Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Homeostatic structural plasticity increases the efficiency of small-world networks

In networks with small-world topology, which are characterized by a high clustering coefficient and a short characteristic path length, information can be transmitted efficiently and at relatively low costs. The brain is composed of small-world networks, and evolution may have optimized brain connectivity for efficient information processing. Despite many studies on the impact of topology on information processing in neuronal networks, little is known about the development of network topology and the emergence of efficient small-world networks. We investigated how a simple growth process that favors short-range connections over long-range connections in combination with a synapse formation rule that generates homeostasis in post-synaptic firing rates shapes neuronal network topology. Interestingly, we found that small-world networks benefited from homeostasis by an increase in efficiency, defined as the averaged inverse of the shortest paths through the network. Efficiency particularly increased as small-world networks approached the desired level of electrical activity. Ultimately, homeostatic small-world networks became almost as efficient as random networks. The increase in efficiency was caused by the emergent property of the homeostatic growth process that neurons started forming more long-range connections, albeit at a low rate, when their electrical activity was close to the homeostatic set-point. Although global network topology continued to change when neuronal activities were around the homeostatic equilibrium, the small-world property of the network was maintained over the entire course of development. Our results may help understand how complex systems such as the brain could set up an efficient network topology in a self-organizing manner. Insights from our work may also lead to novel techniques for constructing large-scale neuronal networks by self-organization.
Towards self-organizing maps based Computational Intelligent System for denial of Service Attacks Detection

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are some of the biggest problems for computer security. Detection and early alert of these attacks would be helpful information which could be used to make appropriate decisions in order to minimize their negative impact. This paper proposes a new approach based on SOM-type unsupervised artificial neural networks for detection of this type of attacks at an early stage. We present a SOM-based Computational Intelligent System for DoS Attacks Detection (CISDAD) and a new representation scheme for information. A study has been carried out on real traffic from a healthcare environment based on web technologies. Results show effectiveness in the detection of toxic traffic and congestion regarding abuse in communication networks.
Delay-dependent robust H2 control for discrete systems with time-delay and polytopic uncertainty

In this paper, new separated delay-dependent H2 performance criterion is derived for a class of discrete time-delay systems. When used in robust synthesis for real polytopic uncertainty, it can rule out the technical restriction of using a single Lyapunov function to some extent, and therefore, lead to potentially less conservative linear matrix inequality (LMI) characterizations. The results are then extended to design robust H2 controller for discrete systems with time-delay and polytopic uncertainty. All the conditions are given in terms of LMIs. A numerical example is given to illustrate the proposed method.
An intelligent interactive support system for short-and mid-term planning in a production planning and control system

Although production planning and control systems were developed and used for about thirty years, a whole bunch of problems remains unresolved. Simple data management tasks – like retrieval and manipulation of master data concerning products, orders, staff, machines and stocks – are handled quite well. However the more complex task of creating or adapting production schedules is not yet satisfactorily solved in systems currently available on the market. Intelligent knowledge based systems supporting but not replacing the human planner, are a promising approach to solve this task. We propose a support system that covers the whole range from completely interactive scheduling and rescheduling to totally automatic plan generation. In one extreme the human planner may completely construct the schedule in an interactive graphical environment whereas the system only checks the production requirements. For automatic plan generation the system applies constrained based heuristic search and an anytime variant of heuristic repair.
Validity of the GOLD 2017 classification in the prediction of mortality and respiratory hospitalization in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Background: The Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) released an updated document in 2017 that excluded the spirometric parameter in the classification of patients. The validity of this new classification system in predicting mortality and respiratory hospitalization is still uncertain. Methods: Outpatients (n=149) with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who underwent spirometry and six-minutes walking test from October 2011 to September 2013 were enrolled. The overall mortality and rate of respiratory hospitalization over a median of 61 months were analyzed. Kaplan-Meier survival analyses, receiver operaing curve analyses with areas under the curve (AUCs), and logistic regression analyses for GOLD 2007, GOLD 2011, GOLD 2017, and/or BODE index were performed to evaluate their abilities to predict mortality and respiratory hospitalization. Results: Forty-two (53.2%) patients in 2011 GOLD C or D group were categorized into 2017 GOLD A or B group. The odds ratios of GOLD 2017 group C and group D relative to group A were 7.55 (95% CI, 1.25–45.8) and 25.0 (95% CI, 6.01–102.9) for respiratory hospitalization. Patients in GOLD 2017 group A and group B had significantly better survival (log-rank test, p<0.001) compared with patients in group D; however, survival among patients in GOLD 2007 groups and GOLD 2011 groups was comparable. The AUC values for GOLD 2007, GOLD 2011, GOLD 2017, and BODE index were 0.573, 0.624, 0.691, 0.692 for mortality (p=0.013) and 0.697, 0.707, 0.741, and 0.754 for respiratory hospitalization (p=0.296), respectively. Conclusion: The new GOLD classification may perform better than the previous classifications in terms of predicting mortality and respiratory hospitalization.
HIGH-PRECISION OBJECT MONITORING WITH IMAGE ASSISTED THEODOLITES - STATE OF THE ART 1

In the past, high-precision online 3-D measuring required artificial targets defining the points on the objects to be monitored. For many tasks like monitoring of displacements of buildings, artificial targets are not desired. Todays image assisted theodolite systems can perform their measurements even without targeting. Such systems use the texture on the surface of the object to find "interesting points" which can replace the artificial targets. However, well-trained "measurement experts" are required to operate such a measurement system. In order to make such systems easy to use even for non-experts, it can be extended by an appropriate decision system which supports the operator. We report on the state of the art of such image assisted theodolite measurement systems and on the potential of future developments. Mainly, research work carried out at the Vienna University of Technology and Leica Geosystems (Heerbrugg) will be described here.
Nutrition and Health – The Association between Eating Behavior and Various Health Parameters: A Matched Sample Study

Population-based studies have consistently shown that our diet has an influence on health. Therefore, the aim of our study was to analyze differences between different dietary habit groups in terms of health-related variables. The sample used for this cross-sectional study was taken from the Austrian Health Interview Survey AT-HIS 2006/07. In a first step, subjects were matched according to their age, sex, and socioeconomic status (SES). After matching, the total number of subjects included in the analysis was 1320 (N = 330 for each form of diet – vegetarian, carnivorous diet rich in fruits and vegetables, carnivorous diet less rich in meat, and carnivorous diet rich in meat). Analyses of variance were conducted controlling for lifestyle factors in the following domains: health (self-assessed health, impairment, number of chronic conditions, vascular risk), health care (medical treatment, vaccinations, preventive check-ups), and quality of life. In addition, differences concerning the presence of 18 chronic conditions were analyzed by means of Chi-square tests. Overall, 76.4% of all subjects were female. 40.0% of the individuals were younger than 30 years, 35.4% between 30 and 49 years, and 24.0% older than 50 years. 30.3% of the subjects had a low SES, 48.8% a middle one, and 20.9% had a high SES. Our results revealed that a vegetarian diet is related to a lower BMI and less frequent alcohol consumption. Moreover, our results showed that a vegetarian diet is associated with poorer health (higher incidences of cancer, allergies, and mental health disorders), a higher need for health care, and poorer quality of life. Therefore, public health programs are needed in order to reduce the health risk due to nutritional factors.
Recent Captive‐Breeding Proposals and the Return of the Ark Concept to Global Species Conservation

Captive breeding for reintroduction is a much discussed tool in the management of endangered species. Although a number of high-profile case studies illustrate the critical role captive breeding can play in preventing species extinction (e.g., Stanley Price 1989; Kleiman & Rylands 2002; Cade & Burnham 2003), the available historical evidence indicates most reintroduction attempts failed (Griffith et al. 1989; Wolf et al. 1996). Over the past decade, the number of reintroduction programs and the body of scientific literature documenting these efforts has increased dramatically (Seddon et al. 2007), but the role of captive breeding remains controversial (e.g., Jule et al. 2008) despite well-documented successes. In its simplest form, the role of captive breeding and reintroduction in conservation is analogous to Noah’s ark. Species threatened with extinction are maintained in captivity, as if aboard an ark escaping the flood, until those factors threatening their existence are removed and they can be returned to the wild. This analogy has been widely used in the popular and scientific literature (Durrell 1976; Soule et al. 1986; Balmford et al. 1995). Here I focus on the extent to which the importance of captive breeding and reintroduction as a conservation strategy is reflected in planning and policy, particularly by the world’s zoos and aquaria. I tracked policy and opinion in the zoo and conservation biology literature and found a general decline in emphasis on captive breeding since the early 1990s until the recent recommendations for large-scale captive breeding pertaining to hundreds of species from certain taxonomic groups. It is worth considering whether these new proposals are open to the same criticisms as their predecessors and whether they
Systematic Analysis of Time-Series Gene Expression Data on Tumor Cell-Selective Apoptotic Responses to HDAC Inhibitors

SAHA (suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid or vorinostat) is the first nonselective histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). SAHA affects histone acetylation in chromatin and a variety of nonhistone substrates, thus influencing many cellular processes. In particularly, SAHA induces selective apoptosis of tumor cells, although the mechanism is not well understood. A series of microarray experiments was recently conducted to investigate tumor cell-selective proapoptotic transcriptional responses induced by SAHA. Based on that gene expression time series, we propose a novel framework for detailed analysis of the mechanism of tumor cell apoptosis selectively induced by SAHA. Our analyses indicated that SAHA selectively disrupted the DNA damage response, cell cycle, p53 expression, and mitochondrial integrity of tumor samples to induce selective tumor cell apoptosis. Our results suggest a possible regulation network. Our research extends the existing research.
Active Hexose Correlated Compound Activates Immune Function to Decrease Chlamydia trachomatis Shedding in a Murine Stress Model

A cold-induced stress mouse model for investigating chlamydia genital infection and immune response analysis was established in our laboratory. Previous results showed that cold-induced stress results in suppression of the immune response and increased intensity of chlamydia genital infection in the mouse model. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the potential therapeutic value of active hexose correlated compound (AHCC) against chlamydia genital infection in mice. AHCC is an extract of mushroom commonly used as a dietary supplement is known to boost the immune system. Mice were infected intravaginally with Chlamydia trachomatis after a 24-day cold-stress application. Oral administration of AHCC to stressed or non-stressed mice was carried out seven days before infection and during the course of infection along with cervicovaginal swabbing. Cytokine production by peritoneal and splenic T cells isolated from AHCC-fed stressed mice and non-stressed mice was measured ELISA. Splenic T cells from both animal groups were co-cultured with mouse monocyte J774.2 cell line or cultured by addition of supernatants of AHCC-treated J774.2 cell line for 24 hours. Infection studies showed that AHCC-feeding compared to phosphate buffered saline (PBS)-feeding to stressed mice resulted in reduced Chlamydia trachomatis shedding from the genital tract. Levels of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin 6 (IL-6) were significantly increased in stressed mice receiving AHCC compared to stressed mice receiving PBS. Production of interferon gamma (IFN-γ) and interleukin 2 (IL-2) in the AHCC group was significantly high compared to production in PBS-fed group. Splenic T cells from stressed and non-stressed cultured with supernatants of AHCC-treated J774.2 cell line resulted in significantly increased TNF-α or IFN-γ production. Results obtained in this study show that AHCC improves the function of immune cells as indicated by the restoration of levels of cytokines production that were suppressed under cold induced-stress conditions. This is the first report showing that oral administration of AHCC enhances the function of the immune system, which could result in increased resistance of the host to chlamydia genital infection.
Efficient and High Quality Contouring of Isosurfaces on Uniform Grids

The interactive polygonization of isosurfaces has become possible with the mapping of the Marching Cubes (MC) and Marching Tetrahedra (MT) algorithms to GPUs. Such mapping is not as straightforward in cases that the algorithm generate meshes closer to the isosurface or result in better polygon shapes, since they often require complex computations for the vertex positioning of the polygons or even do not have table-driven implementations. In this paper, we revisit Dual Contouring (DC) and Macet algorithms and propose, respectively: (i) a novel parallel efficient version on uniform grids and (ii) novel GPU modules which extend the original MC. Our DC algorithm is table-driven and positions the vertices in a particle-based fashion, which is then used to map into a GPU implementation. In addition, we enumerate the current ways to implement efficient contouring algorithms on the GPUs as orthogonal features, and present the tradeoff of each approach. We validate the efficiency of our algorithms with its comparison to interactive versions of MC algorithms.
Knudsen forces on microcantilevers

When two surfaces at two different temperatures are separated by a distance comparable to a mean-free path of the molecules of the ambient medium, the surfaces experience Knudsen force. This mechanical force can be important in microelectromechanical systems and in atomic force microscopy. A theoretical discussion of the magnitude of the forces and the conditions where they can be encountered is discussed. A potential application of the Knudsen force in designing a cantilever-based vacuum gauge is discussed.
Synthesis for Linear Time-Delay Systems with Saturating Actuator

This paper deals with the problem of local stabilization for linear time-delay systems subject to actuator saturation. Different from the traditional Lyapunov-Krasovskii approach to estimate the domain of attraction, a less conservative method based on Lyapunov-Razumikhin approach is presented using linear matrix inequalities technique. The effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated with an example.
Augmenting Image Place AR 3D Interactions for Wearable Computers

This paper presents a set of large object manipulation techniques implemented in a wearable augmented reality computer system that are optimised for the outdoor setting. These techniques supplement the current image plane approach, to provide a comprehensive solution to 3D object manipulation in an augmented reality outdoor environment. The three extended manipulation techniques, Revolve, Xscale, and Ground plane translation, are focused on using what we determined to be the best coordinate system for object rotation, scaling and translation. This paper goes on to present the generalised plane technique for the constrained translation of graphical objects on arbitrary planes to enable more complex translation operations. The paper presents the techniques from both the user interface and software development perspectives.
Sequential Turning Acquisition and Reconstruction (STAR) method for four-dimensional imaging of cyclically moving structures

Optical coherence tomography allows for dynamic, three-dimensional (3D+T) imaging of the heart within animal embryos. However, direct 3D+T imaging frame rates remain insufficient for cardiodynamic analysis. Previously, this limitation has been addressed by reconstructing 3D+T representations of the beating heart based on sets of two-dimensional image sequences (2D+T) acquired sequentially at high frame rate and in fixed (and parallel) planes throughout the heart. These methods either require additional hardware to trigger the acquisition of each 2D+T series to the same phase of the cardiac cycle or accumulate registration errors as the slices are synchronized retrospectively by pairs, without a gating signal. Here, we present a sequential turning acquisition and reconstruction (STAR) method for 3D+T imaging of periodically moving structures, which does not require any additional gating signal and is not prone to registration error accumulation. Similarly to other sequential cardiac imaging methods, multiple fast image series are consecutively acquired for different sections but in between acquisitions, the imaging plane is rotated around the center line instead of shifted along the direction perpendicular to the slices. As the central lines of all image-sequences coincide and represent measurements of the same spatial position, they can be used to accurately synchronize all the slices to a single inherent reference signal. We characterized the accuracy of our method on a simulated dynamic phantom and successfully imaged a beating embryonic rat heart. Potentially, this method can be applied for structural or Doppler imaging approaches with any direct space imaging modality such as computed tomography, ultrasound, or light microscopy.
U.S. College Student Media and Twitter: Are Student Media Following Best Practices?

The current study examines how student media in the United States utilize Twitter and if those media outlets are following best practices. A constructed-sample content analysis of 10 Twitter feeds over the course of four semesters was conducted. The findings show that student media are generally not following best practices with a wide range of differences among those outlets in the sample. Discussion includes what this means for institutions teaching social media for journalists and other concerns.
Combined vs. Separate Views in Matrix-based Graph Analysis and Comparison

While much work has been done in the area of visualization for analysis of graphs, relatively little research exists into how best to use visualization for comparing graphs. We have developed a suite of general graph comparison questions that can be tailored to specific data sets, and compared the use of superimposed and juxtaposed views of graph matrices on an example data set. Our observations indicate that combined views are more useful in comparing general graphs, allowing for greater user accuracy in determining differences and their effects.
UROBOROS: Instrumenting Stripped Binaries with Static Reassembling

Software instrumentation techniques are widely used in program analysis tasks such as program profiling, vulnerability discovering, and security-oriented transforming. In this paper, we present an instrumentation tool called UROBOROS, which supports static instrumentation on stripped binaries. Due to the lack of relocation and debug information, reverse engineering of stripped binaries is challenging. Compared with the previous work, UROBOROS can provide complete, easy-to-use, transparent, and efficient static instrumentation on stripped binaries. UROBOROS supports complete instrumentation by statically recovering the relocatable program (including both code and data sections) and the control flow structures from binary code. UROBOROS provides a rich API to access and manipulate different levels of the program tructure. The instrumentation facilities of UROBOROS are easy-to-use, users with no binary rewriting and patching skills can directly manipulate stripped binaries to perform smooth program transformations. Distinguished from most instrumentation tools that need to patch the instrumentation code as new sections, UROBOROS can directly inline the instrumentation code into the disassembled program, which provides transparent instrumentation on stripped binaries. For efficiency, in the rewritten output of existing tools, frequent control transfers between the attached and original sections can incur a considerable performance penalty. However, the output from UROBOROS incurs no extra cost because the original and instrumentation code are connected by "fall-through" transfers. We perform comparative evaluations between UROBOROS and the state-of-the-art binary instrumentation tools, including DynInst and Pin. To demonstrate the versatility of UROBOROS, we also implement two real-world reengineering tasks which could be challenging for other instrumentation tools to accomplish. Our experimental results show that UROBOROS outperforms theexisting binary instrumentation tools with better performance, lower labor cost, and a broader scope of applications.
Distributed Metadata Management Scheme in HDFS

A Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is designed to store very large data sets reliably and to stream those data sets at high bandwidth to user applications. Metadata management is critical to distributed file system. In HDFS architecture, a single master server manages all metadata, while a number of data servers store file data. This architecture can't meet the exponentially increased storage demand in cloud computing, as the single master server may become a performance bottleneck. Comparative study of a metadata management scheme is done. There is three of techniques sub-tree partitioning, hashing and consistent hashing of metadata management scheme. Out of these three schemes consistent hashing is the best techniques which employs multiple NameNodes, and divides the metadata into "buckets" which can be dynamically migrated among NameNodes according to system workloads. To maintain reliability, metadata is replicated in different NameNodes with log replication technology, and Paxos algorithm is adopted to keep replication consistency.