Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reducing the Spec2006 Benchmark Suite for Simulation­based Computer Architecture Research

Present day computer architects use advanced microarchitecture simulators to test the performance of processor designs. The simulator workloads are generally benchmarks, which are representative of specific types of real world applications. Because microarchitecture implementations increase in complexity and the simulation workloads are required to represent complicated applications, the simulation time has greatly increased. To solve the problem, researchers are looking into ways to reduce the amount of time benchmarks run, while maintaining the same workload characterization of the longer benchmarks. MinneSPEC is a representative reduction of SPEC2000, with the reduced input sets found using SimpleScalar profiling tools [1]. With the release of SPEC CPU2006, new benchmarks have been added to the SPEC benchmarking suite which will be used to evaluate performance in tomorrow's microprocessors. These benchmarks are considerably larger than SPEC2000 and using SimpleScalar to profile their workloads would take a large amount of time and effort. This paper suggests a different reduction technique which gathers profiling information using processor performance counters accessed using PAPI. Since workloads are running on a native system instead of a simulator, profiling information can be gathered in a much shorter amount of time. This allows for fine grained tuning of reduced input sets so more representative reduced benchmarks can be found in a much shorter amount of time. Using this technique, we were able to reduce five SPEC2006 benchmarks to under 10 billion instructions yet still have over 95% Chi­Squared confidence for instruction mix between the reduced input set and reference input set. While further work in this area needs to be done, the preliminary results of our research show that PAPI benchmark reduction may be a much more effective reduction technique than SimpleScalar alone.
From ‘our methods apply equally well’ to ‘the model does a very poor job’: a corpus-based study of academic value-marking

Disciplinary discourse reflects and reinforces values whose investigation can yield textual evidence of the qualities or aspects of reality regarded as desirable or undesirable by its members. Scholars challenge and (re)negotiate knowledge claims through texts that signal how “the values of academic communities are articulated in discourse meanings” (Hyland 1997: 20). Successful communication depends on the participants’ ability to establish a common ground based on a shared of what is good or bad, suitable or unsuitable, affective or ineffective, etc. But while the speech acts realising evaluation have been extensively researched, little is known of the underlying values they encode. This paper illustrates the methods employed in a recent study of academic writing based on a 1 million-word corpus of English research articles from ten different disciplinary areas (anthropology, biology, computer science, economics, engineering, history, mathematics, medicine, physics and sociology). Starting from candidate items with 100+ wordlist occurrences, the most frequent value-marking categories were investigated using a combination of automated and manual techniques; four of these categories (relevance, size, novelty and goodness) were then singled out for systematic investigation, based on lexical sets and word groups including synonyms and antonyms from different parts of speech. The results show how scholars from different disciplines draw on a repertoire of conventional, largely unqualified, axiological meanings instrumental to the production of knowledge claims in their field. This study specifically targets the axiological variables embdeed in explicitly evaluative speech acts. It employs tools consistent with earlier efforts (e.g. Biber et al. 2004) combining corpus-linguistic and discourse-analytic metho¬d¬o¬lo¬gies for the analysis of lexical variation in academic genres. While the detailed findings are described in Giannoni (2010), the focus here is on the challenges inherent in such an approach: the conventional criteria used for grouping and selecting disciplinary fields; the difficult balance between automated text processing and manual investigation; the difference between evaluative speech acts and parameters of value; insights and directions for further corpus-based work. Despite its mundane appearance, the significance of such data should not be understimated as “every act of evaluation expresses a communal value-system, and [. ] this value-system in turn is a component of the ideology which lies behind every text” (Thompson & Hunston 2000: 6).
Mixture Models and Frequent Sets: Combining Global and Local Methods for 0-1 Data

We study the interaction between global and local techniques in data mining. Specifically, we study the collections of frequent sets in clusters produced by a probabilistic clustering using mixtures of Bernoulli models. That is, we first analyze 0–1 datasets by a global technique (probabilistic clustering using the EM algorithm) and then do a local analysis (discovery of frequent sets) in each of the clusters. The results indicate that the use of clustering as a preliminary phase in finding frequent sets produces clusters that have significantly different collections of frequent sets. We also test the significance of the differences in the frequent set collections in the different clusters by obtaining estimates of the underlying joint density. To get from the local patterns in each cluster back to distributions, we use the maximum entropy technique [17] to obtain a local model for each cluster, and then combine these local models to get a mixture model. We obtain clear improvements to the approximation quality against the use of either the mixture model or the maximum
Melioidosis: a clinical overview.

INTRODUCTION Melioidosis, an infection caused by the environmental Gram-negative bacillus Burkholderia pseudomallei, has emerged as an important cause of morbidity and mortality in Southeast Asia and northern Australia. SOURCES OF DATA a review of the literature using PubMed. AREAS OF AGREEMENT Approaches to diagnosis and antimicrobial therapy. AREAS OF CONTROVERSY Whether seroconversion signals the presence of a quiescent bacterial focus and an increase in long-term risk of melioidosis. AREAS TIMELY FOR DEVELOPING RESEARCH Melioidosis is potentially preventable, but there is a striking lack of evidence on which to base an effective prevention programme. An accurate map defining the global distribution of B. pseudomallei is needed, together with studies on the relative importance of different routes of infection. There is a marked difference in mortality from melioidosis in high-income versus lower income countries, and affordable strategies that reduce death from severe sepsis (from any cause) in resource-restricted settings are needed.
Composition and metabolism of the intestinal microbiota in consumers and non-consumers of yogurt

The objective of the present study was to evaluate the impact of a regular consumption of yogurt on the composition and metabolism of the human intestinal microbiota. Adult subjects were selected on the basis of daily food records and divided into two groups: yogurt consumers (at least 200 g yogurt consumed per d, n 30); non-consumers (no yogurt, n 21). Their faecal microbiota was analysed using molecular methods (in situ hybridisation and PCR amplification combined with separation by denaturing gel electrophoresis) and its metabolic characteristics were assessed by measuring glycosidase, β-glucuronidase and reductase activities and profiling SCFA, neutral sterols and bile acids. The yogurt starter Lactobacillus delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus (identity confirmed by 16S rRNA sequencing) was detected in 73 % of faecal samples from fermented milk consumers v. 28 % from non-consumers (P = 0·003). In yogurt consumers, the level of Enterobacteriaceae was significantly lower (P = 0·006) and β-galactosidase activity was significantly increased (P = 0·048). In addition, within this group, β-galactosidase activity and the Bifidobacterium population were both positively correlated with the amount of fermented milk ingested (r 0·66, P < 0·0001 and r 0·43, P = 0·018, respectively). Apart from these effects, which can be considered beneficial to the host, no other major differences could be detected regarding the composition and metabolic activity of intestinal microbiota.
A requirements-driven simulation framework for communication infrastructures design

Dynamic reconfiguration capabilities of FPGA devices are commonly exploited in order to perform changes in a system with respect to computational elements. In this paper, we propose a framework able to exploit different levels of simulations in order to perform a requirements-driven design of the communication infrastructure of a reconfigurable system, so that the overall performances can be improved. To accomplish this requirements-driven design it is necessary to perform a design space exploration of applications and scenarios in which a particular system can be used. A new scenario-centric approach is proposed in order to identify metrics and requirements needed to apply a communication infrastructure reconfiguration.
Tried and tested: the psychometric properties of the multiple sclerosis impact scale (MSIS-29) in a population-based study

Objective To investigate the psychometric properties of the Multiple Sclerosis Impact Scale (MSIS-29) and to assess the relationship between the Kurtzke Expanded Disability Status Scale and the physical and psychological parts of this score. Methods A population-based study identified cases with definite multiple sclerosis (MS) in the north-east region of Ireland. They were examined and completed the MSIS-29. Cases were classified as mild (Expanded Disability Status Score (EDSS) 0–3.0), moderate (EDSS 3.5–5.5), or severe (6.0–9.5) MS. Results The 248 participants (82 male, 166 female) had a mean age of 49.1 years (SD 12.4). EDSS ranged from 0 to 9.5 (median 6.0). Data quality was excellent (0.02% missing data), physical and psychological scores spanned the entire range with low floor and ceiling effects. Internal consistency was high (Cronbach’s alpha 0.97 – physical score, 0.93 – psychological score). The convergent validity of the physical impact score of the MSIS-29 with the Kurtzke EDSS was confirmed with a high Spearman’s rank coefficient correlation of 0.63 (P = 0.01). Physical impact scores for mild, moderate, and severe disability as were statistically different at 25.9%, 48.0%, and 63.9%, respectively. Mean psychological score was non-significantly higher in the moderately disabled group at 47.4% compared with the severely disabled at 44.3% (P = 0.58). Conclusions The MSIS-29 is an acceptable, reliable, and valid method of recording quality of life. A significant relationship between higher physical impact scores of the MSIS-29 and higher Kurtzke EDSS values suggests that is may be of use in clinical trials to monitor progression.
A Perturbative Approach to Novelty Detection in Autoregressive Models

We propose a new method to perform novelty detection in dynamical systems governed by linear autoregressive models. The method is based on a perturbative expansion to a statistical test whose leading term is the classical F-test, and whose O(1/n) correction can be approximated as a function of the number of training points and the model order alone. The method can be justified as an approximation to an information theoretic test. We demonstrate on several synthetic examples that the first correction to the F-test can dramatically improve the control over the false positive rate of the system. We also test the approach on some real time series data, demonstrating that the method still retains a good accuracy in detecting novelties.
Sensor fusion-based event detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Recently, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) community has witnessed an application focus shift. Although, monitoring was the initial application of wireless sensor networks, in-network data processing and (near) real-time actuation capability have made wireless sensor networks suitable candidate for event detection and alarming applications as well. Unreliability and dynamic (e.g. in terms of deployment area, network resources, and topology) are normal practices in the field of WSN. Therefore, effective and trustworthy event detection techniques for the WSN require robust and intelligent methods of mining hidden patterns in the sensor data, while supporting various kinds of dynamicity. Due to the fact that events are often functions of more than one attribute, data fusion and use of more features can help increasing event detection rate and reducing false alarm rate. In addition, sensor fusion can lead to more accurate and robust event detection by eliminating outliers and erroneous readings of individual sensor nodes and combining individual event detection decisions. In this paper, we propose a two-level sensor fusion-based event detection technique for the WSN. The first level of event detection in our proposed approach is conducted locally inside the sensor nodes, while the second level is carried out in a level higher (e.g., in a cluster head or gateway) and incorporates a fusion algorithm to reach a consensus among individual detection decisions made by sensor nodes. By considering fire as an event, we evaluate our approach through several experiments and illustrate impact of sensor fusion on achieving better results.
Frontiers in Group Dynamics

In the first of these articles, those aspects of group life which can be represented as an equilibrium in a phase space were considered. In the discussion of social equilibrium it was emphasized that for understanding social events, and for planning social action, a reference from the phase space to the total social field is usually necessary. As an example of such an analysis of a social field, certain problems of social channels will be discussed briefly in this second article. We shall then consider some general problems of social planning, with particular reference to the role of “action research ” in bringing about social change.
Ephrin B1 maintains apical adhesion of neural progenitors

Apical neural progenitors are polarized cells for which the apical membrane is the site of cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix adhesion events that are essential for maintaining the integrity of the developing neuroepithelium. Apical adhesion is important for several aspects of the nervous system development, including morphogenesis and neurogenesis, yet the mechanisms underlying its regulation remain poorly understood. Here, we show that ephrin B1, a cell surface protein that engages in cell signaling upon binding cognate Eph receptors, controls normal morphogenesis of the developing cortex. Efnb1-deficient embryos exhibit morphological alterations of the neuroepithelium that correlate with neural tube closure defects. Using loss-of-function experiments by ex vivo electroporation, we demonstrate that ephrin B1 is required in apical progenitors (APs) to maintain their apical adhesion. Mechanistically, we show that ephrin B1 controls cell-ECM adhesion by promoting apical localization of integrin β1 and we identify ADP-ribosylation factor 6 (Arf6) as an important effector of ephrin B1 reverse signaling in apical adhesion of APs. Our results provide evidence for an important role for ephrin B1 in maintaining the structural integrity of the developing cortex and highlight the importance of tightly controlling apical cell-ECM adhesion for neuroepithelial development.
Contextual Factors Contributing to Ethnic Identity Development of Second-Generation Iranian American Adolescents

The data drawn from interviews with 55 second-generation Iranian American adolescents revealed that pride in ancient Persian culture, the adolescents’ physical characteristics, perceived stereotypes, and community point of reference all combined to affect ethnic identity as well as to reinforce a sense of ethnic loyalty. The contextual factors that influenced ethnic identity retention were family connectedness, language, community ties, ethnic pride, engagement in cultural activities and traditions, and cultural beliefs including mannerisms and an emphasis on education. Females were more likely than their male counterparts to retain the Persian language and to engage in Persian entertainment. Furthermore, the majority of the participants self-identified themselves as Persian instead of Iranian, due to the stereotypes and negative portrayals of Iranians in the media and politics. Adolescents from Jewish and Baha’i faiths asserted their religious identity more than their ethnic identity.
DSP-Based Testing of Analog and Mixed-Signal Circuits

analog circuit testing university of cincinnati dsp based testing of analog and mixed signal circuits dsp based analog and mixed signal test ernet india dsp based testing of analog and mixed signal circuits dsp based testing of analog and mixed signal circuits dsp based testing of analog and mixed signal circuits mixed signal and dsp design techniques analog devices dsp-based analog and mixed-signal test combined analog/digital spectral testing for rf and dsp chapter
Memory Performance of AND-parallel Prolog on Shared-Memory Architectures

The goal of the RAP-WAM AND-parallel Prolog abstract architecture is to provide inference speeds significantly beyond those of sequential systems, while supporting Prolog semantics and preserving sequential performance and storage efficiency. This paper presents simulation results supporting these claims with special emphasis on memory performance on a two-level sharedmemory multiprocessor organization. Several solutions to the cache coherency problem are analyzed. It is shown that RAP-WAM offers good locality and storage efficiency and that it can effectively take advantage of broadcast caches. It is argued that speeds in excess of 2 ML IPS on real applications exhibiting medium parallelism can be attained with current technology.
UoB-UK at SemEval-2016 Task 1: A Flexible and Extendable System for Semantic Text Similarity using Types, Surprise and Phrase Linking

We present in this paper a system for measuring Semantic Text Similarity (STS) in English. We introduce three novel techniques: the use of Types, methods of linking phrases, and the use of aSurpriseFactor to generate 8,370 similarity measures, which we then combine using Support Vector and Kernel Ridge Regression. Our system out performs the State of the Art in SemEval 2015, and our best performing run achieved a score of . 7094 on the 2016 test set as a whole, and over 0.8 on the majority of the datasets. Additionally, the use of Surprise, Types and phrase linking is not limited to STS and can be used across various Natural Language Processing tasks, while our method of combining scores provides a flexible way of combining variously generated Similarity Scores.
Estimation of user interest in visited web page

Nowadays web portals contain large amount of information that is meant for various visitors or groups of visitors. To effectively navigate within the content the website needs to "know" its users in order to provide personalized content to them. We propose a method for automatic estimation of the user's interest in a web page he visits. This estimation is used for the recommendation of web portal pages (through presenting adaptive links) that the user might like. We conducted series of experiments in the domain of our faculty web portal to evaluate proposed approach.
Decoupled software pipelining with the synchronization array

Despite the success of instruction-level parallelism (ILP) optimizations in increasing the performance of microprocessors, certain codes remain elusive. In particular, codes containing recursive data structure (RDS) traversal loops have been largely immune to ILP optimizations, due to the fundamental serialization and variable latency of the loop-carried dependence through a pointer-chasing load. To address these and other situations, we introduce decoupled software pipelining (DSWP), a technique that statically splits a single-threaded sequential loop into multiple nonspeculative threads, each of which performs useful computation essential for overall program correctness. The resulting threads execute on thread-parallel architectures such as simultaneous multithreaded (SMT) cores or chip multiprocessors (CMP), expose additional instruction level parallelism, and tolerate latency better than the original single-threaded RDS loop. To reduce overhead, these threads communicate using a synchronization array, a dedicated hardware structure for pipelined inter-thread communication. DSWP used in conjunction with the synchronization array achieves an 11% to 76% speedup in the optimized functions on both statically and dynamically scheduled processors.
Role of Bulk Water in Hydrolysis of the Rhodopsin Chromophore*

Rhodopsin (Rho) is a prototypical G protein-coupled receptor that changes from an inactive conformational state to a G protein-activating state as a consequence of its retinal chromophore isomerization, 11-cis-retinal → all-trans-retinal. The photoisomerized chromophore covalently linked to Lys296 by a Schiff base is subsequently hydrolyzed, but little is known about this reaction. Recent research indicates a significant role for tightly bound transmembrane water molecules in the Rho activation process. Atomic structures of Rho and hydroxyl radical footprinting reveal ordered waters within Rho transmembrane helices that are located close to highly conserved and functionally important receptor residues, forming a hydrogen bond network. Using 18O-labeled H2O, we now report that water from bulk solvent, but not tightly bound water, is involved in the hydrolytic release of chromophore upon Rho activation by light. Moreover, small molecules (and presumably, water) enter the Rho structure from the cytoplasmic side of the membrane. Thus, this work indicates two distinct origins of water vital for Rho function.
A Comparative Acoustic Study on Speech of Glossectomy Patients and Normal Subjects

Oral, head and neck cancer represents 3% of all cancers in the United States and is the 6th most common cancer worldwide. Tongue cancer patients are treated by glossectomy, a surgical procedure to remove the cancerous tumor. As a result, the tongue properties such as volume, shape, muscle structure, and motility are affected. As a result, the vocal tract acoustics are affected too. This study compares the speech acoustics between normal subjects and partial glossectomy patients with T1 or T2 tumors. The acoustic signal of four vowels (/iy/, /uw/, /eh/, and /ah/) and two fricatives (/s/ and /sh/) were analyzed. Our results show that, while the average formants (F1-F3) for the four vowels between the normal subjects and the glossectomy patients are very similar, the average centers of gravity for the two fricatives differ significantly. These differences in fricatives can be explained by the more posterior constriction in patients due to the glossectomy (or the cancer tumor) and its resulting longer front cavity.