Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comprehensive Investigations on QUEST: a Novel QoS-Enhanced Stochastic Packet Scheduler for Intelligent LTE Routers

In this paper we propose a QoS-enhanced intelligent stochastic optimal fair real-time packet scheduler, QUEST, for 4G LTE traffic in routers. The objective of this research is to maximize the system QoS subject to the constraint that the processor utilization is kept nearly at 100 percent. The QUEST has following unique advantages. First, it solves the challenging problem of starvation for low priority process - buffered streaming video and TCP based; second, it solves the major bottleneck of the scheduler Earliest Deadline First’s failure at heavy loads. Finally, QUEST offers the benefit of arbitrarily pre-programming the process utilization ratio.Three classes of multimedia 4G LTE QCI traffic, conversational voice, live streaming video, buffered streaming video and TCP based applications have been considered. We analyse two most important QoS metrics, packet loss rate (PLR) and mean waiting time. All claims are supported by discrete event and Monte Carlo simulations. The simulation results show that the QUEST scheduler outperforms current state-of-the-art benchmark schedulers. The proposed scheduler offers 37 percent improvement in PLR and 23 percent improvement in mean waiting time over the best competing current scheduler Accuracy-aware EDF.
Effect of leukocyte-reduced platelet-rich plasma on osteoarthritis caused by cranial cruciate ligament rupture: A canine gait analysis model

The goal of this study was to objectively assess the effect of a platelet-rich plasma (PRP) derivate in English bulldogs with stifle degenerative joint disease secondary to cranial cruciate ligament rupture (CCLR). We used a force platform and affixed electrogoniometers to measure peak vertical force (PVF), vertical impulse (VI), stance time (ST), and angular range of motion (AROM), from 12 lame client-owned English bulldogs with post-CCLR stifle joint abnormalities. The 12 affected subjects were treated with 4 intra-articular injections of PRP, at 30-day intervals. Ten untreated, sound English bulldogs were used as a reference group. Clinical outcomes were evaluated using a linear mixed effects model. Mean values of PVF, VI, ST, and AROM were improved within the first 3 months post-treatment in the CCLR group, with mean measured changes increasing to maximum 4.56% body weight gain, 1.5% body weight/second, 0.07 seconds, and 6.18 degrees, respectively. The effects declined progressively after the treatment interval, ending at nearly initial levels after 6 months. This study demonstrates that dogs with CCLR treated with intra-articular PRP had improved PVF, VI, ST, and AROM over time; the duration of effect was waning by the end of the post-treatment period.
Theoretical Analysis of the Ductility, Porosity, Hardness and Density in Aluminum–Magnesium alloys with Titanium

Bu calismada, kum dokum yontemiyle uretilen aluminyum-magnezyum-titanyum alasimlarinin suneklik, porozite, sertlik ve yogunluk degerlerine magnezyum ve titanium elementlerinin etkileri cok katmanli yapay sinir aglari yaklasimi kullanilarak arastirilmistir. Onerilen modelin guvenirligi ve performansi iliskilendirme modeli kullanilarak kontrol edilmis ve butun cikis degerlerinin liner korelasyonunun %90’dan daha buyuk oldugu gorulmustur. Sertlik ve porozite olusumunda magnezyumun, suneklik degerinde ise aluminyumun daha buyuk etkiye sahip oldugu tespit edilmistir
Lagarto I - Una plataforma hardware/software de arquitectura de computadoras para la academia e investigación

The design of Microprocessors Computer Architectures remains as a fundamental course in Computer Science and Computer Engineering. The technology and organization inside microprocessors have changed quite fast in the last twenty years. That change has increased the information handled in class, difficulting the teaching/learning process among students. Although there are tools, mainly simulators, available to exemplify abstract concepts during the course, these tools have not come along with the technology. The computer architecture group of the Centro de Investigaci\'on en Computaci\'on at the IPN Mexico is working on a project called Lagarto to create an open computing platform for research and education to simplify the understanding of fundamental concepts involved in computer architecture and operating systems. This paper introduces Lagarto, our soft-core-processor micro-architecture. It has a scalar pipeline structure and executes a full MIPS 32 R6 ISA [9] [10] and includes an MMU to support modern Operative Systems. The complete design has been described using Verilog HDL and is fully synthesizable in an FPGA. Additionally, this work shows different ways to use and test the microprocessor with codes written in either assembly language or C language. We show that the Lagarto project allows students to incorporate during the course not only the traditional model of visualizing theoretical knowledge in a practical exercise through simulators but also integrate into the teaching process the RTL design to build the Microprocessor Architecture.
Encouraging intrinsic motivation in the clinical setting: teachers' perspectives from the self-determination theory.

INTRODUCTION Self-determination theory postulates that the three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness have to be satisfied for students to achieve intrinsic motivation and internalisation of autonomous self-regulation towards academic activities. Consequently, the influence of the clinical teaching environment becomes crucial when satisfying these needs, particularly when promoting or diminishing students' intrinsic motivation. The aim of this study was to describe and understand how clinical teachers encourage intrinsic motivation in undergraduate dental students based on the three basic psychological needs described by the self-determination theory. METHODS A qualitative case study approach was adopted, and data were collected through semistructured interviews with nine experienced undergraduate clinical teachers of one dental school in Santiago, Chile. Interview transcripts were analysed by two independent reviewers using a general inductive approach. FINDINGS Several themes emerged outlining teaching strategies and behaviours. These themes included the control of external motivators; gradual transference of responsibility; identification and encouragement of personal interests; timely and constructive feedback; delivery of a vicarious learning experience; teamwork, team discussion, and presence of a safe environment, amongst others. Overall, teachers stressed the relevance of empowering, supporting and building a horizontal relationship with students. CONCLUSIONS Our findings regarding dental education expand on the research outcomes from other health professions about how teachers may support students to internalise behaviours. An autonomy-supportive environment may lead students to value and engage in academic activities and eventually foster the use of an autonomy-supportive style to motivate their patients.
Unveiling Distribution Patterns of Freshwater Phytoplankton by a Next Generation Sequencing Based Approach

The recognition and discrimination of phytoplankton species is one of the foundations of freshwater biodiversity research and environmental monitoring. This step is frequently a bottleneck in the analytical chain from sampling to data analysis and subsequent environmental status evaluation. Here we present phytoplankton diversity data from 49 lakes including three seasonal surveys assessed by next generation sequencing (NGS) of 16S ribosomal RNA chloroplast and cyanobacterial gene amplicons and also compare part of these datasets with identification based on morphology. Direct comparison of NGS to microscopic data from three time-series showed that NGS was able to capture the seasonality in phytoplankton succession as observed by microscopy. Still, the PCR-based approach was only semi-quantitative, and detailed NGS and microscopy taxa lists had only low taxonomic correspondence. This is probably due to, both, methodological constraints and current discrepancies in taxonomic frameworks. Discrepancies included Euglenophyta and Heterokonta that were scarce in the NGS but frequently detected by microscopy and Cyanobacteria that were in general more abundant and classified with high resolution by NGS. A deep-branching taxonomically unclassified cluster was frequently detected by NGS but could not be linked to any group identified by microscopy. NGS derived phytoplankton composition differed significantly among lakes with different trophic status, showing that our approach can resolve phytoplankton communities at a level relevant for ecosystem management. The high reproducibility and potential for standardization and parallelization makes our NGS approach an excellent candidate for simultaneous monitoring of prokaryotic and eukaryotic phytoplankton in inland waters.
Additional Supplementary Support of a Short Implant for the Distal Cantilever Partial Prosthesis

Backgrounds. The placement of dental implants is restricted by various anatomic limitations such as an insufficient residual ridge height. Cantilever extensions in implant-supported prosthetic partial dentures may result in unfavorable loading on the abutment fixtures. Adjunct support of the distal cantilever partial denture by a short implant at distal extension area may reduce the overloading on the dental abutment implants. Purpose. To examine the stress distribution on an additional short implant at different location of a distal cantilever prosthesis. Material and methods. Two 10 mm and one 6mm titanium rods resemble the regular osseointegrated dental implant were embedded in the resin block. The short 6mm titanium rod was used to support the distal cantilever extension of the prosthesis. Three different distances between the regular and short titanium rods (10, 16, 22 mm) were established and were tested the strain around all the titanium rods when 400N loading force directly applied on the titanium rod at presumed first molar position. Results. Introducing an adjunct short implant to support the cantilever segment of a prosthesis can significantly reduce the strain around all implants (P＜0.05). When the short implant was placed at 22mm distal to the distal regular implant, the applied force can be even distributed. Conclusion. Assisting support a short implant at distal extension area can reduce the unfavorable cantilever effect on the cantilever prosthesis.
Combining crossing-based and paper-based interaction paradigms for dragging and dropping between overlapping windows

Despite novel interaction techniques proposed for virtual desktops, common yet challenging tasks remain to be investigated. Dragging and dropping between overlapping windows is one of them. The fold-and-drop technique presented here offers a natural and efficient way of performing those tasks. We show how this technique successfully builds upon several interaction paradigms previously described, while shedding new light on them.
Neural correlates of cognitive and affective processing in maltreated youth with posttraumatic stress symptoms: Does gender matter?

Abstract We investigated the relationship of gender to cognitive and affective processing in maltreated youth with posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Maltreated (N = 29, 13 females, 16 males) and nonmaltreated participants (N = 45, 26 females, 19 males) performed an emotional oddball task that involved detection of targets with fear or scrambled face distractors. Results were moderated by gender. During the executive component of this task, left precuneus/posterior middle cingulate hypoactivation to fear versus calm or scrambled face targets were seen in maltreated versus control males and may represent dysfunction and less resilience in attentional networks. Maltreated males also showed decreased activation in the inferior frontal gyrus compared to control males. No differences were found in females. Posterior cingulate activations positively correlated with posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. While viewing fear faces, maltreated females exhibited decreased activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and cerebellum I–VI, whereas maltreated males exhibited increased activity in the left hippocampus, fusiform cortex, right cerebellar crus I, and visual cortex compared to their same-gender controls. Gender by maltreatment effects were not attributable to demographic, clinical, or maltreatment parameters. Maltreated girls and boys exhibited distinct patterns of neural activations during executive and affective processing, a new finding in the maltreatment literature.
An Event-Triggered Programmable Prefetcher for Irregular Workloads

Many modern workloads compute on large amounts of data, often with irregular memory accesses. Current architectures perform poorly for these workloads, as existing prefetching techniques cannot capture the memory access patterns; these applications end up heavily memory-bound as a result. Although a number of techniques exist to explicitly configure a prefetcher with traversal patterns, gaining significant speedups, they do not generalise beyond their target data structures. Instead, we propose an event-triggered programmable prefetcher combining the flexibility of a general-purpose computational unit with an event-based programming model, along with compiler techniques to automatically generate events from the original source code with annotations. This allows more complex fetching decisions to be made, without needing to stall when intermediate results are required. Using our programmable prefetching system, combined with small prefetch kernels extracted from applications, we achieve an average 3.0x speedup in simulation for a variety of graph, database and HPC workloads.
Evaluation of RE Tools Suitability for Continuous Requirements Engineering

Requirements engineering process usually is supported by certain tools. The choice of the tools may depend on several organizational and personal factors and can result in a large set of tools and the necessity to move requirements engineering artifacts from one tool to others continuously. In this paper the hypothesis that it is preferable to limit the number of the tools in use is discussed. The discussion is based on the Requirements Engineering Artifact Distribution method that has been developed for requirements engineering in multi project environment.
Ezetimibe decreased nonalcoholic fatty liver disease activity score but not hepatic steatosis

Background/Aims A number of clinical trials reported varying effects of cholesterol lowering agents in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) patients. We, therefore, assessed the changes in hepatic steatosis and NAFLD activity score (NAS) after treatment with cholesterol lowering agents in NAFLD patients by metaanalysis. Methods The Cochrane Library, the MEDLINE, and the Embase databases were searched until May 2015, without any language restrictions, for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and nonrandomized studies (NRSs). Additional references were obtained from review of bibliography of relevant articles. The quality of evidence was assessed using the grading of recommendations assessment, development and evaluation guidelines. Results Three RCTs (n = 98) and two NRSs (n = 101) met our study inclusion criteria (adult, NAFLD, liver biopsy). Liver biopsy was performed in all five studies, but only the three studies reported NAS. Ezetimibe significantly decreased NAS (standardized mean difference [SMD], –0.30; 95% confidence interval [CI], –0.57 to –0.03) but not hepatic steatosis in RCT (SMD, –0.1; 95% CI, –0.53 to 0.32), while the effect was significant for both NAS and intrahepatic content in NRSs (SMD, –3.0; 95% CI, –6.9 to 0.91). Conclusions Ezetimibe decreased NAS without improving hepatic steatosis.
Relationship between Body Fat and Physical Fitness in Army ROTC Cadets

The Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT), consisting of timed sit‐ups, push‐ups, and run, is the Army's method for measuring physical performance. The Army uses height and circumference measurements (HCM) to calculate percent body fat (%BF). Study objectives were to: 1) determine relationships between APFT results and %BF and 2) compare accuracy of body fat assessment methods: air‐displacement plethysmography (ADP), bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA), and body mass index (BMI). Subjects were Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) cadets (n=11M, 2F, 21.6±3.5y) from a Midwestern university. At a single visit, %BF was assessed using HCM, BIA, ADP, and BMI. The ROTC director provided APFT results. HCM, ADP, and BIA were strongly correlated (r>0.7, p<0.01). Composite APFT score was not correlated with any body fat assessment method. Push‐up number was negatively correlated with %BF by HCM, ADP, and BIA (r>‐0.7, p=0.001). Run time was positively correlated with %BF by HCM, ADP, and BIA (r>0.6, p<0.05). No correlations were found between %BF by HCM, ADP, or BIA and sit‐up number. BMI was not correlated with any variable. For this young, active population very strong correlations between HCM, ADP, and BIA suggest that HCM is a reasonable tool to estimate %BF of ROTC cadets. As %BF increases, number of push‐ups performed decreases and run time increases. However, the limited sample size may have impeded detection of other relationships between %BF and physical fitness, and did not allow for examination of sex differences.
Patterns of Local Community Composition Are Linked to Large-Scale Diversification and Dispersal of Clades

At any location, a group of organisms may be represented by several clades. What determines which clades will dominate local communities in terms of their species richness? Here, this relatively neglected question is addressed by analyzing 166 local assemblages of snakes distributed globally. For most regions, local assemblages are dominated by clades with higher global-scale diversification rates and more frequent dispersal into each region, and not by clades that have been present in that region longer. This result contrasts with many other studies of local richness (in other organisms), which show strong impacts of regional colonization time on overall local species richness of clades. Furthermore, even though local assemblages are assembled independently on different continents, most regions have converged on similar patterns of proportional richness. Specifically, a few rapidly diversifying clades dominate most communities around the world. The high diversification rates of these clades are then linked to their high dispersal rates. Similar patterns may occur in many groups, such as plants, frogs, salamanders, birds, and mammals.
Adaptive tradeoff explanations in conversational recommenders

The completeness and certainty of a user's preferences may vary during her preference construction process in a conversational recommender. In order to more effectively support users to uncover their hidden criteria and/or solve preference conflicts, we propose to generate adaptive tradeoff explanations in organization-based recommender interfaces, to be conditional on the user's contextual needs. An experiment shows the adaptive element's higher potential to improve recommendation efficiency, relative to methods without this feature.
Elevated Expression of miR302-367 in Endothelial Cells Inhibits Developmental Angiogenesis via CDC42/CCND1 Mediated Signaling Pathways

Rationale: Angiogenesis is critical for embryonic development and microRNAs fine-tune this process, but the underlying mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Methods: Endothelial cell (EC) specific miR302-367 line was used as gain-of-function and anti-miRs as loss-of-function models to investigate the effects of miR302-367 on developmental angiogenesis with embryonic hindbrain vasculature as an in vivo model and fibrin gel beads and tube formation assay as in vitro models. Cell migration was evaluated by Boyden chamber and scratch wound healing assay and cell proliferation by cell count, MTT assay, Ki67 immunostaining and PI cell cycle analysis. RNA high-throughput sequencing identified miR-target genes confirmed by chromatin immunoprecipitation and 3'-UTR luciferase reporter assay, and finally target site blocker determined the pathway contributing significantly to the phenotype observed upon microRNA expression. Results: Elevated EC miR302-367 expression reduced developmental angiogenesis, whereas it was enhanced by inhibition of miR302-367, possibly due to the intrinsic inhibitory effects on EC migration and proliferation. We identified Cdc42 as a direct target gene and elevated EC miR302-367 decreased total and active Cdc42, and further inhibited F-actin formation via the WASP and Klf2/Grb2/Pak1/LIM-kinase/Cofilin pathways. MiR302-367-mediated-Klf2 regulation of Grb2 for fine-tuning Pak1 activation contributing to the inhibited F-actin formation, and then the attenuation of EC migration. Moreover, miR302-367 directly down-regulated EC Ccnd1 and impaired cell proliferation via the Rb/E2F pathway. Conclusion: miR302-367 regulation of endothelial Cdc42 and Ccnd1 signal pathways for EC migration and proliferation advances our understanding of developmental angiogenesis, and meanwhile provides a rationale for future interventions of pathological angiogenesis that shares many common features of physiological angiogenesis.
Intercarrier interference in MIMO OFDM

We examine multicarrier transmission over time-varying channels. We first develop the model for such a transmission scheme and focus particularly on OFDM-based schemes. We analyze the impact of time-variation within a transmission block which could arise both from Doppler spread of the channel and from synchronization errors. We propose a time-domain approach to mitigate the effects of such time-variations. This approach reduces to the familiar single-tap frequency-domain equalizer when the channel is block time-invariant. We also develop this in the context of multiple transmit and receive antennas and specialize the receiver to space-time block-coded systems. Finally we provide numerical results.
A multidisciplinary approach to the treatment of severe cerebral vasospasm following bacterial meningitis: A case report and literature review

Background: Although cerebrovascular complications of bacterial meningitis are common, postmeningitic cerebral vasospasm significant enough to result in ischemic injury has been reported in only limited fashion. Case Description: We describe a case of severe cerebral vasospasm following streptococcal meningitis managed successfully with emergency suboccipital decompression, extracranial-intracranial bypass, intra-arterial vasodilator infusion, and maximal medical therapy. To our knowledge, this may be the first case in which surgical cerebral revascularization has been utilized to limit ischemic injury in the setting of postmeningitic cerebral vasospasm. Conclusions: Patients presenting with abrupt neurological decline following recent treatment for bacterial meningitis may be suffering from a reversible vasoconstriction of the cerebral arteries, and prompt aggressive treatment can result in a favorable outcome even in patients who present in very poor neurological condition.