Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Community Networks and Sustainability: A Survey of Perceptions, Practices, and Proposed Solutions

Community network (CN) initiatives have been around for roughly two decades, evangelizing a distinctly different paradigm for building, maintaining, and sharing network infrastructure but also defending the basic human right to Internet access. Over this time they have evolved into a mosaic of systems that vary widely with respect to their network technologies, their offered services, their organizational structure, and the way they position themselves in the overall telecommunications’ ecosystem. Common to all these highly differentiated initiatives is the sustainability challenge. We approach sustainability as a broad term with an economical, political, and cultural context. We first review the different perceptions of the term. These vary both across and within the different types of stakeholders involved in CNs and are reflected in their motivation to join such initiatives. Then, we study the diverse approaches of CN operators toward the sustainability goal. Given the rich context of the term, these range all the way from mechanisms to fund their activities, to organizational structures and social activities serving as incentives for the engagement of their members. We iterate on incentive mechanisms that have been proposed and theoretically analyzed in the literature for CNs as well as tools and processes that have been actually implemented in them. Finally, we enumerate lessons that have been learned out of these two decades of CNs’ operation and discuss additional technological and regulatory issues that are key to their longer-term sustainability.
MAGIC: A Multiattribute Declustering Mechanism for Multiprocessor Database Machines

During the past decade, parallel database systems have gained increased popularity due to their high performance, scalability, and availability characteristics. With the predicted future database sizes and complexity of queries, the scalability of these systems to hundreds and thousands of processors is essential for satisfying the projected demand. Several studies have repeatedly demonstrated that both the performance and scalability of a parallel database system are contingent on the physical layout of the data across the processors of the system. If the data are not declustered appropriately, the execution of an operation might waste system resources, reducing the overall processing capability of the system. With earlier, single-attribute partitioning mechanisms such as those found in the Tandem, Teradata, Gamma, and Bubba parallel database systems, range selections on any attribute other than the partitioning attribute must be sent to all processors containing tuples of the relation, while range selections on the partitioning attribute can be directed to only a subset of the processors. Although using all the processors for an operation is reasonable for resource intensive operations, directing a query with minimal resource requirements to processors that contain no relevant tuples wastes CPU cycles, communication bandwidth, and I/O bandwidth. As a solution, this paper describes a new partitioning strategy, multiattribute grid declustering (MAGIC), which can use two or more attributes of a relation to decluster its tuples across multiple processors and disks. In addition, MAGIC declustering, unlike other multiattribute partitioning mechanisms that have been proposed, is able to support range selections as well as exact match selections on each of the partitioning attributes. This capability enables a greater variety of selection operations to be directed to a restricted subset of the processors in the system. Finally, MAGIC partitions each relation based on the resource requirements of the queries that constitute the workload for the relation and the processing capacity of the system in order to ensure that the proper number of processors are used to execute queries that reference the relation. >
Systematic Testing of Literature Reported Genetic Variation Associated with Coronary Restenosis: Results of the GENDER Study

Background Coronary restenosis after percutaneous coronary intervention still remains a significant problem, despite all medical advances. Unraveling the mechanisms leading to restenosis development remains challenging. Many studies have identified genetic markers associated with restenosis, but consistent replication of the reported markers is scarce. The aim of the current study was to analyze the joined effect of previously in literature reported candidate genes for restenosis in the GENetic DEterminants of Restenosis (GENDER) databank. Methodology/Principal Findings Candidate genes were selected using a MEDLINE search including the terms ‘genetic polymorphism’ and ‘coronary restenosis’. The final set included 36 genes. Subsequently, all single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the genomic region of these genes were analyzed in GENDER using set-based analysis in PLINK. The GENDER databank contains genotypic data of 2,571,586 SNPs of 295 cases with restenosis and 571 matched controls. The set, including all 36 literature reported genes, was, indeed, significantly associated with restenosis, p = 0.024 in the GENDER study. Subsequent analyses of the individual genes demonstrated that the observed association of the complete set was determined by 6 of the 36 genes. Conclusion Despite overt inconsistencies in literature, with regard to individual candidate gene studies, this is the first study demonstrating that the joint effect of all these genes together, indeed, is associated with restenosis.
A model-based framework: an approach for profit-driven optimization

Although optimizations have been applied for a number of years to improve the performance of software, problems that have been long-standing remain, which include knowing what optimizations to apply and how to apply them. To systematically tackle these problems, we need to understand the properties of optimizations. In our current research, we are investigating the profitability property, which is useful for determining the benefit of applying an optimization. Due to the high cost of applying optimizations and then experimentally evaluating their profitability, we use an analytic model framework for predicting the profitability of optimizations. In this paper, we target scalar optimizations, and in particular, describe framework instances for partial redundancy elimination (PRE) and loop invariant code motion (LICM). We implemented the framework for both optimizations and compare profit-driven PRE and LICM with a heuristic-driven approach. Our experiments demonstrate that a model-based approach is effective and efficient in that it can accurately predict the profitability of optimizations with low overhead. By predicting the profitability using models, we can selectively apply optimizations. The model-based approach does not require tuning of parameters used in heuristic approaches and works well across different code contexts and optimizations.
Correlation of Major Cytogenetic Response with a Pharmacogenetic Marker in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Patients Treated with Imatinib (STI571)

Purpose: Imatinib, an inhibitor of the Bcr-Abl tyrosine kinase, is indicated for the treatment of patients with Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia. We examined genotypes from patients enrolled in the International Randomized Study of IFN-α versus STI571 in an attempt to identify factors that associate with cytogenetic response. Experimental Design: Sixty-eight polymorphic loci in 26 genes were examined in a subset of 187 patients (imatinib-treated patients, n = 113; IFN + 1-β-d-arabinofuranosylcytosine-treated patients, n = 74). Correlations between genotype and major cytogenetic response (MCyR) were examined by Fisher’s exact tests. Multivariate and survival analyses were also performed. Results: A significant association between MCyR and the rs2290573 polymorphism mapped to 15q22.33 was observed in imatinib-treated patients (P = 0.00037, Bonferroni corrected P = 0.025). Individuals with a CC genotype at this locus had a MCyR rate of 52% compared with individuals with a CT or TT genotype that had a MCyR rate of 89% (odds ratio, 6.72; 95% confidence interval, 1.51–29.91). In a multivariate analysis, the rs2290573 polymorphism was significant, whereas Sokal score was not. Time to progression analysis illustrated a significant difference based on genotype for the rs2290573 polymorphism. Conclusions: A significant association was identified between the genetic polymorphism rs2290573 and MCyR in imatinib-treated patients. This polymorphism is located in the intronic sequence of a putative gene with a tyrosine kinase domain. Multivariate analysis suggests that an individual’s genotype for rs2290573 has more predictive value for MCyR than prognostic variables such as Sokal score. The clinical relevance of these results requires validation in future clinical trials.
Exploring New Interaction Mechanisms to Support Information Sharing and Collaboration Using Large Multi-touch Displays in the Context of Digital Storytelling

A wide range of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) have been used to support teaching and to enhance the learning process in the last decades. With the latest introduction of large interactive tabletops, multi-touch interaction is taken to the next level since large displays allow and invite not just one but multiple users to interact and collaborate at the same time. The latest presents designers and developers with new challenges in terms of interaction possibilities to promote active collaboration and information sharing. This paper evaluates the use of novel Tangible User Interface (TUI) approaches for the design of an interactive tabletop application conceived to support co-located collaborative learning in the particular context of Digital Storytelling (DS). We present the results of a user interaction study, which considers the users' subjective reaction and acceptance for these User Interface (UI) paradigms, as well as their level of collaboration and communication while working together. The results of the study indicated that the users adapted working in a close collaboration using the provided multi-touch functionalities very quickly. Furthermore, users appreciated the possibility to closely discussing, conversing and exchanging information with their peers through simultaneous interactions on the multi-touch display.
The Cyan Language

This is the manual of Cyan, a prototype-based object-oriented language. Cyan supports static typing, single inheritance, mixin objects (similar to mixin classes with mixin inheritance), generic prototypes, and Java-like interfaces. The language has several innovations: a completely object-oriented exception system, statically-typed closures, a kind of graphical metaobjects called codegs, optional dynamic typing, user-defined literal objects (an innovative way of creating objects), context objects (a generalization of closures), and grammar methods and message sends (which makes it easy to define Domain Specific Languages).
A Rule-based Methodology for Hardware Configuration Validation in Embedded Systems

As the complexity of multicore SoCs increases, more potential system issues are arising. Hardware-related configuration issues are becoming more complicated owing to the introduction of more cores and various complex peripherals. Considering the complexity of multicore programming, consultation of the main source of guidance, i.e. the user manual, is not an efficient approach to identify such problems. Improper hardware-related configurations could lead to either functional or performance issues. Some of these issues are even subtle and hard to detect. Therefore, a rule-based validation methodology is proposed to deal with hardware-related configuration issues in an efficient and reliable way. Hardware trace is applied in this methodology to detect issues even before symptoms appear. The method directly observes the register accesses and detects bugs based on trace data. It is independent of the application as long as they are run on the given platform, which means the same method implementation could be applied to any applications on the same platform. In this paper, an initial proof-of-concept for the proposed methodology has been implemented and demonstrated on the Infineon TC29 device.
Biomechanical Constraints Underlying Motor Primitives Derived from the Musculoskeletal Anatomy of the Human Arm

Neural control of movement can only be realized though the interaction between the mechanical properties of the limb and the environment. Thus, a fundamental question is whether anatomy has evolved to simplify neural control by shaping these interactions in a beneficial way. This inductive data-driven study analyzed the patterns of muscle actions across multiple joints using the musculoskeletal model of the human upper limb. This model was used to calculate muscle lengths across the full range of motion of the arm and examined the correlations between these values between all pairs of muscles. Musculoskeletal coupling was quantified using hierarchical clustering analysis. Muscle lengths between multiple pairs of muscles across multiple postures were highly correlated. These correlations broadly formed two proximal and distal groups, where proximal muscles of the arm were correlated with each other and distal muscles of the arm and hand were correlated with each other, but not between groups. Using hierarchical clustering, between 11 and 14 reliable muscle groups were identified. This shows that musculoskeletal anatomy does indeed shape the mechanical interactions by grouping muscles into functional clusters that generally match the functional repertoire of the human arm. Together, these results support the idea that the structure of the musculoskeletal system is tuned to solve movement complexity problem by reducing the dimensionality of available solutions.
On the Capacity of Bufferless Networks-on-Chip

Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) form an emerging paradigm for communications within chips. In particular, bufferless NoCs require significantly less area and power consumption, but also pose novel major scheduling problems to achieve full capacity. In this paper, we provide first insights on the capacity of bufferless NoCs. In particular, we present optimal periodic schedules for several bufferless NoCs with a complete-exchange traffic pattern. These schedules particularly fit distributed-programming models and network congestion-control mechanisms. In addition, for general traffic patterns, we also introduce efficient greedy scheduling algorithms, that often outperform simple greedy online algorithms and cannot have deadlocks. Finally, using network simulations, we quantify the speedup of our suggested algorithms, and show how they improve throughput by up to 35 percent on a torus network.
Evaluation of the combined medical and surgical treatment in nasal polyposis. I: Functional results

Conclusion: This prospective study is the first in the literature to present long-term results of a combined medical and surgical treatment in patients with nasal polyposis (NP) including strict inclusion criteria, analysis of the results in terms of clinical amelioration, polyp size reduction, and steroid consumption. The results of the present study show that combined surgery and corticosteroid therapy is effective in the treatment of NP. Objective: Most publications on outcome after functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS) include patients with various pathologies. The aim of this study was to provide reference information for FESS in patients with NP with strict inclusion and exclusion criteria. Materials and methods: This was a prospective study involving 194 consecutive patients. Clinical symptoms, polyp size, and steroid consumption were evaluated before and after FESS (mean follow-up, 74 months). An actuarial analysis using the Kaplan Meier life table method was performed with regard to the 3- and 5-year symptoms control rates. Results: All symptoms were improved after FESS. The 5-year actuarial nasal obstruction control rate was 65.8%. The 5-year actuarial severe posterior rhinorrhea control rate was 82.9%. The 5-year actuarial smell loss and anosmia control rates were 17.7% and 65.8%, respectively. Polyp volume and steroid consumption decreased significantly after FESS.
Beyond "Hitting the Hits": Generating Coherent Music Playlist Continuations with the Right Tracks

Automated playlist generation is a special form of music recommendation and a common feature of digital music playing applications. A particular challenge of the task is that the recommended items should not only match the general listener's preference but should also be coherent with the most recently played tracks. In this work, we propose a novel algorithmic approach and optimization scheme to generate playlist continuations that address these requirements. In our approach, we first use collections of shared music playlists, music metadata, and user preferences to select suitable tracks with high accuracy. Next, we apply a generic re-ranking optimization scheme to generate playlist continuations that match the characteristics of the last played tracks. An empirical evaluation on three collections of shared playlists shows that the combination of different input signals helps to achieve high accuracy during track selection and that the re-ranking technique can both help to balance different quality optimization goals and to further increase accuracy.
An interactive, visual simulator for the DLX pipeline

We have built an interactive, visual pipeline simulator, called dlxview, for the DLX instruction set and pipeline described in Computer Architecture A Quantitative Approach by Hennessy and Patterson [1]. This software provides animated versions of key figures and tables from the text and allows the user to readily follow details of pipeline activity as a code is simulated, to vary pipeline implementation, and to compare performance across different pipeline designs. The software package requires a system running Unix and X11, with Tcl/Tk installed, and using the GNU gcc compiler is recommended. A 256 color display with 1024x768 pixels is best for display, due to the detailed diagrams of the DLX pipeline. The software has been designed to run on a variety of platforms and has been tested on Solaris 2.3, SunOS 4.1. 1, HP-UX 9.0, DEC OSF/1 4.0, and Linux kernel 1.2. 1. DLXview is available at http://yara.ecn. purdue.edu/~teamaaa/dlxview/
Comparison of mHTT Antibodies in Huntington’s Disease Mouse Models Reveal Specific Binding Profiles and Steady-State Ubiquitin Levels with Disease Development

Huntington’s disease (HD) cellular pathology is characterised by the aggregation of mutant huntingtin (mHTT) protein into inclusion bodies. The present paper compared the sensitivity of five widely used mHTT antibodies (S830; MW8; EM48; 1C2; ubiquitin) against mice from five commonly used HD mouse models (R6/1; YAC128; HdhQ92; B6 HdhQ150; B6 x129/Ola HdhQ150) at two ages to determine: the most sensitive antibodies for each model; whether mHTT antibody binding differed depending on aggregation stage (diffuse versus frank inclusion); the role of ubiquitin during aggregation as the ubiquitin proteosome system has been implicated in disease development. The models demonstrated unique profiles of antibody binding even when the models varied only by background strain (HdhQ150). MW8 was highly sensitive for detecting frank inclusions in all lines whereas EM48, ubiquitin and 1C2 demonstrated consistent staining in all models irrespective of age or form of mHTT. MW8 and S830 were the most sensitive antibodies with 1C2 the least. Ubiquitin levels were stable for each model regardless of age. Ubiquitin was particularly sensitive in young YAC128 mice that demonstrate an absence of inclusions until ~12 months of age suggesting high affinity to mHTT in its diffuse form. The data indicate that generalisations across models regarding the quantification of aggregations may not be valid and that mHTT antibody binding is unique to the mouse model and sensitive to changes in inclusion development.
A semi-active hybrid neuroprosthesis for restoring lower limb function in paraplegics

Through the application of functional electrical stimulation (FES) individuals with paraplegia can regain lost walking function. However, due to the rapid onset of muscle fatigue, the walking duration obtained with an FES-based neuroprosthesis is often relatively short. The rapid muscle fatigue can be compensated for by using a hybrid system that uses both FES and an active orthosis. In this paper, we demonstrate the initial testing of a semi-active hybrid walking neuroprosthesis. The semi-active hybrid orthosis (SEAHO) supports a user during the stance phase and standing while the electric motors attached to the hip section of the orthosis are used to generate hip flexion/extension. FES in SEAHO is mainly used to actuate knee flexion/extension and plantar flexion of the foot. SEAHO is controlled by a finite state machine that uses a recently developed nonlinear controller for position tracking control of the hip motors and cues from the hip angle to actuate FES and other components.
Morphology and mechanical properties of extruded ribbons of LDPE/PA6 blends compatibilized with an ethylene-acrylic acid copolymer

Two grades of low density polyethylene (LDPE) were blended with polyamide-6 (PA) in the 75/25 and 25/75 wt/wt ratios and shaped into ribbons with a Brabender single screw extruder. An ethylene-acrylic acid copolymer (EAA) was used in the 2 phr concentration as a compatibilizer precursor (CP). The morphology of the ribbons and its evolution during high temperature annealing were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results confirmed that EAA does actually behave as a reactive compatibilizer for the LDPE/PA blends. In fact, in the presence of EAA, the interfacial adhesion is improved, the dispersion of the minor phase particles is enhanced and their tendency toward fibrillation is increased, especially for the blends with the higher molar mass LDPE grade. The mechanical properties of the latter blends were found to be considerably enhanced by the addition of EAA, whereas the improvement was relatively modest for the blends with the lower molar mass LDPE. The fracture properties of double end notched samples of the ribbons prepared with the blends containing the lower molar mass LDPE grade were also studied. It was shown that, despite of the increased interfacial adhesion caused by the presence of EAA, the latter plays a measurable positive effect on the fracture properties only for the blends with LDPE as the matrix.