Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Locus Reference Genomic: reference sequences for the reporting of clinically relevant sequence variants

Locus Reference Genomic (LRG; http://www.lrg-sequence.org/) records contain internationally recognized stable reference sequences designed specifically for reporting clinically relevant sequence variants. Each LRG is contained within a single file consisting of a stable ‘fixed’ section and a regularly updated ‘updatable’ section. The fixed section contains stable genomic DNA sequence for a genomic region, essential transcripts and proteins for variant reporting and an exon numbering system. The updatable section contains mapping information, annotation of all transcripts and overlapping genes in the region and legacy exon and amino acid numbering systems. LRGs provide a stable framework that is vital for reporting variants, according to Human Genome Variation Society (HGVS) conventions, in genomic DNA, transcript or protein coordinates. To enable translation of information between LRG and genomic coordinates, LRGs include mapping to the human genome assembly. LRGs are compiled and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). LRG reference sequences are selected in collaboration with the diagnostic and research communities, locus-specific database curators and mutation consortia. Currently >700 LRGs have been created, of which >400 are publicly available. The aim is to create an LRG for every locus with clinical implications.
Peer-to-peer overlay network management through AGILE

Currently, state of the art peer-to-peer (P2P) lookup mechanisms actively create and manage a peer application layer overlay network to achieve scalability and efficiency. The proposed mechanism AGILE (Adaptive Group-of-Interest-based Lookup Engine) extends this management approach, adapting the overlay network such as to bring requesting peers and desired lookup items close together, reducing the number of hops and, thus, latency as well as bandwidth requirements for a lookup. At the same time, AGILE introduces mechanisms to build a fair system.
Mobile-to-mobile opportunistic task splitting and offloading

With the advent of wearable computing and the resulting growth in mobile application market, we investigate mobile opportunistic cloud computing where mobile devices leverage nearby computational resources in order to save execution time and consumed energy. Our goal is to enable generic computation offloading to heterogeneous devices forming a mobile-to-mobile opportunistic computing platform. In this paper, we adopt (1) an analytical approach and (2) an experimental approach to highlight the gain given by mobile-to-mobile opportunistic offloading compared to local execution. We also investigate multiple offloading strategies with regards to both computation time and energy consumption. We propose an auto-splitting and offloading algorithms that computes the optimal chunks sizes that could be offloaded remotely to neighboring mobile device. We show that our splitting and offloading algorithm succeeds in picking the optimal chunk sizes and distribution with up to 99.7% efficiency. In addition, the offloader device saves up to 80% energy while offloading the task remotely. For instance if the offloader device is running out of battery, offloading is the ultimate solution to increase its lifetime.
Incentives, Program Configuration, and Employee Uptake of Workplace Wellness Programs

Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the effect of wellness program configurations and financial incentives on employee participation rate. Methods: We analyze a nationally representative survey on workplace wellness programs from 407 employers using cluster analysis and multivariable regression analysis. Results: Employers who offer incentives and provide a comprehensive set of program offerings have higher participation rates. The effect of incentives differs by program configuration, with the strongest effect found for comprehensive and prevention-focused programs. Among intervention-focused programs, incentives are not associated with higher participation. Conclusions: Wellness programs can be grouped into distinct configurations, which have different workplace health focuses. Although monetary incentives can be effective in improving employee participation, the magnitude and significance of the effect is greater for some program configurations than others.
Theoretical Analysis of Surface-Textured Elastomer Sleeve in Lubricated Rotary Sliding

A soft elastohydrodynamic lubrication (SEHL) model is presented that consists of a stationary surface-textured soft elastomer sleeve and a rigid, smooth rotating shaft. The Reynolds equation and the equation of linear elasticity are solved simultaneously for the pressure distribution and viscous shear stresses in the fluid film and for the elastic stresses and deformations in the elastomer. An extensive parametric analysis is performed to evaluate the optimum parameters of the surface texturing for minimum friction coefficient. The transition from full hydrodynamic to mixed lubrication is also analyzed. It is shown that the model is also valid for predicting friction coefficient of various types of circumferential elastomer seals.
Physiological differences between sprint- and distance-specialized cross-country skiers.

PURPOSE Sprint- (≤1.8 km) and distance-skiing (≥15 km) performance rely heavily on aerobic capacity. However, in sprint skiing, due to the ~20% higher speed, anaerobic capacity contributes significantly. This study aimed to identify the possible anthropometric and physiological differences between elite male sprint and distance skiers. METHODS Six sprint and 7 distance international-level cross-country skiers completed testing using the V2 skating technique on a roller-ski treadmill. Measurements included submaximal O2 cost (5°, 3 m/s) and a 1000-m time trial (6°, >3.25 m/s) to assess VO2peak and accumulated oxygen (σO2) deficit. RESULTS The groups displayed similar O2 cost during the submaximal load. The sprint skiers had a higher σO2 deficit (79.0 ± 11.3 vs 65.7 ± 7.5·mL/kg, P = .03, ES = 1.27) and VO2peak in absolute values (6.6 ± 0.5 vs 6.0 ± 0.5 L/ min, P = .04, ES =1.23), while VO2peak relative to body mass was lower than in the distance skiers (76.4 ± 4.4 vs 83.0 ± 3.2 mL · kg-1 · min-1, P = .009, ES = 1.59). The sprint skiers were heavier than the distance skiers (86.6 ± 6.1 vs 71.8 ± 7.2 kg, P = .002, ES = 2.07), taller (186 ± 5 vs 178 ± 7 cm, P = .04, ES = 1.25), and had a higher body-mass index (24.9 ± 0.8 vs 22.5 ± 1.3 kg/m2, P = .003, ES = 2.05). CONCLUSION The elite male sprint skiers showed different anthropometric and physiological qualities than the distance skiers, with these differences being directly related to body mass.
Advanced Mechanical Ventilatory Constraints During Incremental Exercise in Class III Obese Male Subjects

BACKGROUND: We investigated the role of mechanical ventilatory constraints in obese class III subjects during incremental exercise. METHODS: We examined 14 control subjects (body mass index [BMI], 23.6 ± 3.2 kg/m2), 15 obese class II subjects (BMI, 37.2 ± 4.5 kg/m2), and 17 obese class III subjects (BMI, 53.4 ± 6.8 kg/m2). All subjects performed pulmonary function tests and maximal inspiratory pressure at rest, ventilatory parameters, flow-volume loops, and rated perceived exertion and breathlessness during exercise. RESULTS: All subjects had normal pulmonary function. Obesity resulted in increased minute ventilation for a given submaximal work rate, although minute ventilation during peak exercise was lowest in the obese class III subjects. End-expiratory lung volume was significantly lower in the obese subjects at rest and during exercise at the ventilatory threshold but not during peak exercise. During heavy-to-peak exercise, the obese subjects increased their end-expiratory lung volume, whereas the control group continued to decrease this parameter. Compared with controls, end-inspiratory lung volume was significantly lower in obese class II subjects and obese class III subjects at rest and at the ventilatory threshold but not during peak exercise. At maximal exercise, obese class III subjects had a greater end-inspiratory lung volume than obese class II subjects and controls. Obese class III subjects displayed a greater expiratory air flow limitation at rest, at the ventilatory threshold, and during peak exercise than both controls and obese class II subjects. CONCLUSIONS: Mechanical ventilatory constraints increase progressively with degrees of obesity, contributing to exercise limitation in obese subjects.
Performance evaluation of fingerprint open-set identification algorithms

We report performance of one-to-many fingerprint identification algorithms using one, two, four, eight or ten fingers for recognition. Performance is quantified in terms of recognition accuracy (false positive and false negative identification rate), robustness of algorithms (failure to process images) and computational efficiency (time to execute and size of the generated templates). We measured performance on a large dataset of fingerprint images of operational quality using varying enrollment sizes. The main contributions of this paper are two fold: a) open-set identification performance measures and b) an assessment of core capability of current one-to-many fingerprint recognition algorithms. This is accomplished using a subset of algorithms reported in the Fingerprint Vendor Technology Evaluation (FpVTE2012) that show the range and bounds of performance seen in that evaluation.
Efficient implementation of lazy suffix trees

We present an efficient implementation of a write‐only top‐down construction for suffix trees. Our implementation is based on a new, space‐efficient representation of suffix trees that requires only 12 bytes per input character in the worst case, and 8.5 bytes per input character on average for a collection of files of different type. We show how to efficiently implement the lazy evaluation of suffix trees such that a subtree is evaluated only when it is traversed for the first time. Our experiments show that for the problem of searching many exact patterns in a fixed input string, the lazy top‐down construction is often faster and more space efficient than other methods. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Thermal Properties and Transition Temperatures of AlB2-Type Diborides

The thermal properties, cohesion and transition temperatures of 14 compounds in the AlB2-type diborides have been calculated by first-principles. The obtained thermal properties, cohesion and transition temperatures Tc were compared with both available experimental data and other theoretical results. The relationship among enthalpy formation, bulk modulus and melting temperature in these diborides were further analyzed. The results illustrate that ZrB2 is the most stable, and AuB2 has the largest c/a ratio and it is also most unstable to a phase separation. It is observed that the diborides including Mg, Sc, and Hf series with a more negative enthalpy of formation have a larger bulk modulus and higher melting temperature. AuB2 has higher electron-phonon coupling constant and hence possesses a higher Tc.
The Statistics of Bulk Segregant Analysis Using Next Generation Sequencing

We describe a statistical framework for QTL mapping using bulk segregant analysis (BSA) based on high throughput, short-read sequencing. Our proposed approach is based on a smoothed version of the standard statistic, and takes into account variation in allele frequency estimates due to sampling of segregants to form bulks as well as variation introduced during the sequencing of bulks. Using simulation, we explore the impact of key experimental variables such as bulk size and sequencing coverage on the ability to detect QTLs. Counterintuitively, we find that relatively large bulks maximize the power to detect QTLs even though this implies weaker selection and less extreme allele frequency differences. Our simulation studies suggest that with large bulks and sufficient sequencing depth, the methods we propose can be used to detect even weak effect QTLs and we demonstrate the utility of this framework by application to a BSA experiment in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Parallelizing Database Systems using Thread Level Speculation

Improving the performance of a program by splitting it into threads is hard, since a parallel machine model is more complex than a sequential one. Thread Level Speculation (TLS) allows a program to be parallelized while retaining sequential program semantics. In the past TLS has been shown to make automatic parallelization of programs much easier—in this paper we show that TLS makes manual parallelization of complex software much easier by allowing the programmer to ignore infrequent cases. We demonstrate this by parallelizing transactions in a database system. In the process we find that simple changes to basic database structures produces dramatic improvements in program performance when run on a TLS system. As a result of these changes we make a single transaction run three times faster.
Retrieval of trademarkandgray-scaleimagesusingglobal similarity �

Content-based imageretrieval is animportantareaof research. Here,amethodto characterizevisual appearancefor determiningglobalsimilarity in imagesis described.Imagesarefilteredwith Gaussian derivativesandgeometricfeaturesarecomputedfrom thefilteredimages.Thegeometricfeaturesused herearecurvatureandphase.Two imagesmaybesaidto besimilar if they have similardistributionsof suchfeatures.Globalsimilarity may, therefore,bededucedby comparinghistogramsof thesefeatures. Thisallowsfor rapidretrieval. Thesystem’ sperformanceonadatabaseof about1500grey-level images andanotherdatabaseof 2000trademarkimagesis shown. It is alsoshown thattheapproachis scalable andexamplesof queryresultsona databaseof morethan63000trademarkimagesareprovided.
Salt marsh vegetation change after a short-term tidal restriction in the Changjiang estuary

The zonation of Scirpus mariqueter and Scirpus tabernaemontani communities is conspicuous in salt marshes of the Changjiang estuary. However, diking, which partly restricted tidal fluctuation in a salt marsh, resulted in the invasion of S. tabernaemontani into S. mariqueter communities. To explore the role of the interaction between the two species in the vegetation change, the structure of S. mariqueter tussocks at low elevation and S. tabernaemontani clones at medium elevation were investigated in the diked marsh, and biomass allocations to different components of the two species was also estimated. Scirpus mariqueter performed better at the edges of the tussocks but aged and declined in the central areas of the tussocks with low density of living shoots, large proportion of flowering shoots, and low aboveground dry mass. Scirpus taberaemontani grew vigorously in the center areas of large S. taberaemontani clones with high density of shoots, and those clones were surrounded by a residual ring of S. mariqueter, whose structure was similar to the pattern observed in the tussocks of S. mariqueter. Comparison of the vegetation structure along the elevational gradient of the diked marsh suggests that S. taberaemontani invades the center area of the Scirpus mariqueter tussocks, possibly due to changed topography and its well-developed aerenchymatous tissue. Scirpus tabernaemontani allocates a significantly greater proportion of biomass to photosynthetic shoots and rhizomes than S. mariqueter does, both above ground and below ground, a potential competitive advantage. Once established in the central areas of the S. mariqueter tussocks, S. taberaemontani successfully replaced S. mariqueter. We hypothesize that the competitive displacement of S. mariqueter by S. taberaemontani plays an important role in the vegetation change after the short-term tidal restriction and also in generating plant zonation in the salt marshes.
Feature-based volume metamorphosis

Image metamorphosis, or image morphing , is a popular technique for creating a smooth transition between two images. For synthetic images, transforming and rendering the underlying three-dimensional (3D) models has a number of advantages over morphing between two pre-rendered images. In this paper we consider 3D metamorphosis applied to volume-based representations of objects. We discuss the issues which arise in volume morphing and present a method for creating morphs. Our morphing method has two components: ﬁrst a warping of the two input volumes, then a blending of the resulting warped volumes. The warping component, an extension of Beier and Neely’s image warping technique to 3D, is feature-based and allows ﬁne user control, thus ensuring realistic looking intermediate objects. In addition, our warping method is amenable to an efﬁcient approximation which gives a 50 times speedup and is computable to arbitrary accuracy. Also, our technique corrects the ghosting problem present in Beier and Neely’s technique. The second component of the morphing process, blending, is also under user control; this guarantees smooth transitions in the renderings.
Real-time scene parsing by means of a convolutional neural network for mobile robots in disaster scenarios

Disaster robotics poses particular challenges for computer vision, both in terms of image characteristics (due to motion blur, difficult light conditions, lack of up/down orientation, etc.), and in terms of learning data (limited availability, difficulty of annotation due to image quality, etc.). We developed a system for real-time scene-parsing, intended for use in a support system for operators of remote-controlled mobile robots employed in disaster areas. Our testbed is video footage gathered by a snake-like mobile robot exploring an (artificial) collapsed building environment. The core of the system is a relatively small-scale convolutional neural network. Our approach combines pixel-level learning with superpixel-level classification, in an effort to learn efficiently from a relatively small number of partially annotated frames. Our classification system is capable of real-time operation, and demonstrates that convolutional neural networks can be applied effectively even under the harsh conditions imposed by disaster robotics.
Stochastic response-time guarantee for non-preemptive, fixed-priority scheduling under errors

Error recovery mechanisms, such as automatic repeat request (ARQ) for e.g. the CAN protocol, are a crucial part of safety critical embedded systems. These can have a strong impact on the timing behavior of the system and an unpropitious combination of error events may cause a real-time application to miss deadlines with potentially hazardous consequences. Therefore, formal analysis of the worst-case timing including errors is indispensable for certification. We present a new convolution-based stochastic analysis in which we model errors as additional execution time to bound the probability for an activation to exceed a response-time value in the worst-case.
Motion prediction for caching and prefetching in mouse-driven DVE navigation

A distributed virtual environment (DVE) allows geographically separated users to participate in a shared virtual environment via connected networks. However, when the users are connected by the Internet, bandwidth limitation and network latency may seriously affect the performance and the interactivity of the system. This explains why there are very few DVE applications for the Internet. To address these shortcomings, caching and prefetching techniques are usually employed. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of these techniques depends largely on the accuracy of the prediction method used. Although there are a few methods proposed for predicting 3D motion, most of them are primarily designed for predicting the motion of specific objects by assuming certain object motion behaviors. We notice that in desktop DVE applications, such as virtual walkthrough and network gaming, the 2D mouse is still the most popular device used for navigation input. Through studying the motion behavior of a mouse during 3D navigation, we have developed a hybrid motion model for predicting the mouse motion during such navigation---a linear model for prediction at low-velocity motion and an elliptic model for prediction at high-velocity motion. The predicted mouse motion velocity is then mapped to the 3D environment for predicting the user's 3D motion. We describe how this prediction method can be integrated into the caching and prefetching mechanisms of our DVE prototype. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of the method and the resulting caching and prefetching mechanisms through extensive experiments.
Bioinformatics Analysis of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Gene rspL and Its Mutation

The emergence and spread of multidrug-resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis represent an increasing public health problem. Understanding multidrug-resistant mechanism(s) is essential for efficient treatment and control of tuberculosis. Mutations in gene rpsL, encoding the ribosomal protein S12, are responsible for most of the high-level Streptomycin resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Recently, a mass of data about gene rpsL continue to accumulate rapidly, but it is lack for systemic analysis using these data. Here, we used bioinformatics tools to analyze globe data about the rpsL of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the rpsL and its homologs were clearly divided into three groups, but they are all from organisms known as tuberculosis pathogens, which implied that general conformational structure of the rpsL did not change. Structure analysis showed that the 43 region of the rpsL alter hydrophilic nature in the wild-type rpsL to hydrophobic nature in the mutation. Prediction of the secondary structure of ribosomal protein S12 displayed a coil within the helix structure of the 43 region in the wild-type rpsL whereas just helix structure in the mutation. Therefore, it was suggested that mutations of hydrophilic nature and coil within the helix structure of the 43 region of gene rpsL are responsible for most of the high-level Streptomycin resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
A Corpus-based Account of Regular Polysemy: The Case of Context-sensitive Adjectives

In this paper we investigate polysemous adjectives whose meaning varies depending on the nouns they modify (e.g., fast). We acquire the meanings of these adjectives from a large corpus and propose a probabilistic model which provides a ranking on the set of possible interpretations. We identify lexical semantic information automatically by exploiting the consistent correspondences between surface syntactic cues and lexical meaning. We evaluate our results against paraphrase judgments elicited experimentally from humans and show that the model's ranking of meanings correlates reliably with human intuitions: meanings that are found highly probable by the model are also rated as plausible by the subjects.
A comparison between feedback strategies in human-to-human and human-machine communication

A coupling device includes a nut releasably engaging a body which receives a tubular member. A sleeve which attaches to the nut telescopes over the tubular member and includes grooves for gripping the tubular member and an undercut recess for carrying a seal. An outer recess on the sleeve receives an inturned flange on the nut for attaching the nut and sleeve. A leading edge on the sleeve abuts the body and the inturned flange is movable from a first cylindrical section formed by the outer recess to a second cylindrical section via a tapered surface to radially contract the sleeve thereby engaging the grooves with the tubular member. The nut carries a major portion of the sleeve and the seal within an inner bore on the nut and the sleeve, seal and nut comprise a unitary assembly for telescoping over the tubular member.