Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Randomness in Distributed Protocols

We describe a family of caching protocols for distributed networks that can be used to decrease or eliminate the occurrence of hot spots in the network. Our protocols are particularly designed for use with very large networks such as the Internet, where delays caused by hot spots can be severe, and where it is not feasible for every server to have complete information about the current state of the entire network. The protocols are easy to implement using existing network protocols such as TCP/IP, and require very little overhead. The protocols work with local control, make efficient use of existing resources, and scale gracefully as the network grows. Our caching protocols are based on a special kind of hashing that we call consistent hashing. Roughly speaking, a consistent hash function is one which changes minimally as the range of the function changes. Through the development of good consistent hash functions, we are able to develop caching protocols which do not require users to have a current or even consistent view of the network. We believe that consistent hash functions may eventually prove to be useful in other applications such as distributed name servers and/or quorum systems. In this paper, we describe caching protocols for distributed networks that can be used to decrease or eliminate the occurrences of " hot spots ". Hot spots occur any time a large number of clients wish to simultaneously access data from a single server. If the site is not provisioned to deal with all of these clients simultaneously, service may be degraded or lost. Many of us have experienced the hot spot phenomenon in the context of the Web. A Web site can suddenly become extremely popular and receive far more requests in a relatively short time than 1 it was originally configured to handle. In fact, a site may receive so many requests that it becomes " swamped, " which typically renders it unusable. Besides making the one site inaccessible, heavy traffic destined to one location can congest the network near it, interfering with traffic at nearby sites. As use of the Web has increased, so has the occurrence and impact of hot spots. Recent famous examples of hot spots on the Web include the JPL site after the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet struck Jupiter, an IBM site during the Deep Blue-Kasparov chess tournament , and several political sites on the night of the …
SEMA3C drives cancer growth by transactivating multiple receptor tyrosine kinases via Plexin B1

Growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) pathway activation is a key mechanism for mediating cancer growth, survival, and treatment resistance. Cognate ligands play crucial roles in autocrine or paracrine stimulation of these RTK pathways. Here, we show SEMA3C drives activation of multiple RTKs including EGFR, ErbB2, and MET in a cognate ligand‐independent manner via Plexin B1. SEMA3C expression levels increase in castration‐resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), where it functions to promote cancer cell growth and resistance to androgen receptor pathway inhibition. SEMA3C inhibition delays CRPC and enzalutamide‐resistant progression. Plexin B1 sema domain‐containing:Fc fusion proteins suppress RTK signaling and cell growth and inhibit CRPC progression of LNCaP xenografts post‐castration in vivo. SEMA3C inhibition represents a novel therapeutic strategy for treatment of advanced prostate cancer.
Characteristics of Sol-Gel Derived SiO2 Thick Film on 4H-SiC

Physical and electrical properties of sol-gel derived SiO2 thick film (100-130 nm) deposited on n-type 4H-SiC have been investigated. The oxide was annealed in argon gas ambient for 30 minutes at 650, 750, 850, and 950°C, in order to optimize the oxide properties. Results indicated that the oxide is denser with a significant reduction in percentage of porosity as the annealing temperature increases, except for sample annealed at 950°C. The oxide annealed at 850°C was having values of refractive index and dielectric constant close to the values reported in thermally grown SiO2 and it has demonstrated the lowest leakage current density and total interface trap density. Viscous shear flow effect has been proposed as the main contributor for the reduction of physical properties when the oxide was annealed at 950°C.
Anticancer Properties of Distinct Antimalarial Drug Classes

We have tested five distinct classes of established and experimental antimalarial drugs for their anticancer potential, using a panel of 91 human cancer lines. Three classes of drugs: artemisinins, synthetic peroxides and DHFR (dihydrofolate reductase) inhibitors effected potent inhibition of proliferation with IC50s in the nM- low µM range, whereas a DHODH (dihydroorotate dehydrogenase) and a putative kinase inhibitor displayed no activity. Furthermore, significant synergies were identified with erlotinib, imatinib, cisplatin, dasatinib and vincristine. Cluster analysis of the antimalarials based on their differential inhibition of the various cancer lines clearly segregated the synthetic peroxides OZ277 and OZ439 from the artemisinin cluster that included artesunate, dihydroartemisinin and artemisone, and from the DHFR inhibitors pyrimethamine and P218 (a parasite DHFR inhibitor), emphasizing their shared mode of action. In order to further understand the basis of the selectivity of these compounds against different cancers, microarray-based gene expression data for 85 of the used cell lines were generated. For each compound, distinct sets of genes were identified whose expression significantly correlated with compound sensitivity. Several of the antimalarials tested in this study have well-established and excellent safety profiles with a plasma exposure, when conservatively used in malaria, that is well above the IC50s that we identified in this study. Given their unique mode of action and potential for unique synergies with established anticancer drugs, our results provide a strong basis to further explore the potential application of these compounds in cancer in pre-clinical or and clinical settings.
TRPV6, TRPM6 and TRPM7 Do Not Contribute to Hair-Cell Mechanotransduction

Hair cells of the inner ear transduce mechanical stimuli like sound or head movements into electrical signals, which are propagated to the central nervous system. The hair-cell mechanotransduction channel remains unidentified. We tested whether three transient receptor channel (TRP) family members, TRPV6, TRPM6 and TRPM7, were necessary for transduction. TRPV6 interacted with USH1C (harmonin), a scaffolding protein that participates in transduction. Using a cysteine-substitution knock-in mouse line and methanethiosulfonate (MTS) reagents selective for this allele, we found that inhibition of TRPV6 had no effect on transduction in mouse cochlear hair cells. TRPM6 and TRPM7 each interacted with the tip-link component PCDH15 in cultured eukaryotic cells, which suggested they might be part of the transduction complex. Cochlear hair cell transduction was not affected by manipulations of Mg2+, however, which normally perturbs TRPM6 and TRPM7. To definitively examine the role of these two channels in transduction, we showed that deletion of either or both of their genes selectively in hair cells had no effect on auditory function. We suggest that TRPV6, TRPM6 and TRPM7 are unlikely to be the pore-forming subunit of the hair-cell transduction channel.
SD-HDFS: Secure Deletion in Hadoop Distributed File System

Sensitive information that is stored in Hadoop clusters can potentially be retrieved without permission or access granted. In addition, the ability to recover deleted data from Hadoop clusters represents a major security threat. Hadoop clusters are used to manage large amounts of data both within and outside of organizations. As a result, it has become important to be able to locate and remove data effectively and efficiently. In this paper, we propose Secure Delete, a holistic framework that propagates file information to the block management layer via an auxiliary communication path. The framework tracks down undeleted data blocks and modifies the normal deletion operation in the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). We introduce CheckerNode, which generates a summary report from all DataNodes and compares the block information with the metadata from the NameNode. If the metadata do not contain the entries for the data blocks, unsynchronized blocks are automatically deleted. However, deleted data could still be recovered using digital forensics tools. We also describe a novel secure deletion technique in HDFS that generates a random pattern and writes multiple times to the disk location of the data block.
Synergistic effects of fumed silica on intumescent flame‐retardant polypropylene

The synergistic effects of fumed silica on the thermal and flame-retardant properties of intumescent flame retardant (IFR) polypropylene based on the NP phosphorus-nitrogen compound have been studied by Fourier transfer infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, cone calorimeter test (CCT), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), limiting oxygen index (LOI), and UL-94 tests. The LOI and UL-94 data show that when ≤1 wt % fumed silica substituted for the IFR additive NP can increase 2 to 4% LOI values of the PP blends and keep the V-0 rating. The data obtained from the CCT tests indicate the heat release rates (HRR) reduce by about 23% for the PP/NP sample with 0.5 wt % fumed silica, whereas the mass loss rates (MLR) and total heat release (THR) values are much lower than those of the PP/NP samples without fume silica. The TGA data demonstrate that a suitable amount of fumed silica can increase the thermal stability and charred residue of the PP/IFR/SiO 2 blends after 500°C. The morphological structures of charred residues observed by SEM give positive evidence that a suitable amount of fumed silica can promote the formation of compact intumescent charred layers and prevent the charred layers from cracking, which effectively protects the underlying polymer from burning. The dynamic FTIR spectra reveal that the synergistic flame-retardant mechanism of a suitable amount of fumed silica with IFR additive is due to its physical process in the condensed phases. However, a high loading of fumed silica restricts the formation of charred layers with P—O—P and P—O—C complexes formed from burning of polymer materials and destroys the swelling behavior of intumescent charred layers, which deteriorates the flame retardant and thermal properties of the PP/IFR blends.
MR Brain Image Segmentation: A Framework to Compare Different Clustering Techniques

In Magnetic Resonance (MR) brain image analysis, segmentation is commonly used for detecting, measuring and analyzing the main anatomical structures of the brain and eventually identifying pathological regions. Brain image segmentation is of fundamental importance since it helps clinicians and researchers to concentrate on specific regions of the brain in order to analyze them. However, segmentation of brain images is a difficult task due to high similarities and correlations of intensity among different regions of the brain image. Among various methods proposed in the literature, clustering algorithms prove to be successful tools for image segmentation. In this paper, we present a framework for image segmentation that is devoted to support the expert in identifying different brain regions for further analysis. The framework includes different clustering methods to perform segmentation of MR images. Furthermore, it enables easy comparison of different segmentation results by providing a quantitative evaluation using an entropy-based measure as well as other measures commonly used to evaluate segmentation results. To show the potential of the framework, the implemented clustering methods are compared on simulated T1-weighted MR brain images from the Internet Brain Segmentation Repository (IBSR database) provided with ground truth segmentation.
Hyperbolic Covariant Coherent Structures in Two Dimensional Flows

A new method to describe hyperbolic patterns in two-dimensional flows is proposed. The method is based on the Covariant Lyapunov Vectors (CLVs), which have the properties of being covariant with the dynamics, and thus, being mapped by the tangent linear operator into another CLVs basis, they are norm independent, invariant under time reversal and cannot be orthonormal. CLVs can thus give more detailed information about the expansion and contraction directions of the flow than the Lyapunov vector bases, which are instead always orthogonal. We suggest a definition of Hyperbolic Covariant Coherent Structures (HCCSs), which can be defined on the scalar field representing the angle between the CLVs. HCCSs can be defined for every time instant and could be useful to understand the long-term behavior of particle tracers. We consider three examples: a simple autonomous Hamiltonian system, as well as the non-autonomous “double gyre” and Bickley jet, to see how well the angle is able to describe particular patterns and barriers. We compare the results from the HCCSs with other coherent patterns defined on finite time by the Finite Time Lyapunov Exponents (FTLEs), to see how the behaviors of these structures change asymptotically.
Impacts of climate change on rice production in Africa and causes of simulated yield changes

This study is the first of its kind to quantify possible effects of climate change on rice production in Africa. We simulated impacts on rice in irrigated systems (dry season and wet season) and rainfed systems (upland and lowland). We simulated the use of rice varieties with a higher temperature sum as adaptation option. We simulated rice yields for 4 RCP climate change scenarios and identified causes of yield declines. Without adaptation, shortening of the growing period due to higher temperatures had a negative impact on yields (−24% in RCP 8.5 in 2070 compared with the baseline year 2000). With varieties that have a high temperature sum, the length of the growing period would remain the same as under the baseline conditions. With this adaptation option rainfed rice yields would increase slightly (+8%) but they remain subject to water availability constraints. Irrigated rice yields in East Africa would increase (+25%) due to more favourable temperatures and due to CO2 fertilization. Wet season irrigated rice yields in West Africa were projected to change by −21% or +7% (without/with adaptation). Without adaptation irrigated rice yields in West Africa in the dry season would decrease by −45% with adaptation they would decrease significantly less (−15%). The main cause of this decline was reduced photosynthesis at extremely high temperatures. Simulated heat sterility hardly increased and was not found a major cause for yield decline. The implications for these findings are as follows. For East Africa to benefit from climate change, improved water and nutrient management will be needed to benefit fully from the more favourable temperatures and increased CO2 concentrations. For West Africa, more research is needed on photosynthesis processes at extreme temperatures and on adaptation options such as shifting sowing dates.
Analysis of Image Steganography Techniques: A Survey

Steganography is the technique of hiding data in an appropriate multimedia carrier, e.g., image, audio, and video files known as Cover. Images are mostly used as the cover medium due to their pervasiveness in different applications and representation with high redundancy. This paper provides a review and analysis of many existing methods for digital image steganography in the spatial as well as transform domain. The performance evaluation of the algorithms with respect to the proposed analysis parameters are summarized along with their limitations inorder to throw some light on the utility of the algorithm as per the requirement of application. General Terms Steganography
White electroluminescence from a poly(N-vinylcarbazole) layer doped with CdSe/CdS core–shell quantum dots

Hybrid organic/inorganic white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) were fabricated of semiconductor polymer poly(N-vinylcarbazole) (PVK) doped with CdSe/CdS core–shell semiconductor quantum dots (QDs). The device, with a structure of indium–tin-oxide (ITO)|3,4-polyethylene–dioxythiophene–polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS)|PVK:CdSe/CdS|Al, emitted a pure white light spanning the whole visible region from 400 to 800 nm. The Commission Internationale del’Eclairage coordinates (CIE) remained at x = 0.33,y = 0.34 at wide applied voltages. The maximum brightness and electroluminescence (EL) efficiency reached 180 cd m−2 at 19 V and 0.21 cd A−1 at current density of 2 mA cm−2, respectively. The realization of the pure white light emission is attributed to the incomplete energy and charge transfer from PVK to CdSe/CdS core–shell QDs.
Single Underwater Image Restoration Using Adaptive Attenuation-Curve Prior

Underwater imaging is an important topic in maritime research. Due to the existence of dust-like particles in water medium, underwater images are vulnerable to the effect of low contrast and color cast. In this paper, we propose a novel underwater image restoration method based on a non-local prior, namely, adaptive attenuation-curve prior. This prior relies on the statistical distribution of pixel values. That is, all pixel values of a clear image can be partitioned into several hundred distinct clusters in RGB space, and the pixel values in each cluster will be distributed on a curve with a power function form after attenuated by water in varying degrees. Specifically, we can estimate the transmission for each pixel according to its distribution on the curves. Then, we estimate the attenuation factor to compensate for the transmission. To prevent over saturation and reduce the noise of the recovered images, we propose the saturation constraints to adjust the transmission of the three color channels. Qualitative and quantitative results demonstrate that our proposed method can achieve better performance, compared with the state-of-the-art approaches. Moreover, our proposed method can be further extended to restore other kinds of degraded images, such as hazy images.
VALIDATION OF POSTINJURY MULTIPLE ORGAN FAILURE SCORES

Most multiple organ failure (MOF) scores were developed over a decade ago, but little has been done in terms of validation and to understand the differences between populations identified by each of them. Given the lack of a gold standard, validation must rely on association with objective adverse outcomes. Thus, we propose to (a) validate two widely accepted MOF scores (Denver and Marshall), examining their association with adverse outcomes in a postinjury population; and (b) compare risk factors, characteristics, and outcomes of patients identified by each score. The Denver MOF score grades (from 0-3) four organ dysfunctions (lung, kidney, liver, and heart) and defines MOF as a total score more than 3. The Marshall score grades, in addition, central nervous system and hematologic dysfunction (total of six organs on a 0- to 4-point scale). Using a prospectively collected data set, MOF was scored daily by both scores for 1,389 consecutive trauma patients with Injury Severity Score of more than15 admitted from 1992 to 2004. Risk factors, clinical outcomes (death, ventilator-free days), and resource utilization outcomes (mechanical ventilation time, length of stay in the intensive care unit) were evaluated. Both scores were associated with areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves of 80 or greater (ideal value = 100), with values for the Denver score being slightly greater (albeit not significantly) regarding prediction of most outcomes. Values of sensitivity and specificity were more than 70% for death and ventilator-free days (with the Denver score showing a consistent trend toward greater specificity), but either sensitivity or specificity was less than 70% for mechanical ventilation time and length of stay in the intensive care unit, suggesting that these scores are appropriately biased toward clinical outcomes as opposed to resource utilization. Both scores performed well, with the Denver MOF score showing greater specificity, which, coupled with its simplicity, makes it an attractive tool for both the research and clinical environments. Basic concepts of each score can probably be combined to produce an improved MOF score.
Pulsed holmium laser tissue ablation threshold studies

Threshold radiant exposures for pulsed holmium laser ablation of tissue were measured using a high speed framing camera. The effects of laser irradiance and beam size on threshold radiant exposure were investigated. Threshold radiant exposure decreased with increasing laser irradiance over the range 105-107 W/cm2. An increase in laser beam diameter reduced the laser irradiance required to achieve ablation over the range of spot sizes examined (243-970 μm). These results suggest that both the rate of energy deposition and laser beam geometry affect the events preceding the onset of ablation and should be considered when modeling or quantifying laser ablation of tissue.
Effect of Deposition Time on the Photoelectrochemical Properties of Cupric Oxide Thin Films Synthesized via Electrodeposition Method

The main aim of this study was to investigate the effect of deposition time on the physicochemical and photoelectrochemical properties of cupric oxide (CuO) thin films synthesized via electrodeposition method. Firstly, the electrodeposition of amorphous CuO films on fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) working electrodes with varying deposition time between 5 and 30 min was carried out, followed by annealing treatment at 500 °C. Resultant nanocrystalline CuO thin films were characterised using field emission-scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), photocurrent density, and photoluminescence measurements. Through FE-SEM analysis, it was observed that the surface of thin films was composed of irregular-sized CuO nanocrystals. A smaller CuO nanocrystals size will lead to a higher photoactivity due to the increase in overall catalytic surface area. In addition, the smaller CuO nanocrystals size will prolongs the electron-hole recombination rate due to the increase in copious amount of surface defects. From this study, it was revealed that the relationship between deposition time and CuO film thickness was non-linear. This could be due to the detachment of CuO thin films from the FTO surface at an increasing amount of CuO mass being deposited. It was observed that the amount of light absorbed by CuO thin films increased with film thickness until a certain extent whereby, any further increase in the film thickness will result in a reduction of light photon penetration. Therefore, the CuO nanocrystals size and film thickness have to be compromised in order to yield a higher catalytic surface area and a lower rate of surface charge recombination. Finally, it was found that the deposition time of 15 min resulted in an average CuO nanocrystals size of 73.7 nm, optimum film thickness of 0.73 μm, and corresponding photocurrent density of 0.23 mA/cm 2 at the potential bias of - 0.3 V (versus Ag/AgCl). The PL spectra for the deposition time of 15 min has the lowest rate of recombination of photogenerated electron-hole pairs by referring to its lowest PL intensity.