Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Non-monotonic Snapshot Isolation: Scalable and Strong Consistency for Geo-replicated Transactional Systems

Modern cloud systems are geo-replicated to improve application latency and availability. Transactional consistency is essential for application developers; however, the corresponding concurrency control and commitment protocols are costly in a geo-replicated setting. To minimize this cost, we identify the following essential scalability properties: (i) only replicas updated by a transaction T make steps to execute T; (ii) a read-only transaction never waits for concurrent transactions and always commits; (iii) a transaction may read object versions committed after it started; and (iv) two transactions synchronize with each other only if their writes conflict. We present Non-Monotonic Snapshot Isolation (NMSI), the first strong consistency criterion to allow implementations with all four properties. We also present a practical implementation of NMSI called Jessy, which we compare experimentally against a number of well-known criteria. Our measurements show that the latency and throughput of NMSI are comparable to the weakest criterion, read-committed, and between two to fourteen times faster than well-known strong consistencies.
Precision and Accuracy of Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design

Although mechanistic-empirical design does offer some insight into pavement behaviour and performance, at least more so than empirical design methods, they remain mere models of the real-life pavement and are not perfect by far. Recently these design methods have evolved to include two aspects, the basic engineering knowledge and models incorporated in the method and the computational simulation techniques that are often used to introduce spatial and time variability in the design process. The introduction of the computational simulation techniques has shifted the focus of researchers and the developers of mechanistic-empirical design methods from the core engineering models that determine the accuracy of these methods to the simulation techniques that are merely computer coding exercises but do not improve the accuracy of the design methods. The paper provides an overview of concepts such as variability, precision, accuracy, bias or error and design risk in the context of pavement design. A simple classification of mechanistic-empirical design methods is also provided and the main components of these design methods are discussed in general. The effects of variability and error on the design accuracy and design risk are lastly illustrated at the hand of a simple mechanistic-empirical design problem, showing that the engineering models alone determine the accuracy of these design methods.
Social functioning in first-episode schizophrenia. A prospective follow-up study

SUMMARY Aim: was to compare social functioning of first-admitted schizophrenic patients with healthy controls and evaluate the influence of different variables on social abilities of patients, 1 month (T1), 13 months after hospitalization (T2) and 4–6 years after T1 (T3). Material and methods: A group of 74 schizophrenic patients: 46 male and 28 female; age 24.7 ± 6.7 and a control group of matched 52 male and 34 female subjects were enrolled. Social Functioning Scale (SFS), Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), Global Assessment Scale (GAS) and socio-demographic questionnaire were used. Results: In all examinations SFS scores in the patients (T1- 103.5; T2- 104.4; T3- 107.0), were significantly lower than in the healthy controls- 117.0 (p<0.001). In longitudinal analysis, a mild improvement was observed in T3 SFS score and in its three subscales (p<0.05) In cross-sectional analysis, better social functioning was associated with female sex, longer education, activity before admission, and better functioning in the pre-admission period. In regression analyses SFS at T2 was predicted by PANSS total scores at T1 (27% of the variance), and at T3 by PANSS total scores at T1 and duration of psychotic symptoms before the first hospitalization (20% of the variance). Conclusions: Social functioning in schizophrenia is impaired from the onset of disease and may be mildly improved in intermediate follow-up. Female sex, higher education and pre-admission functioning are correlated with better social outcome, however regression analysis point to the duration of untreated illness and severity of symptoms after the first admission, as important predictors of social functioning in early course of schizophrenia. social functioning / schizophrenia / first-episode / follow-up study
MINOR NEUROLOGICAL DYSFUNCTION AND QUALITY OF MOVEMENT IN RELATION TO NEONATAL CEREBRAL DAMAGE AND SUBSEQUENT DEVELOPMENT

Minor neurological dysfunction (MND) and quality of movement were studied in relation to neonatal cerebral damage and developmental assessments at 31/2 years of age in 66 very low‐birthweight children without obvious disability. MND was found in 19 children and was significantly related to the quality of movement. Tne results demonstrate that MND is associated with neonatal cerebral damage at preschool‐age, but that the assessment of quality of movement is associated with more complex sensory motor tasks and simultaneous processing. At preschool‐age, quality of movemeni might therefore be a better marker of later learning problems than traditional signs of minor neurological dysfunction.
AMNP: ad hoc multichannel negotiation protocol with broadcast solutions for multi-hop mobile wireless networks

A multi-hop mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is generally configured as a peer-to-peer network with no centralised hubs or controllers that coordinate channel resources. Nodes in a MANET usually equip one single transceiver for data transmissions. However, the single transceiver architecture will cause a difficulty of being implemented in multichannel environment if the network transmission capacity would be improved by adopting parallel multichannel access. To solve this thorny problem, this study presents a distributed medium access control (MAC) layer protocol called ad hoc multichannel negotiation protocol (AMNP) for multichannel transmissions in the multi-hop MANET. Additionally, two problems, the multichannel hidden terminal problem and the multichannel broadcast transmission problem, caused by single transceiver operations in the multichannel environment, which have not been revealed in academia, is presented and solved in this study. Finally, an enhanced AMNP with channel scheduling (AMNP/s) scheme is introduced to improve the channel utilisation. The author show, via simulations, that AMNP/s provides a higher throughput compared to its single-channel counterpart by promoting simultaneous transmissions in different channels. Simulation results also show that AMNP/s derives higher performance than other multichannel transmission schemes that use multiple transceivers.
Snapshot of Activated G Proteins at the Membrane: The Gαq-GRK2-Gßγ Complex

G protein–coupled receptor kinase 2 (GRK2) plays a key role in the desensitization of G protein–coupled receptor signaling by phosphorylating activated heptahelical receptors and by sequestering heterotrimeric G proteins. We report the atomic structure of GRK2 in complex with Gαq and Gβγ, in which the activated Gα subunit of Gq is fully dissociated from Gβγ and dramatically reoriented from its position in the inactive Gαβγ heterotrimer. Gαq forms an effector-like interaction with the GRK2 regulator of G protein signaling (RGS) homology domain that is distinct from and does not overlap with that used to bind RGS proteins such as RGS4.
Implicit and Explicit Knowledge in Second Language Acquisition.

Language development is frequently characterized as a process where learning proceeds implicitly, that is, incidentally and in absence of awareness of what was learned. This article reports the results of two experiments that investigated whether second language acquisition can also result in implicit knowledge. Adult learners were trained on an artificial language under incidental learning conditions and then tested by means of grammaticality judgments and subjective measures of awareness. The results indicate that incidental exposure to second language syntax can result in unconscious knowledge, which suggests that at least some of the learning in this experiment was implicit. At the same time, however, it was also found that conscious (but unverbalizable) knowledge was clearly linked to improved performance in the grammaticality judgment task.
Service optimization of in-elastic flows stripped over multiple asymmetric mobile channels

In this paper, we present a stateless multi-server guaranteed rate scheduling service model that utilizes multiple, asymmetric wireless channels to maximize service guarantees for in-elastic flows. One of the major consequences of multichannel flow forwarding is the increased intra-path and inter-path end-to-end delay variations between successive packets of a stream. These variations cause problems in achieving desired service levels due to increased reorder overhead, higher packet drop-rate, and higher buffer maintenance overhead. We have aggregated the capacity of available wireless channels through a link monitoring function (LMF) and has formulated a multi-server scheduling model that ensures tight delay-bounds and lower service latency to minimize inter-path delay variations and out-of-sequence arrival. The simulation results show consistently higher performance metrics of the scheme w.r. t. end-to-end delay variations, in-order arrival, and service latency that enable reliable, scalable, guaranteed rate service during mobility.
Model Checking with Logic Based Petri Nets

We introduce a new class of Petri nets, simple logic Petri nets (SLPN). We show how this type of nets can be efficiently mapped into logic programs with negation: the corresponding answer sets describe interleaved executions of the underlying Petri nets. We also show how to model and specify AgentSpeak agents with SLPN’s. This allows us to solve the task of model checking AgentSpeak agents by computing answer sets of the obtained logic program with any ASP system.
Surveying the identification of communities

Nowadays, many networks of interest include a variety of social and technological networks, which are naturally divided into communities. The identification of these community structures has considerably attracted the attention of researchers in recent years. Thus, this paper reviews the main algorithms for finding communities and locating meaningful structures. The survey starts from graph theory and includes the latest algorithms for detecting web communities. The existence of communities that can overlap is also taken into account, as well as the main commonly used software tools for depicting communities.
A coherent compensation method for multiband fusion imaging

In this paper, a coherent processing method based on valid poles and phase auto-focusing is proposed to compensate the incoherent phases between subbands in multiband radar signal fusion imaging. In order to eliminate the effect of noise on incoherent phase estimation, valid poles are firstly extracted based on the maximum cross correlation of subbands pole phase sequences, and then are reordered to estimate the linear incoherent phase. For the fixed incoherent phase estimation, phase auto-focusing which can effectively compensate the random initial phases is applied for subband echoes respectively. And the method is effective and noise insensitive as verified by simulation results.
DNA damage, apoptosis and cell cycle changes induced by fluoride in rat oral mucosal cells and hepatocytes.

AIM To study the effect of fluoride on oxidative stress, DNA damage and apoptosis as well as cell cycle of rat oral mucosal cells and hepatocytes. METHODS Ten male SD rats weighing 80-120 g were randomly divided into control group and fluoride group, 5 animals each group. The animals in fluoride group had free access to deionized water containing 150 mg/L sodium fluoride (NaF). The animals in control group were given distilled water. Four weeks later, the animals were killed. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) in oral mucosa and liver were measured by Fenton reaction, lipid peroxidation product, malondialdehyde (MDA), was detected by thiobarbituric acid (TBA) reaction, reduced glutathione (GSH) was assayed by dithionitrobenzoic acid (DTNB) reaction. DNA damage in oral mucosal cells and hepatocytes was determined by single cell gel (SCG) electrophoresis or comet assay. Apoptosis and cell cycle in oral mucosal cells and hepatocytes were detected by flow cytometry. RESULTS The contents of ROS and MDA in oral mucosa and liver tissue of fluoride group were significantly higher than those of control group (P < 0.01), but the level of GSH was markedly decreased (P < 0.01). The contents of ROS, MDA and GSH were (134.73 +/- 12.63) U/mg protein, (1.48 +/- 0.13) mmol/mg protein and (76.38 +/- 6.71) mmol/mg protein in oral mucosa respectively, and (143.45 +/- 11.76) U/mg protein, (1.44 +/- 0.12) mmol/mg protein and (78.83 +/- 7.72) mmol/mg protein in liver tissue respectively. The DNA damage rate in fluoride group was 50.20% in oral mucosal cells and 44.80% in hepatocytes, higher than those in the control group (P < 0.01). The apoptosis rate in oral mucosal cells was (13.63 +/- 1.81) % in fluoride group, and (12.76 +/- 1.67)% in hepatocytes, higher than those in control group. Excess fluoride could differently lower the number of oral mucosal cells and hepatocytes at G0/G1 and S G2/M phases (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION Excess fluoride can induce oxidative stress and DNA damage and lead to apoptosis and cell cycle change in rat oral mucosal cells and hepatocytes.
3 D Face Recognition Using Geodesic Facial Curves to Handle Expression , Occlusion and Pose Variations

this paper illustrates the use of radial facial curves on 3D meshes to mode facial deformation caused by expression, occlusion and variation in poses and to recognize faces despite large expression, in presence of occlusion and pose variations. Here we represent facial surface by indexed collection of radial geodesic curves on 3D face meshes emanating from nose tip to the boundary of mesh and compare the facial shapes by comparing shapes of their corresponding curves. We use elastic shape analysis for comparing shapes of facial curves because elastic matching seems natural for facial deformation and is robust to challenges such as large facial expressions (especially those with open mouths), large pose variations, missing parts, and partial occlusions due to glasses, hair, and so on. Our results match or improve upon the state-of-the-art methods on two prominent databases:,GavabDB, and Bosphorus, each posing a different type of challenges.
Interference Cartography for Hierarchical Dynamic Spectrum Access

This paper describes a simple but effective concept in cognitive networks that provides awareness on the radio environment through geo-localized interference measurements: the interference cartography. The purpose of this novel concept is to combine location information with radio measurements carried out over the heterogeneous radio environment, and to provide a complete view of the environment to be used in autonomous decision making in a cognitive context. This is achieved by aggregating the already existing radio measurements that circulate in wireless networks forming the heterogeneous network panorama, combining this aggregated information with geo-localization information, performing advanced signal processing techniques to render the information complete and reliable, and updating the information to provide a viable picture of the environment for efficient detection, analysis and decision. Our focus is on hierarchical access models where licensed spectrum can be accessed by secondary users without creating harmful interference on the primaries. A complete description of a possible network implementation in a hierarchical access scheme is given, with a centralized architecture and a protocol structure that complies with the utilization of interference cartography. A case study of the proposed scheme is also given, demonstrating the utility of the notion of interference cartography.
Pressures of the Season

High-stakes tests are the most heavily weighted measures in accountability systems developed in response to No Child Left Behind. While some studies show high-stakes accountability being related to test score gains, others suggest these policies do not improve achievement and often result in unintended consequences. To understand mechanisms driving positive and negative effects on student learning, it is necessary to look beyond achievement data and step inside classrooms. We present findings from 2 years of observation in 23 second and third grade classrooms, capitalizing on the combination of grade levels and seasons during which we observed. On the theoretically important domain of instructional support, we find classroom quality is lower when classrooms are under greatest pressure to increase test performance.
Civic Action and Media Perceptions within the Wall: The (Re) Negotiation of Power in China

Little has been known about China’s policing of the Internet until recently, when researchers began publishing insights on the types of messages that gets deleted and permitted on various social media platforms, as well as whether or not such moderations are performed automatically. Many discussions have focused on how such efforts may undermine the democratic potential and civic actions that may be empowered and facilitated by the Internet. Two cases discussed in this paper show a different picture: the aftermath of a train collision in Wenzhou in 2011, and an elaborate plan by a company to take out its competition – both utilizing social media. Structuration theory is used to analyse the types of agency, structures, and power negotiations that can be observed in both cases. The paper then reports a survey carried out with 499 participants on their perceptions of both cases, focusing on how trust propensity and types of information may shape their perceptions of media credibility. Results show that trust propensity was only significant in shaping perceptions of credibility for social media, but the types of information is significant in shaping perceptions of credibility for both mainstream and social media. Implications are drawn for media literacy as well as how civic actions function within China.
Airway management in two of newborns with Pierre Robin Sequence: the use of disposable vs multiple use LMA for fiberoptic intubation

In this article, we discuss the use of LMAs as a conduit to intubate the trachea of two Pierre Robin Sequence infants. Multiple use LMAs will admit larger diameter tracheal tubes (TT) than their disposable counterparts. Increased friction with the surface of the TT makes passing even small diameter tubes through the lumen of the disposable LMA difficult.
Regional Lung Function in Kyphoscoliosis 1

Young patients with idiopathic kyphoscoliosis are often symptom-free and remain so until middle age, when those with severe deformity may become breathless on exertion and develop respiratory or, less often, cardiac failure. Kyphoscoliosis is, by definition, primarily a disorder of the spine, but the consequent rotation of the thorax and the distortion of the trunk may be severe, especially if much lateral curvature is present. The result is to diminish the intrathoracic volume and distort its contents (Chapman, Dill. and Graybiel, 1939). Patients with kyphoscoliosis who are short of breath usually have rapid, shallow breathing which expends most of the tidal volume in the dead space and leaves some alveoli underventilated. The work and energy cost of breathing is high in the older patients because of the abnormally high elastic resistance of the chest
Biofilm formation in long‐term central venous catheters in children with cancer: a randomized controlled open‐labelled trial of taurolidine versus heparin

Taurolidine has demonstrated inhibition of biofilm formation in vitro. The aim of this study was to compare the effect of catheter locking with taurolidine vs heparin in biofilm formation in central venous catheters. Forty‐eight children with cancer were randomized to catheter locking by heparin (n = 22) or taurolidine (n = 26), respectively. After removal, catheters were examined by standardized scanning electron microscopy to assess quantitative biofilm formation. Biofilm was present if morphologically typical structures and bacterial cells were identified. Quantitative and semi‐quantitative cultures were also performed. Biofilm was identified in 23 of 26 catheters from the taurolidine group and 21 of 22 catheters from the heparin group. A positive culture was made of six of the catheters locked with taurolidine and heparin, respectively (p = 0.78). The rate of catheter‐related bloodstream infections (CRBSI) was 0.1 per 1000 catheter‐days using taurolidine and 0.9 per 1000 catheter‐days using heparin (p = 0.03). This randomized trial confirmed that the use of taurolidine as catheter‐lock compared with heparin reduced the rate of CRBSIs; this reduction was not related to a reduction in the intraluminal biofilm formation and the rate of bacterial colonization detected by scanning electron microscopy in the two groups.
Designing dedicated data compression for physics experiments within FPGA already used for data acquisition

Physics experiments produce enormous amount of raw data, counted in petabytes per day. Hence, there is large effort to reduce this amount, mainly by using some filters. The situation can be improved by additionally applying some data compression techniques: removing redundancy and optimally encoding the actual information. Preferably, both filtering and data compression should fit in FPGA already used for data acquisition - reducing requirements of both data storage and networking architecture. We will briefly explain and discuss some basic techniques, for a better focus applied to design a dedicated data compression system basing on a sample data from a prototype of a tracking detector: 10000 events for 48 channels. We will focus on the time data here, which after neglecting the headers and applying data filtering, requires on average 1170 bits/event using the current coding. Encoding relative times (differences) and grouping data by channels, reduces this number to 798 bits/channel, still using fixed length coding: a fixed number of bits used for a given value. Using variable length Huffman coding to encode numbers of digital pulses for a channel and the most significant bits of values (simple binning) reduces further this number to 552 bits/event. Using adaptive binning: denser for frequent values, and an accurate entropy coder we get further down to 455 bits/event - this option can easily fit unused resources of FPGA currently used for data acquisition. Finally, using separate probability distributions for different channels, what could be done by a software compressor, leads to 437bits/event, what is 2.67 times less than the original 1170 bits/event.
Exact Outage Performance Analysis of Multiuser Multi-relay Spectrum Sharing Cognitive Networks

In this paper, we investigate the outage per- formance of dual-hop multiuser multi-relay cognitive ra- dio networks under spectrum sharing constraints. Using an efficient relay-destination selection scheme, the exact and asymptotic closed-form expressions for the outage proba- bility are derived. From these expressions it is indicated that the achieved diversity order is only determined by the number of secondary user (SU) relays and destinations, and equals to M + N (where M and N are the number of desti- nation nodes and relay nodes, respectively). Further, we find that the coding gain of the SU network will be affected by the interference threshold ¯ I at the primary user (PU) receiver. Specifically, as the increases of the interference threshold, the coding gain of the considered network approaches to that of the multiuser multi-relay system in the non-cognitive net- work. Finally, our study is corroborated by representative numerical examples.