Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aggregate Computations over Uncertain and Probabilistic Data in TRIO System

Trio is a new kind of database system that supports data, uncertainty, and lineage in a fully integrated manner. The first Trio prototype, dubbed Trio-One, is built on top of a conventional DBMS using data and query translation techniques together with a small number of stored procedures. Uncertain and probabilistic data are inherent in many important applications. Recently, considerable research efforts have been put into the field of managing uncertain data. This paper describes Trio-One’s translation scheme and system architecture, showing how it efficiently and easily supports the Trio data model and query language and also shows how aggregation is performed on uncertain and probabilistic data in TRIO system.
The Rickettsia conorii Adr1 Interacts with the C-Terminus of Human Vitronectin in a Salt-Sensitive Manner

Spotted fever group (SFG) Rickettsia species are inoculated into the mammalian bloodstream by hematophagous arthropods. Once in the bloodstream and during dissemination, the survival of these pathogens is dependent upon the ability of these bacteria to evade serum-borne host defenses until a proper cellular host is reached. Rickettsia conorii expresses an outer membrane protein, Adr1, which binds the complement inhibitory protein vitronectin to promote resistance to the anti-bacterial effects of the terminal complement complex. Adr1 is predicted to consist of 8 transmembrane beta sheets that form a membrane-spanning barrel with 4 peptide loops exposed to the extracellular environment. We previously demonstrated that Adr1 derivatives containing either loop 3 or 4 are sufficient to bind Vn and mediate resistance to serum killing when expressed at the outer-membrane of E. coli. By expressing R. conorii Adr1 on the surface of non-pathogenic E. coli, we demonstrate that the interaction between Adr1 and vitronectin is salt-sensitive and cannot be interrupted by addition of heparin. Additionally, we utilized vitroenctin-derived peptides to map the minimal Adr1/vitronectin interaction to the C-terminal region of vitronectin. Furthermore, we demonstrate that specific charged amino acid residues located within loops 3 and 4 of Adr1 are critical for mediating resistance to complement-mediated killing. Interestingly, Adr1 mutants that were no longer sufficient to mediate resistance to serum killing still retained the ability to bind to Vn, suggesting that Adr1-Vn interactions responsible for resistance to serum killing are more complex than originally hypothesized. In summary, elucidation of the mechanisms governing Adr1-Vn binding will be useful to specifically target this protein-protein interaction for therapeutic intervention.
Consistent Online Backup in Transactional File Systems

The backup taken of a file system must be consistent, preserving data integrity across files in the file system. With file system sizes getting very large, and with demand for continuous access to data, backup has to be taken when the file system is active (is online). Arbitrarily taken online backup may result in an inconsistent backup copy. We propose a scheme referred to as mutual serializability to take a consistent backup of an active file system assuming that the file system supports transactions. The scheme extends the set of conflicting operations to include read-read conflicts, and it is shown that if the backup transaction is mutually serializable with every other transaction individually, a consistent backup copy is obtained. The user transactions continue to serialize within themselves using some standard concurrency control protocol such as Strict 2PL. We put our scheme into a formal framework to prove its correctness, and the formalization as well as the correctness proof are independent of the concurrency control protocol used to serialize user transactions. The scheme has been implemented and experiments show that consistent online backup is possible with reasonable overhead.
Nucleotide-Dependent Dimerization of the C-Terminal Domain of the ABC Transporter CvaB in Colicin V Secretion

ABSTRACT The cytoplasmic membrane proteins CvaB and CvaA and the outer membrane protein TolC constitute the bacteriocin colicin V secretion system in Escherichia coli. CvaB functions as an ATP-binding cassette transporter, and its C-terminal domain (CTD) contains typical motifs for the nucleotide-binding and Walker A and B sites and the ABC signature motif. To study the role of the CvaB CTD in the secretion of colicin V, a truncated construct of this domain was made and overexpressed. Different forms of the CvaB CTD were found during purification and identified as monomer, dimer, and oligomer forms by gel filtration and protein cross-linking. Nucleotide binding was shown to be critical for CvaB CTD dimerization. Oligomers could be converted to dimers by nucleotide triphosphate-Mg, and nucleotide release from dimers resulted in transient formation of monomers, followed by oligomerization and aggregation. Site-directed mutagenesis showed that the ABC signature motif was involved in the nucleotide-dependent dimerization. The spatial proximity of the Walker A site and the signature motif was shown by disulfide cross-linking a mixture of the A530C and L630C mutant proteins, while the A530C or L630C mutant protein did not dimerize on its own. Taken together, these results indicate that the CvaB CTD formed a nucleotide-dependent head-to-tail dimer.
The Fed, liquidity, and credit allocation

The current financial turmoil has generated considerable discussion of liquidity. Moreover, it has been widely reported that the Federal Reserve played a major role in supplying liquidity to financial markets during this distressed time. This article describes two ways in which the Fed has supplied liquidity since late 2007. The first is traditional: The Fed supplies liquidity by providing credit through open market operations and by lending to depository institutions at the so-called discount window. The second is by enhancing the liquidity of portfolios of some institutions by replacing their less-liquid assets with more-liquid assets. The Fed has used the second approach since late 2007. Unlike several previous occasions, however, it began supplying liquidity in the first, more traditional way only recently-in September 2008. This article notes that the Fed departed from its long-standing tradition of minimizing its effect on the allocation of credit by supplying liquidity to institutions that it believed to be most in need; at the same time, it neutralized the effects of these actions on the total supply of liquidity in the financial market. The article also discusses the Fed's reasons for reallocating credit this time rather than simply increasing the total supply of financial market liquidity.
Speeding up subcellular localization by extracting informative regions of protein sequences for profile alignment

The functions of proteins are closely related to their subcellular locations. In the post-proteomics era, the amount of gene and protein data grows exponentially, which necessitates the prediction of subcellular localization by computational means. This paper proposes mitigating the computation burden of alignment-based approaches to subcellular localization prediction by using the information provided by the N-terminal sorting signals. To this end, a cascaded fusion of cleavage site prediction and profile alignment is proposed. Specifically, the informative segments of protein sequences are identified by a cleavage site predictor. Then, only the informative segments are applied to a homology-based classifier for predicting the subcellular locations. Experimental results on a newly constructed dataset show that the method can make use of the best property of both approaches and can attain an accuracy higher than using the full-length sequences. Moreover, the method can reduce the computation time by 20 folds. We advocate that the method will be important for biologists to conduct large-scale protein annotation or for bioinformaticians to perform preliminary investigations on new algorithms that involve pairwise alignments.
Using Duration Information in Cantonese Connected-Digit Recognition

This paper presents an investigation on the use of explicit statistical duration models for Cantonese connected-digit recognition. Cantonese is a major Chinese dialect. The phonetic compositions of Cantonese digits are generally very simple. Some of them contain only a single vowel or nasal segment. This makes it difficult to attain high accuracy in the automatic recognition of Cantonese digit strings. Recognition errors are mainly due to the insertion or deletion of short digits. It is widely admitted that the hidden Markov model does not impose effective control on the duration of the speech segments being modeled. Our approach uses a set of statistical duration models that are built explicitly from automatically segmented training data. They parametrically describe the distributions of various absolute and relative duration features. The duration models are used to assess recognition hypotheses and produce probabilistic duration scores. The duration scores are added with an empirically determined weight to the acoustic score. In this way, a hypothesis that is competitive in acoustic likelihood, but unfavorable in temporal organization, will be pruned. The conventional Viterbi search algorithms for connected-word recognition are modified to incorporate both state-level and word-level duration features. Experimental results show that absolute state duration gives the most noticeable improvement in digit recognition accuracy. With the use of duration information, insertion errors are much reduced, while deletion errors increase slightly. It is also found that explicit duration models are more effective for slow speech than for fast speech.
Revealing synthetic facial animations of realistic characters

Given the recent development of advanced multimedia techniques able to support the creation of realistic computer generated characters, there is the parallel need of automatic tools allowing users to verify the source of the multimedia data they are observing, thus discriminating between artificial and natural information. In this paper, we focus on video representing human beings and we propose a novel method to identify computer generated characters by analysing the evolution of the face model in chronological order. Experimental results show that photorealistic facial animations, which are usually performed following fixed patterns, can be distinguished from natural ones, which follow much more complicated and various geometric distortions.
Labeling nanoparticles: Dye leakage and altered cellular uptake

In vitro and in vivo behavior of nanoparticles (NPs) is often studied by tracing the NPs with fluorescent dyes. This requires stable incorporation of dyes within the NPs, as dye leakage may give a wrong interpretation of NP biodistribution, cellular uptake, and intracellular distribution. Furthermore, NP labeling with trace amounts of dye should not alter NP properties such as interactions with cells or tissues. To allow for versatile NP studies with a variety of fluorescence‐based assays, labeling of NPs with different dyes is desirable. Hence, when new dyes are introduced, simple and fast screening methods to assess labeling stability and NP–cell interactions are needed. For this purpose, we have used a previously described generic flow cytometry assay; incubation of cells with NPs at 4 and 37°C. Cell–NP interaction is confirmed by cellular fluorescence after 37°C incubation, and NP‐dye retention is confirmed when no cellular fluorescence is detected at 4°C. Three different NP‐platforms labeled with six different dyes were screened, and a great variability in dye retention was observed. Surprisingly, incorporation of trace amounts of certain dyes was found to reduce or even inhibit NP uptake. This work highlights the importance of thoroughly evaluating every dye–NP combination before pursuing NP‐based applications. © 2016 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry
Physical-Layer Considerations for The Realistic Deployment of Impairment-Aware Connection Provisioning

Nowadays, impairment-aware connection provisioning is a hot topic due to the evolution of optical networks to all-optical infrastructures and to the need to maintain or enhance Quality of Service (QoS). Most of the research efforts in this field use complex, analytical models of impairments as the basis for the connection provisioning decision. However, these models are not fully feasible in practice due to cost, monitoring limitations and the architectures of impairment-aware Routing and Wavelength Assignment (RWA). This paper discusses key physical-layer considerations for the realistic deployment of impairment-aware connection provisioning, and provides an example of cost-effective, distributed Impairment-aware RWA (IRWA) in the context of the all- optical ADRENALINE testbed.
Rapid stereo-vision enhanced face recognition

This paper presents a real-time face recognition system. The system uses a stereo camera to locate, track, and recognize a person's face. Our algorithm improves state-of-the-art monocular 2D object recognition techniques by additionally considering the facial 3D surface, which is relatively stable under different lighting conditions. First, faces are detected and their surfaces are reconstructed from the stereo images. Afterwards, a 3D face is composed by joining 2D image data and appropriate depth data. The 3D face is then decomposed into its principal components. The principal components are used to recognize a 3D face by comparing characteristics of the current face to those of known individuals in a database. The result is an efficient and accurate face recognition algorithm. To evaluate our approach, we compared its performance to a classical monocular face recognition algorithm and observed that the recognition rate increased on average by 7.7 percent.
Towards content-based audio fragment authentication

Audio authentication is a technique to protect the integrity and originality of audio signals. Due to the long duration, it is often desirable to authenticate only a segment of audio signal. To the authors' knowledge, this important issue has not been seriously researched so far. In this paper, a novel authentication algorithm is proposed for the purpose of audio fragment authentication. SIFT descriptor originated from computer vision field is introduced and calculated on audio spectrogram to accomplish the tasks of fragment alignment, time-domain blocking, cropping and inserting identification etc. Experiments show reliable discrimination between admissible and malicious manipulations, precise tamper localization and classification.
Intersection resolution method for cloth simulation

Collision response is one of the major challenges for cloth simulation. Implicit integration method allows large time step, however when time step is too large the collision may not be detected, and the intersections occur. Collision can not be avoided only by preventing the collision from happening. The intersection that has already taken place must be resolved for a collision-free state. This paper implements efficient techniques resolving intersection for cloth simulation. Two stages are selected for handling the collision. We try to prevent collision from happening in the first stage, and the second stage deal with actual intersections. This two-stage approach eliminates almost all collision in the first stage, leaving only a few collisions for the second stage. Intersections between two triangles can be resolved correctly. In cloth which is composed of thousands of triangles, one particle's movement can lead to its neighbor particle positions' altering. The global performance should be considered in order for a totally collision-free state. A squared cloth draped onto a human model is tested for the techniques we put forward. Experimental results reveal that his procedure is suitable for intersection resolution in cloth simulation.
Mitigation of application DDoS attacks using ASNRI scheme for IP and MAC frames

With increasing trend in application services on large-scale internet scenario of both wired and wireless interface, intimidation to restrain the application service by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks become a high-flying issue. Most of the present DDoS attacks resistance method work on application services in wired network and wireless network individually. No method is offered herewith for the two kinds of networks up to now. Though the present internet application services must switch between wired and wireless platform, well-matched resistance method for Distributed Denial of Service attacks have to be coined for better security which is the present requirement in the environment. With these issues in mind, the proposed model develops counter mechanism to mitigate the potency of the resource attacks and evaluate the efficacy. Application Service Network Request Identification (ASNRI) scheme is presented to provide an apparent demarcation of wired service and wireless services request, which is then fed to the Bayes packet classifier for its associated denial of service attack characteristics. From the Bayes packet classifier, resistance filters are stimulated to restrict denial of service attacks in the respective platform, that is. , wired or wireless. The simulation of the proposed ASNRI scheme is conducted with NS-2 simulator to show its effectiveness of restricting Distributed Denial of Service attacks in terms of RESPONSE TIME, APPLICATION SERVICE THROUGHPUT, LOAD VARIANCE in the application server.
Traffic Load Balancing Schemes for Devolved Controllers in Mega Data Centers

In most existing cloud services, a centralized controller is used for resource management and coordination. However, such infrastructure is gradually not sufficient to meet the rapid growth of mega data centers. In recent literature, a new approach named devolved controller was proposed for scalability concern. This approach splits the whole network into several regions, each with one controller to monitor and reroute a portion of the flows. This technique alleviates the problem of an overloaded single controller, but brings other problems such as unbalanced work load among controllers and reconfiguration complexities. In this paper, we make an exploration on the usage of devolved controllers for mega data centers, and design some new schemes to overcome these shortcomings and improve the performance of the system. We first formulate <italic>Load Balancing problem for Devolved Controllers</italic> (LBDC) in data centers, and prove that it is NP-complete. We then design an <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f$</tex-math><alternatives><inline-graphic xlink:href="gao-ieq1-2579622.gif"/> </alternatives></inline-formula>-approximation for LBDC, where <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f$</tex-math> <alternatives><inline-graphic xlink:href="gao-ieq2-2579622.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> is the largest number of potential controllers for a switch in the network. Furthermore, we propose both centralized and distributed greedy approaches to solve the LBDC problem effectively. The numerical results validate the efficiency of our schemes, which can become a solution to monitoring, managing, and coordinating mega data centers with multiple controllers working together.
Effect of unilateral and bilateral resistance exercise on maximal voluntary strength, total volume of load lifted, and perceptual and metabolic responses

The present study investigated the effect of unilateral and bilateral resistance exercise (RE) on maximal voluntary strength, total volume of load lifted (TVLL), rating of perceived exertion (RPE) and blood lactate concentration of resistance-trained males. Twelve healthy men were assessed for the leg extension one-repetition maximum (1RM) strength using bilateral and unilateral contractions. Following this assessment, an RE session (3 sets of repetitions to failure) was conducted with bilateral and unilateral (both limbs) contractions using a load of 50% 1RM. The TVLL was calculated by the product of the number of repetitions and the load lifted per repetition. RPE and blood lactate were measured before, during and after each set. Session RPE was measured 30 minutes after RE sessions. There was a significant difference in the bilateral (120.0±11.9) and unilateral (135.0±20.2 kg) 1RM strength (p < 0.05). The TVLL was similar between both RE sessions. Although the repetitions decreased with each successive set, the total number of repetitions completed in the bilateral protocol (48) was superior to the unilateral (40) protocol (p < 0.05). In both bouts, RPE increased with each subsequent set whilst blood lactate increased after set 1 and thereafter remained stable (p < 0.05). The RPE and lactate responses were not significantly different between both sessions. In conclusion, a bilateral deficit in leg extension strength was confirmed, but the TVLL was similar between both RE sessions when exercising to voluntary fatigue. This outcome could be attributed to the number of repetitions completed in the unilateral RE bout. The equal TVLL would also explain the similar perceptual and metabolic responses across each RE session.
Obesogenic diet and physical activity: independent or associated behaviours in adolescents?

Abstract Objective Associations between diet and physical activity may identify behaviours that could be changed together to prevent childhood obesity. The present study examines associations between physical activity and obesogenic dietary behaviours in a large UK adolescent cohort. Design Cross-sectional analysis of a UK cohort. Adolescents aged 10–11 years completed three 1 d diet diaries. Average daily energy consumption, percentage energy from fat and carbohydrate, energy density and grams of fruit and vegetables were estimated. To assess physical activity participants wore an accelerometer for three or more days. Regression models were run by sex to examine the extent to which dietary variables predicted physical activity before and after controlling for pubertal status, maternal education and adiposity. Setting The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), south-west England. Subjects Adolescents who provided diet data at age 10 years and physical activity data at age 11 years. Results Among boys, percentage energy from fat was consistently negatively associated with accelerometer-determined indicators of physical activity (standardized beta (β) = −0·055 to −0·101, P < 0·05) while total energy (β = 0·066 to 0·091, P < 0·05) and percentage energy from carbohydrate (β = 0·054 to 0·106, P < 0·05) were positively associated before and after adjustment for confounders. For girls fruit and vegetable intake was consistently positively associated with physical activity (β = 0·056 to 0·074, P < 0·005). However all associations were weak. Associations were broadly comparable when participants with non-plausible dietary reports were included or excluded from the analyses. Conclusions Obesogenic diet and physical activity behaviours were weakly associated, suggesting that interventions should focus on implementing strategies that are independently successful at changing diet or physical activity behaviours either separately or in combination.