Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Link-Based Clustering for Finding Subrelevant Web Pages

We propose a new Web page clustering. Typical search engines only provide relevant pages, i.e., the pages matching users’ needs. However, we design our clustering method to provide non-relevant pages as search results when they refer to relevant pages and help users anticipate the contents of those relevant pages. We call such pages subrelevant. As it is difficult to improve Web search performance, we use subrelevancy to relax the criterion as to what kind of pages should appear in search results with the least drawback, i.e., one click away from a relevant page. Our clustering method is based on three concepts: THP, out-degree path length, and threshold parameter. We use clustering results to modify the feature vectors of Web pages. Hence, each clustering result induces a reranking of search results. We expect the reranking to raise the ranks of subrelevant pages. In the experiments with NTCIR-3 Web task test collection, our clustering largely improved the average precision by 13 percent in comparison with the baseline.
An Efficient Maximum Power Point Tracking Controller for Photovoltaic Systems Using New Boost Converter Design and Improved Control Algorithm

This paper presents an efficient maximum power point tracking (MPPT) controller for a standalone photovoltaic (PV) generation system. To achieve an efficient MPPT controller, a new boost converter design and an improved MPPT algorithm are incorporated. In the proposed boost converter design, a passive regenerative snubber circuit is included to absorb the energy of stray inductance so as to reduce the IGBT switching losses. As for the improved MPPT algorithm, it is based on the curve fitting method which attempts to predict the power-voltage characteristic curve by a fourth order polynomial function. The predicted P-V curve strongly depends on the cell temperature and therefore the ambient temperature and solar radiation are used to track the maximum power point (MPP) of the PV module. Experimental results are given to verify the validity and performance of the MPPT algorithm which is embedded in a prototype MPPT controller. The experimental results showed that the proposed MPPT controller successfully tracked the MPP by giving an average tracking efficiency of 89.2%
Comparison of Four Polymerase Chain Reaction Methods for the Rapid Detection of Human Fecal Pollution in Marine and Inland Waters

We compared the effectiveness of three PCR protocols for the detection of Bifidobacterium adolescentis and one PCR protocol for detecting Bacteroidales as indicators of human fecal pollution in environmental samples. Quantitative PCR indicated that a higher concentration of B. adolescentis DNA was recovered from sewage samples on the 0.2 μm filters compared to the 0.45 μm filters, and there was no evidence of qPCR inhibitors in the DNA extracts. With the Matsuki method (1999), B. adolescentis was detected only in undiluted sewage samples. The King method (2007) performed well and detected B. adolescentis in all of the sewage dilutions (from undiluted to 10−4). In contrast, the Bonjoch approach (2004) was effective at detecting B. adolescentis at lower dilutions (10−3) of sewage samples and it gave false positive results with some (3/8) pig fecal samples. Human-specific Bacteroidales (HuBacs) were detected in the lower diluents of sewage samples but was positive in pig (6/8) and cattle fecal samples. PCR detection of B. adolescentis in marine samples from Puerto Rico and freshwater samples from Georgia indicated that the PCR method of King et al. (2007) and the modified Layton method for HuBac were in agreement in detecting human fecal pollution in most sites.
Vesicular Stomatitis Virus G Pseudotyped Retrovector Mediates Effective in Vivo Suicide Gene Delivery in Experimental Brain Cancer 1

Direct in vivo tumor-targeting with “suicide” viral vectors is limited by either inefficient gene transfer (i.e., retroviral vectors) or indiscriminate transfer of a conditionally toxic gene to surrounding nonmalignant tissue (i.e., adenoviral vectors). Retrovectors pseudotyped with the vesicular stomatitis virus G protein (VSVG) may serve as a remedy to this conundrum. These retroviral particles differ from standard murine retroviruses by their very broad tropism and the capacity to be concentrated by ultracentrifugation without loss of activity. We propose that a VSVGtyped retrovector can be used for efficient and tumor-specific herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase (TK) gene delivery in vivo. To test this hypothesis, we developed a bicistronic retroviral vector that expresses TK and green fluorescence protein (pTKiGFP). The 293GPG packaging cell line was used to generate vTKiGFP retroparticles. In cytotoxicity assays, vTKiGFP-transduced human glioma cell lines were sensitized to the cytotoxic effects of gangciclovir (GCV) 10,000-fold. Subsequently, virus was concentrated by ultracentrifugation to a titer of 2.3 3 10 cfu/ml. We tested the antitumor activity of vTKiGFP retroparticles in a rat C6 glioma model of brain cancer. Concentrated retrovector stock (9ml volume) was injected stereotactically in preestablished intracerebral tumor. Subsequently, rats were treated with GCV for 10 days. Control rats (no GCV) had a mean survival of 38 days (range, 20–52 days). Sections performed on postmortem brain tissue revealed large tumors with evidence of high efficiency retrovector transfer and expression (as assessed by GFP fluorescence). Fluorescence was restricted to malignant tissue. In the experimental group (GCV treated), 8 of 12 remain alive and well>120 days after glioma implantation. In conclusion, vTKiGFP is very efficient at transducing human glioma cell linesin vitro and leads to significant GCV sensitization. Recombinant retroviral particles can be concentrated to titers that allow in vivo intratumoral delivery of large viral doses. The therapeutic efficiency of this reagent has been demonstrated in a preclinical model of brain cancer.
CHAPTER Dynamic Load Balancing Using Work-Stealing 35

In this chapter, we present a methodology for efficient load balancing of computational problems that can be easily decomposed into multiple tasks, but where it is hard to predict the computation cost of each task, and where new tasks are created dynamically during runtime. We present this methodology and its exploitation and feasibility in the context of graphics processors. Work-stealing allows an idle core to acquire tasks from a core that is overloaded, causing the total work to be distributed evenly among cores, while minimizing the communication costs, as tasks are only redistributed when required. This will often lead to higher throughput than using static partitioning.
FIRST-ORDER TRANSITION IN THE BREAKDOWN OF DISORDERED MEDIA

We study the approach to global breakdown in disordered media driven by increasing external forces. We first analyze the problem by mean-field theory, showing that the failure process can be described as a first-order phase transition, similarly to the case of thermally activated fracture in homogeneous media. Then we quantitatively confirm the predictions of the mean-field theory using numerical simulations of discrete models. Widely distributed avalanches and the corresponding meanfield scaling are explained by the long-range nature of elastic interactions. We discuss the analogy of our results to driven disordered first-order transitions and spinodal nucleation in magnetic systems. [S0031-9007(97)02501-5]
A Longitudinal Analysis of Young Adult Pathways to STEMH Occupations.

In this study, we determined the educational pathways and key life course transitions of young adults who enter Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Health (STEMH) technician and professional jobs using the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) dataset, tracking high school students from 1997 to adulthood in 2009. Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), findings underscored gender, ethnic and racial background, high school achievement and career and technical education (CTE) participation, earning high school industry certifications, postsecondary enrollment (2 year and 4 year), and degree attainment as factors contributing to the attainment of STEMH technician and professional careers. In light of the findings, we recommend that strategies to broaden the participation of minorities and women in STEMH fields include strengthening high school CTE programs and emphasizing career guidance in high schools to promote career awareness as a means to attract and retain students in STEMH pathways.
An approach to lightweight deployment of web services

Web Services is gradually becoming the most popular distributed computing paradigm for the Internet. Although several vendor and research efforts are in progress, fully-fledged deployment of Web Services in a wide scale has not been accomplished yet. The present contribution describes a framework for lightweight deployment of Web Services. This framework can be seen as a contribution to a smooth transition step towards a complete large-scale deployment. The paper starts with a description of data access techniques supporting multiple data providers, devised and used in the scope of a European research project. It is illustrated how schemes employed to provide remote transparent access to the data providers evolved to a lightweight Web Services framework.
Similarity Search for Sequences of Diierent Lengths: Matching and Indexing

Similarity match queries are common and important in many database applications with sequence data, such as text databases, genetics, time series, scientiic experiments, etc. In this paper, we consider the problem of eecient matching and retrieval of sequences of diierent lengths. Most of the previous research in this area concentrates on similarity matching and retrieval of sequences of the same length using the Euclidean distance metric. For similarity matching of sequences, we use a modiied version of the edit distance function. We consider two sequences matching if the majority of the elements in the sequences match. In the matching process, a mapping among non-matching elements is created to check if there are unacceptable deviations among them. This means that two matching sequences should have lengths that are comparable. For eecient retrieval of matching sequences, we propose two methods. The rst method is a feature-based indexing mechanism used to nd out a small collection of sequences which are matching candidates with a given query sequence from a large data set. Like all other feature-based indexing methods, our method maps each sequence into a point in the K dimensional space, where K is the number of extracted features for the sequence. Lengths and moments (mean and variance) of sequences are used as features. The second method is an indexing scheme which is totally based on lengths and relative distances between sequences. We use vp-trees as the underlying distance-based index structure in this method. Both methods work in two phases: hypothesization and veriication. In the hypothesization phase, data sequences that are distant to the query sequence are ltered out eeciently. In the veriication phase, the candidate sequences that were not eliminated in the hypothesization phase are checked if they actually match with the query sequence. In presenting our methods, we put more emphasis on numerical sequences from scientiic experiments.
The Demand for Cinema in Sweden: An Application of Proportional Odds Model

ABSTRACT This article examines the determinants of demand for cinema using a randomly drawn sample of the movie-going population in Sweden. A proportional odds model is applied to capture the natural ordering of dependent variables and any inherent nonlinearities. The findings show that individual demand for cinema depends on gender, age, educational attainment, income, marital status, critical reviews, word of mouth, and willingness to pay. The fact that cinema demand is correlated with economic and socio-demographic variables has important implications for theoretical and empirical research in cultural economics and human decision-making processes.
DSGE Models of High Exchange-Rate Volatility and Low Pass-Through

This paper develops a quantitative, dynamic, open-economy model which endogenously generates high exchange rate volatility, whereas a low degree of pass-through stems from both nominal rigidities (in the form of local currency pricing) and price discrimination. We model real exchange rate volatility in response to real shocks by reconsidering and extending two approaches suggested by the quantitative literature (one by Backus Kehoe and Kydland [1995], the other by Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan [2003]), within a common framework with incomplete markets and segmented domestic economies. Our model accounts for a variable degree of ERPT over different horizons. In the short run, we find that a very small amount of nominal rigidities--consistent with the evidence in Bils and Klenow [2004--lowers the elasticity of import prices at border and consumer level to 27% and 13%, respectively. Still, exchange rate depreciation worsens the terms of trade -- in accord with the evidence stressed by Obstfeld and Rogoff [2000]. In the long run, exchange-rate pass-through coefficients are also below one, as a result of price discrimination. The latter is an implication of distribution services, which makes the goods demand elasticity market specific.
Dose translation from animal to human studies revisited

As new drugs are developed, it is essential to appropriately translate the drug dosage from one animal species to another. A misunderstanding appears to exist regarding the appropriate method for allomet‐ric dose translations, especially when starting new animal or clinical studies. The need for education regarding appropriate translation is evident from the media response regarding some recent studies where authors have shown that resveratrol, a compound found in grapes and red wine, improves the health and life span of mice. Immediately after the online publication of these papers, the scientific community and popular press voiced concerns regarding the relevance of the dose of resveratrol used by the authors. The animal dose should not be extrapolated to a human equivalent dose (HED) by a simple conversion based on body weight, as was reported. For the more appropriate conversion of drug doses from animal studies to human studies, we suggest using the body surface area (BSA) normalization method. BSA correlates well across several mammalian species with several parameters of biology, including oxygen utilization, caloric expenditure, basal metabolism, blood volume, circulating plasma proteins, and renal function. We advocate the use of BSA as a factor when converting a dose for translation from animals to humans, especially for phase I and phase II clinical trials. —Reagan‐Shaw S. , Nihal, M. , Ahmad N. Dose translation from animal to human studies revisited. FASEB J. 22, 659–661 (2007)
AR-ABAC: A New Attribute Based Access Control Model Supporting Attribute-Rules for Cloud Computing

One of the most important challenges that have threatened cloud computing and caused its slow adoption is security. Since clouds have diverse groups of users with different sets of security requirements, restricting the users' accesses and protecting information from unauthorized accesses have become the most difficult tasks. To address these critical challenges, in this paper we first formalize Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) and propose a new access control model, called Attribute-Rule ABAC (AR-ABAC), for cloud computing to meet critical access control requirements in clouds. Our model supports the attribute-rules that deal with the association between users and objects, as well as the capability for accessing objects based on their sensitivity levels. The attribute-rules specify an agreement that determines what kind of attributes should be used and the number of attributes considered for making access decisions. In addition, our model ensures secure resource sharing among potential untrusted tenants and supports different access permissions to the same user at the same session.
High-Temperature SAW Wireless Strain Sensor with Langasite

Two Surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators were fabricated on langasite substrates with Euler angle of (0°, 138.5°, 117°) and (0°, 138.5°, 27°). A dipole antenna was bonded to the prepared SAW resonator to form a wireless sensor. The characteristics of the SAW sensors were measured by wireless frequency domain interrogation methods from 20 °C to 600 °C. Different temperature behaviors of the sensors were observed. Strain sensing was achieved using a cantilever configuration. The sensors were measured under applied strain from 20 °C to 500 °C. The shift of the resonance frequency contributed merely by strain is extracted from the combined effects of temperature and strain. Both the strain factors of the two SAW sensors increase with rising ambient temperature, and the SAW sensor deposited on (0°, 138.5°, 117°) cut is more sensitive to applied strain. The measurement errors of the two sensors are also discussed. The relative errors of the two sensors are between 0.63% and 2.09%. Even at 500 °C, the hysteresis errors of the two sensors are less than 5%.
A Mixed Methods Approach to Examining the Relationship Between News Media Literacy and Political Efficacy

Employing a convergent parallel design that combines an experiment and interviews, this study examined the relationship between news media literacy (NML) and political efficacy. The experiment tested the effect of exposure to NML messages on self-perceived media literacy and political efficacy beliefs. Experimental results suggest that NML messages influence self-perceived media literacy, which mediates political efficacy. This study also used interviews to explore how people apply NML skills to their news consumption and the relationship between news media literacy and political efficacy. The experimental and interview findings give us a more complete understanding of the complex relationship between NML and political efficacy and offer insight into the kinds of NML interventions that could be developed using theoretically and empirically validated findings.
Pulverised-Coal Combustion with Staged Air Introduction: CFD Analysis with Different Thermal Radiation Methods~!2009-08-21~!2009-10-13~!2010-04-16~!

Combustion chamber designers endeavour to achieve optimum operating conditions that give maximum combustion efficiency, together with minimum pollutant formation rate. Modelling of fossil fuel utility boilers has reached a remarkable development in recent years. Particularly, the application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling technology and other advanced mathematical methods offer opportunities for analysis, optimisation and options examination in order to increase the overall efficiency of the energy facilities. The main purpose of the present study was to investigate how the results obtained with two radiative heat transfer methods, the P1 approximation method and the discrete ordinates (DO) method, fit temperature field in a boiler furnace on pulverised coal, with implemented over-fire air (OFA) ports. The overall framework of the CFD modelling approach is described. The numerical modelling results for boiler baseline operating conditions are compared with a test matrix of local temperature measurements. An accuracy analysis of the P1 and DO methods is done on a basis of a comparison between the numerically obtained and measured temperature profiles.
The Antinociceptive Effects of Hydroalcoholic Extract of Bryonia dioica in Male Rats

Background: Side effects of synthetic analgesic drugs in the clinical practice have drawn researchers’ attention on developing the herbal medicine as more appropriate analgesic agents. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the antinociceptive effect of hydroalcoholic leaf extract of Bryonia dioica (HEBD) on male rats. Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, 42 adult male rats were divided into 7 groups: control, HEBD (80, 100, and 300 mg/ kg, ip), morphine (1 mg/kg, ip), indomethacin (1 mg/kg, ip), and naloxone (1 mg/kg ip). In order to assess the analgesic effects of the extract, writhing, tail-flick, and formalin tests were used. Also, Tukey post hoc and 1-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests were used to analyze the data. Results: Using writhing, tail-flick, and formalin tests, dramatic antinociceptive effects were observed for HEBD at the dose of 300 mg/kg with P < 0.01. The results of data analysis also revealed that there was no significant difference between indomethacin and dose of 300 mg/ kg of extract in formalin test. LD50 of the plant was 4200 mg/kg. Conclusions: The experimental data verified that HEBD leaves displayed remarkable antinociceptive activity. Furthermore, the nonselective opioid receptor antagonist, naloxone blocked the antinociceptive effect of the extract in all tests, suggesting that HEBD may act both at peripheral and central levels.
PVT-induced timing error detection through replica circuits and time redundancy in reconfigurable devices

This paper studies performance and timing failure probability of time-shifted redundant circuits and path-/circuit-replica circuits. Measurement-based experiments using a fabricated test chip are performed. For an approximately similar false positive error probability for the path-replica and circuit-replica, the false negative error probability of the circuit-replica is approximately two orders of magnitude less than that of the path-replica circuits. When attaining a false negative error of zero, the probability of error detection and reexecution in time-shifted redundant circuits is comparable to, or rather smaller than that of the path-replica circuits.
Moving Polymer Waveguides and Latching Actuator for 2 × 2 MEMS Optical Switch

We describe a novel type of MEMS optical switch 4 based on moving waveguide which has merits inherited from 5 both MEMS and integrated optics technologies. It provides an 6 expandable 2 × 2 switching capability, a first in this category of 7 switches. The switch is built by assembling independently opti8 mized latching silicon actuator and soft polymer waveguides. The 9 actuator is based on two new structures: a microhinge, dubbed 10 the fork hinge, and a latching structure using a precompressed 11 microspring. The mechanical switching speed was measured below 12 0.5 ms. The complex polymer waveguide structure was thoroughly 13 characterized to obtain all the components of the optical loss. 14 This analysis allowed us to estimate robustly the insertion loss 15 of the assembled optical switch below 3 dB and to identify the 16 possibilities to improve this figure. [2008-0142] 17