Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive BFT protocols

Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) protocols have been proposed mostly as a means to support the execution of highly-resilient services, i.e., of services that keep their availability, integrity, and confidentiality even if there are accidental or malicious faults (attacks, intrusions). Several distinct BFT protocols have been proposed in the literature and each of these protocols excels for different operational conditions. Furthermore, even for the same protocol, the configuration and deployment options (number of replicas, characteristics of servers, etc) have a huge impact on the performance of the system. Since the conditions that affect the performance of a BFT protocol, such as the workloads and the threats, may change in runtime, it is relevant to devise techniques to adapt BFT implementations and/or deployments dynamically. This work proposes a number of viable adaptations of BFT protocols, for a number of scenarios that are meaningful in practice, and studies the implementation of BFT protocols that can support these adaptation in runtime. In this context we also study what are the relevant parameters that need to be monitored to trigger the adaptations and what are the policies that can be used to drive the adaptations in a secure manner.
Pocket PhotoMesa: a Zoomable image browser for PDAs

Small devices such as Palm and Pocket PC have gained wide popularity with the advance and affordability of mobile technologies. Image browsers are among popular software applications on small devices. The limitations introduced by these devices such as screen resolution, processing power and storage impose a challenge for multimedia applications designed for larger displays to adapt to small screens. For an image browser, layout of images and navigation between them are critical factors of the users' experience.Motivated by these challenges, we developed Pocket PhotoMesa: an image browser for the pocket pc that employs quantum strip Treemaps for laying out images and Zoomable User Interfaces for navigation. In this paper, we discuss the development of Pocket PhotoMesa and we describe a usability study comparing the performance and users' experience using Pocket PhotoMesa and ACDSee image browser (a current commercial offering) for the Pocket PC.
Distribution and neurochemical phenotypes of caudal medullary neurons activated to express cFos following peripheral administration of cholecystokinin

Immunocytochemical localization of the protein product of the proto‐oncogene C‐fos allows anatomical identification of physiologically activated neurons. The present study examined the subnuclear distribution of cFos protein in the rat caudal medulla following peripheral administration of cholecystokinin octapeptide, which reduces feeding and gastric motility by a vagally mediated mechanism. To begin phenotypic characterization of neurons activated to express cFos following cholecystokinin treatment, double‐labeling techniques were used to identify vagal motor neurons and neurons immunoreactive for tyrosine hydroxylase, neuropeptide Y, and neurotensin. Activated cells were most prevalent in the subnucleus medialis of the nucleus of the solitary tract, less prevalent in the subnucleus commissuralis, and virtually absent in the subnuclei centralis and gelatinosus. Many activated cells occupied the caudal area postrema; some of these were catecholaminergic. In contrast, activated cells were sparse within the medial rostral area postrema. Other activated cells occupied the dorso‐ and ventrolateral medulla and the midline raphe nuclei. Retrograde labeling of vagal motor neurons confirmed that very few were activated. Those that were activated occupied the caudal dorsal motor nucleus. In the dorsomedial medulla, 51% of catecholaminergic neurons and 39% of neurons positive for neuropeptide Y were activated, but no neurotensin‐positive neurons were activated. In the ventrolateral medulla, 25% of catecholaminergic neurons and 27% of neuropeptide Y‐positive neurons were activated. By characterizing the subnuclear distribution and chemical phenotypes of neurons activated by exogenous cholecystokinin, these data contribute to elucidation of the neural circuits mediating the behavioral, physiological, and neuroendocrine effects produced by this peptide. © 1993 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Ethics of Digital Writing Research: A Rhetorical Approach

The study of writers and writing in digital environments raises distinct and complex ethical issues for researchers. Rhetoric theory and casuistic ethics, working in tandem, provide a theoretical framework for addressing such issues. A casuistic heuristic grounded in rhetorical principles can help digital writing researchers critically interrogate their research designs, carefully examine their relationships with research participants, and make sound ethical judgments.
Joint resource allocation and offloading strategies in cloud enabled cellular networks

The numerous features installed in recent mobile phones opened the door to a wide range of applications involving localization, storage, photo and video taking and communication. A significant number of applications involve user generated content and require intensive processing which limits dramatically the battery lifetime of featured mobile terminals. Mobile cloud computing has been recently proposed as a promising solution allowing the mobile users to run computing-intensive and energy parsimonious applications. This new feature requires new functionalities inside the cellular network architecture and needs appropriate resource allocation strategies which account for computation and communication in the same time. In this paper we present promising options to upgrade 4G architecture to support these new features. We also present two resource allocation strategies accounting for both computation and radio resources. These strategies are devised so that to minimize the energy consumption of the mobile terminals while satisfying predefined delay constraints. We compare online learning based solutions where the network adapts dynamically to the application that is run on mobile terminals, and pre-calculated offline solutions which are employed when a certain level of knowledge about the application and the channel conditions is available at the network side. We show, that even with imperfect knowledge about the application, pre-calculated offline strategies offer better performance in terms of energy consumption of mobile terminals.
A new pharmacological treatment for intermittent claudication: results of a randomized, multicenter trial.

BACKGROUND Effective medication is limited for the relief of intermittent claudication, a common manifestation of arterial occlusive disease. Cilostazol is a potent inhibitor of platelet aggregation with vasodilation effects. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the safety and efficacy of cilostazol for the treatment of intermittent claudication. METHODS Thirty-seven outpatient vascular medicine clinics at regional tertiary and university hospitals in the United States participated in this multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel trial. Of the 663 screened volunteer patients with leg discomfort, a total of 516 men and women 40 years or older with a diagnosis of moderately severe chronic, stable, symptomatic intermittent claudication were randomized to receive cilostazol, 100 mg, cilostazol, 50 mg, or placebo twice a day orally for 24 weeks. Outcome measures included pain-free and maximal walking distances via treadmill testing, patient-based quality-of-life measures, global assessments by patient and physician, and cardiovascular morbidity and all-cause mortality survival analysis. RESULTS The clinical and statistical superiority of active treatment over placebo was evident as early as week 4, with continued improvement at all subsequent time points. After 24 weeks, patients who received cilostazol, 100 mg, twice a day had a 51% geometric mean improvement in maximal walking distance (P<.001 vs placebo); those who received cilostazol, 50 mg, twice a day had a 38% geometric mean improvement in maximal walking distance (P<.001 vs placebo). These percentages translate into an arithmetic mean increase in distance walked, from 129.7 m at baseline to 258.8 m at week 24 for the cilostazol, 100 mg, group, and from 131.5 to 198.8 m for the cilostazol, 50 mg, group. Geometric mean change for pain-free walking distance increased by 59% (P<.001) and 48% (P<.001), respectively, in the cilostazol, 100 mg, and cilostazol, 50 mg, groups. These results were corroborated by the results of subjective quality-of-life assessments, functional status, and global evaluations. Headache, abnormal stool samples or diarrhea, dizziness, and palpitations were the most commonly reported potentially drug-related adverse events and were self-limited. A total of 75 patients (14.5%) withdrew because of any adverse event, which was equally distributed between all 3 treatment groups. Similarly, there were no differences between groups in the incidence of combined cardiovascular morbidity or all-cause mortality. CONCLUSION Compared with placebo, long-term use of cilostazol, 100 mg or 50 mg, twice a day significantly improves walking distances in patients with intermittent claudication.
Maximum power point tracker for a PV cell using a fuzzy agent adapted by the fractional open circuit voltage technique

The Photovoltaic cells have P-V characteristics which indicate that there is only one point that produces a maximum output power. The point of the maximum power lies at the knee of the I-V curve. Tracking this point is a very important issue concerning the energy yield of the PV systems. One of the efficient tracking techniques is based on the Fuzzy agents which are able of fine tuning the cell operating voltage and current to keep the maximum possible output power. In this paper, a fuzzy agent with two input parameters enhanced by the fractional open circuit voltage technique will be used to track the MPP in a fast and accurate manner that is better than the traditional techniques. Assigning different weights for the two inputs of the fuzzy agent adapts the power response to achieve fast settling and accurate tracking of the cell maximum output power even under extreme variable atmospheric conditions in an efficient manner with better performance than conventional fuzzy MPPT technique.
Margin-enhanced maximum mutual information estimation for hidden Markov models

A discriminative training algorithm to estimate continuous-density hidden Markov model (CDHMM) for automatic speech recognition is considered. The algorithm is based on the criterion, called margin-enhanced maximum mutual information (MEMMI), and it estimates the CDHMM parameters by maximizing the weighted sum of the maximum mutual information objective function and the large margin objective function. The MEMMI is motivated by the criterion used in such classifier as the soft margin support vector machine that maximizes the weighted sum of the empirical risk function and the margin-related generalization function. The algorithm is an iterative procedure, and at each stage, it updates the parameters by placing different weights on the utterances according to their log likelihood margins: incorrectly-classified (negative margin) utterances are emphasized more than correctly-classified utterances. The MEMMI leads to a simple objective function that can be optimized easily by a gradient ascent algorithm maintaining a probabilistic model. Experimental results show that the recognition accuracy of the MEMMI is better than other discriminative training criteria, such as the approximated maximum mutual information (AMMI), the maximum classification error (MCE), and the soft large margin estimation (SLME) on the TIDIGITS database.
Delexicalized Word Embeddings for Cross-lingual Dependency Parsing

This paper presents a new approach to the problem of cross-lingual dependency parsing, aiming at leveraging training data from different source languages to learn a parser in a target language. Specifically, this approach first constructs word vector representations that exploit structural (i.e., dependency-based) contexts but only considering the morpho-syntactic information associated with each word and its contexts. These delexicalized word embeddings, which can be trained on any set of languages and capture features shared across languages, are then used in combination with standard language-specific features to train a lexicalized parser in the target language. We evaluate our approach through experiments on a set of eight different languages that are part the Universal Dependencies Project. Our main results show that using such delexicalized embeddings, either trained in a monolingual or multilingual fashion, achieves significant improvements over monolingual baselines.
Soluble P-selectin glycoprotein ligand 1 inhibits ocular inflammation in a murine model of allergy.

PURPOSE To assess the anti-inflammatory modality of a soluble extracellular form of P-selectin glycoprotein ligand 1 (sPSGL-1) in a mouse model of ocular allergic response. METHODS Potential anti-inflammatory effects of sPSGL-1 were investigated in SWR/J mice sensitized by topical application of short ragweed pollen to the nasal mucosa followed by a challenge of the ocular mucosa with the same allergen. Five experimental groups were included in these studies: A, mice neither sensitized nor challenged with pollen (control group 1); B, animals sensitized but not challenged (control group 2); C, animals not sensitized but challenged (control group 3); D, animals sensitized and challenged; and E, sensitized animals treated with sPSGL-1 before pollen challenge. All experimental groups were evaluated for gross morphologic ocular changes, and histologic assessments were made to determine the onset/progression of inflammatory reactions and to look for evidence of eosinophil infiltration. RESULTS Mice sensitized and challenged with pollen developed clinical signs consistent with human allergic conjunctivitis. These signs correlate with histologic changes in the conjunctival epithelium and stroma (e.g., edema and extensive eosinophil infiltration). Moreover, the ocular changes also correlated with evidence of eosinophil degranulation. However, sensitized and challenged mice concurrently treated with sPSGL-1 displayed no inflammatory ocular changes associated with a ragweed-induced type-1 hypersensitivity reaction. The lack of ocular changes included the absence of histologic late-phase inflammatory changes of the conjunctiva and a 97% reduction in the induced eosinophil infiltrate. CONCLUSIONS The antagonistic intervention of cell- cell interactions through the blockade of selectin-dependent leukocyte adhesion may offer novel therapeutic strategies to modulate inflammatory responses. The potent inhibitory effects on eosinophil recruitment and late-phase inflammation suggest a role for sPSGL-1 in the treatment of ocular allergic diseases.
Adaptive Control of Mechanical Manipulators

When an accurate dynamic model of a mechanical manipu lator is available, it may be used in a nonlinear, model-based scheme to control the manipulator. Such a control formula tion yields a controller that suppresses disturbances and tracks desired trajectories uniformly in all configurations of the manipulator. Use of a poor dynamic model with this kind of model-based decoupling and linearizing scheme, however, may result in performance that is inferior to a much simpler, fixed-gain scheme. In this paper, we develop a parameter-adaptive control scheme in a set of adaptive laws that can be added to the nonlinear, model-based controller. The scheme is unique be cause it is designed specifically for the nonlinear, model- based controller and has been proven stable in a full, nonlin ear setting. After adaptation, the error dynamics of the joints are decoupled with uniform disturbance rejection in all ma nipulator configurations. The issues of sufficient excitation and the effect of disturbances are also discussed. The theory is demonstrated with simulation results and also with data from an implementation for an industrial robot, the Adept One.
Signaling bias in drug discovery

ABSTRACT Introduction: The availability of different functional pharmacological assays has revealed that agonists for receptors that are pleiotropically coupled to multiple signaling pathways in the cell can emphasize signals to some pathways over others, i.e. can be biased toward certain signals. This, in turn, opens the possibility that molecules can be made to emphasize favorable signals, de-emphasize harmful signals or selectively block the ability of the natural agonist to produce unfavorable signals. Areas covered: This paper discusses the mechanism of biased signaling, the possible therapeutic implications of this effect, methods to quantify and measure bias and the current literature describing the translation of biased measure in vitro to in vivo systems. In addition, the challenges of exploiting this mechanism for therapy are outlined. Expert opinion: While this mechanism is well established and ubiquitous in pharmacology and easily measured in vitro, there are theoretical and practical hurdles to overcome to the fruitful utilization of signaling bias in therapeutic systems. There will be failures in the translation of biased molecules in vivo because of these challenges but hopefully also success and these latter translations hopefully will provide guidance in exploiting this effect further for therapy.
A 52% tuning range QVCO with a reduced noise coupling scheme and a minimum FOMT of 196dBc/Hz

A wide-tuning range QVCO with a novel complimentary-coupling scheme is presented. Two NMOS-only VCOs are coupled via complimentary PMOS injection transistors. This shifts the injection current away from the zero-crossings of the output voltage, thereby reducing the sensitivity of the VCO to injection noise, which results in significant phase-noise improvement. Phase-shift is achieved without frequency-dependent phase-shifting networks, allowing robust coupling over a wide tuning range. As a proof-of-concept, a prototype is designed in TSMC 65nm process with 4-bits of discrete tuning spanning the frequency range 4.6-7.8 GHz (52% tuning range). The prototype operates from 0.5V supply, with a power consumption ranging from 7.4mW-11mW, while achieving a minimum figure-of-merit (FOM) of 181.6dBc/Hz, and a minimum figure-of-merit with tuning-range (FOMT) of 196dBc/Hz.
A Highly Efficient and Simple Construction Strategy for Producing Recombinant Baculovirus Bombyx mori Nucleopolyhedrovirus

The silkworm baculovirus expression system is widely used to produce recombinant proteins. Several strategies for constructing recombinant viruses that contain foreign genes have been reported. Here, we developed a novel defective-rescue BmNPV Bacmid (reBmBac) expression system. A CopyControl origin of replication was introduced into the viral genome to facilitate its genetic manipulation in Escherichia coli and to ensure the preparation of large amounts of high quality reBmBac DNA as well as high quality recombinant baculoviruses. The ORF1629, cathepsin and chitinase genes were partially deleted or rendered defective to improve the efficiency of recombinant baculovirus generation and the expression of foreign genes. The system was validated by the successful expression of luciferase reporter gene and porcine interferon γ. This system can be used to produce batches of recombinant baculoviruses and target proteins rapidly and efficiently in silkworms.
Can Digital Drawing Tools Significantly Develop Children’s Artistic Ability and Creative Activity?

This study aims to investigate how the new digital art tools can significantly improve children‟s artistic ability and creative activity. This particular research tested 16 students aged 9-10 years old in art classes, with the intention of presenting a model for the development and measurement of technological creativity. It uses a modified TAM technology acceptance model to assess the usefulness of digital art tools. The children were provided with appropriate subjects and techniques to improve their performance with the tools, and the relationship between art, technology and creativity was explored. The results of the project show a general improvement in pupils‟ artistic ability and inventiveness through the development of their technological skills, as well as greater ability to express themselves visually.
All-Digital Self-Interference Cancellation Technique for Full-Duplex Systems

Full-duplex systems are expected to double the spectral efficiency compared to conventional half-duplex systems if the self-interference signal can be significantly mitigated. Digital cancellation is one of the lowest complexity self-interference cancellation techniques in full-duplex systems. However, its mitigation capability is very limited, mainly due to transmitter and receiver circuit's impairments (e.g., phase noise, nonlinear distortion, and quantization noise). In this paper, we propose a novel digital self-interference cancellation technique for full-duplex systems. The proposed technique is shown to significantly mitigate the self-interference signal as well as the associated transmitter and receiver impairments, more specifically, transceiver nonlinearities and phase noise. In the proposed technique, an auxiliary receiver chain is used to obtain a digital-domain copy of the transmitted Radio Frequency (RF) self-interference signal. The self-interference copy is then used in the digital-domain to cancel out both the self-interference signal and the associated transmitter impairments. Furthermore, to alleviate the receiver phase noise effect, a common oscillator is shared between the auxiliary and ordinary receiver chains. A thorough analytical and numerical analysis for the effect of the transmitter and receiver impairments on the cancellation capability of the proposed technique is presented. Finally, the overall performance is numerically investigated showing that using the proposed technique, the self-interference signal could be mitigated to ~3 dB higher than the receiver noise floor, which results in up to 76% rate improvement compared to conventional half-duplex systems at 20 dBm transmit power values.
Circulating gamma‐glutamyltransferase fractions in cirrhosis

Four gamma‐gultamyltransferases (GGT) fractions (b‐, m‐, s‐, and f‐GGT) have been identified in human plasma and their concentrations and ratios vary in different pathological conditions. To assess the behaviour of fractional GGT in cirrhotic patients evaluated for liver transplantation.