Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A decision model to select the optimal storage architecture for relational databases

Requirements for database systems differ from small-scale database programs for embedded devices with minimal footprint to large-scale on-line analytical processing applications. For relational database management systems, two storage architectures have been introduced: a) row-oriented architecture and b) column-oriented architecture. In this paper, we present a query decomposition approach to evaluate database operations with respect to their performance according to the storage architecture. We map decomposed queries to workload patterns which contain aggregated database statistics. Further, we develop our complementary decision models which advise the selection of the optimal storage architecture for a given application domain. The first decision model improves the performance of running systems (on-line). The second and third decision model advise an efficient database design or decide which architecture is more suitable for a given application domain (off-line).
Geometric Separator Theorems

| We have a 4-step method for producing \separator theorems" about geometrical objects en masse. Examples: I: Given N disjoint iso-oriented squares in the plane, there exists a rectangle with 2N=3 squares inside, 2N=3 squares outside, and (4 + o(1)) p N partly in & out. II: More generally, given N iso-oriented d-cubes in d-space, no more than of which cover a point, there exists a box with 2N=3 cubes inside, 2N=3 cubes outside, and O(dd 1=d N 1? 1=d) partly in & out. Here \2=3" is best possible, and the dependence of the bound on , d, and N is best possible up to the absolute constant factor in the O. III: We have more general versions where the \d-cubes" and/or the separating \box" could instead be any of a wide variety of convex objects with bounded diameter/width ratios, and where the disjointness condition can be replaced with a variety of other conditions: (a) no more than objects cover a point, or (b) no subcollection's measure exceeds the union of its measures by more than a factor , or (c) no more than objects, among objects whose linear dimensions vary by a factor at most , cover a point. For tons of applications of these theorems, see the companion paper \Applications of geometric separator theorems. " For example, we get the rst subexponen-tial algorithms for optimal traveling salesman tour and rectilinear Steiner tree of N points in d-space, d xed.
Economic Optimality of CCS Use: A Resource-Economic Model

CCS (carbon dioxide capture and storage) is an issue which has received increasing attention in the debate on climate change over the last several years because of its relative technical simplicity and very large potential in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The absence of secondary benefits and uncertainties associated with this approach, however, would require analysts to conduct fine cost-benefit comparisons vis-a-vis other mitigation options. The paper is to provide a perspective on future cost-benefit discussions of CCS by highlighting the optimality of CCS use viewed as a non-renewable resource with a limited capacity. Scarcity of CCS (storage) capacity should involve a shadow price which could raise CCS’s effective price – this is a fair assumption given the technological assessments of CCS so far, but no economic study has explicitly investigated this characteristic before. By using a simple analytical dynamic optimization model, we examine the optimal paths of CCS use, CCS’s real price inclusive of the shadow price, and their difference from the operational price. A particular implication of the model is that if all else is equal, the shadow price of CCS could make the technology relatively less attractive than renewable energy due to CCS’s reliance on scarce reservoirs and the resultant shadow value. This serves as a justification for giving differentiated incentives to different CO2 reduction options: more precisely, more encouragement should be given to renewable energy in comparison to CCS.
Optimized 3D Network-on-Chip Design Using Simulated Allocation

Three-dimensional (3D) silicon integration technologies have provided new opportunities for Network-on-Chip (NoC) architecture design in Systems-on-Chip (SoCs). In this article, we consider the application-specific NoC architecture design problem in a 3D environment. We present an efficient floorplan-aware 3D NoC synthesis algorithm based on simulated allocation (SAL), a stochastic method for traffic flow routing, and accurate power and delay models for NoC components. We demonstrate that this method finds greatly improved solutions compared to a baseline algorithm reflecting prior work. To evaluate the SAL method, we compare its performance with the widely used simulated annealing (SA) method and show that SAL is much faster than SA for this application, while providing solutions of very similar quality. We then extend the approach from a single-path routing to a multipath routing scheme and explore the trade-off between power consumption and runtime for these two schemes. Finally, we study the impact of various factors on the network performance in 3D NoCs, including the TSV count and the number of 3D tiers. Our studies show that link power and delay can be significantly improved when moving from a 2D to a 3D implementation, but the improvement flattens out as the number of 3D tiers goes beyond a certain point.
Therapy-induced developmental reprogramming of prostate cancer cells and acquired therapy resistance

Treatment-induced neuroendocrine transdifferentiation (NEtD) complicates therapies for metastatic prostate cancer (PCa). Based on evidence that PCa cells can transdifferentiate to other neuroectodermally-derived cell lineages in vitro, we proposed that NEtD requires first an intermediary reprogramming to metastable cancer stem-like cells (CSCs) of a neural class and we demonstrate that several different AR+/PSA+ PCa cell lines were efficiently reprogrammed to, maintained and propagated as CSCs by growth in androgen-free neural/neural crest (N/NC) stem medium. Such reprogrammed cells lost features of prostate differentiation; gained features of N/NC stem cells and tumor-initiating potential; were resistant to androgen signaling inhibition; and acquired an invasive phenotype in vitro and in vivo. When placed back into serum-containing mediums, reprogrammed cells could be re-differentiated to N-/NC-derived cell lineages or return back to an AR+ prostate-like state. Once returned, the AR+ cells were resistant to androgen signaling inhibition. Acute androgen deprivation or anti-androgen treatment in serum-containing medium led to the transient appearance of a sub-population of cells with similar characteristics. Finally, a 132 gene signature derived from reprogrammed PCa cell lines distinguished tumors from PCa patients with adverse outcomes. This model may explain neural manifestations of PCa associated with lethal disease. The metastable nature of the reprogrammed stem-like PCa cells suggests that cycles of PCa cell reprogramming followed by re-differentiation may support disease progression and therapeutic resistance. The ability of a gene signature from reprogrammed PCa cells to identify tumors from patients with metastasis or PCa-specific mortality implies that developmental reprogramming is linked to aggressive tumor behaviors.
Are consumers willing to purchase genetically modified foods?

A careful understanding of consumer willingness to pay(WTP) towards genetically modified(GM) foods in China will provide a scientific basis for policy decision-making on development of agricultural biotechnology, and to help companies involved in the manufacturing and marketing of GM foods in developing a profile of consumers. This study aims to estimate consumer WTP of GM foods in China and factors influencing WTP. Data were collected in 31 regions by a national telephone survey. A double-bounded logic model was used. The results show that price, knowledge and education level are important factors influencing WTP. To some extent, age and gender also influence WTP for the different GM foods. Furthermore, consumers are willing to purchase GM foods at a discount.
Persistence or Clearance of Human Papillomavirus Infections in Women in Ouro Preto, Brazil

Persistent high-risk (HR) human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is necessary for development of precursor lesions and cervical cancer. We investigate persistence and clearance of HPV infections and cofactors in unvaccinated women. Cervical samples of 569 women (18–75 years), received for routine evaluation in the Health Department of Ouro Preto, Brazil, were collected and subjected to PCR (MY09/11 or GP5+/6+ primers), followed by RFLP or sequencing. All women were interviewed to collect sociodemographic and behavioral information. Viral infection persistence or clearance was reevaluated after 24 months and was observed in 59.6% and 40.4% of women, respectively. HPVs 16, 33, 59, 66, 69, and 83 (HR) were the most persistent types whereas HPVs 31, 45, and 58 were less persistent. Clearance or persistence did not differ between groups infected by HPVs 18, 53, and 67. In low-risk (LR) types, HPV 6 infected samples were associated with clearance, while HPV 11, 61, 72, or 81 infected samples were persistent in the follow-up. No statistically significant association was detected between persistent HPV infections and sociodemographic and behavioral characteristics analyzed. To study persistence or clearance in HPV infection allows the identification of risk groups, cofactors, and strategies for prevention of cervical cancer.
Compact Planar Quasi-Elliptic Function Filter With Inline Stepped-Impedance Resonators

Compact microstrip bandpass filters of orders N = 4,6, and 8 with quasi-elliptic function responses are synthesized with inline stepped-impedance resonators. The filters have enhanced transition responses since two transmission zeros are generated on both sides of the passband. Existence of these two zeros is investigated by formulating the Y-matrix of the equivalent circuit for the filter and taking adjacent and nonadjacent coupling into account. Some matrix elements Yj,j+2 representing coupling between two nonadjacent resonators are shown to have the opposite signs in both the lower and upper sides of the center frequency. This property leads to creation of the two transmission zeros on both sides of the passband. It is demonstrated that one more zero can be created in the rejection band by the tapped-line input/output scheme. Experimental circuits on substrates with epsivr = 2.2 and 10.2 are measured to validate the theory and design.
A3Cov: A new topology construction protocol for connected area coverage in WSN

Topology control is a well-known strategy to save energy and extend the lifetime of wireless sensor networks. It consists of topology construction and topology maintenance algorithms. While topology construction builds a reduced topology, topology maintenance changes the reduced topology when the current one is no longer optimal. The selection of an appropriate topology maintenance technique is rarely included in the evaluation of topology control solutions, even though the impact of such decision in the lifetime of the network (in terms of number of nodes or coverage) has been shown before. This paper makes two important contributions. First, it introduces a new topology construction algorithm called A3Cov, based on the A3 protocol, which increases the coverage ratio considerably compared to the original version. Second, the A3Cov protocol is evaluated jointly with four topology maintenance techniques to determine the influence of the different maintenance schemes on the area coverage and the network lifetime. The results show that the dynamic global topology maintenance techniques with A3Cov provide the best coverage and network lifetime for a substantially longer period of time compared to the ACOS protocol.
Solitonic excitations in the Haldane phase of an S=1 chain

We study low-lying excitations in the 1D S=1 antiferromagnetic valence-bond-solid (VBS) model. In a numerical calculation on finite systems the lowest excitations are found to form a discrete triplet branch, separated from the higher-lying continuum. The dispersion of these triplet excitations can be satisfactorily reproduced by assuming approximate wavefunctions. These wavefunctions are shown to correspond to moving hidden domain walls, i.e. to one-soliton excitations.
Configurable Transient Fault Detection via Dynamic Binary Translation

Smaller feature sizes, lower voltage levels, and reduced noise margins have helped improve the performance and lower the power consumption of modern microprocessors. These same advances have made processors more susceptible to transient faults that can corrupt data and make systems unavailable. Designers often compensate for transient faults by adding hardware redundancy and making circuitand process-level adjustments. However, applications have different data integrity and availability demands, which make hardware approaches such as these too costly for many markets. Software techniques can provide fault tolerance at a lower cost and with greater flexibility since they can be selectively deployed in the field even after the hardware has been manufactured. Most existing software-only techniques use recompilation, requiring access to program source code. Regardless of the code transformation method, previous techniques also incur unnecessary significant performance penalties by uniformly protecting the entire program without taking into account the varying vulnerability of different program regions and state elements to transient faults. This paper presents Spot , a software-only fault-detection technique which uses dynamic binary translation to provide softwaremodulated fault tolerance with fine-grained control of redundancy. By using dynamic binary translation, users can improve the reliability of their applications without any assistance from hardware or software vendors. By using software-modulated fault tolerance, Spot can vary the level of protection independently for each register and region of code to provide users with more, and often superior, faultdetection options. This feature of Spotincreases the mean work to failure from 1.90x to 17.79x.
State space modeling of ionic polymer-metal composite actuators based on electrostress diffusion coupling theory

Ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) actuators are expected as artificial muscles for bio-mimetic soft robots. The IPMC gel first bends quickly and then bends back slowly when a constant voltage is applied to the sample. The latter phenomenon, referred to as the stress relaxation, can be modeled by electrostress diffusion coupling theory. The theory can predict the behavior of the actuator for the different species of counterions. In order to describe the actuator dynamics as a system with inputs and outputs, this paper proposes a linear state space model based on the electrostress diffusion coupling theory. The model consists of the three systems, the electrical, the electro-mechanical, and the mechanical systems. The results of the simulation and the experiment demonstrate the validity of the model.
The Temporal Bin Packing Problem: An Application to Workload Management in Data Centres

This paper formalises a packing problem that emerges as a core sub-problem for managing workload consolidation in data centres. As a generalisation of the Bin Packing (BP) problem, it considers a set of tasks (items) to be assigned to a set of machines (bins) under capacity constraints (CPU usage) on each machine. Unlike classic BP settings, items have a lifespan. We define the cost of using a bin as the product of the bin's capacity and the time for which it is used. This problem will be referred to as the Temporal Bin Packing problem (TBP). We formalise the problem and present optimisation models using Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) and Constraint Programming (CP) for two contrasting but equivalent perspectives on the problem. The Packing model (PA) extends traditional BP models while the Temporal model (TP) explicitly models time with a sequence of packing problems. In addition, symmetry breaking techniques are developed. Finally, we introduce both a lower bound and an upper bound on the objective function. Our empirical results suggest that the TBP is a rather challenging problem for complete solvers to prove optimality. While breaking symmetry considerably reduces the computational effort for both PA and TP models, the Packing model using CP should be considered for larger instances.
On invisible plasma content in radio-loud AGNs: the case of TeV blazar Markarian 421

Invisible plasma content in blazar jets such as protons and/or thermal electron-positron (e ± ) pairs is explored through combined arguments of dynamical and radiative processes. By comparing physical quantities required by the internal shock model with those obtained through the observed broad-band spectra for Mrk 421, we obtain that the ratio of the Lorentz factors of a pair of cold shells resides in about 2 ∼ 20, which implies that the shocks are at most mildly relativistic. Using the obtained Lorentz factors, the total mass density p in the shocked shells is investigated. The upper limit of p is obtained from the condition that thermal bremsstrahlung emission should not exceed the observed γ-ray luminosity, whilst the lower limit is constrained from the condition that the energy density of non-thermal electrons is smaller than that of the total plasma. Then, we find p is 10 2 -10 3 times heavier than that of non-thermal electrons for pure e ± pairs, while 10 2 -10 6 times heavier for pure electron-proton (e/p) content, implying the existence of a large amount of invisible plasma. The origin of the continuous blazar sequence is briefly discussed and we speculate that the total mass density and/or the blending ratio of e ± pairs and e/p plasma could be new key quantities for the origin of the sequence.
Prevalence and predictors of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease as defined by the fatty liver index in a type 2 diabetes population

Background and aims We aimed to study the prevalence and the predictive factors of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) defined by the fatty liver index (FLI) in type 2 diabetic patients (T2DM). Methods Three hundred and eighty-one T2DM outpatients who regularly attended a Consulting Clinic in Cluj were retrospectivelly included. FLI, a surrogate steatosis biomarker based on body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), triglycerides (TGL) and gammaglutamyl-transferase (GGT) was used to assess NAFLD in all patients. Anthropometric and biochemical parameters were measured. Hepatic steatosis (HS) was evaluated by ultrasonography. Results NAFLD-FLI (defined as FLI>60) was correlated with HS evaluated by ultrasound (r=0.28; p<0.001). NAFLD-FLI was detected in 79% of T2DM. The prevalence of obesity in NAFLD-FLI patients was 80%. Of the patients with normal alanine aminotransferase (ALAT), 73.8 % had NAFLD. At univariate analysis, NAFLD-FLI was correlated with age (r= −0.14; p=0.007), sex (r=0.20; p<0.001), LDL cholesterol (r=0.12; p=0.032), HDL cholesterol (r = −0.13; p=0.015), ALAT (r=0.20; p<0.001) and ASAT (r=0.19; p<0.001). At multiple regression analysis, sex, ALAT and LDL-cholesterol were independent predictors of NAFLD-FLI. After logistic regression model, ALAT, LDL-cholesterol, HOMA-IR were good independent predictors of NAFLD-FLI. Conclusions NAFLD-FLI could be useful to identify NAFLD in T2DM patients. Subjects with T2DM had a high prevalence of NADLD-FLI even with normal ALAT levels. Our findings showed that sex, ALAT, LDL cholesterol and IR were significant and independent factors associated with the presence of NAFLD in T2DM subjects.
Multiple instance discriminative dictionary learning for action recognition

Action recognition from video is a prominent research area in computer vision, with far-reaching applications. Current state-of-the-art action recognition methods is Fisher Vector (FV) coding model based on spatio-temporal local features. Though high dimensional local features have more representative, the high dimensions are challenge for the dictionary learning of FV model. This paper proposes a Multiple Instance Discriminative Dictionary Learning (MIDDL) method for action recognition. We introduce cross-validation method in multiple instance learning procedure, which prevents training from prematurely locking onto erroneous initial instances. In order to balance the positive instance number between positive bags, only the top ranked instances are labeled as positive in the step of iterative training classifiers. Taking these classifiers as discriminative visual words, we get the video global representation based on classifier response. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of applying the learned discriminative classifiers as visual word on challenging action data sets, i.e. UCF50 and HMDB51.
Parenthetical Constructions - an Argument against Modularity

This paper presents an argument against modularizing linguistic information in natural language generation systems. We argue that complex linguistic constructions require grammatical information to be located in the same module, in order to avoid over-complicating the system architecture. We demonstrate this point by showing how parenthetical constructions --- which have only been generated in previous systems using an aggregation or revision module --- can be generated by a surface realizer when using an integrated grammar.
Mobi-G: Gossip-based monitoring in MANETs

Monitoring in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) constitutes a crucial service, as it enables the adaptation to the changing conditions in those networks based on the monitored state. Many monitoring mechanisms rely on a hierarchical structure, which must be maintained and suffers from sparsely populated networks, where the hierarchy might not be correctly established. Contrary to this structured design, other mechanisms rely on a simple, flat topology using gossiping to aggregate information. However, current gossip-based approaches provide inaccurate results, since they cannot handle the characteristics of MANETs. To overcome these problems and to exploit the flat topology and the robust communication pattern of gossiping for the monitoring of MANETs, this paper introduces Mobi-G. Mobi- G is a flat approach that gossips to exchange information instead of gossiping to aggregate them. It consists of a flexible protocol that exploits the characteristics of wireless communication, handles the mobility of nodes, and operates even in sparsely populated networks to provide accurate results at minimum cost.
Facilitated nuclear transport of calmodulin in tissue culture cells

Calmodulin (CaM) potentiates Ca(2+)-dependent signaling pathways in both the cytoplasm and nucleus. We have investigated the mechanism of CaM nuclear transport using tissue culture cell microinjection and a permeabilized cell import assay. The inhibition of CaM import by the translocation inhibitor wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) and by chilling, indicates that CaM import is facilitated, but because ATP depletion does not affect CaM import, the mechanism does not appear to be active. Chilling and WGA arrest persist in ATP-depleted cells, indicating that CaM is not retained in the cytoplasm by an ATP-dependent mechanism. In permeabilized cells, both Ca(2+)-CaM and Ca(2+)-free CaM are sensitive to extract-dependent WGA and chilling import inhibition. Titration experiments in microinjected and permeabilized cells indicate that a saturable cytosolic factor(s) mediates chilling and WGA arrest.