Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Task Scheduling for Heterogeneous Multicore Systems

In recent years, as the demand for low energy and high performance computing has steadily increased, heterogeneous computing has emerged as an important and promising solution. Because most workloads can typically run most efficiently on certain types of cores, mapping tasks on the best available resources can not only save energy but also deliver high performance. However, optimal task scheduling for performance and/or energy is yet to be solved for heterogeneous platforms. The work presented herein mathematically formulates the optimal heterogeneous system task scheduling as an optimization problem using queueing theory. We analytically solve for the common case of two processor types, e.g., CPU+GPU, and give an optimal policy (CAB). We design the GrIn heuristic to efficiently solve for near-optimal policy for any number of processor types (within 1.6% of the optimal). Both policies work for any task size distribution and processing order, and are therefore, general and practical. We extensively simulate and validate the theory, and implement the proposed policy in a CPU-GPU real platform to show the optimal throughput and energy improvement. Comparing to classic policies like load-balancing, our results range from 1.08x~2.24x better performance or 1.08x~2.26x better energy efficiency in simulations, and 2.37x~9.07x better performance in experiments.
A Web-based Environment for Supporting Learning Communities in Distance Education – Use in Computer Science Education

In the context of this dissertation, issues related to design and development of educational environments that support collaborative learning and contribute to the active engagement of learners in knowledge building are studied. Specifically, the dissertation is placed in the context of supporting the learning process by utilizing the Internet and especially the Environments which support Electronic Learning Communities by leveraging social software technologies for access to information and knowledge creation. In the frame of this thesis the development of innovative techniques to support the creation, management, operation and interconnection of electronic communities was studied. A Web based educational environment CRICOS (CReate Interconnected COmmunitieS) was designed and implemented, based on the theory of learning communities and particularly communities of practice, which supports members of different communities in collaborative knowledge creation
Simple Subtyping Assay for Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Subtypes B, C, CRF01-AE, CRF07-BC, and CRF08-BC

ABSTRACT After the initial development of a human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) subtype-screening tool by nested multiplex PCR, we further improve it through the redesign of subtype-specific primers based on subtype signature pattern (SSP) analyses and optimization of the PCR conditions. Extracted RNA from plasma samples was used in reverse transcription and the cDNA products were added to the first round PCR, in which universal primers in the gag region were used to detect HIV-1 M group isolates. In the second round of PCR, three pairs of subtype-specific primers, detecting subtypes B, C, and CRF01-AE, were added in one tube. Subtype determination was based on the different size of PCR products on the agarose gel electrophoresis. An additional set of primers detecting only the prevalent recombinant strains CRF07-BC and CRF08-BC was used to discriminate CRF07- and CRF08-BC from pure subtype C. Testing for all kinds of HIV subtype reference strains indicated that this assay was applicable. A panel of 252 HIV-positive samples and 30 HIV-negative samples was further used to evaluate and validate this assay. Compared to the assay of sequence-based phylogenetic analysis, the newly developed assay has an adequate designated subtype sensitivity, 93.2% (69 of 74) for subtype B, 95.1% (117 of 123) for subtype C, 94.0% (47 of 50) for CRF01-AE, and 95.0% (115 of 121) for CRF07-BC and CRF08-BC. Most importantly, the intersubtype specificity of the assay was found to be 100%. The assay specificity was also found to be 100% when used to test 30 HIV-negative samples. The average reproducibility was 96.0% for subtype B, 96.7% for subtype C, and 95.0% for CRF01-AE. We have developed a simple, rapid, and low cost assay for screening subtypes B, C, CRF01-AE, CRF07-BC, and CRF08-BC in China.
Broad band parasitically coupled concentric semi circular elliptically ring antenna surrounding an elliptical patch with air gap

The paper presents the performance of a parasitically coupled semi circular elliptical ring antenna surrounding elliptical patch geometry having air gap between conducting patch and ground plane. With proposed modifications in the conventional circular patch geometry, the bandwidth of modified antenna with an air gap is around seven times higher than that of a simple circular patch antenna. The gain, directivity and efficiency of modified circular patch antenna with air gap is also improved to some extent but still these are less than desired values. The E and H plane radiation patterns presented by antenna in the frequency range where broadband performance is obtained are identical in shape and nature. Direction of maximum intensity retained by antenna at both frequencies is normal to patch geometry.
Homologous Recombination Is a Primary Pathway to Repair DNA Double-Strand Breaks Generated during DNA Rereplication*

Background: DNA rereplication causes DSB formation, but its repair mechanisms in mammalian cells are not clear. Results: We showed that HR is induced upon rereplication and impaired HR causes severe cell death. Conclusion: HR-mediated repair is a primary mechanism to repair rereplication-induced DSBs. Significance: DNA rereplication leads to genome instability and tumorigenesis. Our study helps to illustrate repair mechanisms of rereplication-associated DSBs to prevent cancer. Re-initiation of DNA replication at origins within a given cell cycle would result in DNA rereplication, which can lead to genome instability and tumorigenesis. DNA rereplication can be induced by loss of licensing control at cellular replication origins, or by viral protein-driven multiple rounds of replication initiation at viral origins. DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) are generated during rereplication, but the mechanisms of how these DSBs are repaired to maintain genome stability and cell viability are poorly understood in mammalian cells. We generated novel EGFP-based DSB repair substrates, which specifically monitor the repair of rereplication-associated DSBs. We demonstrated that homologous recombination (HR) is an important mechanism to repair rereplication-associated DSBs, and sister chromatids are used as templates for such HR-mediated DSB repair. Micro-homology-mediated non-homologous end joining (MMEJ) can also be used but to a lesser extent compared to HR, whereas Ku-dependent classical non-homologous end joining (C-NHEJ) has a minimal role to repair rereplication-associated DSBs. In addition, loss of HR activity leads to severe cell death when rereplication is induced. Therefore, our studies identify HR, the most conservative repair pathway, as the primary mechanism to repair DSBs upon rereplication.
GMS: Generic memristive structure for non-volatile FPGAs

The invention of the memristor enables new possibilities for computation and non-volatile memory storage. In this paper we propose a Generic Memristive Structure (GMS) for 3-D FPGA applications. The GMS cell is demonstrated to be utilized for steering logic useful for multiplexing signals, thus replacing the traditional pass-gates in FPGAs. Moreover, the same GMS cell can be utilized for programmable memories as a replacement for the SRAMs employed in the look-up tables of FPGAs. A fabricated GMS cell is presented and its use in FPGA architecture is demonstrated by the area and delay improvement for several architectural benchmarks.
Predicting Social Support for Grieving Persons: A Theory of Planned Behavior Perspective

Research has consistently reported that social support from family, friends, and colleagues is an important factor in the bereaved person's ability to cope after the loss of a loved one. This study used a Theory of Planned Behavior framework to identify those factors that predict a person's intention to interact with, and support, a grieving person. Questionnaire data from 160 university students showed that together behavioral, normative, and control beliefs and past behavior significantly predicted intention after controlling for gender and past experience. Behavioral beliefs, followed by control beliefs and past behavior, were the most important predictors of intention to support a grieving person.
Emotional intelligence in children and adolescents : in search of a theoretical framework and improved assessment methods

This first chapter starts with a summary of the literature on emotional intelligence and gives an introduction to the empirical studies of this doctoral dissertation. First, the value of emotional intelligence for society and the importance to examine and improve the validity of current maximum performance emotional intelligence measures in childhood and adolescence is explained. Next, a historical view on emotional intelligence research is presented. Then, the theoretical approaches to emotional intelligence are introducted, explaining the difference between mixed and ability models, whereafter the measurement approaches to emotional intelligence are described, discussing the difference between traditional self-report and maximum performance tests. Based on the historical overview of emotional intelligence and the presented theoretical and measurement approaches to emotional intelligence we take position for the ability model approach and favor maximum performance measurement. After, we addresss the lack of well-established maximum performance measures in childhood and adolescence and provide a brief description of two tests the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale for Children and the Mayer-SaloveyCaruso Emotional Intelligence Test Youth Version that have been developed for use in childhood and adolescence, we discuss their validity evidence, and identify their limitations. At the end of this chapter, the need to investigate and improve the validity of these two tests is explained. The overarching research questions of the current dissertation are proposed and a short outline of the conducted studies is presented.
ANAPHORIC REFERENCE TO ENTITIES AND PLACES IN LITERAL AND METAPHORICAL CONTEXTS

This article reports on corpus research into the occurrence of from + anaphor. Developing distinctions derived from the typology of entities and qualities in Functional Grammar as well as the notion of metaphoricality found in the work of Lakoff, we find that in the syntactic context chosen for analysis the anaphor there is applied when the language-user conceives of the antecedent as a metaphorical place, whereas the occurrence of anaphoric it indicates a non- metaphorical conceptualization. The suggestion is advanced that choice of anaphor could be used as a test for metaphoricality where the source domain is location or movement in space.
Sequential group testing with graph constraints

In conventional group testing, the goal is to detect a small subset of defecting items D in a large population N by grouping arbitrary subset of N into different pools. The result of each group test T is a binary output depending on whether the group contains a defective item or not. The main challenge is to minimize the number of pools required to identify the set D. Motivated by applications in network monitoring and infection propagation, we consider the problem of group testing with graph constraints. As opposed to conventional group testing where any subset of items can be pooled, here a test is admissible if it induces a connected subgraph H ⊂ G. In contrast to the non-adaptive pooling process used in previous work, we first show that by exploiting an adaptive strategy, one can dramatically reduce the number of tests. More specifically, for any graph G, we devise a 2-approximation algorithm (and hence order optimal) that locates the set of defective items D. To obtain a good compromise between adaptive and non-adaptive strategies, we then devise a multi-stage algorithm. In particular, we show that if the set of defective items are uniformly distributed, then an l-stage pooling strategy can identify the defective set in O(l·|D|·|N|1/l) tests, on the average. In particular, for l = log(|N|) stages, the number of tests reduces to 4|D| log(|N|), which in turn is order optimum.
Gait-based authentication using a wrist-worn device

Every individual has a distinctive way of walking. For this reason gait can be a key element of biometric techniques aimed at authenticating and/or identifying the user of a wearable device. This paper presents a lightweight method that uses the acceleration collected at the user's wrist for authentication purposes. The user's typical gait pattern is learned during the first period of use, then detection of anomalies in a set of acceleration-based features is used to understand if a new user, a possible impostor or a thief, is wearing the device. The method has been successfully evaluated with 15 volunteers, showing an Equal Error Rate of 2.9%. These results suggest that gait-based authentication with a wrist-worn device can be carried out with high accuracy levels. A comparison with a similar method executed on a pocket-worn device is also included.
Deep Algorithm Quality (DAQ): A blind computer vision algorithm quality assessment technique

No-Reference image quality assessment is a challenging problem of great interest to computer vision research community. This paper proposes to find a general solution to measure image quality for both human and computer vision system. A supervised deep neural network, called Deep Algorithm Quality (DAQ), is designed to blindly measure the human visual quality of benchmark images as well as to predict the performance of a computer vision algorithm on distorted images. The performance of the proposed DAQ is evaluated using two sets of experiments. The first experiment formulates DAQ as an image quality estimator, and evaluates the performance on general image quality assessment benchmarks. DAQ has achieved highest LCC and SROCC scores compare to five state-of-the-art image quality assessment methods. In the second experiment, DAQ is trained to work as a failure detector to predict the detection performance of another predefined computer vision algorithm working on distorted images.
Does Compressed Sensing Improve the Throughput of Wireless Sensor Networks?

Although compressed sensing (CS) has been envisioned as a useful technique to improve the performance of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), it is still not very clear how exactly it will be applied and how big the improvements will be. In this paper, we propose two different ways (plain-CS and hybrid-CS) of applying CS to WSNs at the networking layer, in the form of a particular data aggregation mechanism. We formulate three flow-based optimization problems to compute the throughput of the non-CS, plain-CS, and hybrid-CS schemes. We provide the exact solution to the first problem corresponding to the non-CS case and lower bounds for the cases with CS. Our preliminary numerical results are only for a low-power regime. They illustrate two crucial insights: first, applying CS naively may not bring any improvement, and secondly, our hybrid-CS can achieve significant improvement in throughput.
Efficacy of whole-cell pertussis vaccine in preschool children in the United States.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the efficacy of currently used whole-cell pertussis vaccines. DESIGN Active surveillance to detect pertussis cases in Baltimore, Md, Denver, Colo, and Milwaukee, Wis, and investigation of secondary attack rates in 347 household contacts, aged 1 through 4 years, to estimate vaccine efficacy. OUTCOME MEASURE Vaccine efficacy was estimated using different case definitions for pertussis. RESULTS Vaccine efficacy was 64%, 81%, and 95% for case definitions of mild cough, paroxysmal cough, and severe clinical illness, respectively. Requiring laboratory confirmation increased efficacy to 95% to 98% for culture-positive children and to 77% to 95% for culture- or serology-confirmed cases, depending on disease severity. Vaccine efficacy for typical paroxysmal cough increased from 44% for one diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine dose to 80% for four or more doses. CONCLUSIONS The trend toward increasing vaccine efficacy with different case definitions may be due to improved efficacy in preventing severe illness and to case definitions that are more specific for pertussis. Whole-cell pertussis vaccine was highly effective in preventing pertussis in preschool children exposed to infection within their households. Direct side-by-side efficacy studies of whole-cell vaccine and the recently licensed acellular vaccine will be necessary to assure that comparable protection is afforded by the new vaccines if they are to be used for immunization of infants.
A Semantic P2P Overlay Network for Web Service Discovery

In service-oriented environments the service discovery mechanisms adopting a key-word based and centralised approach are not able to provide the users' requests with accurate results, nor are any longer able to scale against the increasing number of Web Services provided by service providers. Distributed, semantics-enabled infrastructures for service discovery promise to fulfill these requirements, even though the ambitious goal of a dynamic selection and automated integration of web services has not been accomplished yet. In this paper we present a P2P-based infrastructure supporting a scalable service discovery process. Overlay groups are formed by clustering together peers offering services which are semantically related: a search request for a service (query) will be handled by the group where it has the highest chance to be satisfied. The main focus of the paper is on the groups creation and maintenance strategy, and on the query routing mechanism. A system prototype has been implemented and validated through a case study.
A technique for quantifying heterogeneous ice nucleation in microlitre supercooled water droplets

Abstract. In many clouds, the formation of ice requires the presence of particles capable of nucleating ice. Ice-nucleating particles (INPs) are rare in comparison to cloud condensation nuclei. However, the fact that only a small fraction of aerosol particles can nucleate ice means that detection and quantification of INPs is challenging. This is particularly true at temperatures above about −20 °C since the population of particles capable of serving as INPs decreases dramatically with increasing temperature. In this paper, we describe an experimental technique in which droplets of microlitre volume containing ice-nucleating material are cooled down at a controlled rate and their freezing temperatures recorded. The advantage of using large droplet volumes is that the surface area per droplet is vastly larger than in experiments focused on single aerosol particles or cloud-sized droplets. This increases the probability of observing the effect of less common, but important, high-temperature INPs and therefore allows the quantification of their ice nucleation efficiency. The potential artefacts which could influence data from this experiment, and other similar experiments, are mitigated and discussed. Experimentally determined heterogeneous ice nucleation efficiencies for K-feldspar (microcline), kaolinite, chlorite, NX-illite, Snomax® and silver iodide are presented.
Managerial Role Profiles of Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Commissioners

Using Mintzberg's managerial role model, this study examined the managerial role profiles of 63 intercollegiate athletic conference commissioners. Results showed that the subjects rated the disseminator role as most important, followed by the liaison, disturbance handler, monitor, leader, entrepreneur, spokesperson, figurehead, negotiator, and resource allocator role behaviors. Membership in NCAA divisions did not significantly affect these ratings.
Equality, Justice and Identity in an Expatriate/Local Setting: Which Human Factors Enable Empowerment of Filipino Aid Workers?

This study explored which of social dominance, social identity and perceptions of organisational justice were most predictive of self-reported empowerment among aid workers in the Philippines (N = 98). Responses to an online survey available in English and Tagalog were obtained from employees of diverse locally operating aid organisations in the Philippines. The survey included composite measures of empowerment, perceived social dominance, social identity and organisational justice. All measures except perceived social dominance performed as theorised in the Philippine context of this study. The best predictor of empowerment was the aspect of organisational justice centering on the fairness of personal interactions (interactional justice; β = .331). An interaction effect between interactional justice and aspects of empowerment and social (Filipino) identity was also observed (β = .233), implying that a secure Filipino identity may act as a buffer to consequences of injustice, all other things being equal. The overall pattern of results suggests that justice plays a more significant role than either social dominance or identity in contributing to empowerment amongst Filipino aid employees. Strikingly, interactional justice may matter more than distributive justice.
JC virus T′ proteins encoded by alternatively spliced early mRNAs enhance T antigen-mediated viral DNA replication in human cells

Alternative splicing of the JC Virus (JCV) precursor early mRNA yields five transcripts that encode proteins that regulate the life cycle of this human polyomavirus. Large T protein (TAg) mediates viral DNA replication and oncogenic activities, and small t protein influences these functions under certain conditions. Recently, three new early proteins, T′135,T′136, andT′165, were discovered that contain sequences overlapping amino-terminal TAg functional domains. Initial studies with the T′ proteins suggested they contribute to viral DNA replication and transformation. Mutation of a donor splice site utilized by all three T′ mRNAs creates a mutant that exhibits a 10-fold decrease in viral DNA replication compared to wild type JCV. To assess the influence that individual T′ proteins have on the replication process, a set of T′ acceptor site mutants was created in which the unique second acceptor splice site of each T′ mRNA was altered to eliminate production of one, two or all three T′ mRNAs. The patterns of early mRNA and protein expression in these seven mutants were examined, and it was found that mutation of the T′135 acceptor site resulted in the utilization of cryptic splice sites and the generation of new T′ species. Additional mutations were made to prevent these aberrant splicing reactions prior to measuring DNA replication potential of the mutants. DpnI assays revealed that each T′ protein contributes to TAg-mediated DNA replication activity. The three single mutants that express two T′ proteins and the double mutant that only produces T′136, exhibited levels of replication equivalent to that of wild type virus, whereas the two double mutants that fail to express T′136 replicated about twofold less efficiently than wild-type JCV. Replication activity of the triple acceptor site mutant, like that of the T′ donor site mutant from an earlier study, was impaired significantly.