Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EU Accession and Economic Growth

The countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have much to gain from implementing policies that increase investment, support the development of human capital, and promote the legal, regulatory, and policy framework needed for market mechanisms to function. The faster they implement such changes, the faster they will bridge the income gap between them and the countries of the European Union - and the more likely their chances of successful integration. Joining the European Union (EU) is perhaps the key political and economic objective of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries as they approach the 21st century. But how successful the CEE countries are in achieving this goal depends not only on how well and quickly they adapt their legal and regulatory systems to EU requirements but on how well and quickly they bridge the wide income gaps between CEE and EU countries. Using a model and cross-section data to develop estimates, Barbone and Zalduendo investigate how appropriate structural policies adopted before and after accession to the EU can help CEE countries bridge this income gap. They have much to gain from implementing policies that increase investment, support the development of human capital, and promote the legal, regulatory, and policy framework needed for market mechanisms to function. The faster they implement such changes, the faster they will bridge the income gap between them and the EU countries - and the more likely their accession to the EU will be successful. This paper - a product of Country Department II, Europe and Central Asia - is part of a larger effort in the department to examine issues related to accession to EU by Central and Eastern European countries. Luca Barbone may be contacted at lbarbone@worldbank.org.
CAOR: Coding-aware opportunistic routing in wireless ad hoc networks

In this paper, we propose a new protocol which integrates intra-flow network coding based opportunistic routing with inter-flow network coding, called CAOR, for lossy wireless networks. In a lossy environment, each linear combination of packets in a batch may not be able to arrive at each forwarder intact. The challenge of this problem is to determine which packets to be XORed for transmissions at each forwarder based on the partially received packets within all combinations (i.e., coded packets). The design goal of our solution is to reduce the number of transmissions and to increase coding opportunity through finding a proper set of packets which can increase the innovative probability for downstream nodes while ensuring the decodability for upstream nodes. The simulation results show that CAOR achieves an average throughput 20% to 30% higher than existing work. Moreover, CAOR also reduces on the average 20% of the number of transmissions for sending a batch of packets.
Novel on-line maximum duty point tracking technique to improving server power efficiency meeting 80plus Gold code

The main theme of this paper is to propose a novel on-line maximum duty point tracking technique to improve the efficiency of the server power. The server power consists of PFC and phase-shift full-bridge converter. The proposed MDPT technique controls the DC-link bus voltage of power factor corrector (PFC) to retain maximum duty ratio of phase-shift full-bridge converter. It will be shown that the efficiency can therefore be improved significantly and meet the 80 plus Gold code. Experimental system using TI DSP (TMS320F2812) as the control platform has been set up. The specifications of the server power supply include: AC input voltage = 110 / 220 V, DC output voltage = 12 V and output power = 480W. Experimental results show that the efficiency can be improved from light load to full load conditions. It will be shown that the efficiency can therefore be improved up to 2.3% to meet the 80 PLUS Gold code. These results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed maximum duty point tracking technique.
First-Principles Calculations of Grain Boundary-Surface for Various Grain Boundaries with Different Energies in Aluminum

The grain boundary surface is the excess energy of the grain boundary as the lattice on one side of the grain is translated relative to the lattice on the other side of the grain. The maximum in the slope of the grain boundary surface determines the ideal shear strength for the grain boundary sliding. We presented the ideal shear strength for the grain boundary sliding in aluminum Σ3(11 2)[110] tilt grain boundary from the first-principles calculations. The ideal shear strength for the grain boundary sliding was much smaller than the ideal shear strength of a perfect single crystal.
High Precision Freeform Polymer Optics

Injection molding offers a cost efficient method for manufacturing high precision plastic optics for high volume applications. Beside classical optical surfaces like planes, spheres and also aspheres the demand for surfaces without symmetric properties, so called freeform surfaces, continues to rise. To push the surface accuracy for high volume applications for the molded freeform lens, new 3D iteration cycles to compensate systematically residual errors have to be developed. This paper will illustrate a new way for the manufacturing of ultra precision mold tool inserts with submicron precision and show the manufacturing of replicated freeform surfaces with micrometer range shape accuracy at diameters up to 40 mm. Furthermore, two examples for molded, energy and material efficient freeform optics adapted to the green photonics philosophy are shown and explained.
An Automatic Elaborate Requirement Specification By Using Hierarchical Text Classification

Ambiguity is a major problem of software errors because much of the requirements specification is written in a natural language format. Therefore, it is hard to identify consistencies because this format is too ambiguous for specification purposes. This paper aims to propose a method for handling requirement specification documents which have a similar content to each other through a hierarchical text classification. The method consists of two main processes of classification: heavy classification and light classification. The heavy classification is to classify the requirement specification documents having similar content together. Meanwhile, light classification is to elaborate specification requirement documents by using the Euclidean distance. Finally, slimming down the number of requirements specification through hierarchical text classification classifying may yield a specification which is easier to understand. That means the proposed method is more effective for reducing and handling in the requirements specification.
Burst segmentation: an approach for reducing packet loss in optical burst switched networks

We address the issue of contention resolution in optical burst switched networks, and we introduce an approach for reducing packet losses which is based on the concept of burst segmentation. In burst segmentation, rather than dropping the entire burst during contention, the burst may be broken into multiple segments, and only the overlapping segments are dropped. The segmentation scheme is investigated by simulation in conjunction with a deflection scheme, and it is shown that segmentation with deflection can achieve a significantly reduced packet loss rate.
SkelCL - A Portable Skeleton Library for High-Level GPU Programming

While CUDA and OpenCL made general-purpose programming for Graphics Processing Units (GPU) popular, using these programming approaches remains complex and error-prone because they lack high-level abstractions. The especially challenging systems with multiple GPU are not addressed at all by these low-level programming models. We propose SkelCL -- a library providing so-called algorithmic skeletons that capture recurring patterns of parallel computation and communication, together with an abstract vector data type and constructs for specifying data distribution. We demonstrate that SkelCL greatly simplifies programming GPU systems. We report the competitive performance results of SkelCL using both a simple Mandelbrot set computation and an industrial-strength medical imaging application. Because the library is implemented using OpenCL, it is portable across GPU hardware of different vendors.
In vitro Antibacterial Activity of Aqueous and Ethanol Extracts of Aristolochia indica and Toddalia asiatica Against Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria

Bacteria have developed multidrug resistance against available antimicrobial agents. Infectious diseases caused by these multidrug-resistant bacteria are major causes of morbidity and mortality in human beings. Synthetic drugs are expensive and inadequate for the treatment of diseases, causing side effects and ineffective against multidrug-resistant bacteria. The medicinal plants are promising to have effective antimicrobial property due to presence of phytochemical compounds like alkaloids, flavanoids, tannins and phenolic compounds. The present study aimed to find the antimicrobial activity of medicinal plants against multidrug-resistant bacteria. Multidrug-resistant bacteria were identified by Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method. Production of β-lactamases (extended spectrum β-lactamases, metallo β-lactamase and AmpC β-lactamase) were identified by combination disc method. Antibacterial activity of aqueous and ethanol extract of Aristolochia indica and Toddalia asiatica were detected by agar well diffusion assay and minimum inhibitory concentration. All bacteria used in this study showed antibiotic resistance to ≥3 antibiotics. Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Proteus mirabilis and Vibrio cholerae were found to be positive for β-lactamase production. Ethanol extract of Aristolochia indica showed more significant antibacterial activity against multidrug-resistant bacteria than Toddalia asiatica. Ethanol extracts of Aristolochia indica and Toddalia asiatica showed minimum inhibitory concentration values of 50-100 μg/ml and 100-200 μg/ml, respectively against multidrug-resistant bacteria. From this study, it was concluded that Aristolochia indica has more potential to treat multidrug-resistant bacteria than Toddalia asiatica.
An Accelerating Technique for SAT-based ATPG

This paper describes an accelerating technique for SAT based ATPG (automatic test pattern generation). The main idea of the proposed algorithm is representing more than one test generation problems as one CNF formula with introducing control variables, which reduces CNF generation time. Furthermore, learnt clauses of previously solved problems are effectively shared for other problems solving, so that the SAT solving time is also reduced. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm runs more than 3 times faster than the original SAT-based ATPG algorithm.
Plastic deformation modelling of tempered martensite steel block structure by a nonlocal crystal plasticity model

The plastic deformations of tempered martensite steel representative volume elements with different martensite block structures have been investigated by using a nonlocal crystal plasticity model which considers isotropic and kinematic hardening produced by plastic strain gradients. It was found that pronounced strain gradients occur in the grain boundary region even under homogeneous loading. The isotropic hardening of strain gradients strongly influences the global stress–strain diagram while the kinematic hardening of strain gradients influences the local deformation behaviour. It is found that the additional strain gradient hardening is not only dependent on the block width but also on the misorientations or the deformation incompatibilities in adjacent blocks.
Improving Query Spelling Correction Using Web Search Results

Traditional research on spelling correction in natural language processing and information retrieval literature mostly relies on pre-defined lexicons to detect spelling errors. But this method does not work well for web query spelling correction, because there is no lexicon that can cover the vast amount of terms occurring across the web. Recent work showed that using search query logs helps to solve this problem to some extent. However, such approaches cannot deal with rarely-used query terms well due to the data sparseness problem. In this paper, a novel method is proposed for use of web search results to improve the existing query spelling correction models solely based on query logs by leveraging the rich information on the web related to the query and its top-ranked candidate. Experiments are performed based on realworld queries randomly sampled from search engine’s daily logs, and the results show that our new method can achieve 16.9% relative F-measure improvement and 35.4% overall error rate reduction in comparison with the baseline method.
Fabrication of electroactive polymer actuator composed of polypyrrole and solid-polymer electrolyte and its application to micropump

Mechanical performances of beam-shaped and bridge-shaped conductive polymer actuator in aqueous solution and in solid electrolyte have been measured and analyzed varying polymerization conditions and operating conditions. The optimum thickness of polypyrrole for the best bending performance is about 17-19 μm which has been polymerized at the current density of 5.4 μA/mm2 for 120 minutes. For the application of conductive polymer actuator to micropump, silicon bulk micromachining process has been combined with polymer processes. By use of parylene diaphragm and anisotropic etching of silicon, the micropump structure composed of polypyrrole and solid polymer electrolyte has been fabricated successfully.
Ambient Fine Particulate Matter and Mortality among Survivors of Myocardial Infarction: Population-Based Cohort Study

Background: Survivors of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) are at increased risk of dying within several hours to days following exposure to elevated levels of ambient air pollution. Little is known, however, about the influence of long-term (months to years) air pollution exposure on survival after AMI. Objective: We conducted a population-based cohort study to determine the impact of long-term exposure to fine particulate matter ≤ 2.5 μm in diameter (PM2.5) on post-AMI survival. Methods: We assembled a cohort of 8,873 AMI patients who were admitted to 1 of 86 hospital corporations across Ontario, Canada in 1999–2001. Mortality follow-up for this cohort extended through 2011. Cumulative time-weighted exposures to PM2.5 were derived from satellite observations based on participants’ annual residences during follow-up. We used standard and multilevel spatial random-effects Cox proportional hazards models and adjusted for potential confounders. Results: Between 1999 and 2011, we identified 4,016 nonaccidental deaths, of which 2,147 were from any cardiovascular disease, 1,650 from ischemic heart disease, and 675 from AMI. For each 10-μg/m3 increase in PM2.5, the adjusted hazard ratio (HR10) of nonaccidental mortality was 1.22 [95% confidence interval (CI): 1.03, 1.45]. The association with PM2.5 was robust to sensitivity analyses and appeared stronger for cardiovascular-related mortality: ischemic heart (HR10 = 1.43; 95% CI: 1.12, 1.83) and AMI (HR10 = 1.64; 95% CI: 1.13, 2.40). We estimated that 12.4% of nonaccidental deaths (or 497 deaths) could have been averted if the lowest measured concentration in an urban area (4 μg/m3) had been achieved at all locations over the course of the study. Conclusions: Long-term air pollution exposure adversely affects the survival of AMI patients. Citation: Chen H, Burnett RT, Copes R, Kwong JC, Villeneuve PJ, Goldberg MS, Brook RD, van Donkelaar A, Jerrett M, Martin RV, Brook JR, Kopp A, Tu JV. 2016. Ambient fine particulate matter and mortality among survivors of myocardial infarction: population-based cohort study. Environ Health Perspect 124:1421–1428; http://dx.doi. org/10.1289/EHP185
Platelet-Associated CD40/CD154 Mediates Remote Tissue Damage after Mesenteric Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury

Several innate and adaptive immune cell types participate in ischemia/reperfusion induced tissue injury. Amongst them, platelets have received little attention as contributors in the process of tissue damage after ischemia reperfusion (I/R) injury. It is currently unknown whether platelets participate through the immunologically important molecules including, CD40 and when activated, CD154 (CD40L), in the pathogenesis of I/R injury. We hypothesized that constitutive expression of CD40 and activation-induced expression of CD154 on platelets mediate local mesenteric and remote lung tissue damage after I/R injury. Wild type (WT; C57BL/6J), CD40 and CD154 deficient mice underwent mesenteric ischemia for 30 minutes followed by reperfusion for 3 hours. WT mice subjected to mesenteric I/R injury displayed both local intestinal and remote lung damage. In contrast, there was significantly less intestinal damage and no remote lung injury in CD40 and CD154 deficient mice when compared to WT mice. Platelet-depleted WT mice transfused with platelets from CD40 or CD154 deficient mice failed to reconstitute remote lung damage. In contrast, when CD40 or CD154 deficient mice were transfused with WT platelets lung tissue damage was re-established. Together, these findings suggest that multiple mechanisms are involved in local and remote tissue injury and also identify platelet-expressed CD40 and/or CD154 as mediators of remote tissue damage.
Adenovirus‐mediated CD40 ligand therapy induces tumor cell apoptosis and systemic immunity in the TRAMP‐C2 mouse prostate cancer model

The interaction between CD40 ligand (CD40L) and CD40 on antigen presenting cells is essential for the initiation of antigen‐specific T‐cell responses, whereas CD40L stimulation of CD40+ tumor cells can induce cellular apoptosis. We investigated the anti‐tumor effects induced by CD40L gene transfer into the mouse prostate adenocarcinoma cell line TRAMP‐C2, both in vitro and in vivo.
Malware Forensics: Discovery of the Intent of Deception

Malicious software (malware) has a wide variety of analysis avoidance techniques that it can employ to hinder forensic analysis. Although legitimate software can incorporate the same analysis avoidance techniques to provide a measure of protection against reverse engineering and to protect intellectual property, malware invariably makes much greater use of such techniques to make detailed analysis labour intensive and very time consuming. Analysis avoidance techniques are so heavily used by malware that the detection of the use of analysis avoidance techniques could be a very good indicator of the presence of malicious intent. However, there is a tendency for analysis tools to focus on hiding the presence of the tool itself from being detected by the malware, and not on recording the detection and recording of analysis avoidance techniques. In addition, the coverage of anti-anti-analysis techniques in common tools and plugins is much less than the number of analysis avoidance techniques that exist. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the discovery of the intent of deception may be a very good indicator of an underlying malicious objective of the software under investigation.
Vision-based camera motion recovery for augmented reality

We address the problem of tracking the 3D position and orientation of a camera, using the images it acquires while moving freely in unmodeled, arbitrary environments. This task has a broad spectrum of useful applications in domains such as augmented reality and video post production. Most of the existing methods for vision-based camera tracking are designed to operate in a batch, off-line mode, assuming that the whole video sequence to be tracked is available before tracking commences. Typically, such methods operate noncausally, processing video frames backwards and forwards in time as they see fit. Furthermore, they resort to optimization in very high dimensional spaces, a process that is computationally intensive. For these reasons, batch methods are inapplicable to tracking in online, time-critical applications such as video see-through augmented reality. This paper puts forward a novel feature-based approach for camera tracking. The proposed approach operates on images continuously as they are acquired, has realistic computational requirements and does not require modifications of the environment. Sample experimental results demonstrating the feasibility of the approach on video images are also provided
Evolutionary history of the Paradoxurus palm civets – a new model for Asian biogeography

Aim Using molecular data and dental features, we investigated the genetic and morphological diversity among species of palm civets in the genus Paradoxurus, with a focus on the common palm civet, Paradoxurus hermaphroditus (Carnivora, Viverridae), in order to address biogeographic scenarios and provide recommendations for a taxonomic revision.
Matching pursuit algorithm for Gaussian beam decomposition

In this paper we have presented the MP algorithm as an alternative method for Gaussian beam decomposition. The results of the numerical example indicate that this type of WFT frame expansion produces a substantial improvement in the quality of the reconstructed field in terms of both the number of expansion coefficients and the relative error. However one major drawback of the MP algorithm is its computational complexity. Compared to the dual frame, the MP algorithm always appears to be time consuming.
Under Consideration for Publication in J. Functional Programming an Intuitionistic Λ-calculus with Exceptions

We introduce a typed λ-calculus which allows the use of exceptions in the ML style. It is an extension of the system AF2 of Krivine and Leivant ((Krivine, 1990a), (Leivant, 1983)). We show its main properties : confluence, strong normalization and weak subject reduction. The system satisfies the " the proof as program " paradigm as in AF2. Moreover, the underlined logic of our system is intuitionistic logic.
Application of Google Maps API with Grails Services for Mapping Highway Construction Sites

Most people agreed that Google Maps set the standard for ease of use when it comes to a free online web mapping services. In addition, different map views are available which user can choose from the options of a terrain view, normal map view, or satellite image view based on their needs. Embedding a Google Maps on a website will not only make it more user-friendly but also enable people to access certain location with more ease. This paper intends to introduce the use of this geoinformatics services from Google along with Grails services in creating a simple interactive map for highway construction sites. A discussion will cover up the use of programming interface provided by Google and Grails (open source web application framework) and also the advantages of embedding the map to the website.
An Improved Ant Colony System Based on Negative Biased

Ant System (AS) was the first Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm, which converged too slowly and consumed huge computation. Among the variants of AS, Ant Colony System (ACS) was one of the most successful algorithms. But ACS converged so rapidly that it always was in early stagnation. An improved Ant Colony System based on Negative Biased (NBACS) was introduced in the paper to overcome the early stagnation of the ACS. Experiments for Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) showed that better solutions were obtained at the same time when the convergence rate accelerated more rapidly.