Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Declarative configuration management for complex and dynamic networks

Network management and operations are complicated, tedious, and error-prone, requiring signifcant human involvement and domain knowledge. As the complexity involved inevitably grows due to larger scale networks and more complex protocol features, human operators are increasingly short-handed, despite the best effort from existing support systems to make it otherwise. This paper presents coolaid, a system under which the domain knowledge of device vendors and service providers is formally captured by a declarative language. Through effcient and powerful rule-based reasoning on top of a database-like abstraction over a network of devices, coolaid enables new management primitives to perform network-wide reasoning, prevent misconfguration, and automate network confguration, while requiring minimum operator effort. We describe the design and prototype implementation of coolaid, and demonstrate its effectiveness and scalability through various realistic network management tasks.
Fast & Predictable A Lightweight Release Framework Promotes Agility through Rhythm and Flow

Embarking on salesforce.compsilas large scale transformation to our adaptive development methodology presented many unique challenges due to the scale of the rollout as well as the need to align a large number of teams (30+) to a common release date, 3-4 times per year. To specifically address the latter challenge, we created a lightweight release framework in order to optimize on-time, high quality delivery to our customers and partners. Salesforce.com delivers product functionality using the software-as-a-service hosted model and has 30+ scrum teams working on a single release concurrently. The release framework that we created exhibitscharacteristics different than most release processes--simple, lightweight, unambiguous, and visibleeverywhere, to our entire technology organization. By implementing this lightweight release framework and making it highly visible, wepsilave organically promoted a cyclical harmony and rhythm in our organization and across all scrum teams. This cyclical harmony and rhythm has created an environment where local team agility is promoted, facilitated and thrives. To support an agile methodology effectively on an enterprise scale, a lightweight release framework is highly useful in empowering small self-organizing teams while "optimizing the whole" of the product you are focused on delivering. Interestingly enough, we found that the absence of one can actually inhibit agility and avoidable ambiguity, in an environment where there is a high degree of unavoidable ambiguity.
Design of Doherty power amplifier for carrier-aggregation in LTE-A small cell base station

The demand for higher data rate has led to the utilization of carrier aggregation technique, where the linearity and efficiency requirements of power amplifier become more stringent especially for base station. To improve efficiency around the average output power, the two-way symmetrical Doherty power amplifier with unequal input power splitting ratio is proposed. The experimental results show that the proposed Doherty architecture delivers a 39 dBm average output power with low error vector magnitude and high efficiency. Finally, an example of two LTE-Advanced component carriers (CCs) at Band 41 is used to verify the feasibility of the proposed Doherty concept in intra-band carrier aggregation.
Nonparametric simultaneous sparse recovery: An application to source localization

We consider multichannel sparse recovery problem where the objective is to find good recovery of jointly sparse unknown signal vectors from the given multiple measurement vectors which are different linear combinations of the same known elementary vectors. Many popular greedy or convex algorithms perform poorly under non-Gaussian heavy-tailed noise conditions or in the face of outliers. In this paper, we propose the usage of mixed ℓp, q norms on data fidelity (residual matrix) term and the conventional ℓ0,2-norm constraint on the signal matrix to promote row-sparsity. We devise a greedy pursuit algorithm based on simultaneous normalized iterative hard thresholding (SNIHT) algorithm. Simulation studies highlight the effectiveness of the proposed approaches to cope with different noise environments (i.i.d., row i.i.d, etc) and outliers. Usefulness of the methods are illustrated in source localization application with sensor arrays.
Design and Performance Evaluation of Multiple AF-Relay Processing in Multi-Cell Environment

For multiple half-duplex amplify-and-forward (AF) relays in cellular communications, a statistical power allocation (control) method is designed to minimize network power under the relay-transmit-power and the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio constraints. Computer simulation corroborates that the designed relay processing yields significant performance enhancement and network power reduction compared to a system with plain AF relays and a direct communication system without relays.
High-throughput proteomics using Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry

The advent of high-throughput proteomic technologies for global detection and quantitation of proteins creates new opportunities and challenges for those seeking to gain greater understanding of the cellular machinery. Here, recent advances in high-resolution capillary liquid chromatography coupled to Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry are reviewed along with its potential application to high-throughput proteomics. These technological advances combined with quantitative stable isotope labeling methodologies provide powerful tools for expanding our understanding of biology at the system level.
The determination of surface intersection using subdivision and Polyhedron Intersection Methods

The need for the determination of surface intersection exists in many real-world applications. Such determination is based on a recurrent operation so that its computation should be fast, reliable and suitable for the surfaces involved. Two methods are applied and two new methods are proposed in this work for determining the intersection of two Bézier surfaces: Subdivision, Marching Methods, Polyhedron Intersection, and Hybrid between subdivision and poly- hedron intersection. Combining the two methods: subdivision and polyhedron intersection, a hybrid method is obtained. It integrates the subdivision method with the intersection of two triangulated polyhedra. Thus, the final result is much more precise than that for plane/plane intersection. Consequently, it is closer to the exact result. Unfortunately, none of the three methods can produce the true intersection curves. Further refinement of the intermediate result needs to be performed. Two marching methods, using Tangential or Circular steps, are used to calculate exact intersection points. A major difference between the two techniques is the step size. In the method using tangential steps, the step size has to be fixed and predefined while that of the circular step is dynamic and automatically changed. The selection of which techniques to be used depends on the problem itself: if the result is crooked or winding, the circular step is recommended, otherwise it is sufficient to use the tangential step.
Reasoning About Class Behavior

We present a sound and complete method for reasoning about contextual equivalence between different implementations of classes in an imperative subset of Java. To the extent of our knowledge this is the first such method for a language with unrestricted inheritance, where the context can arbitrarily extend classes to distinguish otherwise equivalent implementations. Similar reasoning techniques for class-based languages [1, 12] don’t consider inheritance at all, or forbid the context from extending related classes. Other techniques that do consider inheritance [3] study whole-program equivalence. Our technique also handles public, private, and protected interfaces of classes, imperative fields, and invocations of callbacks. Using our technique we were able to prove equivalences in examples with higher-order behavior, where previous methods for functional calculi admit limitations [21, 24]. Adding inheritance to a class-based language increases the distinguishing power of the context. Here we show how this extra distinguishing power is reflected in the conditions for equivalence of our technique. Furthermore we show that adding a cast operator is a conservative extension of the language. 1. Introduction The class is a facility to divide programs into small units that encode different parts of the entire program behavior. This makes classes attractive for reuse and re-implementation. But changing the implementation of a class that is being used in a number of programs comes with the responsibility that the new implementation will not alter the behavior of these programs. The effect that a change in the implementation of a class has on the behavior of a program that uses it depends greatly on the ways that the program interacts with the class. In a Java-like language (and in the absence of reflection) the surrounding program can interact directly with the class by creating new instances, invoking its public methods, and changing the state of its public fields. It can also interact more indirectly with the class. It can define subclasses that inherit from the original class and instantiate objects, invoke methods, and change the state of fields of these classes. Moreover the subclasses may override methods of the original class and have access to its protected interface. To formalize the notion of equivalent implementations of classes we adapt the standard notion of contextual equivalence between expressions from functional languages [20] to an equiv
Wear mechanism of flax/basalt fiber-reinforced eco friendly brake friction materials

Fibre-reinforced polymer composites exhibit excellent mechanical and tribological properties. Due to these reasons, they are used in many engineering applications such as transmission and brake systems. In the present study, the wear mechanism of flax and basalt fibre-reinforced phenolic composites was studied using a pin-on-disc wear tester. The sliding conditions such as sliding velocity and normal force varied from 0.1 to 0.5 m/s and 9.81 to 49.04 N, respectively. The wear map of worn-out specimens were analysed using wear mechanism map developed using Fuzzy Clustering Method. Scanning Electron microscopy photographs were examined and wear map was correlated. Different wear mechanisms that dominated a particular wear regime were discussed in this paper.
Numeracy Skills in Patients With Degenerative Disorders and Focal Brain Lesions

Objective: To characterize the numerical profile of patients with acquired brain disorders. Method: We investigated numeracy skills in 76 participants—40 healthy controls and 36 patients with neurodegenerative disorders (Alzheimer dementia, frontotemporal dementia, semantic dementia, progressive aphasia) and with focal brain lesions affecting parietal, frontal, and temporal areas as in herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE). All patients were tested with the same comprehensive battery of paper-and-pencil and computerized tasks assessing numerical abilities and calculation. Degenerative and HSE patients also performed nonnumerical semantic tasks. Results: Our results, based on nonparametric group statistics as well as on the analysis of individual patients, and all highly significant, show that: (a) all patients, including those with parietal lesions—a key brain area for numeracy processing—had intact processing of number quantity; (b) patients with impaired semantic knowledge had much better preserved numerical knowledge; and (c) most patients showed impaired calculation skills, with the exception of most semantic dementia and HSE patients. Conclusion: Our results allow us, for the first time, to characterize the numeracy skills in patients with a variety of neurological conditions and to suggest that the pattern of numerical performance can vary considerably across different neurological populations. Moreover, the selective sparing of calculation skills in most semantic dementia and HSE suggest that numerical abilities are an independent component of the semantic system. Finally, our data suggest that, besides the parietal areas, other brain regions might be critical to the understanding and processing of numerical concepts.
Towards Coordination and Control of Multi-robot Systems

This thesis focuses on control and coordination of mobile mu lti-robot systems (MRS). In recent years there has been an increasing inter est in systems comprised of several autonomous mobile robots. MRS can o fte deal with tasks that are difficult, if not impossible, to be ac complished by a single robot. In the context of MRS, one of the challenges is t he need to control, coordinate and synchronize the operation of sev eral robots to perform some specified task. This calls for new strategies an d methods which allow the desired system behavior to be specified in a fo rmal and succinct way. Temporal logics provide a formal requirement specification mechanism with the capability to define desired behaviors qu antitatively due to its similarity to natural languages. Two different frameworks for the coordination and control o f MRS have been investigated. Framework I A network of robots is modeled as a network of mul timodal hybrid automata. A finite bisimilar quotient for each o f the robots in the network is computed by forming a partition of the envir onment. Constructing a timed automaton, one for each robot in the netw ork, from the finite bisimilar quotient allows coordination among the robots and timing constraints to be considered. The model checker UPPA AL is used for formal symbolic model checking against a requirement sp ecification formulated in Computational Tree Logic (CTL) for a network of m ultimodal robots. The result is a set of motion plans for the robot s which satisfy the requirement specification. Framework II A framework for controller synthesis for a sin gle robot, modeled as a nonlinear system with respect to requireme nt specification in Linear-time Temporal Logic (LTL) is presented. Dy namic feed-
POS Tagging with a More Informative Tagset

We investigate the impact of introducing finer distinctions into the tagset on the accuracy of partof-speech tagging. This is a tangential approach to most recent research in the field, which has focussed on applying dierent algorithms using a very similar set of features. We outline the basic approach to tagset refinement and describe preliminary findings.
Double-Hole Pencil-Point Spinal Needle

To the Edito r: Greene' in 1926 des cri bed a needle with a point that is "round. tapering. and sharp. "This was the result of expe riment s published by him' during 1923. and his experience since then . which had brought him to the conclusion that -postpuncture headach e is caused by trauma to the spinal dura suffidcnt to result in excessive leakage of cerebrospina illuid to the point at wh ich the brain is left with out a water cushion . " His experiments dem onstrated that greater trauma is produced by the usc of a needle with a blunt cutting point than by a needle of the same caliber with a point that is round ed. taperin g, and sharp. He also found that it was possible to pass a small sharp. round. tapering. pointed instrument between the fibers of a spinal dural sac. suspended and filled with water. with out cutti ng any of the fibers. He performed 215 consecutive punctures with his needle. with only two patients reporting headache. In many instances the pu ncture was done during the noon hour. and the patient res um ed work for the remainder of the day. Kirschner' in 193 1 described a needle for spinal ane sthesia with an opening in the shaft just proximal to the beve led closed end. Such a needle was recommended to Iacilitate more accurate control of the duration and extent of anesthesia. since it could be manipulated so as to permit inject ion of solution in a stream flowing para llei 10 the long axis of the spinal fluid column. rather than against the side of the canal opposite the pu ncture. Han and Whitacr e' in 1951 described their pencil-point spinal needle. known since as the Whitacre needle. Sprone et a! ' in 1987 modified th e Whilacre needle. which has been know n since as the Sprotte need le. In the 8 years since Sprotte et al. described their needle. there has been a real "comebackof spinal anesthesia in many operating rooms around the wo rld. This is combined with another breakthrough in regional anesthesia, called combined spina l-epid ura l anesthesia. The pencilpoint spinal needle serves this combination quite we ll. The U.S. Food and Drug Admini stration ha s approved use 01 th e pencil-point spinal need le on ly in th e need lethroughneed le or Eldor techniques for comb ined spinalepidural an es th esia. However. the long orifice of the 24·gauge Sproue spinal needle may result in failed spinal anes thetics when they arc used. since this length exceeds the I-mm th ickness 01 human lumbar dura,« Sproue has modified this device by reducing the length of the orifice. Sosis et
Statistics of RGBD Images

Cameras that can measure the depth of each pixel in addition to its color have become easily available and are used in many consumer products worldwide. Often the depth channel is captured at lower quality compared to the RGB channels and different algorithms have been proposed to improve the quality of the D channel given the RGB channels. Typically these approaches work by assuming that edges in RGB are correlated with edges in D. In this paper we approach this problem from the standpoint of natural image statistics. We obtain examples of high quality RGBD images from a computer graphics generated movie (MPI-Sintel) and we use these examples to compare different probabilistic generative models of RGBD image patches. We then use the generative models together with a degradation model and obtain a Bayes Least Squares (BLS) estimator of the D channel given the RGB channels. Our results show that learned generative models outperform the state-of-the-art in improving the quality of depth channels given the color channels in natural images even when training is performed on artificially generated images.
SYNTHESIS AND COMPARATIVE PHOTOLUMINESCENCE OF CdZnSe / ZnS AND CdZnSe / ZnSeS ALLOY QUANTUM DOTS

In order to search for new structures and compositions of quantum dots, suppress the blinking photoluminescence (random changes between high emission state ( on) and low emission status ( off ) under continuous photo- excitation ) and serve the application purposes in bio- medical and in optoelectronic devices , we have studied the fabrication of new alloy quantum dots ( QDs ). In this paper, we present new results on alloy core / shell quantum dots, with changed alloy shell composition, that was CdZnSe/ZnSe x S 1-x a ML with x ( x = 0 , 0.2, 0.4, 0.5 , 0.6, 0.8) and the shell thickness in monolayer (ML) ( a = 2 , 4 , 6 ) . The emission spectra and the intensity change according to the composition of the alloy shell. The full width a half maximum ( FWHM ) of the emission spectra of quantum dots CdZnSe is 25.5 nm. Covered with a shell layer, the emission intensity of the CdZnSe core increases along with the shell thickness. For comparison purpose, two different shell materials have been used, which are ZnS and ZnSeS alloy. With the same shell thickness, the emission wavelengths and intensity of the QDs change when the shell’s composition changes.The photoluminescence (PL) decay and the PL blinking of the alloy QDs was studied. It was shown that the alloy QDs spent by the nanocrystal in the ON state ranged typically between 20 and 40 %, and was dependent on the core composition. Detailed discussions on the experiment results are presented.
Towards an understanding of anti-virtualization and anti-debugging behavior in modern malware

Many threats that plague todaypsilas networks (e.g., phishing, botnets, denial of service attacks) are enabled by a complex ecosystem of attack programs commonly called malware. To combat these threats, defenders of these networks have turned to the collection, analysis, and reverse engineering of malware as mechanisms to understand these programs, generate signatures, and facilitate cleanup of infected hosts. Recently however, new malware instances have emerged with the capability to check and often thwart these defensive activities - essentially leaving defenders blind to their activities. To combat this emerging threat, we have undertaken a robust analysis of current malware and developed a detailed taxonomy of malware defender fingerprinting methods. We demonstrate the utility of this taxonomy by using it to characterize the prevalence of these avoidance methods, to generate a novel fingerprinting method that can assist malware propagation, and to create an effective new technique to protect production systems.
Tumor-Derived Lactate Modifies Antitumor Immune Response: Effect on Myeloid-Derived Suppressor Cells and NK Cells

In this study, we explore the hypothesis that enhanced production of lactate by tumor cells, because of high glycolytic activity, results in inhibition of host immune response to tumor cells. Lactate dehydrogenase-A (LDH-A), responsible for conversion of pyruvate to lactate, is highly expressed in tumor cells. Lentiviral vector–mediated LDH-A short hairpin RNA knockdown Pan02 pancreatic cancer cells injected in C57BL/6 mice developed smaller tumors than mice injected with Pan02 cells. A decrease occurred in the frequency of myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) in the spleens of mice carrying LDH-A–depleted tumors. NK cells from LDH-A–depleted tumors had improved cytolytic function. Exogenous lactate increased the frequency of MDSCs generated from mouse bone marrow cells with GM-CSF and IL-6 in vitro. Lactate pretreatment of NK cells in vitro inhibited cytolytic function of both human and mouse NK cells. This reduction of NK cytotoxic activity was accompanied by lower expression of perforin and granzyme in NK cells. The expression of NKp46 was decreased in lactate-treated NK cells. These studies strongly suggest that tumor-derived lactate inhibits NK cell function via direct inhibition of cytolytic function as well as indirectly by increasing the numbers of MDSCs that inhibit NK cytotoxicity. Depletion of glucose levels using a ketogenic diet to lower lactate production by glycolytic tumors resulted in smaller tumors, decreased MDSC frequency, and improved antitumor immune response. These studies provide evidence for an immunosuppressive role of tumor-derived lactate in inhibiting innate immune response against developing tumors via regulation of MDSC and NK cell activity.
Feature extraction technique using hybridization of DWT and DCT for gender classification

In this paper, a robust technique to construct feature vector for gender classification has been proposed. Discrete Wavelet transform is used in concatenation with Discrete Cosine transform to form the feature vector. Initially, multi-level Discrete Wavelet transform is applied to images to obtain the approximation coefficients of image. Discrete Cosine transform are then calculated for the obtained approximate image. Hybridisation of DWT and DCT reduces the feature vector size significantly. Using this feature vector as input, SVM classifies the images. 2-Fold cross validation dataset is used to learn the SVM optimal parameter. Face images of three different databases i.e. AT@T, Faces94 and Georgia Tech databases are used to evaluate the efficiency of proposed technique for gender classification. Results show that the proposed technique performs better as compare to other state-of-art techniques.