. It, however, complicates the task of address allocation in MANET as nodes now have to regulate the entire process of allocation by communicating within themselves as well as monitor the changes that occur in the network. Moreover, the same feature induces events like partitioning, merging, etc in the network which are never encountered in a conventional wired or wireless network. Consequently, classical addressing protocols are inadequate for MANET and hence, cannot be used. A number of protocols have been propounded in a bid to handle the problem of address allocation. Majority of these protocols albeit promising, fail to handle some scenarios efficiently. In this paper, we propose and analyze a filter-based addressing protocol named AADP, for unique address allocation in MANET. The focus of our analysis is on complex events such as simultaneous joining and merging. We also provide a brief mathematical analysis of our protocol. Simulation results show that our protocol is robust to packet losses, handles partitioning and merging efficiently and has an upper hand over the other protocols.