Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Minimum storage BASIC codes: A system perspective

The explosion of big data stored in distributed file systems calls for more efficient storage paradigms. While replication is widely used to ensure data availability, erasure codes provide a much better tradeoff between storage and availability. Reed-Solomon (RS) codes are the standard design choice, however, their high repair cost is often considered an unavoidable price to pay for high storage efficiency and high reliability. BASIC codes can achieve the optimal tradeoff between storage capacity and repair bandwidth with much less complexity of regenerating codes, which is first proposed in [1]. This paper integrate one construction of the minimum storage BASIC (MS-BASIC) codes [2] into a Hadoop HDFS cluster testbed with up to 22 storage nodes. We demonstrate that MS-BASIC codes conform to the theoretical findings and achieve recovery bandwidth saving compared to the conventional recovery approach based on RS codes.
Corneal Confocal Microscopy Predicts 4-Year Incident Peripheral Neuropathy in Type 1 Diabetes

OBJECTIVE This study determined if deficits in corneal nerve fiber length (CNFL) assessed using corneal confocal microscopy (CCM) can predict future onset of diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS CNFL and a range of other baseline measures were compared between 90 nonneuropathic patients with type 1 diabetes who did or did not develop DPN after 4 years. The receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve was used to determine the capability of single and combined measures of neuropathy to predict DPN. RESULTS DPN developed in 16 participants (18%) after 4 years. Factors predictive of 4-year incident DPN were lower CNFL (P = 0.041); longer duration of diabetes (P = 0.002); higher triglycerides (P = 0.023); retinopathy (higher on the Early Treatment of Diabetic Retinopathy Study scale) (P = 0.008); nephropathy (higher albumin-to-creatinine ratio) (P = 0.001); higher neuropathy disability score (P = 0.037); lower cold sensation (P = 0.001) and cold pain (P = 0.027) thresholds; higher warm sensation (P = 0.008), warm pain (P = 0.024), and vibration (P = 0.003) thresholds; impaired monofilament response (P = 0.003); and slower peroneal (P = 0.013) and sural (P = 0.002) nerve conduction velocity. CCM could predict the 4-year incident DPN with 63% sensitivity and 74% specificity for a CNFL threshold cutoff of 14.1 mm/mm2 (area under ROC curve = 0.66, P = 0.041). Combining neuropathy measures did not improve predictive capability. CONCLUSIONS DPN can be predicted by various demographic, metabolic, and conventional neuropathy measures. The ability of CCM to predict DPN broadens the already impressive diagnostic capabilities of this novel ophthalmic marker.
Overexpression of IL-15 In Vivo Increases Antigen-Driven Memory CD8+ T Cells Following a Microbe Exposure1

To elucidate potential roles of IL-15 in the maintenance of memory CD8+ T cells, we followed the fate of Ag-specific CD8+ T cells directly visualized with MHC class I tetramers coupled with listeriolysin O (LLO)91–99 in IL-15 transgenic (Tg) mice after Listeria monocytogenes infection. The numbers of LLO91–99-positive memory CD8+ T cells were significantly higher at 3 and 6 wk after infection than those in non-Tg mice. The LLO91–99-positive CD8+ T cells produced IFN-γ in response to LLO91–99, and an adoptive transfer of CD8+ T cells from IL-15 Tg mice infected with L. monocytogenes conferred a higher level of resistance against L. monocytogenes in normal mice. The CD44+CD8+ T cells from infected IL-15 Tg mice expressed the higher level of Bcl-2. Transferred CD44+CD8+ T cells divided more vigorously in naive IL-15 Tg mice than in non-Tg mice. These results suggest that IL-15 plays an important role in long-term maintenance of Ag-specific memory CD8+ T cells following microbial exposure via promotion of cell survival and homeostatic proliferation.
Domain-Independent Platform of Spoken Dialogue Interfaces for Information Query

A domain-independent platform of spoken dialogue systems is presented. It assumes that information query is done by a sequence of key-phrases corresponding to search keys, which can be dened by a domain database. A GUI is incorporated to display typical phrase patterns for guidance and to promptly present recognition and query results for con rmation. The platform consists of general-purpose speech understanding modules and task speci cation tools that semi-automatically derive a lexicon and dialogue management rules from the domain database. It is applied to two di erent domains: hotel search system and literature search system. It drastically saves the labor cost and time in developing the prototype systems. And the strategy of key-phrase-based dialogue is even more e ective than the conventional tuned system.
Globalisation , Productivity and Technology Research Paper 2006 / 11 Overseas Trading Costs and Firm Export Performance

The recent micro economic literature concerning exports has highlighted the importance of firms characteristics and trade costs for export decisions. Although the presence of trade costs (i.e. sunk and variable costs) are essential to describe the different export choices firms with different level of productivity make, little is known about them. The previous literature has concentrated mainly on the tariff barriers exporting firms face. The aim of this study is to provide evidence on a different aspect of trade costs, those of overseas trading costs. Firstly, we model theoretically the effect of a reduction in the cost of doing business in foreign countries. Secondly, using a data set of UK manufacturing firms we test these predictions. Controlling for firm and industry level covariates we find that: 1) improvement in the business environment of foreign countries led to an increase in the export intensity of established exporters rather than additional export market entry; 2) the change in exports was almost exclusively explained by the reform took place within Europe; 3) multinationals responded disproportionately to these changes; 4) exports responded most to changes in the rules governing ownership, labour market regulation and international capital markets. JEL classification: D24 F14, F23
The FAUST Corpus of Adequacy Assessments for Real-World Machine Translation Output

We present a corpus consisting of 11,292 real-world English to Spanish automatic translations annotated with relative (ranking) and absolute (adequate/non-adequate) quality assessments. The translation requests, collected through the popular translation portal http://reverso.net, provide a most variated sample of real-world machine translation (MT) usage, from complete sentences to units of one or two words, from well-formed to hardly intelligible texts, from technical documents to colloquial and slang snippets. In this paper, we present 1) a preliminary annotation experiment that we carried out to select the most appropriate quality criterion to be used for these data, 2) a graph-based methodology inspired by Interactive Genetic Algorithms to reduce the annotation effort, and 3) the outcomes of the full-scale annotation experiment, which result in a valuable and original resource for the analysis and characterization of MT-output quality.
Implementation of a Wake-up Radio Cross-Layer Protocol in OMNeT++ / MiXiM

This paper presents the DoRa protocol, which is a new cross-layer protocol for handling the double radio of nodes in wake-up radio scenario. The implementation details in OMNET++/MiXiM are also given, with a focus on the implemented MAC layers. The main goal of the DoRa protocol is to reduce energy consumption in wireless sensor network, by taking full advantage of the passive wake-up scheme. The performance of the DoRa protocol is then evaluated and results are compared with B-MAC and IEEE 802.15. 4 protocols.
The Contribution of Remedial Courses on the Academic and Social Lives of Secondary School Students

This qualitative study investigates the impact of nonformal education, namely remedial courses, on students’ lives and the ways in which it contributes to their academic and social development. The study was conducted via semi-structured interviews with 40 participants (12 students, 12 parents, and 16 teachers and administrators). The findings reveal that these remedial courses had academic, social, psychological, economic, and career development impacts on students’ lives. Moreover, as students’ school success improved, students learned how to spend their leisure time effectively in a secure environment, became socialized, increased their self-confidence, and realized their potential.
Influence of Miscibility of Protein-Sugar Lyophilizates on Their Storage Stability

ABSTRACTFor sugars to act as successful stabilizers of proteins during lyophilization and subsequent storage, they need to have several characteristics. One of them is that they need to be able to form interactions with the protein and for that miscibility is essential. To evaluate the influence of protein-sugar miscibility on protein storage stability, model protein IgG was lyophilized in the presence of various sugars of different molecular weight. By comparing solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy relaxation times of both protein and sugar on two different timescales, i.e., 1H T1 and 1H T1ρ, miscibility of the two components was established on a 2–5- and a 20–50-nm length scale, respectively, and related to protein storage stability. Smaller sugars showed better miscibility with IgG, and the tendency of IgG to aggregate during storage was lower for smaller sugars. The largest sugar performed worst and was phase separated on both length scales. Additionally, shorter protein 1H T1 relaxation times correlated with higher aggregation rates during storage. The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) assay showed overlapping effects of aggregation and chemical degradation and did not correspond as well with the miscibility. Because of the small scale at which miscibility was determined (2–5 nm) and the size of the protein domains (∼2.5 × 2.5 × 5 nm), the miscibility data give an indirect measure of interaction between protein and sugar. This reduced interaction could be the result of steric hindrance, providing a possible explanation as to why smaller sugars show better miscibility and storage stability with the protein.
Classification of oligonucleotide fingerprints: application for microbial community and gene expression analyses

MOTIVATION Oligonucleotide fingerprinting of ribosomal RNA genes (OFRG) is a procedure that sorts rRNA gene (rDNA) clones into taxonomic groups through a series of hybridization experiments. The hybridization signals are classified into three discrete values 0, 1 and N, where 0 and 1, respectively, specify negative and positive hybridization events and N designates an uncertain assignment. This study examined various approaches for classifying the values including Bayesian classification with normally distributed signal data, Bayesian classification with the exponentially distributed data, and with gamma distributed data, along with tree-based classification. All classification data were clustered using the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean. RESULTS The performance of each classification/clustering procedure was compared with results from known reference data. Comparisons indicated that the approach using the Bayesian classification with normal densities followed by tree clustering out-performed all others. The paper includes a discussion of how this Bayesian approach may be useful for the analysis of gene expression data.
Time-dependent Hierarchical Dirichlet Model for Timeline Generation

Timeline Generation aims at summarizing news from different epochs and telling readers how an event evolves. It is a new challenge that combines salience ranking with novelty detection. For long-term public events, the main topic usually includes various aspects across different epochs and each aspect has its own evolving pattern. Existing approaches neglect such hierarchical topic structure involved in the news corpus in timeline generation. In this paper, we develop a novel time-dependent Hierarchical Dirichlet Model (HDM) for timeline generation. Our model can aptly detect different levels of topic information across corpus and such structure is further used for sentence selection. Based on the topic mined fro HDM, sentences are selected by considering different aspects such as relevance, coherence and coverage. We develop experimental systems to evaluate 8 long-term events that public concern. Performance comparison between different systems demonstrates the effectiveness of our model in terms of ROUGE metrics.
High Performance Metadata Integrity Protection in the WAFL Copy-on-Write File System

We introduce a low-cost incremental checksum technique that protects metadata blocks against in-memory scribbles, and a lightweight digest-based transaction auditing mechanism that enforces file system consistency invariants. Compared with previous work, our techniques reduce performance overhead by an order of magnitude. They also help distinguish scribbles from logic bugs. We also present a mechanism to pinpoint the cause of scribbles on production systems. Our techniques have been productized in the NetApp® WAFL® (Write Anywhere File Layout) file system with negligible performance overhead, greatly reducing corruption-related incidents over the past five years, based on millions of runtime hours.
Plasma Enhanced Complete Oxidation of Ultrathin Epitaxial Praseodymia Films on Si(111)

Praseodymia films have been exposed to oxygen plasma at room temperature after deposition on Si(111) via molecular beam epitaxy. Different parameters as film thickness, exposure time and flux during plasma treatment have been varied to study their influence on the oxygen plasma oxidation process. The surface near regions have been investigated by means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy showing that the plasma treatment transforms the stoichiometry of the films from Pr2O3 to PrO2. Closer inspection of the bulk properties of the films by means of synchrotron radiation based X-ray reflectometry and diffraction confirms this transformation if the films are thicker than some critical thickness of 6 nm. The layer distance of these films is extremely small verifying the completeness of the plasma oxidation process. Thinner films, however, cannot be transformed completely. For all films, less oxidized very thin interlayers are detected by these experimental techniques.
20-Years of Population-Based Cancer Registration in Hepatitis B and Liver Cancer Prevention in The Gambia, West Africa

Background The Gambia Hepatitis Intervention Study (GHIS) was designed as a randomised control trial of infant hepatitis B vaccination applied to public health policy, with the main goal of preventing primary liver cancer later in adult life in The Gambia. To that effect, the National Cancer Registry of The Gambia (NCR), a population-based cancer registry (PBCR), was established in 1986 to actively collect data on all cancer diagnosis nation-wide. We extracted 20-years (1990-2009) of data to assess for the first time, the evolution of the most common cancers, also describe and demonstrate the role of the PBCR in a hepatitis B and liver cancer prevention programme in this population. Methods and Findings We estimated Age-Standardised Incidence Rates (ASR (W)) of the most common cancers registered during the period by gender. The registration period was divided into four 5-year intervals and incidence rates were estimated for each interval. The most common cancers in males were liver, prostate, lung plus bronchus, non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) and stomach, accounting for 60%, 5%, 4%, 5% and 3%, respectively. Similarly, cancers of the cervix uteri, liver, breast and NHL, were the most common in females, accounting for 33%, 24%, 11% and 4% of the female cancers, respectively. Conclusions Cancer incidence has remained relatively stable over time, but as shown elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa the disease is a threat in The Gambia. The infection related cancers which are mostly preventable (HBV in men and HPV/HIV in women) were the most common. At the moment the data is not enough to detect an effect of hepatitis B vaccination on liver cancer incidence in The Gambia. However, we observed that monitoring case occurrence through PBCR is a key public health pre-requisite for rational planning and implementation of targeted interventions for improving the health of the population.
Does Lack of Innovation and Absorptive Capacity Retard Economic Growth in Africa

This paper reviews the innovative capabilities and absorptive capacities of African countries, and investigates whether they have played significant roles in the region’s slow and episodic economic growth. Results from cross-country regressions covering 31 Sub-Saharan African countries suggest that growth in Africa is not simply a question of capital accumulation, fertility rates, aid dependency, and stable macroeconomic environment. It is also about strengthening the capacity of African countries to assimilate and effectively use knowledge and technology. Contrary to the views held by many analysts, the growth of African economies does not depend so much on their ability to innovate, but rather on their capacity to absorb and effectively use new technologies. Beyond technological issues, the paper confirms the stylized facts that the size of the government and political stability are important for the growth performance of African countries.
Cosmological baryonic and matter densities from 600 000 SDSS luminous red galaxies with photometric redshifts

We analyse MegaZ-LRG, a photometric-redshift catalogue of luminous red galaxies (LRGs) based on the imaging data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) 4th Data Release. MegaZ-LRG, presented in a companion paper, contains > 10(6) photometric redshifts derived with ANNZ, an artificial neural network method, constrained by a spectroscopic subsample of approximate to 13 000 galaxies obtained by the 2dF-SDSS LRG and Quasar (2SLAQ) survey. The catalogue spans the redshift range 0.4 < z < 0.7 with an rms redshift error sigma(z) approximate to 0.03(1 + z), covering 5914 deg(2) to map out a total cosmic volume 2.5 h(-3) Gpc(3). In this study we use the most reliable 600 000 photometric redshifts to measure the large-scale structure using two methods: (1) a spherical harmonic analysis in redshift slices, and (2) a direct re-construction of the spatial clustering pattern using Fourier techniques. We present the first cosmological parameter fits to galaxy angular power spectra from a photometric-redshift survey. Combining the redshift slices with appropriate covariances, we determine best-fitting values for the matter density Omega(m) and baryon density Omega(b) of Omega(m)h = 0.195 +/- 0.023 and Omega(b)/Omega(m) = 0.16 +/- 0.036 (with the Hubble parameter h = 0.75 and scalar index of primordial fluctuations n(scalar) = 1 held fixed). These results are in agreement with and independent of the latest studies of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and their precision is comparable to analyses of contemporary spectroscopic-redshift surveys. We perform an extensive series of tests which conclude that our power spectrum measurements are robust against potential systematic photometric errors in the catalogue. We conclude that photometric-redshift surveys are competitive with spectroscopic surveys for measuring cosmological parameters in the simplest 'vanilla' models. Future deep imaging surveys have great potential for further improvement, provided that systematic errors can be controlled.
Protein Kinase A Activation Promotes Plasma Membrane Insertion of DCC from an Intracellular Pool: A Novel Mechanism Regulating Commissural Axon Extension

Protein kinase A (PKA) exerts a profound influence on axon extension during development and regeneration; however, the molecular mechanisms underlying these effects of PKA are not understood. Here, we show that DCC (deleted in colorectal cancer), a receptor for the axon guidance cue netrin-1, is distributed both at the plasma membrane and in a pre-existing intracellular vesicular pool in embryonic rat spinal commissural neurons. We hypothesized that the intracellular pool of DCC could be mobilized to the plasma membrane and enhance the response to netrin-1. Consistent with this, we show that application of netrin-1 causes a modest increase in cell surface DCC, without increasing the intracellular concentration of cAMP or activating PKA. Intriguingly, activation of PKA enhances the effect of netrin-1 on DCC mobilization and increases axon extension in response to netrin-1. PKA-dependent mobilization of DCC to the plasma membrane is selective, because the distributions of transient axonal glycoprotein-1, neural cell adhesion molecule, and trkB are not altered by PKA in these cells. Inhibiting adenylate cyclase, PKA, or exocytosis blocks DCC translocation on PKA activation. These findings indicate that netrin-1 increases the amount of cell surface DCC, that PKA potentiates the mobilization of DCC to the neuronal plasma membrane from an intracellular vesicular store, and that translocation of DCC to the cell surface increases axon outgrowth in response to netrin-1.
Exploring the teaching of culture in the foreign language classroom within the context of collaborative professional development: a critical participatory action research study

ABSTRACT This article describes the experience of French language teachers as they explored interculturality within a collaborative professional development environment. Participants studied how to design culture lessons for their classrooms through the lens of Intercultural Communicative Competence with the support of theoretical frameworks for intercultural learning. The findings underscore a need for teacher professional development that creates space for teachers to explore topics of interest in an in-depth and collaborative manner, that makes time for exploration of theoretical frameworks, and that models practical strategies for embedding interculturality in curricula. Furthermore, this study reveals that explicit examples of intercultural lessons taught while using the target language are needed in order for language teachers to gain confidence in this area.
A Fast Mach Network IPC Implementation

This paper describes an implementation of network Mach IPC optimized for clusters of processors connected by a fast network, such as workstations connected by an Ethernet or processors in a non-shared memory multiprocessor. This work contrasts with earlier work, such as the netmsg server, which has emphasized connectivity (by using robust and widely available protocols such as TCP/IP) and con(cid:12)gurability (with an entirely user-state implementation) at the expense of performance. The issues addressed by this work are support for low latency delivery of small and large messages, support for port capabilities and reference counting, and integration with the existing local Mach IPC implementation. Low latency for small messages requires careful bu(cid:11)er and control (cid:13)ow management; this work is compared with other fast RPC work described in the literature. Low latency for large messages, particularly for faster networks, requires an avoidance of copying, which can be achieved through virtual memory support; the modi(cid:12)cations that were necessary to make Mach's virtual memory support inexpensive enough to be useful for this purpose are described. The distributed implementation of port capabilities, port reference counts, and port migration is discussed, and compared with that in the netmsg server. Finally, performance data is presented to quantify the speedup achieved with the described implementation.