Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spotlight: Scalable Transport Layer Load Balancing for Data Center Networks

Load Balancing plays a vital role in cloud data centers to distribute traffic among instances of network functions or services. State-of-the-art load balancers dispatch traffic obliviously without considering the real-time utilization of service instances and therefore can lead to uneven load distribution and sub-optimal performance. In this article, we design and implement Spotlight, a scalable and distributed load balancing architecture that maintains connection-to-instance mapping consistency at the edge of data center networks. Spotlight uses a new stateful flow dispatcher which periodically polls instances’ load and dispatches incoming connections to instances in proportion to their available capacity. Our design utilizes a distributed control plane and in-band flow dispatching; thus, it scales horizontally in data center networks. Through extensive flow-level simulation and packet-level experiments on a testbed with HTTP traffic on unmodified Linux kernel, we demonstrate that compared to existing methods Spotlight distributes traffic more efficiently and has near-optimum performance in terms of overall service utilization. Compared to existing solutions, Spotlight improves aggregated throughput and average flow completion time by at least 20 percent with infrequent control plane updates. Moreover, we show that Spotlight scales horizontally as it updates the switches at O(100ms) and is resilient to lack of control plane convergence.
The quasi 16-day wave in mesospheric water vapor during boreal winter 2011/2012

Abstract. This study investigates the characteristics of the quasi 16-day wave in the mesosphere during boreal winter 2011/2012 using observations of water vapor from ground-based microwave radiometers and satellite data. The ground-based microwave radiometers are located in Seoul (South Korea, 37° N), Bern (Switzerland, 47° N) and Sodankyla (Finland, 67° N). The quasi 16-day wave is observed in the mesosphere at all three locations, while the dominant period increases with latitude from 15 days at Seoul to 20 days at Sodankyla. The observed evolution of the quasi 16-day wave confirms that the wave activity is strongly decreased during a sudden stratospheric warming that occurred in mid-January 2012. Using satellite data from the Microwave Limb Sounder on the Aura satellite, we examine the zonal characteristics of the quasi 16-day wave and conclude that the observed waves above the midlatitudinal stations Seoul and Bern are eastward-propagating s = −1 planetary waves with periods of 15 to 16 days, while the observed oscillation above the polar station Sodankyla is a standing wave with a period of approximately 20 days. The strongest relative wave amplitudes in water vapor during the investigated time period are approximately 15%. The wave activity varies strongly along a latitude circle. The activity of the quasi 16-day wave in mesospheric water vapor during boreal winter 2011/2012 is strongest over northern Europe, the North Atlantic Ocean and northwestern Canada. The region of highest wave activity seems to be related to the position of the polar vortex. We conclude that the classic approach to characterize planetary waves zonally averaged along a latitude circle is not sufficient to explain the local observations because of the strong longitudinal dependence of the wave activity.
Synthesis and Coherent Vibrational Laser Spectroscopy of Putative Molecular Constituents Associated with the Surfaces of Isoprene-Derived Secondary Organic Aerosol Particles

SOA particle formation ranks among the least understood processes in the atmosphere, rooted in part in a) the limited knowledge about SOA chemical composition; b) the availability of only little concrete evidence for chemical structures; and c) little availability of reference compounds needed for benchmarking and chemical identification in pure and homogenous form. Here, we address these challenges by synthesizing and subjecting to physical and chemical analysis putative isoprene-derived SOA particle constituents. Our surface-selective spectroscopic analysis of these compounds is followed by comparison to synthetic SOA particles prepared at the Harvard Environmental Chamber (HEC) and to authentic SOA particles collected in a tropical forest environment, namely the Amazon Basin, where isoprene oxidation by OH radicals has been reported to dominate SOA particle formation (Claeys et al., 2004; Martin et al., 2010b; Paulot et al., 2009; Poeschl et al., 2010). We focus on the epoxides and tetraols that have been proposed to be present in the SOA particles. We characterize the compounds prepared here by a variety of physical measurements and polarizationresolved vibrational sum frequency generation (SFG), paying particular attention to the Ebben et al. Page 2 phase state (condensed vs. vapor) of four epoxides and two tetraols in contact with a fused silica window. We compare the spectral responses from the tetraol and epoxide model compounds with those obtained from the natural and synthetic SOA particle samples that were collected on filter substrates and pressed against a fused silica window and discuss a possible match for the SFG response of one of the epoxides with that of the synthetic SOA particle material. We conclude our work by discussing how the approach described here will allow for the study of the SOA particle formation pathways from firstand second-generation oxidation products by effectively 'fast-forwarding' through the initial reaction steps of particle nucleation via a chemically resolved approach aimed at testing the underlying chemical mechanisms of SOA particle formation. Contributed equally, *Corresponding authors: r-thomson@northwestern.edu and geigerf@chem.northwestern.edu Ebben et al. Page 3
Achieving Superosseointegration: The Photofunctionalization Effect

Osseointegration is the backbone of successful implant stability. Biological ageing of titanium implants decreases its bioactivity leading to less bone to implant contact. Ultraviolet photofunctionalization reverses the ageing process, increases the bone-implant contact to almost 100% in what is known as “Superosseointegration”, and therefore increasing the strength and the primary stability of implants while decreasing the healing time. Photofunctionalization was shown to improve the prognosis, decreased morbidity and to have a significant impact on clinical practice. The aim of this review is to explain the events on the molecular level, the clinical implications of photofunctionalization and to highlight some of the other applications associated with this new technology.
Finding Local Minima via Stochastic Nested Variance Reduction

We propose two algorithms that can find local minima faster than the state-of-the-art algorithms in both finite-sum and general stochastic nonconvex optimization. At the core of the proposed algorithms is $\text{One-epoch-SNVRG}^+$ using stochastic nested variance reduction (Zhou et al., 2018a), which outperforms the state-of-the-art variance reduction algorithms such as SCSG (Lei et al., 2017). In particular, for finite-sum optimization problems, the proposed $\text{SNVRG}^{+}+\text{Neon2}^{\text{finite}}$ algorithm achieves $\tilde{O}(n^{1/2}\epsilon^{-2}+n\epsilon_H^{-3}+n^{3/4}\epsilon_H^{-7/2})$ gradient complexity to converge to an $(\epsilon, \epsilon_H)$-second-order stationary point, which outperforms $\text{SVRG}+\text{Neon2}^{\text{finite}}$ (Allen-Zhu and Li, 2017) , the best existing algorithm, in a wide regime. For general stochastic optimization problems, the proposed $\text{SNVRG}^{+}+\text{Neon2}^{\text{online}}$ achieves $\tilde{O}(\epsilon^{-3}+\epsilon_H^{-5}+\epsilon^{-2}\epsilon_H^{-3})$ gradient complexity, which is better than both $\text{SVRG}+\text{Neon2}^{\text{online}}$ (Allen-Zhu and Li, 2017) and Natasha2 (Allen-Zhu, 2017) in certain regimes. Furthermore, we explore the acceleration brought by third-order smoothness of the objective function.
Yenidoğanın Beslenme Şeklinin Anne Uyku Ve Yorgunluğuna Etkisi

Giris: Emzirme yenidogan icin en yararli beslenme seklidir. Fakat farkli nedenlerden dolayi anneler bebeklerine anne sutu disinda urunler verebilmektedir. Postpartum donemde yenidoganin beslenme sekline iliskin yasanabilecek sorunlar annelerin bu sureci olumsuz deneyimlemesine neden olabilir. Amac: Yenidoganin beslenme seklinin annenin uyku ve yorgunluguna etkisini incelemektir. Yontem: Calisma tanimlayici ve retrospektif tipte olup, postpartum besinci haftada bulunan 245 anne ile gerceklestirilmistir. Annelerin postpartum birinci haftada ve ikinci haftadan dorduncu haftanin sonuna kadar uyku ve yorgunluklari geriye donuk degerlendirilmistir. Veri toplamak amaciyla Tanitici Bilgi Formu, Annenin Uyku Durumunu Degerlendirme Formu ve Visual Yorgunluk Degerlendirme skalasi kullanilmistir. Veriler Mann Whitney-U ve ki-kare testi ile degerlendirilmistir. Bulgular: Birinci hafta tam emziren annelerin toplam uyku suresi kismi emzirenlere gore daha az olmasina ragmen uykularini daha yeterli bulduklari (p =.000) ve hissettikleri yorgunlugun daha az oldugu (p =.000) saptanmistir. Dorduncu haftanin sonunda ise tam tersi kismi emziren annelerin toplam uykularini daha yeterli bulduklari (p =.000) ve hissettikleri yorgunlugun daha az oldugu (p =.000) saptanmistir. Sonuc: Bu calismanin sonucunda tam emziren anneler postpartum ilk haftada yorgunluklari ve uyku bolunmeleriyle daha iyi bas ederken ozellikle birinci haftanin sonrasinda zorlandiklari saptanmistir. Postpartum donemde emzirme uykuyu gelistirip iyilestirebilecegi icin yeni anneler tam emzirmeye tesvik edilmelidir Anahtar Sozcukler: Uyku, Yorgunluk, Postpartum Donem, Emzirme.
Novel Selectivity Estimation Strategy for Modern DBMS

Author(s): Shin, Jun Hyung | Advisor(s): Rusu, Florin | Abstract: Selectivity estimation is important in query optimization, however accurate estimation is difﬁcult when predicates are complex. Instead of existing database synopses and statistics not helpful for such cases, we introduce a new approach to compute the exact selectivity by running an aggregate query during the optimization phase. Exact selectivity can be achieved without signiﬁcant overhead for in-memory and GPU-accelerated databases by adding extra query execution calls. We implement a selection push-down extension based on the novel selectivity estimation strategy in the MapD database system. Our approach records constant and less than 30 millisecond overheads in any circumstances while running on GPU. The novel strategy successfully generates better query execution plans which result in performance improvement up to 4.8 times from TPC-H benchmark SF50 queries and 7.3 times from star schema benchmark SF-80 queries.
Nonlinear Transient Modeling and Design of Turbocharger Rotor/Semi-Floating Bush Bearing System

This work presents the bearing design and analysis of radial semi-floating bush oil lubricated bearings for a typical industrial turbocharger configuration. Initially, the stability analysis for a linear rotor/bearing system is evaluated through eigenvalues and eigenvectors. The stiffness and damping coefficients of the inner oil film are obtained for the linear modeling process. The operating speed range of the turbocharger is high enough, at 21,000 to 24,000 rpm, to be unstable, indicating that the analysis should be and is carried out with nonlinear transient modeling. The nonlinear transient analysis evaluates the rotor and bush limit cycle orbits, rotor dynamics, the forces acting on the rotor and semi-floating bush surfaces, the oil flow through the bearing, the oil temperatures, and the power loss of the two oil films. The optimum design of a set of semi-floating bush bearings for this application depends strongly upon the clearances of the bush and squeeze film damper, usually expressed as the non-dimensional clearance to radius ratio. A typical clearance is evaluated to determine the bearing performance in terms of orbit size, forces acting on the bush and squeeze damper surfaces, oil flow through the bearing, power loss, and thermal heating. The nonlinear transient orbit values are evaluated for frequency content using the FFT to determine which orbits show both the synchronous and sub-synchronous vibration components and the associated rotor modes excited. These results are compared to the linear analysis over the operating speed range. The oil flow through the bearing component is much larger than the squeeze film damper. The forces acting on the bush and squeeze damper surfaces are related to the fatigue life of the bearing.
Kinshipgan: Synthesizing of Kinship Faces from Family Photos by Regularizing a Deep Face Network

In this paper, we propose a kinship generator network that can synthesize a possible child face by analyzing his/her parent's photo. For this purpose, we focus on to handle the scarcity of kinship datasets throughout the paper by proposing novel solutions in particular. To extract robust features, we integrate a pre-trained face model to the kinship face generator. Moreover, the generator network is regularized with an additional face dataset and adversarial loss to decrease the overfitting of the limited samples. Lastly, we adapt cycle-domain transformation to attain a more stable results. Experiments are conducted on Families in the Wild (FIW) dataset. The experimental results show that the contributions presented in the paper provide important performance improvements compared to the baseline architecture and our proposed method yields promising perceptual results.
CHIME: Clustering of high-dimensional Gaussian mixtures with EM algorithm and its optimality

Unsupervised learning is an important problem in statistics and machine learning with a wide range of applications. In this paper, we study clustering of high-dimensional Gaussian mixtures and propose a procedure, called CHIME, that is based on the EM algorithm and a direct estimation method for the sparse discriminant vector. Both theoretical and numerical properties of CHIME are investigated. We establish the optimal rate of convergence for the excess mis-clustering error and show that CHIME is minimax rate optimal. In addition, the optimality of the proposed estimator of the discriminant vector is also established. Simulation studies show that CHIME outperforms the existing methods under a variety of settings. The proposed CHIME procedure is also illustrated in an analysis of a glioblastoma gene expression data set and shown to have superior performance. Clustering of Gaussian mixtures in the conventional low-dimensional setting is also considered. The technical tools developed for the high-dimensional setting are used to establish the optimality of the clustering procedure that is based on the classical EM algorithm.
Reengineering Filipino, English, and the Lingua Franca in basic education

The 2002 Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) involves a reduction of several subjects or learning areas to five: Filipino, English, Mathematics, Science, and Makabayan. The learning competencies previously assigned to the discarded subjects have been redistributed to these five, particularly to Filipino, English, and Makabayan. At the same time, the Lingua Franca Project, which experiments on the use of regional vernaculars in selected schools, has been continued and even expanded to include the use of local vernaculars. How are language learning elements integrated into the new BEC? What lessons have been learned so far about language planning, curriculum planning, teacher training, and change management?
Atmospheric N deposition causes carbon balance gains in a seven year field experiment in subalpine grassland

Air pollution agents interact when affecting biological sinks for atmospheric CO2, e.g. the soil organic carbon (SOC) content of grassland ecosystems. Factors favoring plant productivity, like atmospheric N deposition, are usually considered to favor SOC storage. In a seven year experiment in subalpine grassland under Nand O3-deposition treatment, we examined C-fluxes and -pools. Total N deposition was 4, 9, 14, 29 and 54 kg N ha yr (N4, N9, etc.), annual mean phytotoxic O3 dose was 49, 65 and 89 mmol m projected leaf area. We hypothesized that SOC of this mature ecosystem 10 would not change in control treatments, but that effects of air pollutants on plant yield, net ecosystem productivity (NEP) and SOC content would develop in parallel, leading to SOC content to increase with N deposition. In the control treatment SOC increased significantly by 9% in seven years. Cumulative plant yield showed a highly significant N effect (+38% in N54), but no O3-effect. Cumulative NEP did show a strong, yet statistically insignificant, hump shaped response pattern to N deposition with a +62% increase in N14, and only +39% increase in N54. SOC had a similar response to N, with highest 15 gains at intermediate N deposition rates (9 and 14 kg N ha yr), suggesting an unimodal response, too. We assume the strong, pollutant-independent soil C sink developed as a consequence of the management change from grazing to cutting. The non-parallel response of SOC and NEP compared to plant yield under N deposition is likely the result of increased respiratory SOC losses, following mitigated microbial N-limitation or priming effects, and a shift in plant C allocation leading to smaller C input from roots. 20
Dorsal Patch and Chemical Signaling in Males of the Long-Nosed Bat, Leptonycteris curasoae (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae)

Abstract Adult males of the long-nosed bat (Leptonycteris curasoae) produce odoriferous “sebaceous” secretions in the interscapular region (dorsal patch), exclusively during the mating season (November–December). These dorsal patches might play a role in mate selection by L. curasoae in northern Venezuela. We evaluated differences between body traits of males with and without dorsal patches to determine whether these structures could be used by females as indicators of male quality, examined whether the size of the dorsal patch shows a relationship with other body traits during the mating season, and investigated the physical and behavioral development of dorsal patches. Thirty-seven percent of all males sampled (n = 99) showed conspicuous dorsal patches during the mating season in November and December. Males with conspicuous dorsal patches had larger testes, smaller body masses, lower body condition indices, and lower ectoparasite loads than males without dorsal patches. Larger testes and lower ectoparasite loads suggest that the dorsal patch could be signaling male quality and readiness for mating. A typical dorsal patch covered approximately 1.7 cm2 of a male's interscapular region, but size of this structure did not vary with any of the body traits examined. We describe a novel, stereotypic behavior performed by male L. curasoae, which we call “smearing behavior,” and suggest that this is associated with development of the dorsal patch because males appear to smear different body fluids onto this patch. We further suggest that sebaceous secretions in the interscapular region would not be the determining factor in dorsal patch development.
Direct fixation of [(11)C]-CO(2) by amines: formation of [(11)C-carbonyl]-methylcarbamates.

[(11)C-Carbonyl]-methylcarbamates can be synthesised directly from [(11)C]-CO(2) and primary or secondary amines in a one-pot, two-step reaction. The use of either diazabicyclo[5.4. 0]undec-7-ene (DBU) or 2-tert-butylimino-2-diethylamino-1,3-dimethyl-perhydro-1,3,2-diazaphosphorine (BEMP) enables efficient trapping of [(11)C]-CO(2) in small volumes of DMF as [(11)C]-carbamate salts. Subsequent reaction with a variety of methylating agents rapidly generates the desired [(11)C-carbonyl]-methylcarbamates in high radiochemical yields. The usefulness of the method is illustrated by the efficient radiosynthesis of a kappa opioid receptor imaging radiotracer, useful in positron emission tomography (PET).
Determinantes da Rotatividade das Carteiras dos Fundos de Investimento em Ações

† . Mestre pela Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo da Fundação Getulio Vargas. Vínculo: Pesquisador da Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo da Fundação Getulio Vargas. Endereço: Av. Nove de Julho, 2029, São Paulo – São Paulo E-mail: pedro.albertin@gvmail.br Telefone: (11) 3799-7994  Pós doutor pela Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade da Universidade de São Paulo Vínculo: Professor titular da Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo da Fundação Getulio Vargas. Endereço: Av. Nove de Julho, 2029, São Paulo E-mail: william.eid@fgv.br Telefone: (11) 3799 7994
A high-power laser diode driver in vehicle headlight application

The high-power laser diode driver (HPLDD) that combines the buck-boost converter (BBC) and feedback controllers was designed and implemented for the vehicle headlights. The buck-boost converter could be operated in all conversion modes including step-up, step-down, and step-up-down, with variable battery voltages input to the HPLDD. Moreover, the feedback controllers composed of a voltage-loop controller (VLC) and a current-loop controller (CLC) to control the BBC's output voltage and current to drive high-power laser diodes (HPLDs). In the start-up phase, when the BBC output side is operated from the constant-voltage mode and changed to the constant-current mode, a current overshoot occurs, which can damage the high-power laser diodes. This paper proposed a control method, the proportional-switching-proportional-integral control technology, can be used to the CLC to reduce the start-up current overshoot.
A novel key-points based shapelets transform for time series classification

Time Series Classification (TSC) has been attracting more and more researchers attention. Shapelet is a novel concept proposed in recent years, which allows for TSC based on local features. A shapelet is subsequence of a time series and it could be maximally representative of a class. The original shapelet discovery algorithm is time-consume and the shapelet based classifier is constructed as a decision tree which non-leaf node contains the time-consume process. There are two shortcomings for the original algorithm: 1) shapelet discovery process is time-consume; 2) both feature extraction and classifier construction are tightly coupled, resulting in the novel concept is difficult to apply to construct other classifier. Although there are a mount of speed up technologies for the first shortcomings, we think that the newest proposed key-points based shapelet has the potential to resolve both poor interpretability and slow running problems. Whats more, the original algorithm remain a room for improvements. In this paper, we will propose two novelty. First, we will improve the original key-points based shapelet discovery algorithm. Second, we will apply the improved novel concept to shapelet transform algorithm. Besides the algorithm description, we also designed two groups of verified experiments. By comparing with state-of-the-art methods, we will demonstrate that our method could resolve the two shortcomings effectively.
Versatile interactions and bioinformatics analysis of noncoding RNAs

Advances in RNA sequencing technologies and computational methodologies have provided a huge impetus to noncoding RNA (ncRNA) study. Once regarded as inconsequential results of transcriptional promiscuity, ncRNAs were later found to exert great roles in various aspects of biological functions. They are emerging as key players in gene regulatory networks by interacting with other biomolecules (DNA, RNA or protein). Here, we provide an overview of ncRNA repertoire and highlight recent discoveries of their versatile interactions. To better investigate the ncRNA-mediated regulation, it is necessary to make full use of innovative sequencing techniques and computational tools. We further describe a comprehensive workflow for in silico ncRNA analysis, providing up-to-date platforms, databases and tools dedicated to ncRNA identification and functional annotation.