Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Model Checking for Integrating Dynamic Load Distribution into Parallel Applications

Many parallel applications running on a distributed memory cluster generate data dynamically to process during their execution. In this case it is possible that some cluster nodes become overloaded. To improve performance we can integrate a dynamic data distribution algorithm.The integration of a dynamic load distribution policy into an application must consider the correct programming of several synchronisation/communication points in order to avoid dead-lock or data lost problems. In this work we show how a Model checking technique can be used to verify formally and automatically whether an application along with a load distribution algorithm work properly.We first propose a model for a parallel application that uses a dynamic load distribution policy to transfer its generated data to other processors (when there are some processors that can help with data processing). In our model in particular we defined a cyclic distribution policy. We also propose a set of functioning properties that our model and all parallel application that uses dynamic load distribution must fulfill. Then we apply a formal verification technique using the model checker spin to ensure that such properties are satisfied. To show an application of our model we used the MPI tool to implement it and solve the N-Queens problem, where milliards of possible solutions (data)are generated and processed. We show some results obtained by using a 16 processors system.
Distribution of Glycated Haemoglobin According to Early-Life and Contemporary Characteristics in Adolescents and Adults without Diabetes: The 1982 and 1993 Pelotas Birth Cohorts

Aim Glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), a marker of glucose control in individuals with diabetes mellitus, is also related with the incidence of cardiometabolic risk in populations free of disease. The aim of this study was to describe the distribution of HbA1c levels according to early-life and contemporary factors in adolescents and adults without diabetes mellitus. Methods HbA1c was measured in adults aged 30 years and adolescents aged 18 years who are participants in the 1982 and 1993 Pelotas Birth Cohorts, respectively. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed to describe the HbA1c mean values according to early-life and contemporary characteristics collected prospectively since birth. Results The distribution of the HbA1c was approximately normal in both cohorts, with a mean (SD) 5.10% (0.43) in the 1982 cohort, and 4.89% (0.50) in the 1993 cohort. HbA1c mean levels were significantly higher in individuals self-reported as black/brown skin color compared to those self-reported as white in both cohorts. Parental history of diabetes was associated with higher HbA1c mean in adults, while stunting at one year old presented an inverse relation with the outcome in adolescents. No other early and contemporary factors were associated with HbA1c levels in adults or adolescents. Conclusions We found a consistent relationship between HbA1c and skin color in both cohorts. Further research is needed to understand the role of genomic ancestry on levels of HbA1c concentrations which may inform policies and preventive actions for diabetes mellitus and cardiometabolic risk.
A common language for \programmable matter" (cellular automata and all that)

Based on extensive experience with concepts, theory, applications , and hardware and software implementations, we propose a canonical way to represent " programmable matter " structures such as cellular automata, lattice gases, and related fine-grained, uniform, massively-parallel computational substrates. Our proposal is accompanied by an " exemplar " software engine which embodies our recommendations and makes the pro-grammable matter paradigm effectively accessible to anyone provided with an ordinary computer. This initiative is intended to facilitate the design, as well as stimulate the exchange and dissemination, of pro-grammable matter algorithms; among other things, it effects " technology transfer " for extensive research done in previous years by the MIT Information Mechanics group. In particular, the present approach owes much to Norman Margolus and the cam8 project. Let him who hath not reinvented cellular automata cast the first stone!
Sensitization to pets is a major determinant of persistent asthma and new asthma onset in Sweden

Abstract Introduction. Our knowledge about atopy as a longitudinal predictor of asthma is limited. The purpose of this study was to investigate the prognosis of asthma and risk factors for asthma onset, especially sensitization of specific allergens in a population sample. Material and methods. A cohort responded to a respiratory questionnaire in 1990 and 2003. At baseline, 2,060 subjects who, in the screening questionnaire, reported respiratory symptoms and 482 controls were investigated with interviews, spirometry, and skin-prick test. A total of 721 asthmatics and 976 subjects without respiratory disease were clinically verified. At follow-up in 2003, 340 subjects with persistent asthma and 186 subjects with asthma remission were identified, while 76 subjects reported new asthma onset. Results. Sensitization to pets and a high symptom score were significant determinants of persistent asthma (odds ratio (OR) 3.2 (95% CI 1.9–5.6) and 5.7 (2.5–13.3), respectively) and onset of asthma (OR 2.6 (1.1–6.0), and 1.7 (1.2–2.3)). A high self-reported responsiveness to airway irritants (OR 1.6 (1.1–2.2)), and more asthma medications (OR 2.0 (1.3–2.9)) were additional indicators of persistent asthma at the follow-up. Belonging to the older age group decreased the risk both of having persistent asthma and asthma onset. Discussion. Asthmatics sensitized to pets have a more severe outcome than asthmatics not sensitized to pets. Sensitization to pets was also a strong predictor for onset of asthma. Special attention should be given to asthmatics who report having severe symptoms and problems with airway irritants as such patients are more likely to have persistent problems.
Asymptotic behavior and uniqueness of boundary blow-up solutions to elliptic equations

In this paper, under some structural assumptions of weight function b(x) and nonlinear term f (u), we establish the asymptotic behavior and uniqueness of boundary blow-up solutions to semilinear elliptic equations { ∆u = b(x) f (u), x ∈ Ω, u(x) = ∞, x ∈ ∂Ω, where Ω ⊂ RN is a bounded smooth domain. Our analysis is based on the Karamata regular variation theory and the Lopez-Gomez localization method.
Evaluation of the Association of IGF2BP2 Variants With Type 2 Diabetes in French Caucasians

OBJECTIVE—We performed a comprehensive genetic association study of common variation spanning the IGF2BP2 locus in order to replicate the association of the “confirmed” type 2 diabetes susceptibility variants rs4402960 and rs1470579 in the French Caucasian population and to further characterize the susceptibility variants at this novel locus. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—We genotyped a total of 21 tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms spanning the IGF2BP2 locus in our type 2 diabetes case-control cohort comprising 3,093 French Caucasian subjects. RESULTS—IGF2BP2 variants rs4402960 and rs1470579 were not associated with type 2 diabetes in the present study (P = 0.632 and P = 0.896, respectively). Meta-analysis of genotype data from over 34,000 subjects demonstrated that our inability to replicate rs4402960/rs1470579 was consistent with the findings from several previous genome-wide association study (GWAS) datasets that were underpowered to detect this modest association signal (odds ratio [OR] 1.14). We obtained novel evidence that rs9826022, a borderline rare variant (5% minor allele frequency) in the 3′ downstream region, was associated with type 2 diabetes (P = 0.0002; OR 1.53 [95% CI 1.22–1.91]). This result was corroborated by the meta-analysis of 10,542 genotypes from the current study and GWAS datasets using both fixed (P = 9.47 × 10−6; 1.30 [1.16–1.46]) and random effects (P = 0.001; 1.30 [1.11–1.52)] calculations. CONCLUSIONS—We were unable to replicate the confirmed rs4402960/rs1470579 susceptibility variants but found novel evidence for a rare variant in the 3′ downstream region of IGF2BP2. Further genetic and functional studies are required to identify the etiological IGF2BP2 variants.
A Common Framework for Distributed Representation Schemes for Compositional Structure

Over the last few years a number of schemes for encoding compositional structure in distributed representations have been proposed, e.g., Smolensky's tensor products, Pollack's RAAMs, Plate's HRRs, Halford et al's STAR model, and Kanerva's binary spatter codes. All of these schemes can placed in a general framework involving su-perposition and binding of patterns. Viewed in this way, it is often simple to decide whether what can be achieved within one scheme will be able to be achieved in another. Furthermore, placing these schemes in a general framework reveals unexplored regions in which other related representation schemes with interesting properties.
Towards the Automatic Detection and Correction of Errors in Automatically Constructed Ontologies

The Open Information Extraction Project is one of the most ambitious attempts in the area of automatically constructing ontologies by harvesting information from the web. What we will call their Know-It-All Ontology contains about 6 billion items, consisting of triples and rules. The downside of such automatically constructed ontologies is that they contain a vast number of errors: some arising from errors in the original web data and some from errors in extracting the data. In this project we explore whether techniques we have developed in the domain of ontology repair can be used to detect and correct some of these errors. In particular, we explore whether the errors in their ontology can be automatically detected by using a theorem prover. We also present a manual classification of the errors as a preliminary feasibility exploration, and discuss our future work towards automatically correcting the ontology based on the error classification.
ASSESSMENT OF ENGINEERING STUDENTS' ACQUIRED AFFECTIVE LEARNING FROM INVOLVEMENT IN COMMUNITY EXTENSION SERVICES

This study determined the level of involvement and acquired affective learning of the Engineering Students from the Institutional and College-Based community extension programs anchored in the Lyceum of the Philippines University (LPU) core values. The Engineering department has high level of students’ involvement in the construction of houses in one of the adapted communities of the university and during the outreach programs. The engineering students have greatly acquired the value of Creator-centeredness, Leadership, Integrity and Nationalism from joining the community extension programs. They also enhanced their personal values, attitude towards the community and the spirit of volunteerism. Humility, perseverance and religiosity are the most common characteristics of the engineering students who joined the community services.
Intel MPX Explained: An Empirical Study of Intel MPX and Software-based Bounds Checking Approaches

Memory-safety violations are a prevalent cause of both reliability and security vulnerabilities in systems software written in unsafe languages like C/C++. Unfortunately, all the existing software-based solutions to this problem exhibit high performance overheads preventing them from wide adoption in production runs. To address this issue, Intel recently released a new ISA extension - Memory Protection Extensions (Intel MPX), a hardware-assisted full-stack solution to protect against memory safety violations. In this work, we perform an exhaustive study of the Intel MPX architecture to understand its advantages and caveats. We base our study along three dimensions: (a) performance overheads, (b) security guarantees, and (c) usability issues. To put our results in perspective, we compare Intel MPX with three prominent software-based approaches: (1) trip-wire - AddressSanitizer, (2) object-based - SAFECode, and (3) pointer-based - SoftBound. Our main conclusion is that Intel MPX is a promising technique that is not yet practical for widespread adoption. Intel MPX's performance overheads are still high (roughly 50% on average), and the supporting infrastructure has bugs which may cause compilation or runtime errors. Moreover, we showcase the design limitations of Intel MPX: it cannot detect temporal errors, may have false positives and false negatives in multithreaded code, and its restrictions on memory layout require substantial code changes for some programs.
Selling Ethics: Discourses of Responsibility in Tourism

This article explores the grammars of responsibility through a discourse analysis of selected travel guidebooks and argues that critical theory and popular media have so far failed to bridge the gap between ideologies and practices of responsibilities. As it stands, an unspoken assumption that a particular set of practices (e.g., buying goods labeled as fair trade or boycotting sweatshop-produced clothing) is perpetuated as undeniably responsible. As long as important questions on what constitutes being ethical and by whose standards this is evaluated against is neglected, however, there is a danger of pursuing practices deemed irrefutably responsible, although they are not responsible or ethical at all. Building on the postcolonial critiques on literature in geographies of responsibilities (Raghuram, Madge, and Noxolo 2009; Jazeel and McFarlane 2010; Noxolo, Raghuram, and Madge 2011), this article interrogates the discourses of responsibility circulated in popular media and, using examples from tourism, highlights the problematic nature of perpetuating a series of universalized instructions regarding one's responsibilities, while revealing the many inconsistencies advocated once one takes a closer and more critical look at what is suggested. What is needed is an effort to close the gap between practices and ideologies of responsibility, where a conscious postcolonial understanding of the variance of ideals of responsibilities across time and space is reflected in our practices and how we understand practices of responsibilities.
Prevalence of depression, its correlates among students, and its effect on health-related quality of life in a Turkish university

Objective.The aims were to investigate the prevalence of depression among university students, and to determine some of the risk factors connected to depression, and also to evaluate its effect on health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Methods.This cross-sectional survey was conducted between 1 December 2007 and 31 January 2008 at Osmangazi University, Eskisehir, in western Turkey. The study group consisted of 822 students. The questionnaire included the students’ socio-demographic characteristics, the Beck Depression Inventory, and the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form-36 (SF-36). The data were analyzed by using chi-square, Student's t test, percent (%) ratios, and backward logistic regression analysis with a significant value of P<0.05. Results. Of the students, 377 (45.9%) were males and 445 (54.1%) females. Overall, the prevalence of depression was 21.8% (n=179/822). Family history of depression, acne on face, any physical defect on body, smoking, alcohol consumption, and future-related occupational preoccupation were all deemed important risk factors for depression (P <0.05, for each one). It was found that, in those with depression, all the mean domain scores of SF-36 scale were lower than those without depression (P <0.05, for each one). Conclusions.The prevalence of depression among the university students in this region of Turkey was wide-spread, affecting negatively the HRQoL of the students. For prevention and control of depression, depression information and knowledge need to be addressed by health education programs.
Limited Effects of Type I Interferons on Kyasanur Forest Disease Virus in Cell Culture

Background The tick-borne flavivirus, Kyasanur Forest disease virus (KFDV) causes seasonal infections and periodic outbreaks in south-west India. The current vaccine offers poor protection with reported issues of coverage and immunogenicity. Since there are no approved prophylactic therapeutics for KFDV, type I IFN-α/β subtypes were assessed for antiviral potency against KFDV in cell culture. Methodology/Principal Findings The continued passage of KFDV-infected cells with re-administered IFN-α2a treatment did not eliminate KFDV and had little effect on infectious particle production whereas the IFN-sensitive, green fluorescent protein-expressing vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV-GFP) infection was controlled. Further evaluation of the other IFN-α/β subtypes versus KFDV infection indicated that single treatments of either IFN-αWA and IFN-αΚ appeared to be more effective than IFN-α2a at reducing KFDV titres. Concentration-dependent analysis of these IFN-α/β subtypes revealed that regardless of subtype, low concentrations of IFN were able to limit cytopathic effects (CPE), while significantly higher concentrations were needed for inhibition of virion release. Furthermore, expression of the KFDV NS5 in cell culture before IFN addition enabled VSV-GFP to overcome the effects of IFN-α/β signalling, producing a robust infection. Conclusions/Significance Treatment of cell culture with IFN does not appear to be suitable for KFDV eradication and the assay used for such studies should be carefully considered. Further, it appears that the NS5 protein is sufficient to permit KFDV to bypass the antiviral properties of IFN. We suggest that other prophylactic therapeutics should be evaluated in place of IFN for treatment of individuals with KFDV disease.
Dynamic Allocation Problems with Volatile Demand

The present paper develops a simple, easy to interpret algorithm for a large class of dynamic allocation problems with unknown, volatile demand. Potential applications include Ad Display problems and network revenue management problems. The algorithm operates in an online fashion and relies on re-optimization and forecast updates. The algorithm is robust (as witnessed by uniform worst case guarantees for arbitrarily volatile demand) and in the event that demand volatility (or equivalently deviations in realized demand from forecasts) is not large, the method is simultaneously optimal. Computational experiments, including experiments with data from real world problem instances, demonstrate the practicality and value of the approach. From a theoretical perspective, we introduce a new device – a balancing property – that allows us to understand the impact of changing bases in our scheme.
Neural-Network Static Learning Controller in DCT Subspace

In this note, a static neural-network (NN) learning controller in discrete cosine transform subspace is proposed. The high-dimensional problem of temporal static learning controllers is overcome, paying a little cost of tracking precision lost. Experiments on two joints of a SCARA type robot verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. A small-size NN may meet the learning control specification and tracking precision can be improved by enlarging the size of the NN.
Image Registration Based on Multiscale Energy Information

We propose a novel multiscale approach for the image registration problem, i.e., to find a deformation that maps one image onto another. The image registration problem is confirmed to be mathematical ill-posed due to the fact that determining the unknown components of the displacements merely from the images is an underdetermined problem. The approach presented here utilizes an auxiliary regularization term based on the energy of a plate with free edges, which incorporates smoothness constraints into the deformation field. One of the important aspects of this approach is that the energy does not penalize affine-linear functions. Consequently, the kernel of the Euler--Lagrange equation is spanned by all rigid motions. Hence, the presented approach is invariant under planar rotation and translation. In order to find an optimal deformation, we solve a sequence of subproblems with decreasing regularization parameter. In this framework the regularization parameter can be regarded as a scale parameter, which ca.
On routing controls in ISP topologies: A structural perspective

Recent measurement studies on the Internet topology show that connectivity of nodes exhibits power-law attribute, but it is apparent that only the degree distribution does not determine the network structure, and especially true when we study the network-related control like routing control. In this paper, we evaluate the optimal routing and several routing methods on the ISP router level topologies where degree distributions follow power-law. We then examine how structural characteristics of topologies affect the network performance. The evaluation results show that the optimal routing method in a topology obtained by a modeling method considerably increases network throughput. However, the optimal routing method in ISP topologies cannot achieve high network throughput as observed in the modeling-based topology. Our results also show that our proposed routing method achieves almost the same network throughput to the optimal routing method in power-law networks, and more importantly, it exhibits the similar distribution of link utilization.
Compact Multipurpose Mobile Laser Scanning System - Initial Tests and Results

We describe a prototype compact mobile laser scanning system that may be operated from a backpack or unmanned aerial vehicle. The system is small, self-contained, relatively inexpensive, and easy to deploy. A description of system components is presented, along with the initial calibration of the multi-sensor platform. The first field tests of the system, both in backpack mode and mounted on a helium balloon for real-world applications are presented. For both field tests, the acquired kinematic LiDAR data are compared with highly accurate static terrestrial laser scanning point clouds. These initial results show that the vertical accuracy of the point cloud for the prototype system is approximately 4 cm (1σ) in balloon mode, and 3 cm (1σ) in backpack mode while horizontal accuracy was approximately 17 cm (1σ) for the balloon tests. Results from selected study areas on the Sacramento River Delta and San Andreas Fault in California demonstrate system performance, deployment agility and flexibility, and potential for operational production of high density and highly accurate point cloud data. Cost and production rate trade-offs place this system in the niche between existing airborne and tripod mounted LiDAR systems.
An academic response to Basel II

It is our view that the Basel Committee of Banking Supervision, in its Basel II proposals, has failed to address many of the key deficiencies of the global financial regulatory system and even created the potential for new sources of instability. This document highlights our concerns that the failure of the proposals to address key issues can have destabilising effects and thus harm the global financial system. In particular, there is considerable scope for under-estimation of financial risk, which may lead to complacency on the part of policy makers and insufficient understanding of the likelihood of a systematic crisis. Furthermore, it is unfortunate that the Basel Committee has not considered how financial institutions will react to the new regulations. Of special concern is how the proposed regulations would induce the harmonisation of investment decisions during the crises with the consequence of destabilising rather than stabilising the global financial system.