Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mining Bitcoins using a Heterogeneous Computer Architecture

Recent years have seen the emergence of a new class of currencies, called cryptocurrencies. These currencies use cryptography to provide security and peer-topeer networking to provide a decentralized system. Bitcoin is the most popular of these currencies. It uses a two-pass SHA-256 hash at its core. Producing new bitcoins is done through a process referred to as “mining”, which involves a brute-force search for a hash with a specific value. This process requires large amounts of computing power. Current-generation hardware for bitcoin mining includes highly-optimized ASIC chips which provide huge amounts of performance. However, designers of such chips are having problems with delivering enough power and cooling to the chips. To alleviate this problem, this thesis looks at the possibilities of using heterogeneous computing to reduce power consumption and produce a more energy-efficient mining solution. A SHA-256 accelerator and a DMA module is developed and integrated into a tile for the Single-ISA Heterogeneous MAny-core Computer, SHMAC, and a system with multiple cores is used to exploit the thread-level parallelism provided by the platform. The system is tested using a benchmark to find out what performance and energy efficiency can be expected when using the system for bitcoin mining. The results show a maximum performance of 175,7 kH/s when running the benchmark application on 14 cores using the SHA-256 accelerator and the DMA module. The best energy efficiency was obtained when running on 14 cores without the DMA enabled, at 163,2 kH/J. The results does not compare well to specialized FPGA-based bitcoin miners, but demonstrates the SHMAC platform’s large degree of thread-level parallelism which can be better exploited in other applications.
Channel estimation and adaptive transmission in variable symbol rate systems

We propose a channel estimation and adaptive transmission algorithm for single carrier frequency domain equalization (SC-FDE) systems with variable symbol rate. In this algorithm, signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) after equalization is estimated and adaptive transmission strategy is designed. A step rate adjusting method is proposed to satisfy the bandwidth variance due to the variable symbol rate. Simulation results show that this algorithm can increase the channel capacity in multipath channel. Keywords-SC-FDE; variable sysbol rate; Channel Estimation; adaptive transmission
Inhibition of 5‐HT1A receptor‐dependent cell survival by cAMP/protein kinase A: Role of protein phosphatase 2A and Bax

Serotonergic 5‐HT1A receptor signaling leading to nuclear factor‐κB (NF‐κB) activation appears to be critical for cell survival. Adenylyl cyclase and protein kinase A (AC/PKA) are effectors of the 5‐HT1A receptor that are inhibited by Gαi subunits. Conversely, Gβγi subunits downstream from the 5‐HT1A receptor participate in the activation of extracellular signal‐regulated kinases (ERK1/2), phosphatidylinositol 3‐kinase (PI3K), Akt, and NF‐κB. To model the contribution of pro‐ and antiapoptotic signaling cascades downstream of activated 5‐HT1A receptor in cell survival, Chinese hamster ovarian (CHO) cells were employed that exogenously overexpress 5‐HT1A receptors. Stimulation with the 5‐HT1A receptor agonist 8‐OH‐DPAT and pharmacological agonists of AC induced PKA and protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) activity, which in turn inhibited: Akt activity, IκBα degradation, nuclear translocation of NF‐κB, and expression of X‐linked inhibitor of apoptosis protein (XIAP/BIRC4). Pharmacological inhibition of PP2A with calyculin A potentiated Akt activity while attenuating ERK1/2 signaling via increased inhibitory phosphorylation of Raf (pSer259). In contrast, increased cAMP levels enhanced Bax translocation to the mitochondria, resulting in the release of cytochrome c, caspase‐3 activation, and apoptosis induction. Our data suggest a central role of cAMP/PKA‐dependent PP2A in shifting the homeostasis of intracellular signaling downstream of activated 5‐HT1A receptor toward cell death in biological systems linked to neuropsychiatric disorders. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Desarrollo y validación de un instrumento para la evaluación de distorsiones cognitivas en pacientes con insuficiencia renal crónica terminal

SUMMARY Background Psychological disturbances are common in patients with chronic renal failure (CRF). From the cognitive-behavioral theoretical perspective, they may be due largely to specific cognitive distortions (CD) that are likely to be modified by brief interventions. The aim of this study was to develop and validate an instrument for evaluation of specific CD among patients with CRF. Method A questionnaire with an encouraging phrase for each of five categories of CD (catastrophizing, dichotomous thinking, outside self-worth, negative self-labeling, and perfectionism) was developed. This was applied to 21 patients with CRF (11 women and 10 men). Based on the technique of natural semantic networks, a set of responses (defining words) with greater semantic weight to each sentence stimulus (core network) were identified and a pilot instrument was developed.
Shotgun Label-free Proteomic Analysis of Clubroot (Plasmodiophora brassicae) Resistance Conferred by the Gene Rcr1 in Brassica rapa

Clubroot, caused by the plasmodiophorid pathogen Plasmodiophora brassicae, is one of the most serious diseases on Brassica crops worldwide and a major threat to canola production in western Canada. Host resistance is the key strategy for clubroot management on canola. Several clubroot resistance (CR) genes have been identified, but the mechanisms associated with these CR genes are poorly understood. In the current study, a label-free shotgun proteomic approach was used to profile and compare the proteomes of Brassica rapa carrying and not carrying the CR gene Rcr1 in response to P. brassicae infection. A total of 527 differentially accumulated proteins (DAPs) were identified between the resistant (with Rcr1) and susceptible (without Rcr1) samples, and functional annotation of these DAPs indicates that the perception of P. brassicae and activation of defense responses are triggered via an unique signaling pathway distinct from common modes of recognition receptors reported with many other plant–pathogen interactions; this pathway appears to act in a calcium-independent manner through a not-well-defined cascade of mitogen-activated protein kinases and may require the ubiquitin-26S proteasome found to be related to abiotic stresses, especially the cold-stress tolerance in other studies. Both up-regulation of defense-related and down-regulation of pathogenicity-related metabolism was observed in plants carrying Rcr1, and these functions may all contribute to the CR mediated by Rcr1. These results, combined with those of transcriptomic analysis reported earlier, improved our understanding of molecular mechanisms associated with Rcr1 and CR at large, and identified candidate metabolites or pathways related to specific resistance mechanisms. Deploying CR genes with different modes of action may help improve the durability of CR.
Musculoskeletal Pain, Fear Avoidance Behaviors, and Functional Decline in Obesity: Potential Interventions to Manage Pain and Maintain Function

Abstract Individuals with musculoskeletal pain exhibit abnormal movement patterns, including antalgic gait, postural dysfunction, increased thoracolumbar stiffness, decreased proprioception, and altered activation of abdominal and extensor muscles. Additionally, aberrant or increased biomechanical forces over time produce joint or structural damage that results in pain. A large body habitus resulting from excessive weight can accelerate these musculoskeletal complaints. Irrespective of age, obesity contributes to chronic musculoskeletal pain, impairment of mobility, and eventual physical disability. Potential mechanisms that may mediate the relationships between obesity-related pain and functional decline include skeletal muscle strength deterioration, systemic inflammation, and psychosocial characteristics (eg, pain catastrophizing, kinesiophobia, and depression). Treatment considerations for obese patients with musculoskeletal pain include assessment of kinesiophobia levels, biomechanical analysis, and pain medication use. Ideally, a multidisciplinary team of physicians, psychologists, and physical therapists should optimize the design of interventions specific to the patient. In some cases, the use of appropriate pain medications or intra-articular injectable agents may help control pain, fostering sustained activity, caloric expenditure, and weight loss. Morbid obesity is a medical condition that alters biomechanical forces on the tissues of the body. This condition provides the opportunity to examine accelerated development of musculoskeletal pain syndromes and etiology. The proposed therapeutic interventions can have multiple benefits in the obese population including weight loss, improved psychological outlook and self-efficacy, reduced kinesiophobia levels, reduced risk of functional dependence, and improved quality of life.
Vocal Acoustic and Facial Action Features in Cross-cultural Emotion Expression

1. Abstract A cross-cultural emotion perception experiment was conducted using vocal-facial emotional stimuli with the seven emotions generated by two Chinese and two Japanese speakers. Forty Chinese and forty Japanese subjects were requested to rate the emotion states, facial action and speech acoustic features of each stimulus. Results of MDS and regression analysis showed that consistent perceptual patterns exist in the two cultural backgrounds for video-only and audio-only stimuli. For both Japanese and Chinese, the subjects could capture more information in both acoustic and facial features from the native materials than from non-native materials even if the materials sans linguistic information. Language learning effects were observed in the cross-language perception, that is, the perceptual results of language learners were suited between the non-language learners and the native speakers. Japanese show more confidence to identify vocal acoustic features i.e. giving higher rating scores, while Chinese exhibit more confidence to identify facial action features.
Viral Subversion of the Nuclear Pore Complex

The nuclear pore complex (NPC) acts as a selective barrier between the nucleus and the cytoplasm and is responsible for mediating communication by regulating the transport of RNA and proteins. Numerous viral pathogens have evolved different mechanisms to hijack the NPC in order to regulate trafficking of viral proteins, genomes and even capsids into and out of the nucleus thus promoting virus replication. The present review examines the different strategies and the specific nucleoporins utilized during viral infections as a means of promoting their life cycle and inhibiting host viral defenses.
Validity Study Personality Predictors of Firefighter Job Performance and Job Satisfaction

We investigated the relationship between the 16PF, Job in General Scale, and supervisor ratings of firefighter performance. Participants in this study were 31 members of a fire department in central Wisconsin. Results indicated that the Independence scale was significantly related to job satisfaction (r = - .40) and the Tough-Mindedness scale was significantly related to supervisor ratings of job performance (r = .39). Job satisfaction and job performance correlated . 31.
Some Empirical Results about the Nature of Concepts

Some Empirical Results About The Nature Of Concepts George Lakoﬂ' University of California at Berkeley It is diﬂicult to write anything short about concepts once one has written a 600—page book on the subject (Lakoli, 1987). What I will try to do is try to set down as brieﬂy and succinctly as possible some of the basics of what has been learned from empirical studies in the various cog- nitive sciences. But before getting on to a substantive discussion, it should be noted that there are important negative results: —Concepts do not ‘mirror nature’; they are not mere internal representa- tions of external reality. —-Concepts are, for the most part, not deﬁned by necessary and sufficient conditions. — Natural kind concepts constitute an interesting special case: Biological natural kind concepts do not refer to sets of biological entities in the
A comparison of four methods for detecting weak genetic structure from marker data

Genetic structure is ubiquitous in wild populations and is the result of the processes of natural selection, genetic drift, mutation, and gene flow. Genetic drift and divergent selection promotes the generation of genetic structure, while gene flow homogenizes the subpopulations. The ability to detect genetic structure from marker data diminishes rapidly with a decreasing level of differentiation among subpopulations. Weak genetic structure may be unimportant over evolutionary time scales but could have important implications in ecology and conservation biology. In this paper we examine methods for detecting and quantifying weak genetic structures using simulated data. We simulated populations consisting of two putative subpopulations evolving for up to 50 generations with varying degrees of gene flow (migration), and varying amounts of information (allelic diversity). There are a number of techniques available to detect and quantify genetic structure but here we concentrate on four methods: FST, population assignment, relatedness, and sibship assignment. Under the simple mating system simulated here, the four methods produce qualitatively similar results. However, the assignment method performed relatively poorly when genetic structure was weak and we therefore caution against using this method when the analytical aim is to detect fine-scale patterns. Further work should examine situations with different mating systems, for example where a few individuals dominate reproductive output of the population. This study will help workers to design their experiments (e.g., sample sizes of markers and individuals), and to decide which methods are likely to be most appropriate for their particular data.
The Future of Invention: Rhetoric, Postmodernism, and the Problem of Change, by John Muckelbauer

‘‘charisma’’ need not be viewed as outside the purview of the study of public argument. For example, a rhetorical account of how charisma works at all ought not be composed of statements that strategies generate charisma. Rather, such an account may comprise the practical reasoning that explains why such strategies may be expected to work. In short, scholars need not and ought not dismiss reasoning in all its guises in studies of the history of rhetoric.
The myth of Kurt Lewin and the rhetoric of collective memory in social psychology textbooks

This article examines how social psychology textbooks represent Kurt Lewin and his contribution to social psychology. Many textbooks describe Lewin as the father of social psychology, using a conventional, passive-voiced trope to do so. The rhetorical meaning of this trope is analysed to show that textbooks are invoking a collective memory, which closes down views of the past, rather than making a historical argument, which opens up the past for examination. This depiction of Lewin typically involves forgetting his critical views about statistics and experimentation. When textbooks cite Lewin’s famous motto “there is nothing as practical as a good theory,” they tend to ascribe it a special status. In doing so, they change its meaning subtly and treat it as a truth that needs no empirical validation. By their rhetoric, omissions, and avoidance of historical sources, textbooks recreate Lewin as a mythic figure rather than a historical one.
The Alcohol Abstinence Self-Efficacy Scale

This study describes the development and the initial psychometric properties of a 20-item, self-report measure to assess Bandura's construct of self-efficacy applied to alcohol abstinence. Efficacy expectations are theorized to mediate behavior change and moderate effort and effective action. The sample was 174 male and 92 female subjects who came to an outpatient alcoholism treatment clinic. Abstinence efficacy was assessed with subject ratings on a 5-point Likert scale of confidence to abstain from alcohol across 20 different high-risk situations. A parallel set of items assessed subjects' temptation to drink in each situation. This Alcohol Abstinence Self-Efficacy scale (AASE) demonstrated a solid subscale structure and strong indices of reliability and validity. The four 5-item subscales measured types of relapse precipitants labeled negative affect, social positive, physical and other concerns, and withdrawal and urges. Both in structure and mean scores the AASE demonstrated no substantive gender dif.
A Fault-tolerant 32 nm CMOS Double Sideband Amplitude Suppressed Carrier Modulator-Demodulator Circuit Implementation

This paper presents a low-voltage, low-power and faulttolerant implementation of Double Sideband Suppressed Carrier (DSB-SC) amplitude modulator-demodulator circuit for portable communication systems. Through the approximation proposed in this work, a CMOS four quadrant multiplier is used as a (de)modulator circuit to generate DSB-SC (de)modulated signals. Furthermore, the proposed fault-tolerant modem can be used to enhance the reliability of safety-critical communication systems since it is able to provide duplicated output using two path output computations. The proposed circuit occupies a small surface area and is functional at high frequencies even with a low supply voltage. SPICE simulations of the post-layout extracted CMOS multiplier in a full-custom 32 nm CMOS technology, which include all parasitic, are used to demonstrate the electrical behavior of the circuit.
OpenEssayist: extractive summarisation and formative assessment of free−text essays.

OpenEssayist is a system which is currently under development. It aims to provide an effective automated interactive feedback system that yields an acceptable level of support for university students writing summative essays. The principal natural language processing technique currently employed is extractive summarisation using graph-based ranking algorithms. OpenEssayist will be piloted in September 2013 with Open University UK students following a Master’s course of study.
Acoustic context recognition for mobile devices using a reduced complexity SVM

Automatic context recognition enables mobile devices to react to changes in the environment and different situations. While many different sensors can be used for context recognition, the use of acoustic cues is among the most popular and successful. Current approaches to acoustic context recognition (ACR) are too costly in terms of computation and memory requirements to support an always-listening mode. This paper describes our work to develop a reduced complexity, efficient approach to ACR involving support vector machine classifiers. The principal hypothesis is that a significant fraction of training data contains information redundant to classification. Through clustering, training data can thus be selectively decimated in order to reduce the number of support vectors needed to represent discriminative hyperplanes. This represents a significant saving in terms of computational and memory efficiency, with only modest degradations in classification accuracy.
A Reflexive Interrogation: Talking Out Loud and Finding Spaces for Works of Public Good

Over a year, we engaged in an ongoing dialogue about what it means to be a professor and how we might do a better job of making the public contributions of our work more explicit. Throughout our dialogue, we continually discussed how we, as faculty members, must always work within the institutional constraints that allow the professoriate to exist in the first place. This conceptual essay, which is anchored by a critical theoretical perspective, is poised to make a contribution to the scholarship on faculty careers, professorial understandings of the public good, as well as the practice of faculty evaluation.
Preprocessing Code Example For Searching

Students who start learning to program often find it difficult to acquire programming concepts. Among all teaching materials, code example is favoured most by both teachers and students. A number of code examples can be found in on-line resources, such as TutorialsPoint and W3School, however, there is not much work on standardising good code examples. This paper proposed a process to prepare good code example for searching. First, we will define characteristics for good code example, followed by a set of preprocessing methods for extracting and processing these characteristics for searching. To evaluate the perceived usefulness of the extracted and processed characteristics for searching, we devised a questionnaire to evaluate the perceived usefulness of the extracted and processed characteristics that will be used in the development of the code example search engine. The positive outcome of this preliminary work enabled us to start work on the code example search system to be used by novice programmers to learn programming.
Efficient collection of big data in WSN

The volume of data is increasing explosively in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) due to development in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Therefore the traditional communication techniques are facing challenges to deal with such huge amount of data. The explosion of data included in application areas of monitoring systems, smart home systems, centralized computing resources etc. The large amount of data which is unable to process with conventional communication techniques is called as Big data. This Big data is having high volume, high velocity and high variety information. This paper proposes method for efficient collection of big data in WSN.
Optogenetic stimulation of astrocytes in the posterior hypothalamus increases sleep at night in C57BL/6J mice

A distributed network of neurons regulates wake, non‐rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, and REM sleep. However, there are also glia in the brain, and there is growing evidence that neurons and astroglia communicate intimately to regulate behaviour. To identify the effect of optogenetic stimulation of astrocytes on sleep, the promoter for the astrocyte‐specific cytoskeletal protein, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) was used to direct the expression of channelrhodopsin‐2 (ChR2) and the linked reporter gene, enhanced yellow fluorescent protein (EYFP), in astrocytes. rAAV‐GFAP‐ChR2 (H134R)‐EYFP or rAAV‐GFAP‐EYFP was microinjected (750 nL) into the posterior hypothalamus (bilateral) of mice. Three weeks later baseline sleep was recorded (0 Hz) and 24 h later optogenetic stimulation applied during the first 6 h of the lights‐off period. Mice with ChR2 were given 5, 10 or 30 Hz stimulation for 6 h (10‐ms pulses; 1 mW; 1 min on 4 min off). At least 36 h elapsed between the stimulation periods (5, 10, 30 Hz) and although 0 Hz was always first, the order of the other three stimulation rates was randomised. In mice with ChR2 (n = 7), 10 Hz, but not 5 or 30 Hz stimulation increased both NREM and REM sleep during the 6‐h period of stimulation. Delta power did not increase. In control mice (no ChR2; n = 5), 10 Hz stimulation had no effect. This study demonstrates that direct stimulation of astrocytes powerfully induces sleep during the active phase of the sleep–wake cycle and underlines the inclusion of astrocytes in network models of sleep–wake regulation.