Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Load Balancing in a Cluster-Based Web Server for Multimedia Applications

We consider a cluster-based multimedia Web server that dynamically generates video units to satisfy the bit rate and bandwidth requirements of a variety of clients. The media server partitions the job into several tasks and schedules them on the backend computing nodes for processing. For stream-based applications, the main design criteria of the scheduling are to minimize the total processing time and maintain the order of media units for each outgoing stream. In this paper, we first design, implement, and evaluate three scheduling algorithms, first fit (FF), stream-based mapping (SM), and adaptive load sharing (ALS), for multimedia transcoding in a cluster environment. We determined that it is necessary to predict the CPU load for each multimedia task and schedule them accordingly due to the variability of the individual jobs/tasks. We, therefore, propose an online prediction algorithm that can dynamically predict the processing time per individual task (media unit). We then propose two new load scheduling algorithms, namely, prediction-based least load first (P-LLF) and prediction-based adaptive partitioning (P-AP), which can use prediction to improve the performance. The performance of the system is evaluated in terms of system throughput, out-of-order rate of outgoing media streams, and load balancing overhead through real measurements using a cluster of computers. The performance of the new load balancing algorithms is compared with all other load balancing schemes to show that P-AP greatly reduces the delay jitter and achieves high throughput for a variety of workloads in a heterogeneous cluster. It strikes a good balance between the throughput and output order of the processed media units
Modified S 2 and Pattern Search Methods to Find Optimal Cluster Centroid for MultiVariable Functions

173  Abstract— Identification of useful clusters in large datasets has attracted considerable interest in clustering process. Since data in the World Wide Web is increasing exponentially that affects on clustering accuracy and decision making, change in the concept between every cluster occurs named concept drift. To detect the difference of cluster distributions between the current data subset and previous clustering result, an algorithm called Drifting Concept Detection (DCD) and proper data labeling need to be performed. To say that the data labeling was performed well, generated clusters must be efficient. Selecting initial cluster center (centroid) is the key factor that has high affection in generating effective clusters. The data with different properties exists in real world. Previous work was concentrated in the identification of optimal cluster centroid for the functions of multi variables using Simplex Search (S 2) method and Pattern Search using Modified Sectioning method. These methods are extended by providing modified S 2 and pattern search methods that finds optimal cluster centroid for the multi variable functions and tests for optimality and then apply any existing clustering algorithm to generate clusters.
AdS3 × w(S3 × S3 × S1) solutions of type IIB string theory

We analyse a recently constructed class of local solutions of type IIB supergravity that consist of a warped product of AdS3 with a seven-dimensional internal space. In one duality frame the only other non-vanishing fields are the NS 3-form and the dilaton. We analyse in detail how these local solutions can be extended to give infinite families of globally well-defined solutions of type IIB string theory, with the internal space having topology S3 × S3 × S1 and with properly quantized 3-form flux.
Loneliness and Cognitive Distortion in Adolescent Facebookers

Facebook users in Indonesia dominated by adolescents in the age range 12 - 15 years. The usage of Facebook has negative effects, such as loneliness and cognitive distortion. The study aims to determine the relationship between loneliness and cognitive distortions in early adolescence Facebook users. Using revision of UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS) – 8 (Hays & DiMatteo, 1987) and Briere’s (2000) Cognitive Distortion Scale (CDS), data was collected from 146 early adolescents, female and male, who studied at schools in East Jakarta, South Jakarta, North Jakarta, and Depok. Based on results of data analysis using Spearman Rank correlation. A significant positive correlation was obtained between loneliness and cognitive distortion on early adolescence Facebook users (r= .271, p< .005). It was supported by a significant positive correlation between dimension of cognitive distortion (self criticism, self blame, helplessness, hopelessness, and preoccupation with danger) and loneliness with correlation rate . 234 – . 308.
in Vitro Ovarian Cancer Cell Line Growth Factor Receptor Autocrine Growth Mechanism in an / Epidermal α Involvement of Transforming Growth Factor

Although transforming growth factor (TGF) a and epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor (EGFR) autocrine mechanism is widely demon strated in many kinds of cancers, its biological significances still remain circumstantial. We critically assessed the significance of this mechanism on the growth of an ovarian cancer cell line. Northern blot analysis in polyadenylated RNA isolated from cells by using 32P-labeled pre-TGFa, EGFR, and prepro-EGF complementary DNAs as probes revealed that pre-TGFa and EGFR but not prepro-EGF gene transcripts were ex pressed in the cell. 1(. I Â«and EGFR but not EGF proteins were observed by immunocytochemical stainings, using monoclonal antibodies against human TGFa, EGFR, and EGF, respectively. This cell line possessed a class of high affinity EGF receptor by I2*I-EGF binding studies; Kt being 2.9 x IO'10 M and Ã„â€ž. to be 7.7 x IO4 sites/cell. As much as 1.12 Â± 0.14 ng (SD; n = 3)/107 cells/24 h of TGFa was secreted in the conditioned media. These results suggested the expression of a TGFa/ EGFR autocrine mechanism in this cell line. We, therefore, assessed the biological significance of this mechanism on the growth of this cell line in serum-free monolayer cell cultures. Although 0.1, 1.0, and 10 IIM concentrations of TGFa did not show significant growth promotion, monoclonal antibodies against TGFa and EGFR but not EGF signifi cantly inhibited cell growth. All these data suggested the biological importance of a TGFa/EGFR autocrine mechanism on the growth of this cell line in vitro.
Differential effects of 5-HTTLPR genotypes on the behavioral and neural responses to tryptophan depletion in patients with major depression and controls.

CONTEXT Tryptophan depletion (TD) is a model used to study the contribution of reduced serotonin transmission to the pathogenesis of major depressive disorder (MDD). Recent studies have not sufficiently addressed the relative contribution of a functional-length triallelic polymorphism in the promoter of the serotonin transporter, 5-HTTLPR, to the behavioral and neural responses to TD in individuals with remitted MDD (rMDD) and controls. OBJECTIVE To determine the role of 5-HTTLPR on the behavioral and neural responses to TD in medication-free patients with rMDD and individually matched controls. DESIGN Participants were stratified according to diagnosis and 5-HTTLPR genotypes and underwent TD on one test day and sham depletion on the other test day in a prospective, double-blind, randomized order. SETTING Outpatient clinic. PARTICIPANTS Twenty-seven medication-free patients with rMDD (18 women and 9 men) and 26 controls (17 women and 9 men). INTERVENTIONS Tryptophan depletion was induced by administration of capsules containing an amino acid mixture without tryptophan. Sham depletion used identical capsules containing lactose. Fludeoxyglucose F 18 positron emission tomography was performed 6 hours after TD. Magnetic resonance images were obtained for each participant. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Quantitative positron emission tomography of regional cerebral metabolic rates for glucose and measures of depression using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. RESULTS Behavioral responses to TD are affected by 5-HTTLPR in patients with rMDD and controls. A direct effect of 5-HTTLPR on the regulation of regional cerebral metabolic rates for glucose was identified in patients with rMDD for the amygdala, hippocampus, and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex. CONCLUSIONS Variations in 5-HTTLPR modulate the sensitivity of patients with rMDD and controls to the behavioral effects of TD. In patients with rMDD, variations in triallelic 5-HTTLPR have a direct effect on regulation of regional cerebral metabolic rates for glucose in a corticolimbic circuit that has been implicated in rMDD.
A Contemporary Prognostic Nomogram for Men with Hormone-Refractory Metastatic Prostate Cancer: A TAX327 Study Analysis

Purpose: To develop a prognostic model and nomogram using baseline clinical variables to predict death among men with metastatic hormone-refractory prostate cancer (HRPC). Experimental Design: TAX327 was a clinical trial that randomized 1,006 men with metastatic HRPC to receive every three week or weekly docetaxel or mitoxantrone, each with prednisone. We developed a multivariate Cox model and nomogram to predict survival at 1, 2, and 5 years. Results: Ten independent prognostic factors other than treatment group were identified in multivariate analysis: (a) presence of liver metastases [hazard ratio (HR), 1.66; P = 0.019], (b) number of metastatic sites (HR, 1.63 if ≥2 sites; P = 0.001), (c) clinically significant pain (HR, 1.48; P < 0.0001), (d) Karnofsky performance status (HR, 1.39 if ≤70; P = 0.016), (e) type of progression (HR, 1.37 for measurable disease progression and 1.29 for bone scan progression; P = 0.005 and 0.01, respectively), (f) pretreatment prostate-specific antigen (PSA) doubling time (HR, 1.19 if <55 days; P = 0.066), (g) PSA (HR, 1.17 per log rise; P < 0.0001), (h) tumor grade (HR, 1.18 for high grade; P = 0.069), (i) alkaline phosphatase (HR, 1.27 per log rise; P < 0.0001), and (j) hemoglobin (HR, 1.11 per unit decline; P = 0.004). A nomogram was developed based on this multivariate model and validated internally using bootstrap methods, with a concordance index of 0.69. Conclusions: This multivariate model identified several new independent prognostic factors in men with metastatic HRPC, including PSA doubling time, and led to the successful development of a clinically applicable nomogram. External prospective validation may support the wider use of this prognostic baseline model for men with HRPC treated with chemotherapy.
Characterization using Latent Dirichlet Allocation TCF 21 Binding Sites Characterization using Latent Dirichlet Allocation

Transcription factors play multiple roles in cell activity and gene expression, and discovering these roles often requires experimentation in a wet lab. We hope to bypass this process computationally by using topic modeling to infer the myriad of functions of a given transcription factor. Specifically, we apply Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to all peaks derived from running ChIP-seq on TCF21 in fetal heart cells, and model each peak as a mixture of topics composed of known binding motifs and cell types. We cluster peaks with similar topic distributions together, and we leverage GREAT to demonstrate that a significant fraction of the resulting clusters have functional biological significance. Functional significance of the peak clusterings implies that we have found functional subgroups of sites that bind TCF21, and thus functions in which TCF21 is involved. Furthermore, we also show that the topics deduced by LDA can associate motifs with cell activity in a variety of human cells and thus also yield useful information. These results are summarized in Figure 1
Performance analysis of speaker features extracted from high-order fractional domains

An evaluation of the feature set of the vector difference (VD) based on fractional cosine and sine transform focusing on the high-order fractional domains for text-independent speaker recognition is elucidated in this paper. The experiments have been done following the principles varying the number of the vector dimension and the power of the output parameters of fractional cosine and sine transform separately. The recognition results show that when the order of primary fractional domain is fixed to be 1 and the one of secondary fractional domain is 0.98, the correct recognition rate of the VD feature matches the one of the previous MFCC feature
The dilation of the Delaunay triangulation is greater than π/2

Consider the Delaunay triangulation T of a set P of points in the plane as a Euclidean graph, in which the weight of every edge is its length. It has long been conjectured that the dilation in T of any pair p, p \in P, which is the ratio of the length of the shortest path from p to p' in T over the Euclidean distance ||pp'||, can be at most {\pi}/2 \approx 1.5708. In this paper, we show how to construct point sets in convex position with dilation > 1.5810 and in general position with dilation > 1.5846. Furthermore, we show that a sufficiently large set of points drawn independently from any distribution will in the limit approach the worst-case dilation for that distribution.
Contrast restoration of road images taken in foggy weather

Driver assistance systems based on camera are strongly disturbed by the presence of foggy weather. The restoration of images, as pre-processing, would improve the performances of such systems. In this paper, we propose a method to restore the image contrast of foggy road scenes combining a physical approach, based on Koschmieders model and a signals approach, based on local histogram equalization. Then we optimize the parameters of our method using a simulated annealing. This method, evaluated on a reference image database, presents a significant improvement compared to other methods and gives consistent results for both homogeneous and inhomogeneous fog.
Shallow Semantics for Textual Entailment Determination

This paper analyses the contribution of shallow syntactic matching and thesaurus based equivalence in determining semantic equivalence of a pair of sentences. The performance of this approach is evaluated on two data sets and compared to other systems, as well as to manual evaluation results. We conclude that shallow semantics can model equivalence and entailment for pairs of syntactically similar sentences but it is not sufficient for reliable recognition of these relations in more complex cases.
Exploring the Intersection of Comparative and Clinical Psychology: An Introduction

Author(s): Marston, Daniel | Abstract: This article serves as the introduction to the special issues of the International Journal of Comparative Psychology on the intersection of comparative and clinical psychology. These two fields have a shared history going back to the beginnings of each. Prominent names throughout psychology have work that crosses over between these two fields. Freud referenced Darwin’s work throughout his work and Skinner’s research was almost exclusively comparative psychology research. For much of the first half of the last century there was a clear collaboration between the two fields that was fueled by motivation to find the best ways of understanding psychological processes. That collaboration has slowed considerably in the past several decades and this has coincided with increased specialization and compartmentalization throughout psychology. It is hoped that the important articles included in this special issue will help spark further discussion of how these two fields can again collaborate for mutual professional benefit and for the benefit for the general public.
Berkeley's Meta-Ontology: Bodies, Forces, and the Semantics of 'Exists'

To the great puzzlement of his readers, Berkeley begins by arguing that nothing exists other than minds and ideas, but concludes by claiming to have defended the existence of bodies. How can Berkeley’s idealism amount to such a defense? I introduce resources from Berkeley’s philosophy of language, and especially his analysis of the discourse of physics, to defend a novel answer to this question. According to Berkeley, the technical terms of physics are meaningful despite failing to designate any reality; their meaningfulness derives from the useful role they play in organizing and predicting our experience. I argue that Berkeleian bodies have the same status as these theoretical entities: they are mere ‘quasi-entities’ introduced by our ways of speaking and thinking in order to serve our practical purposes. Berkeley nevertheless considers this to be a defense of the existence of bodies because he endorses a radically deationary semantics for ‘exists. ’ Leibniz once said of Berkeley, \The one in Ireland who attacks the reality of bodies . is one of that sort of men who wants to be known for his paradoxes" (Leibniz 1989, 306). Three centuries later, Berkeley is still known for his paradoxes. Perhaps the most fundamental paradox in Berkeley’s philosophy is his vociferous rejection of the claim that he ‘attacks the reality of bodies. ’ Although Berkeley begins by arguing that nothing exists but minds and their ideas, he ends by claiming that he is \more certain" of the existence of bodies \than . any other philosopher pretend[s] to be" (DHP, 237; cf. N,x80). How precisely is Berkeley’s idealism meant to be a defense of the existence of bodies? In this paper, I introduce resources from Berkeley’s philosophy of language, and in particular his analysis of the discourse of physics, to defend a novel answer to this question. In De Motu, Berkeley’s most extended treatment of the philosophy of physics, Berkeley introduces a distinction between what I will call
Diseases of meaning, manifestations of health, and metaphor.

Disease and health are commonly thought of as distinct opposites. We propose a different view in which both may be seen to be facets of healthy functioning, each necessary for the other, each giving rise to the other. Thus, disease may be thought of as a manifestation of health. It is the healthy response of an organism striving to maintain physical, psychologic, and spiritual equilibrium. Disease is not necessarily to be avoided, blocked, or suppressed. Rather, it should be understood to be a process of transformation. The process should therefore be facilitated because it is an integral part of the dynamic equilibrium that we ordinarily think of as health. In many cases, perhaps all, people get ill because there is something going "wrong" in their lives. This could occur in a whole range of ways-relationships, environment, food, or job. Our view, however, is that disease is a meaningful state that can inform health workers how to help patients to heal themselves. In this way, instead of being meaningless, people's problems become diseases of meaning, enabling people to see that things are not necessarily "going wrong" but are, in fact, helping them become stronger, to live more fully and with more understanding. Seen from this perspective, depression; cancer; heart disease; neurodegenerative and autoimmune disease; dementia; and conditions such as community violence, genocide, and the problem of environmental devastation are "diseases of meaning. " World Health Organization forecasts make it clear that diseases of meaning will continue well into the next millennium to be the major cause of suffering and death worldwide. To deal with them, the world needs to reformulate the biomolecular paradigm that has been exploited in the last two centuries. It does not address the reasons why these diseases arise, attending mainly to their molecular consequences. A paradigm that includes the importance of meaning must now be given top priority. The concept that diseases are a manifestation of health-a call to a different relationship with ourselves and our environment, both animate and inanimate- is in itself a different approach. Programs for care and education based upon it would have immediate application in medicine, industry, education and ecology. We believe that this model would have far-reaching consequences for the understanding, treatment, and prevention of diseases and behaviors that lead to violence and environmental destruction.
DNA barcoding of Mycosphaerella species of quarantine importance to Europe

The EU 7th Framework Program provided funds for Quarantine Barcoding of Life (QBOL) to develop a quick, reliable and accurate DNA barcode-based diagnostic tool for selected species on the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO) A1/A2 quarantine lists. Seven nuclear genomic loci were evaluated to determine those best suited for identifying species of Mycosphaerella and/or its associated anamorphs. These genes included β-tubulin (Btub), internal transcribed spacer regions of the nrDNA operon (ITS), 28S nrDNA (LSU), Actin (Act), Calmodulin (Cal), Translation elongation factor 1-alpha (EF-1α) and RNA polymerase II second largest subunit (RPB2). Loci were tested on their Kimura-2-parameter-based inter- and intraspecific variation, PCR amplification success rate and ability to distinguish between quarantine species and closely related taxa. Results showed that none of these loci was solely suited as a reliable barcoding locus for the tested fungi. A combination of a primary and secondary barcoding locus was found to compensate for individual weaknesses and provide reliable identification. A combination of ITS with either EF-1α or Btub was reliable as barcoding loci for EPPO A1/A2-listed Mycosphaerella species. Furthermore, Lecanosticta acicola was shown to represent a species complex, revealing two novel species described here, namely L. brevispora sp. nov. on Pinus sp. from Mexico and L. guatemalensis sp. nov. on Pinus oocarpa from Guatemala. Epitypes were also designated for L. acicola and L. longispora to resolve the genetic application of these names.
Web Navigation in Small Communication / Computing Devices using Voice Recognition

This paper presents an innovative idea of using voice recognition(VR) for web navigation in next generation miniature mobile communication/computing devices(MCDs). It highlights the limitations of such devices and how voice recognition can be adapted to these devices for the purpose of web navigation. A voice controlled web browser has been written to demonstrate this idea. Finally, this paper describes possible variations and improvement to this idea.