Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A packet I/O architecture for shell script-based packet processing

We propose a new scripting model for rapid and easier development of packet processing using shell scripts. In this paper we present EtherPIPE, a character network I/O device, that allows the programmer to access network traffic data as a file through UNIX commands. By setting a UNIX pipe "|" from or to EtherPIPE's output or input with UNIX commands, packets can be easily processed, executing functions such as packet filtering, packet capturing, generating arbitrary packets, and rewriting header information. In order to prove the utilities of our model, we have developed FPGA-based EtherPIPE adapter using a commodity FPGA card and a character device driver featuring new offloading functions. With our prototype implementation, packet scripting works at 1Gbps wire-speed, receiving packets with precise hardware timestamps. This paper argues for use cases of the EtherPIPE, and discusses enhanced formats of character devices for easier network scripting. ).
Left atrial volume: important risk marker of incident atrial fibrillation in 1655 older men and women.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the contribution of left atrial (LA) volume in predicting atrial fibrillation (AF). PATIENTS AND METHODS In this retrospective cohort study, a random sample of 2200 adults was identified from all Olmsted County, Minnesota, residents who had undergone transthoracic echocardiographic assessment between 1990 and 1998 and were 65 years of age or older at the time of examination, were in sinus rhythm, and had no history of AF or other atrial arrhythmias, stroke, pacemaker, congenital heart disease, or valve surgery. The LA volume was measured off-line by using a biplane area-length method. Clinical characteristics and the outcome event of incident AF were determined by retrospective review of medical records. Echocardiographic data were retrieved from the laboratory database. From this cohort, 1655 patients in whom LA size data were available were followed from baseline echocardiogram until development of AF or death. The clinical and echocardiographic associations of AF, especially with respect to the role of LA volume in predicting AF, were determined. RESULTS A total of 666 men and 989 women, mean +/- SD age of 75.2 +/- 7.3 years (range, 65-105 years), were followed for a mean +/- SD of 3.97 +/- 2.75 years (range, < 1.00-10.78 years); 189 (11.4%) developed AF. Cox model 5-year cumulative risks of AF by quartiles of LA volume were 3%, 12%, 15%, and 26%, respectively. With Cox proportional hazards multivariate models, logarithmic LA volume was an independent predictor of AF, incremental to clinical risk factors. After adjusting for age, sex, valvular heart disease, and hypertension, a 30% larger LA volume was associated with a 43% greater risk of AF, incremental to history of congestive heart failure (hazard ratio [HR], 1.887; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.230-2.895; P = .004), myocardial infarction (HR, 1.751; 95% CI, 1.189-2.577; P = .004), and diabetes (HR, 1.734; 95% CI, 1.066-2.819; P = .03). Left atrial volume remained incremental to combined clinical risk factors and M-mode LA dimension for prediction of AF (P < .001). CONCLUSION This study showed that a larger LA volume was associated with a higher risk of AF in older patients. The predictive value of LA volume was incremental to that of clinical risk profile and conventional M-mode LA dimension.
Comparison of Number of Waves Surfed and Duration Using Global Positioning System and Inertial Sensors

Surf is an increasingly popular sport and its performance evaluation is often qualitative. This work aims at using a smartphone to collect and analyze the GPS and inertial sensors data in order to obtain quantitative metrics of the surfing performance. Two approaches are compared for detection of wave rides, computing the number of waves rode in a surfing session, the starting time of each wave and its duration. The first approach is based on computing the velocity from the Global Positioning System (GPS) signal and finding the velocity thresholds that allow identifying the start and end of each wave ride. The second approach adds information from the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) of the smartphone, to the velocity thresholds obtained from the GPS unit, to determine the start and end of each wave ride. The two methods were evaluated using GPS and IMU data from two surfing sessions and validated with similar metrics extracted from video data collected from the beach. The second method, combining GPS and IMU data, was found to be more accurate in determining the number of waves, start time and duration. This paper shows that it is feasible to use smartphones for quantification of performance metrics during surfing. In particular, detection of the waves rode and their duration can be accurately determined using the smartphone GPS and IMU. Keywords—Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), Global Positioning System (GPS), smartphone, surfing performance.
Uptake pathways of anionic and cationic photosensitizers into bacteria

The effect of divalent cations (calcium and magnesium) and a permeabilizing agent (EDTA) on the uptake of a cationic photosensitizer (PS), methylene blue (MB), and two anionic PSs, rose bengal (RB) and indocyanine green (ICG), by Gram-positive Enterococcus faecalis and Gram-negative Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans was examined. The possible roles of multidrug efflux pumps and protein transporters in photosensitizer uptake were assessed in E. faecalis cells by studies using an efflux pumpinhibitor (verapamil) and trypsin treatment respectively. Divalent cations enhanced the uptake and photodynamic inactivation potential of both RB and ICG in E. faecalis and A. actinomycetemcomitans , while they decreased the uptake and bacterial killing by MB. Verapamil increased the uptake of RB (possibly due to efflux pump inhibition), whereas trypsin treatment resulted in significant decrease in RB and ICG uptake. The results suggested that the uptake of anionic PSs by bacterial cells may be mediated through a combination of electrostatic charge interaction and by protein transporters, while the uptake of cationic PSs, as previously reported, is mediated by electrostatic interactions and self promoted uptake pathways.
Patterns of Antimicrobial Resistance Observed in Escherichia coli Isolates Obtained from Domestic- and Wild-Animal Fecal Samples, Human Septage, and Surface Water

ABSTRACT A repeated cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the patterns of antimicrobial resistance in 1,286 Escherichia coli strains isolated from human septage, wildlife, domestic animals, farm environments, and surface water in the Red Cedar watershed in Michigan. Isolation and identification of E. coli were done by using enrichment media, selective media, and biochemical tests. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing by the disk diffusion method was conducted for neomycin, gentamicin, streptomycin, chloramphenicol, ofloxacin, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, tetracycline, ampicillin, nalidixic acid, nitrofurantoin, cephalothin, and sulfisoxazole. Resistance to at least one antimicrobial agent was demonstrated in isolates from livestock, companion animals, human septage, wildlife, and surface water. In general, E. coli isolates from domestic species showed resistance to the largest number of antimicrobial agents compared to isolates from human septage, wildlife, and surface water. The agents to which resistance was demonstrated most frequently were tetracycline, cephalothin, sulfisoxazole, and streptomycin. There were similarities in the patterns of resistance in fecal samples and farm environment samples by animal, and the levels of cephalothin-resistant isolates were higher in farm environment samples than in fecal samples. Multidrug resistance was seen in a variety of sources, and the highest levels of multidrug-resistant E. coli were observed for swine fecal samples. The fact that water sample isolates were resistant only to cephalothin may suggest that the resistance patterns for farm environment samples may be more representative of the risk of contamination of surface waters with antimicrobial agent-resistant bacteria.
Use of MV and kV imager correlation for maintaining continuous real-time 3D internal marker tracking during beam interruptions

The integration of onboard kV imaging together with a MV electronic portal imaging device (EPID) on linear accelerators (LINAC) can provide an easy to implement real-time 3D organ position monitoring solution for treatment delivery. Currently, real-time MV–kV tracking has only been demonstrated by simultaneous imagining by both MV and kV imaging devices. However, modalities such as step-and-shoot IMRT (SS-IMRT), which inherently contain MV beam interruptions, can lead to loss of target information necessary for 3D localization. Additionally, continuous kV imaging throughout the treatment delivery can lead to high levels of imaging dose to the patient. This work demonstrates for the first time how full 3D target tracking can be maintained even in the presence of such beam interruption, or MV/kV beam interleave, by use of a relatively simple correlation model together with MV–kV tracking. A moving correlation model was constructed using both present and prior positions of the marker in the available MV or kV image to compute the position of the marker on the interrupted imager. A commercially available radiotherapy system, equipped with both MV and kV imaging devices, was used to deliver typical SS-IMRT lung treatment plans to a 4D phantom containing internally embedded metallic markers. To simulate actual lung tumor motion, previous recorded 4D lung patient motion data were used. Lung tumor motion data of five separate patients were inputted into the 4D phantom, and typical SS-IMRT lung plans were delivered to simulate actual clinical deliveries. Application of the correlation model to SS-IMRT lung treatment deliveries was found to be an effective solution for maintaining continuous 3D tracking during ‘step’ beam interruptions. For deliveries involving five or more gantry angles with 50 or more fields per plan, the positional errors were found to have ⩽1 mm root mean squared error (RMSE) in all three spatial directions. In addition to increasing the robustness of MV–kV tracking against beam interruption, it was also found that use of correlation can be an effective way of lowering kV dose to the patient and for increasing kV image quality by reduction of MV scatter interference.
LiveJack: Integrating CDNs and Edge Clouds for Live Content Broadcasting

Emerging commercial live content broadcasting platforms are facing great challenges to accommodate large scale dynamic viewer populations. Existing solutions constantly suffer from balancing the cost of deploying at the edge close to the viewers and the quality of content delivery. We propose LiveJack, a novel network service to allow CDN servers to seamlessly leverage ISP edge cloud resources. LiveJack can elastically scale the serving capacity of CDN servers by integrating Virtual Media Functions (VMF) in the edge cloud to accommodate flash crowds for very popular contents. LiveJack introduces minor application layer changes for streaming service providers and is completely transparent to end users. We have prototyped LiveJack in both LAN and WAN environments. Evaluations demonstrate that LiveJack can increase CDN server capacity by more than six times, and can effectively accommodate highly dynamic workloads with an improved service quality.
The dynamic impact of intellectual capital on firm value: evidence from China

ABSTRACT We examine the dynamic relationship between intellectual capital (measured by human capital and organizational capital) and firm value of Chinese listed firms. We do causality identification using system GMM and IV estimation, and find no significant relation between human capital and firm value, but organizational capital positively affects firm value with a lag. Our findings are robust to firms with different property rights, of different sizes, or in different industries, with the only exception of capital-intensive firms, in which human capital has a significant influence on firm value. The results imply that the improvement of organizational system plays a more important role in raising the value of a firm in a typical developing country, like China.
Non-invasive lizard identification using signature curves

A novel non-invasive method is proposed to help identify the endangered Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard. This would be preferable to the commonly used, invasive, toe-clipping method, which could be unreliable if the lizard was to lose a toe or foot naturally. Each lizard has a unique and permanent scale pattern which can be used to identify individual lizards. The proposed method involves a novel technique to derive a signature curve from the Hough transform output of the lizard scale pattern such that the signature curve is scale and shift invariant. It has been found that a lizard can be successfully identified by comparing its signature curve with those signature curves of all registered lizards stored in a database.
Threshold Analysis Using Diagnostic Tests with Multiple Results

Clinical problems represented by decision trees can be analyzed in terms of the probability threshold model, which provides management recommendations based on the prior prob ability of disease, the test threshold, and the test-treatment threshold. As originally proposed, the threshold model assumes that diagnostic tests provide information about a single event that is relevant to the decision. For some problems, however, a diagnostic test may provide information about more than one such event (e.g., a computed tomography [CT] scan gives information about both mediastinal and hilar metastases in lung cancer). The authors extend the probability threshold model to cases in which a single test provides information about two events that are relevant to the decision. They derive four thresholds that determine the best strategy for any combination of test results. The approach is illustrated for the decision to use a CT scan to stage lung cancer. The analysis reveals that: 1) the range of prior probabilities for which testing is optimal increases; 2) for some prior probabilities only test results about one event are important; 3) for some prior probabilities test results about both events are important; and 4) failure to account fully for information provided by a test can lead to erroneous test and treatment recommendations. Key words: decision theory; Bayes theorem; decision making, computer-assisted; decision support technics; predictive value of tests; lung neoplasms; probability threshold; decision analysis. (Med Decis Making 1989;9:91- 103)
Integration of Small and Middle-Sized Enterprises into Large Energy Corporations as a Factor of Business Sustainability

Small businesses are traditionally the driver of the economic growth in the conditions of market economy, so in the modern circumstances this thesis is seen as an axiom not requiring additional argumentation. Moreover, the role of small and middle-sized businesses in the acceleration in the rates of economic grows currently increases. The economic recession triggered by the sanctions as well as by the international collapse in oil prices, to an even greater degree actualized the task of searching the ways and methods of the Russian economy potential activation including more active and rational use of the most important nonmaterial resource of market economy that is business initiative.
Afferent and Efferent Connections of the Pineal Organ in the European Sea Bass Dicentrarchus labrax: A Carbocyanine Dye Tract-Tracing Study

The pineal organ of fish is a photosensitive structure that receives light information from the environment and transduces it into hormonal (rhythmic melatonin secretion) and neural (efferent projections/neurotransmitters) signals. In this study, we focused on this neural output. Thus, we performed a tract-tracing study using 1,1′-dioctadecyl-3,3,3′,3′-tetramethylindocarbocyanine perchlorate (DiI), a fluorescent carbocyanine dye, in order to elucidate the efferent and afferent connections of the pineal organ in the European sea bass. The axonal transport of DiI revealed extensive bilateral projections in the sea bass brain. The efferent projections of the sea bass pineal organ reach the habenula, ventral thalamus, periventricular pretectum, central pretectal area, posterior tubercle and medial and dorsal tegmental areas. In addition, in this study we also examined the pinealopetal system in sea bass. This analysis demonstrated that the sea bass pineal organ receives central projections from neurons located, to a large extent, in brain areas innervated by pineal efferent projections, i.e. the thalamic eminence, habenula, ventral thalamus, dorsal thalamus, periventricular pretectum, posterior commissure, posterior tubercle and medial tegmental area. This study is the first description of pinealofugal projections in a representative of Perciformes, which constitutes a derived order within teleosts. Moreover, it represents the first evidence for the presence of pinealopetal neurons in the brain of a teleost species. Our findings, together with the analysis of retinal connections, represent a step forward in the understanding of the integration of photoperiodic signals into the central nervous system of sea bass.
Differential lymphopenia‐induced homeostatic proliferation for CD4+ and CD8+ T cells following septic injury

Sepsis is a severe, life‐threatening infection and a leading cause of death in hospitals. A hallmark of sepsis is the profound apoptosis‐induced depletion of lymphocytes generating a lymphopenic environment. As lymphopenia can induce nonantigen‐driven homeostatic proliferation (HP), we examined this process during sepsis. CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, which were depleted within 24 h of sepsis induction, remained at significantly reduced levels until Day 21 when normal numbers were detected. When HP was examined, naïve CD8+ T cells proliferated between Day 7 and Day 21 post‐cecal ligation and puncture, developing into memory cells with relatively few cells expressing an activation phenotype. Conversely, naïve CD4+ T cells did not undergo HP, but proportionally higher numbers expressed activation markers. Adoptive transfer studies revealed that T cells from mice that had recovered from sepsis were not protective when transferred to naïve mice undergoing sepsis. In addition, the TCR repertoire was not skewed toward any specific Vβ type but resembled the repertoire found in normal mice, suggesting that T cells were not primed to antigens resulting from the infection. Interestingly, depletion of endogenous CD8+ but not CD4+ T cells restored the ability of naive CD4+ T cells to undergo HP, increasing the number of CD4+ T cells with memory but not activation markers. We conclude that homeostatic control in the postseptic environment permits recovery of the T cell repertoire to normal levels without generating antigen‐specific memory or aberrant T cell specificities. Restoration of homeostatic control mechanisms might be a rational therapy for this disorder.
Discordant introgression in a rapidly expanding hybrid swarm

The erosion of species boundaries can involve rapid evolutionary change. Consequently, many aspects of the process remain poorly understood, including the formation, expansion, and evolution of hybrid swarms. Biological invasions involving hybridization present exceptional opportunities to study the erosion of species boundaries because timelines of interactions and outcomes are frequently well known. Here, we examined clinal variation across codominant and maternally inherited genetic markers as well as phenotypic traits to characterize the expansion and evolution of a hybrid swarm between native Cyprinella venusta and invasive Cyprinella lutrensis minnows. Discordant introgression of phenotype, microsatellite multilocus genotype, and mtDNA haplotype indicates that the observable expansion of the C. venusta × C. lutrensis hybrid swarm is a false invasion front. Both parental and hybrid individuals closely resembling C. lutrensis are numerically dominant in the expansion wake, indicating that the non‐native parental phenotype may be selectively favored. These findings show that cryptic introgression can extend beyond the phenotypic boundaries of hybrid swarms and that hybrid swarms likely expand more rapidly than can be documented from phenotypic variation alone. Similarly, dominance of a single parental phenotype following an introduction event may lead to instances of species erosion being mistaken for species displacement without hybridization.
Lung-Cancer Chemoprevention by Induction of Synthetic Lethality in Mutant KRAS Premalignant Cells In Vitro and In Vivo

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in both men and women in the United States, with a low 5-year survival rate despite improved treatment strategies. These data underscore the great need for effective chemoprevention of this cancer. Mutations and activation of KRAS occur frequently in, and are thought to be a primary driver of the development of, non–small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) of the adenocarcinoma subtype. In this study, we developed a new approach for the chemoprevention of NSCLC involving specific targeting of apoptosis in mutant KRAS cells. This approach is based on a synthetic lethal interaction among TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL), the second mitochondria-derived activator of caspase Smac/DIABLO (Smac), and KRAS. Mutational activation of KRAS modulated the expression of TRAIL receptors by upregulating death receptors and downregulating decoy receptors. Furthermore, oncogenic KRAS repressed cellular FADD-like interleukin 1β–converting enzyme (FLICE)-like inhibitory protein (c-FLIP) expression through activation of Erk/mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)-mediated activation of c-Myc. Smac overcame KRAS-induced cell-survival signaling by antagonizing X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis protein (XIAP). Therefore, the combination of TRAIL and a small molecule mimic of Smac induced apoptosis specifically in mutant KRAS cells without harming normal cells. We further showed that short-term, intermittent in vivo treatment with TRAIL and Smac mimic induced apoptosis in tumor cells and reduced tumor burden in a murine model of KRAS-induced lung cancer. These results reflect the potential benefit of a selective therapeutic approach for the chemoprevention of NSCLC. Cancer Prev Res; 4(5); 666–73. ©2011 AACR.
Traders’ market power along Indonesian rubber value chains

Purpose While traders of agricultural products are known to often exercise market power, this power has rarely been quantified for developing countries. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach In order to derive a measure, the authors estimate the traders’ revenue functions and calculate the marginal value products directly from them. The authors subsequently find the determinants affecting their individual market power. Findings Results show that market power at the traders’ level exists and is substantial. This market power is amplified in situations of extreme remoteness, and weakens with increasing market size. Originality/value An exceptional data set with detailed information on the business practices of rubber traders in Jambi, Indonesia is employed with an innovative methodology to directly estimate revenue functions.