Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Global Analytics in the Face of Bandwidth and Regulatory Constraints

Global-scale organizations produce large volumes of data across geographically distributed data centers. Querying and analyzing such data as a whole introduces new research issues at the intersection of networks and databases. Today systems that compute SQL analytics over geographically distributed data operate by pulling all data to a central location. This is problematic at large data scales due to expensive transoceanic links, and may be rendered impossible by emerging regulatory constraints. The new problem of Wide-Area Big Data (WABD) consists in orchestrating query execution across data centers to minimize bandwidth while respecting regulatory constaints. WABD combines classical query planning with novel network-centric mechanisms designed for a wide-area setting such as pseudodistributed execution, joint query optimization, and deltas on cached subquery results. Our prototype, Geode, builds upon Hive and uses 250× less bandwidth than centralized analytics in a Microsoft production workload and up to 360× less on popular analytics benchmarks including TPC-CH and Berkeley Big Data. Geode supports all SQL operators, including Joins, across global data.
A New Sparse LSSVM Method Based the Revised LARS

Least squares support vector machine (LSSVM) has comparable performance with support vector machine (SVM) and it has been widely used for classification and regression problems. The solutions of LSSVM are obtained by solving linear equations, but it lack of sparseness, which result in that it is unable to handle large-scale data sets. The state-of-art method least angle regression (LARS) can obtain a sparse solution by solving the Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) problem. So we use the idea of the LARS to obtain the sparse solution of the LSSVM, i.e., RLARS-LSSVM is proposed, which is an efficient method. The feature of the method is to select the most important samples as support vectors iteratively and to remove the samples that are similar to the selected support vectors simultaneously. Experimental results show that the proposed method can obtain much higher test accuracy compared with other sparse LSSVM methods at the same number of support vectors.
The profiling of university of Ljubljana students according to their motives for exercise participation

Abstract Introduction The main research objective is the analysis of the grouping of the students of the University of Ljubljana, with respect to the intensity of different types of exercise participation motives, their gender, discipline and year of study, level of physical activity, status of physical education class, organization of physical activities during study, and place of residence. Methods Data were collected using personal data sheets during enrolling students at the University of Ljubljana. Students completed The Exercise Motivations Inventory (EMI-2), with additional data about sociodemographic parameters. Results The results reveal that the students could be grouped in three distinctive clusters, which can be very clearly explained in terms of the prevalence of exercise participation motives in general. The students grouped in the first cluster have the lowest average values (means) in all exercise participation motives. The students grouped in the second cluster have the profile with moderate means in all exercise participation motives, while the students grouped in the third cluster have the profile with the highest means in all exercise participation motives. Conclusions The results indicate overall higher motivation for physical activity in men. All the sub-samples are different in their relevant features used in clustering (e.g., male students are dominant in life sciences, etc.), which provide a guide both for the explanation of the results obtained and for practical implications.
Original Articles

This study was originally planned from September tenth through twelfth to assess concurrent use of three real-time data sources during a usual day. When the World Trade Center towers collapsed, the plan expanded to describe 24-hour blood pressure and heart rate, natural environment word use, television viewing/radio listening, and self-reported diary feelings for six undergraduate students in the midst of stressful upheaval. Heart rate, " we " word-use and television viewing/ radio listening increased over time. Higher negative and lower positive feelings/emotions occurred during morning hours on September 11. Students connected with others and shared good thoughts. Measurement with real-time data sources was informative. Center Towers collapsed after being struck by two commercial jetliners; it was a day of stress-ful upheaval for Americans. This article will report the real-time day of undergraduate students who shared with the researchers and data collectors a common ground of making sense of senselessness and creating meaning in the midst of upheaval on this day. A rigorous methodological approach, which was used to assess the real-time experience of the day, included concurrent use of three measurement devices. Implications of the coexistence of upheaval and social connection are considered, as is the potential of the real-time measurement devices used in the study.
Image Database Modeling

The performance of an indexing technique, namely, a system of feature extraction and similarity measure, is strongly related to the test bed in content-based image retrieval. A theoretical framework is proposed for image database modeling. The goal is to investigate the relationship between a given indexing technique and a given image database. As an analogy to the concept of perplexity of a text corpus, the complexity of an image database is introduced. This is a quantitative measure of the quality of an image database for the task of content access to the database. The complexity of an image database is an internal property of the database and can be used to distinguish the difficulty of different databases on which content access is to be performed. On the other hand, the measure can be used to compare the effectiveness of different indexing techniques with which content access is to be performed.
Biped robot push detection and recovery

This paper presents a balance control approach for a biped robot by regulating COM position with the help of proper foot placement in response to external perturbation. The proposed approach detects present postural and stability state of robot through sensory data from Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS) and foot force sensors; and in case of external push, recovers the balance and posture of the robot by foot placement in appropriate direction. The foot placement is carried out using one of the alternative or rescue trajectories already available in the memory of the robot. The rescue trajectories are developed for both sagittal and lateral plane and the strategy for switching from current trajectory to the rescue trajectory and then back to the normal trajectory is discussed in detail. The proposed balance recovery approach is then implemented on a biped robot and is experimentally verified.
An Historical Perspective to Examine How Federal Policy Influenced the Definition and Evaluation of Teacher Effectiveness Since 1950

Increased public demand to hold teachers accountable for student learning and to remove ineffective teachers has challenged state department of education officials to develop teacher evaluation systems that include student assessment data. Many educational researchers theorize teacher effectiveness is the variable under the control of the school with the most influence on student success. This study examines the influence of federal government education policies on state teacher evaluation systems and how this influence has shaped the definition and evaluation of an effective teacher over the past 62 years. Teacher evaluations, when used as a proper tool, assist administrators in providing appropriate professional development and aid in terminating ineffective teachers, which in turn benefits student learning and potentially increases student performance on state standardized and international assessments. Through the analysis of historical documents, within each decade from 1950 to 2012, we can better understand how the social, political, and economic structures and federal education policy of the United States influenced the definition and evaluation of teacher effectiveness at the state and local levels. State education agencies have not responded to public expressions of concern for what they perceived to be a failing education system by mandating effective evaluation systems. This research is a wakeup call for state policy makers to move forward in implementing teacher evaluation policy that will improve teacher effectiveness.
Head reduction and normalization in a call-by-value lambda-calculus

Recently, a standardization theorem has been proven for a variant of Plotkin's call-by-value lambda-calculus extended by means of two commutation rules (sigma-reductions): this result was based on a partitioning between head and internal reductions. We study the head normalization for this call-by-value calculus with sigma-reductions and we relate it to the weak evaluation of original Plotkin's call-by-value lambda-calculus. We give also a (non-deterministic) normalization strategy for the call-by-value lambda-calculus with sigma-reductions.
A TDMA-based mechanism to enforce real-time behavior in WiFi networks

In this paper, a TDMA-based mechanism is proposed for IEEE 802.11 Wireless LANs. This mechanism prioritizes real-time traffic in IEEE 802.11 networks, allowing the coexistence of standard stations with modified (real-time) stations in the same network domain. The worst-case timing analysis of the TDMA-based mechanism shows that the service interval is upper-bounded, even when the communication medium is shared with timing unconstrained stations.
A Precharge-Absorbed DPL Logic for Reducing Early Propagation Effects on FPGA Implementations

In this paper, a new countermeasure against power and electromagnetic (EM) Side Channel Attacks (SCA) on FPGA implemented cryptographic algorithms is proposed. This structure mainly focuses on a critical vulnerability, Early Evaluation, also known as Early Propagation Effect (EPE), which exists in most conventional SCA-hardened DPL (Dual-rail with Precharge Logic) solutions. The main merit of this proposal is that the EPE can be effectively prevented by using a synchronized non regular precharge network, which maintains identical routing between the original and mirror parts, where costs and design complexity compared with previous EPE-resistant countermeasures are reduced, while security level is not sacrificed. Another advantage for our Precharge Absorbed(PA) - DPL method is that its Dual-Core style (independent architecture for true and false parts) could be generated using partial reconfiguration. This helps to get a dynamic security protection with better energy planning. That means system only keeps the true part which fulfills the normal en/decryption task in low security level, and reconfigures the false parts once high security level is required. A relatively limited clock speed is a compromise, since signal propagation is restricted to a portion of the clock period. In this paper, we explain the principles of PA-DPL and provide the guidelines to design this structure. We experimentally validate our methods in a minimized AES co-processor on Xilinx Virtex-5 board using electromagnetic (EM) attacks.
A repository of MR morphometry data in Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment

This paper presents a novel, publicly available repository of anatomically segmented brain images of healthy subjects as well as patients with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. The underlying magnetic resonance images have been obtained from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative database. T1-weighted images (1.5 T and 3 T) have been processed with the multi-atlas based MAPER procedure, resulting in labels for 83 regions covering the whole brain in 816 subjects. Volumetric outliers were reviewed visually to identify limitations of the procedure and the segmentations. Morphometric comparisons between diagnostic groups showed highly significant group differences for a number of individual regions in the temporal lobe and parietal lobes. The segmentations are self-consistent, as evidenced by strong agreement between segmentations of paired images acquired at different field strengths (Jaccard coefficient: 0.802 ± 0.0146). This repository of segmentations is a potentially valuable resource to researchers working with ADNI data.
An Auditory Region in the Primate Insular Cortex Responding Preferentially to Vocal Communication Sounds

Human imaging studies implicate the insular cortex in processing complex sounds and vocal communication signals such as speech. In addition, lesions of the insula often manifest as deficits in sound or speech recognition (auditory agnosia) and speech production. While models of acoustic perception assign an important role to the insula, little is known about the underlying neuronal substrate. Studying a vocal primate, we identified a predominantly auditory region in the caudal insula and therein discovered a neural representation of conspecific communication sounds. When probed with natural sounds, insula neurons exhibited higher response selectivity than neurons in auditory cortex, and in contrast to these, responded preferentially to conspecific vocalizations. Importantly, insula neurons not only preferred conspecific vocalizations over a wide range of environmental sounds and other animal vocalizations, but also over acoustically manipulated versions of these, demonstrating that this preference for vocalizations arises both from spectral and temporal features of the sounds. In addition, individual insula neurons responded highly selectively to only a few vocalizations and allowed the decoding of sound identity from single-trial responses. These findings characterize the caudal insula as a selectively responding auditory region, possibly part of a processing stream involved in the representation of communication sounds. Importantly, our results provide a neural counterpart for the human imaging and lesion findings and uncover a basis for a supposed role of the insula in processing vocal communication sounds such as speech.
Congenital Cerebral Palsy, Child Sex and Parent Cardiovascular Risk

Objective Genes associated with cardiovascular disease may also be risk factors for congenital cerebral palsy (CP) and these associations may be modified by sex, since there is an increased risk of CP in male children. We investigated the association between CP of the child with cardiovascular disease in parents, taking sex of the child into consideration. Methods All parents of non-adopted singletons born in Denmark between 1973 and 2003 were included. Parents of a child with CP, confirmed by the Danish National CP registry, were considered exposed. Cox proportional hazards regressions were used to model risk of cardiovascular outcomes for exposed parents compared to all other parents beginning at the child’s 10th birthday. Results We identified 733,730 mothers and 666,652 fathers among whom 1,592 and 1,484, respectively, had a child with CP. The mean age for mothers at end of follow up was 50±8 years. After adjustment for maternal age, parental education, child’s sex, child’s residence, child being small for gestational age and maternal hypertensive disorder during pregnancy, mothers of CP male children had an excess risk of cardiovascular disease (HR: 1.52, 95% CI: 1.16-2.00), attributable mostly to an increased incidence of hypertension and cerebrovascular disease. After additional adjustment for preterm birth, the association was markedly attenuated for cardiovascular disease (1.34, 95%CI: 1.02 - 1.76), became nonsignificant for hypertension, but remained significant for cerebrovascular disease (HR: 2.73, 95% CI: 1.45- 5.12). There was no increased risk of cardiovascular events in mothers of female CP children, or fathers of CP children of any sex. Conclusions Women that have a male child with CP are at increased risk for premature cardiovascular disease. Part of this association may be related to risk factors for preterm births.
The Economic Progress of Maori Men 1986-1996

Data for the Census years 1986, 1991 and 1996 show that Maori/non-Maori differences in employment and unemployment rates increased over the ten-year period. In search for a possible explanation, multinomial log it models are estimated with unit record data in order to control for changes in socio-economic and demographic factors such as age, qualification, and family and parental situation. The analysis shows that the Maori/non-Maori differences in employment (unemployment) that are explained by the multinomial logit models decreased from 51% (43%) in 1986 to 38% (34%) in 1996. Two potential contributors for declining relative labour market outcomes of Maori men are identified: increasing returns to skills and changes in the sectorial composition of the workforce.
Barchan‐parabolic dune pattern transition from vegetation stability threshold

Many dune fields exhibit a downwind transition from forward‐pointing barchan dunes to stabilized, backward‐pointing parabolic dunes, accompanied by an increase in vegetation. A recent model predicts this pattern transition occurs when dune surface erosion/deposition rates decrease below a threshold of half the vegetation growth rate. We provide a direct test using a unique data set of repeat topographic surveys across White Sands Dune Field and find strong quantitative support for the model threshold. We also show the threshold hypothesis applied to a barchan dune results naturally in its curvature inversion, as the point of threshold crossing progresses from the horns to the crest. This simple, general threshold framework can be an extremely useful tool for predicting the response of dune landscapes to changes in wind speed, sediment supply, or vegetation growth rate. Near the threshold, a small environmental change could result in a drastic change in dune pattern and activity.
Comparison of parallel algorithms for path expression query in object database systems

Proposes a new parallel algorithm for computing path expressions, named the "parallel cascade semi-join" (PCSJ) algorithm. Moreover, a new scheduling strategy called the "right-deep zigzag tree" is designed to further improve the performance of the PCSJ algorithm. The experiments have been implemented in a distributed and parallel NOW (network of workstations) environment. The results show that the PCSJ algorithm outperforms two other parallel algorithms [the parallel forward pointer chasing (PFPC) algorithm and the index-splitting parallel algorithm (IndexSplit)] when computing path expressions with restrictive predicates, and that the right-deep zigzag tree scheduling strategy has a better performance than the right-deep tree scheduling strategy.
Accelerated retinal ganglion cell death in mice deficient in the Sigma-1 receptor

Purpose The sigma-1 receptor (σR1), a ligand-operated chaperone, has been inferred to be neuroprotective in previous studies using σR1 ligands. The σR1 specificity of the protective function, however, has yet to be firmly established, due to the existence of non-σR1 targets of the ligands. Here, we used the σR1-knockout mouse (Sigmar1−/−) to demonstrate unambiguously the role of the σR1 in protecting the retinal ganglion cells against degeneration after acute damage to the optic nerve. Methods Retinal σR binding sites were labeled with radioiodinated σR ligands and analyzed by autoradiography. Localization of the σR1 was performed by indirect immunofluorescence on frozen retinal sections. Retinal ganglion cell death was induced by acute optic nerve crush in wild-type and Sigmar1−/− mice. Surviving cells in the ganglion cell layer were counted on Nissl-stained retinal whole mounts 7 days after the crush surgery. Results Photoaffinity labeling indicated the presence of the σR1 in the retina, in concentrations equivalent to those in liver tissue. Immunolabeling detected this receptor in cells of both the ganglion cell layer and the photoreceptor cell layer in wild-type retinas. Quantification of cells remaining after optic nerve crush showed that 86.8±7.9% cells remained in the wild-type ganglion cell layer, but only 68.3±3.4% survived in the Sigmar1−/−, demonstrating a significant difference between the wild-type and the Sigmar1−/− in crush-induced ganglion cell loss. Conclusions Our data indicated faster retinal ganglion cell death in Sigmar1−/− than in wild-type mice under the stresses caused by optic nerve crush, providing direct evidence for a role of the σR1 in alleviating retinal degeneration. This conclusion is consistent with the previous pharmacological studies using σR1 agonists. Thus, our study supports the idea that the σR1 is a promising therapeutic target for neurodegenerative retinal diseases, such as glaucoma.
CONJOINT ANALYSIS MODELLING OF STATED PREFERENCES

Reviews the state-of-the-art in the conjoint analysis paradigm for stated preference research. Communalities and deferences among different conjoint analysis techniques are discussed, including the assumptions required to use the techniques and to simulate individuals choices. The discussion is organized around rating, ranking and discrete response methods of collecting conjoint data. Recent advances in conjoint analysis are discussed, and particular attention is given to the design and analysis of discrete choice experiments. Limitations and problems in the use of conjoint techniques are outlined, and suggestions are made about directions for future research.
A Collisional Family in the Classical Kuiper Belt

The dynamical evolution of classical Kuiper belt objects (CKBOs) is divided into two parts, according to the secular theory of test particle orbits. The first part is a forced oscillation driven by the planets, while the second part is a free oscillation whose amplitude is determined by the initial orbit of the test particle. We extract the free orbital inclinations and free orbital eccentricities from the osculating elements of 125 known CKBOs. The free inclinations of 32 CKBOs strongly cluster about 2° at orbital semimajor axes between 44 and 45 AU. We propose that these objects comprise a collisional family, the first so identified in the Kuiper belt. Members of this family are plausibly the fragments of an ancient parent body having a minimum diameter of ~800 km. This body was disrupted upon colliding with a comparably sized object and generated ejecta having similar free inclinations. Our candidate family is dynamically akin to a subfamily of Koronis asteroids located at semimajor axes less than 2.91 AU; both families exhibit a wider range in free eccentricity than in free inclination, implying that the relative velocity between parent and projectile prior to impact lay mostly in the invariable plane of the solar system. We urge more discoveries of new CKBOs, to test the reality of our candidate family, and more physical studies of candidate family members, to probe the heretofore unseen interior of a massive, primitive planetesimal.