Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
AQP++: Connecting Approximate Query Processing With Aggregate Precomputation for Interactive Analytics

Interactive analytics requires database systems to be able to answer aggregation queries within interactive response times. As the amount of data is continuously growing at an unprecedented rate, this is becoming increasingly challenging. In the past, the database community has proposed two separate ideas, sampling-based approximate query processing (AQP) and aggregate precomputation (AggPre) such as data cubes, to address this challenge. In this paper, we argue for the need to connect these two separate ideas for interactive analytics. We propose AQP++, a novel framework to enable the connection. The framework can leverage both a sample as well as a precomputed aggregate to answer user queries. We discuss the advantages of having such a unified framework and identify new challenges to fulfill this vision. We conduct an in-depth study of these challenges for range queries and explore both optimal and heuristic solutions to address them. Our experiments using two public benchmarks and one real-world dataset show that AQP++ achieves a more flexible and better trade-off among preprocessing cost, query response time, and answer quality than AQP or AggPre.
Terracidiphilus gabretensis gen. nov., sp. nov., an Abundant and Active Forest Soil Acidobacterium Important in Organic Matter Transformation

ABSTRACT Understanding the activity of bacteria in coniferous forests is highly important, due to the role of these environments as a global carbon sink. In a study of the microbial biodiversity of montane coniferous forest soil in the Bohemian Forest National Park (Czech Republic), we succeeded in isolating bacterial strain S55T, which belongs to one of the most abundant operational taxonomic units (OTUs) in active bacterial populations, according to the analysis of RNA-derived 16S rRNA amplicons. The 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed that the species most closely related to strain S55T include Bryocella elongata SN10T (95.4% identity), Acidicapsa ligni WH120T (95.2% identity), and Telmatobacter bradus TPB6017T (95.0% identity), revealing that strain S55T should be classified within the phylum Acidobacteria, subdivision 1. Strain S55T is a rod-like bacterium that grows at acidic pH (3 to 6). Its phylogenetic, genotypic, phenotypic, and chemotaxonomic characteristics indicate that strain S55T corresponds to a new genus within the phylum Acidobacteria; thus, we propose the name Terracidiphilus gabretensis gen. nov., sp. nov. (strain S55T = NBRC 111238T = CECT 8791T). This strain produces extracellular enzymes implicated in the degradation of plant-derived biopolymers. Moreover, analysis of the genome sequence of strain S55T also reveals the presence of enzymatic machinery required for organic matter decomposition. Soil metatranscriptomic analyses found 132 genes from strain S55T being expressed in the forest soil, especially during winter. Our results suggest an important contribution of T. gabretensis S55T in the carbon cycle in the Picea abies coniferous forest.
Intimate partner violence (IPV): The validity of an IPV screening instrument utilized among pregnant women in Tanzania and Vietnam

Background Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global problem that affects one-third of all women. The present study aims to develop and determine the validity of a screening instrument for the detection of IPV in pregnant women in Tanzania and Vietnam and to determine the minimum number of questions needed to identify IPV. Method An IPV screening instrument based on eight questions was tested on 1,116 Tanzanian and 1,309 Vietnamese women who attended antenatal care before 24 gestational weeks. The women were re-interviewed during their 30th-34th gestational week where the World Health Organization (WHO) IPV questionnaire was used as the gold standard. In all, 255 combinations of eight different questions were first tested on the Tanzanian study population where sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy were calculated. In the evaluation of the performance of the question combinations, different IPV types and the frequency of abusive acts were considered. The question combinations that performed best in Tanzania were subsequently evaluated in the Vietnamese study population. Results In Tanzania, a combination of three selected questions including one question on emotional IPV, one on physical IPV and one on sexual IPV was found to be most effective in identifying women who are exposed to at least one type of IPV during pregnancy (sensitivity = .80; specificity = .74). The performance of the identified combination was slightly less effective in Vietnam (sensitivity = .74; specificity = .68). Focusing on different IPV types, the best performance was found for exposure to physical IPV in both Tanzania (sensitivity = .93; specificity = .70) and Vietnam (sensitivity = .96; specificity = .55). In both countries, the sensitivity increased with the frequency of abuse whereas the specificity decreased. Conclusion By asking pregnant women three simple questions we were able to identify women who were exposed to IPV during pregnancy in two different countries. The question combination performed best in assessing physical IPV where it identified 93% and 96% of Vietnamese and Tanzanian women, respectively, who were exposed to physical IPV.
Partitioned Shadow Volumes

Real‐time shadows remain a challenging problem in computer graphics. In this context, shadow algorithms generally rely either on shadow mapping or shadow volumes. This paper rediscovers an old class of algorithms that build a binary space partition over the shadow volumes. For almost 20 years, such methods have received little attention as they have been considered lacking of both robustness and efficiency. We show that these issues can be overcome, leading to a simple and robust shadow algorithm. Hence we demonstrate that this kind of approach can reach a high level of performance. Our algorithm uses a new partitioning strategy which avoids any polygon clipping. It relies on a Ternary Object Partitioning tree, a new data structure used to find if an image point is shadowed. Our method works on a triangle soup and its memory footprint is fixed. Our experiments show that it is efficient and robust, including for finely tessellated models.
A Pipeline Approach to Chinese Personal Name Disambiguation

In this paper, we describe our sys-tem for Chinese personal name disambiguation task in the ﬁrst CIPS-SIGHAN joint conference on Chinese Language Processing(CLP2010). We use a pipeline approach, in which pre-processing, unrelated documents discarding, Chinese personal name extension and document clustering are performed separately. Chinese personal name extension is the most important part of the system. It uses two additional dictionaries to extract full personal names in Chinese text. And then document clustering is performed under diﬀerent personal names. Experimental results show that our system can achieve good performances.
Comparison of the short-term outcomes between delta-shaped anastomosis and conventional Billroth I anastomosis after laparoscopic distal gastrectomy

Background: The conventional Billroth I anastomosis (cBIA) after laparoscopic distal gastrectomy (LDG) is performed through circular staple extracorporeally. Now, delta-shaped anastomosis (DA), which is performed using a linear stapler intracorporeally, becomes popular. We conducted a meta-analysis to compare the effectiveness and safety between the 2 techniques. Methods: A systematic literature search was performed using PubMed, Ovid, and the Cochrane Library Central. Participants of any age and sex, who underwent DA, or cBIA after LDG, were considered following inclusion criteria. Results: A total of 11 articles, published between 2010 and 2017, fulfilled the selection criteria. The total sample size of these studies was 2729 cases, including DA group 1008 cases and cBIA group 1721 cases. Compared to cBIA group, patients in DA group had less blood loss (mean deviation [MD] = −0.68, 95% confidence interval [CI] = −0.15 to −0.31, P < .001), fewer administration of analgesics (MD = −0.82, 95% CI = −1.58 to −0.05, P = .04), lower NRS score on POD 1 (MD = −0.84, 95% CI = −1.34 to −0.33, P = .001), lower NRS score on POD 3 (MD = −0.38, 95% CI = −0.50 to −0.26, P < .001). Furthermore, compared to cBIA group, obese patients in DA group had fewer total number of complications (MD = 0.46, 95% CI = 0.22 to 0.95, P = .04), shorter postoperative hospital stays (MD = −0.73, 95% CI = −1.18 to −0.28, P = .001), earlier first flatus (MD = −0.30, 95% CI = −0.50 to −0.10, P = .004), fewer administration of analgesics (MD = −1.08, 95% CI = −1.61 to −0.55, P < .001), lower NRS score on POD 1 (MD = −0.68, 95% CI = −0.99 to −0.37, P < .001) and lower NRS score on POD 3 (MD = −0.63, 95% CI = −0.86 to −0.40, P < .001). Conclusions: Compared with cBIA, DA is a safe and feasible procedure, with similar surgical outcomes and postoperative complications. In terms of postoperative recovery, DA is less invasive with quicker resume than cBIA, especially for the obese patients.
A Ubiquitous Smart Learning Platform for the 21st Smart Learners in an Advanced Science and Engineering Education

Many people from various sectors are now talking about "Smart" and "Ubiquitous" things for workplaces, homes, school classrooms, and so on. Terms of ubiquitous and smart are another words for everywhere and intelligence. Ubiquitous smart learning can be defined as a quite innovative way of getting the knowledge, especially in advanced science and engineering areas. Ubiquitous learning environments are always connected with WiFi, 3G and 4G and provide a learners' paradise where they can learn anywhere and anytime whatever they want to learn. In this paper, we have developed a computer simulation-based ubiquitous smart learning system called EDISON (EDucation-research Integration through Simulation On the Net) for supporting users in the area of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics). The EDISON system could be used by the curious learner, much like Thomas Alva Edison who lived in the 19th century and liked to do all kinds of experiments to verify or discover answers to his curiosities or to solve problems. We, as smart learners, who are living in the 21st "smart century" can do many experiments like those done by Edison through computer simulations in a ubiquitous smart learning environment using EDISON. In addition, we have explained in detail how we have been motivated to develop the EDISON system, what kind of functionalities and architecture it has, how we have improved the performance of the EDISON system in terms of system's stability, response and waiting times, and how we plan to expand our system in the future.
Dynamic multi-cue tracking with detection responses association

Multi-cue integration has proved successful at increasing the robustness of tracking algorithms and overcoming the failure cases of individual cue. But considering dynamic appearance of objects or clutter background, the integration based on constant weights may weaken the performance of this scheme. In this paper, we propose a dynamic weights update mechanism for multiple cues tracking with detection responses as supervision. We integrate multiple cues based on the observation hypotheses compared with detection association results and adjust the weights according to the approximation degree. The integration is adapted on-the-fly during tracking, in order to keep the tracker adaptive. The proposed method allows flexible combination of different cues and we select cues based on color and local feature for tracking. Experiments are carried out on 602 trajectories extracted from TRECVID 2008 event detection dataset which is recorded in an airport scenario. Comparison results prove the effectiveness of our method.
Ephrin‐A1‐EphA4 signaling negatively regulates myelination in the central nervous system

During development of the central nervous system not all axons are myelinated, and axons may have distinct myelination patterns. Furthermore, the number of myelin sheaths formed by each oligodendrocyte is highly variable. However, our current knowledge about the axo‐glia communication that regulates the formation of myelin sheaths spatially and temporally is limited. By using axon‐mimicking microfibers and a zebrafish model system, we show that axonal ephrin‐A1 inhibits myelination. Ephrin‐A1 interacts with EphA4 to activate the ephexin1‐RhoA‐Rock‐myosin 2 signaling cascade and causes inhibition of oligodendrocyte process extension. Both in myelinating co‐cultures and in zebrafish larvae, activation of EphA4 decreases myelination, whereas myelination is increased by inhibition of EphA4 signaling at different levels of the pathway, or by receptor knockdown. Mechanistically, the enhanced myelination is a result of a higher number of myelin sheaths formed by each oligodendrocyte, not an increased number of mature cells. Thus, we have identified EphA4 and ephrin‐A1 as novel negative regulators of myelination. Our data suggest that activation of an EphA4‐RhoA pathway in oligodendrocytes by axonal ephrin‐A1 inhibits stable axo‐glia interaction required for generating a myelin sheath.
From Complex Organizations with Simple Jobs to Simple Organizations with Complex Jobs

Organization redesign has become widely acceptedas a regular task for management, recently invigoratedby the interest in Business Process Reengineering. Inspite of that, it is still a neglected area in organization science. This paper emphasizesthe importance of design theory and design-orientedresearch. The potential role of design theory isexemplified by the description of IntegralOrganizational Renewal (IOR), a design theory grounded inpractical experience in the Netherlands. This approachcan be viewed as a Dutch variant of SociotechnicalSystems Design. The essence of this approach lies in the transformation of complex organizationsoffering simple jobs into simple organizations offeringcomplex jobs. IOR can both be regarded as an expertapproach and as a route for self-design. The approach enables the members of the organization todevelop and use their own design expertise. IOR istherefore not only a strategy for organization design,but for organization development as well. The paperpoints to opportunities to make organization researchmore relevant to organization practice.
Social, Structural and Behavioral Determinants of Overall Health Status in a Cohort of Homeless and Unstably Housed HIV-Infected Men

Background Previous studies indicate multiple influences on the overall health of HIV-infected persons; however, few assess and rank longitudinal changes in social and structural barriers that are disproportionately found in impoverished populations. We empirically ranked factors that longitudinally impact the overall health status of HIV-infected homeless and unstably housed men. Methods and Findings Between 2002 and 2008, a cohort of 288 HIV+ homeless and unstably housed men was recruited and followed over time. The population was 60% non-Caucasian and the median age was 41 years; 67% of study participants reported recent drug use and 20% reported recent homelessness. At baseline, the median CD4 cell count was 349 cells/µl and 18% of eligible persons (CD4<350) took antiretroviral therapy (ART). Marginal structural models were used to estimate the population-level effects of behavioral, social, and structural factors on overall physical and mental health status (measured by the SF-36), and targeted variable importance (tVIM) was used to empirically rank factors by their influence. After adjusting for confounding, and in order of their influence, the three factors with the strongest negative effects on physical health were unmet subsistence needs, Caucasian race, and no reported source of instrumental support. The three factors with the strongest negative effects on mental health were unmet subsistence needs, not having a close friend/confidant, and drug use. ART adherence >90% ranked 5th for its positive influence on mental health, and viral load ranked 4th for its negative influence on physical health. Conclusions The inability to meet food, hygiene, and housing needs was the most powerful predictor of poor physical and mental health among homeless and unstably housed HIV-infected men in an urban setting. Impoverished persons will not fully benefit from progress in HIV medicine until these barriers are overcome, a situation that is likely to continue fueling the US HIV epidemic.
Prediction of Protein Modification Sites of Pyrrolidone Carboxylic Acid Using mRMR Feature Selection and Analysis

Pyrrolidone carboxylic acid (PCA) is formed during a common post-translational modification (PTM) of extracellular and multi-pass membrane proteins. In this study, we developed a new predictor to predict the modification sites of PCA based on maximum relevance minimum redundancy (mRMR) and incremental feature selection (IFS). We incorporated 727 features that belonged to 7 kinds of protein properties to predict the modification sites, including sequence conservation, residual disorder, amino acid factor, secondary structure and solvent accessibility, gain/loss of amino acid during evolution, propensity of amino acid to be conserved at protein-protein interface and protein surface, and deviation of side chain carbon atom number. Among these 727 features, 244 features were selected by mRMR and IFS as the optimized features for the prediction, with which the prediction model achieved a maximum of MCC of 0.7812. Feature analysis showed that all feature types contributed to the modification process. Further site-specific feature analysis showed that the features derived from PCA's surrounding sites contributed more to the determination of PCA sites than other sites. The detailed feature analysis in this paper might provide important clues for understanding the mechanism of the PCA formation and guide relevant experimental validations.
The Network Nullspace Property for Compressed Sensing of Big Data Over Networks

We present a novel condition, which we term the network nullspace property, which ensures accurate recovery of graph signals representing massive network-structured datasets from few signal values. The network nullspace property couples the cluster structure of the underlying network-structure with the geometry of the sampling set. Our results can be used to design efficient sampling strategies based on the network topology.
Delivery Time Minimization in Cache-Assisted Broadcast-Relay Wireless Networks with Imperfect CSI

An emerging trend of next generation communication systems is to provide network edges with additional capabilities such as storage resources in the form of caches to reduce file delivery latency. To investigate the impact of this technique on latency, we study the delivery time of a cache-aided broadcast-relay wireless network consisting of one central base station, M cache-equipped transceivers and K receivers under finite precision channel state information (CSI). We use the normalized delivery time (NDT) to capture the worst-case per-bit latency in a file delivery. Lower and upper bounds on the NDT are derived to understand the influence of K, M, cache capacity and channel quality on the NDT. In particular, regimes of NDT-optimality are identified and discussed.
Analysis and tracking of emotions in english and bengali texts: a computational approach

The present discussion highlights the aspects of an ongoing doctoral thesis grounded on the analysis and tracking of emotions from English and Bengali texts. Development of lexical resources and corpora meets the preliminary urgencies. The research spectrum aims to identify the evaluative emotional expressions at word, phrase, sentence, and document level granularities along with their associated holders and topics. Tracking of emotions based on topic or event was carried out by employing sense based affect scoring techniques. The labeled emotion corpora are being prepared from unlabeled examples to cope with the scarcity of emotional resources, especially for the resource constraint language like Bengali. Different unsupervised, supervised and semi-supervised strategies, adopted for coloring each outline of the research spectrum produce satisfactory outcomes
Medshare: A Novel Hybrid Cloud for Medical Resource Sharing Among Autonomous Healthcare Providers

Legacy electronic health record systems were not developed with the level of connectivity expected from them nowadays. Therefore, interoperability weakness inherent in the legacy systems can result in poor patient care and waste of financial resources. Simultaneously, healthcare providers are not yet ready to dispose of them. Large hospitals are also less likely to share their data with external care providers due to economic and political reasons. To overcome the barriers in the effective medical data exchange process, we present a novel hybrid cloud called MedShare, dealing with interoperability issues among disconnected but autonomously functioning healthcare providers. The proposed system architecture and its implementation is based upon: 1) custom data extractors to extract legacy medical data from the three hemodialysis centers under consideration; 2) negotiated and converted to a common data model in each of the private cloud of a provider; 3) indexed patient information using the HashMap technique into the public cloud that operates on private clouds, called a hybrid cloud; and 4) a set of services and tools installed as a coherent environment to exchange information smoothly. This paper enables healthcare professionals to appropriately access and securely share a patient’s medical information. MedShare allows the healthcare providers and administrators to maintain the control of their patient data, which is always the primary concern in building a trustworthy environment for exchanging patient information. Medshare effectively addresses primary security and privacy concerns surrounding the deployment of data exchange process by including patient consent and a two-way authorization process.