Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance of cluster-enabled OpenMP for the SCASH software distributed shared memory system

OpenMP has attracted widespread interest because it is an easy-to-use parallel programming model for shared memory multiprocessor systems. Implementation of a "cluster-enabled" OpenMP compiler is presented. Compiled programs are linked to the page-based software distributed-shared-memory system, SCASH, which runs on PC clusters. This allows OpenMP programs to be run transparently in a distributed memory environment. The compiler converts programs written for OpenMP into parallel programs using the SCASH static library, moving all shared global variables into SCASH shared address space at runtime. As data mapping has a great impact on the performance of OpenMP programs compiled for software distributed-shared-memory, extensions to OpenMP directives are defined for specifying data mapping and loop scheduling behavior, allowing data to be allocated to the node where it is to be processed. Experimental results of benchmark programs on PC clusters using both Myrinet and fast Ethernet are reported.
Night mode prohibitory traffic signs detection

Prohibitory traffic signs play an important role in guiding, warning and regulating traffic system. As driving over the speed limit is often the major cause of accidents, detecting this group of prohibitory signs may reduce this danger. This paper presents an approach to detecting speed limit signs at night mode which is based on Multi-Scale Retinex Color Restoration and Hough Transform. Experiment to check the strength of this approach shows that approximately 96.6% of the prohibitory traffic signs invoked for this test were successfully detected. This test was carried out at dark mode images from different country.
STOCHASTICALLY ORDERED SYNCHRONIZED QUEUES

We consider a synchronized queueing system in which customers arrive according to a Poisson process to a station consisting of c parallel servers, each with its own queue. Upon arrival, customers split into parts and each part joins the corresponding queue. Under the assumption that the service requirements of the c parts of each customer are strongly ordered we obtain the joint distribution of the workloads.
Profits Optimization in the Supply Chain of Online Game Industry

：Online game is a typical E-business indusry. Firstly, the problem is pointed out that the present researches on supply chain contracts designed for tangible traditional products have not considered the characteristic of intangible products such as online game industry. Secondly, the members and operation progress of the supply chain are explored in online game industry. Thirdly, a new supply chain contract model is provided for online game industry under the reference to the existed contracts models. At last, a mathematical example is provided, the profits for the whole supply chain and the profits for every member have been compared with between in the new contract model and in the old contract model, and the results shows the new contract model is better.
The isolation of a blue fluorescent compound scopoletin, from Green Mountain potato tubers, infected with leaf roll virus.

A method has been described for the isolation of a crystalline fluorescent compound that occurs in Green Mountain potato tubers during the first year of infection with leaf roll virus. The substance was identified as 7-hydroxy-6-methoxy 1:2 benzopyrone (scopoletin), previously isolated by Best from tobacco plants, infected with tomato spotted wilt virus.
Risk Adjustment Effect on Stroke Clinical Trials

Background and Purpose— The ischemic stroke population is heterogeneous. Even in balanced randomized trials, patient heterogeneity biases estimates of the treatment effect toward no effect when dichotomous end points are used. Risk adjustment statistically addresses some of the heterogeneity and can reduce bias in the treatment effect estimate. The purpose of this study was to estimate the treatment effect of tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) in the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) tPA data set with and without adjustment for baseline differences. Methods— Using a prespecified predictive model, we calculated unadjusted and risk-adjusted odds ratios (ORs) for favorable outcome for the Barthel Index, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale, and Glasgow Outcome Scale for the patients in the NINDS tPA stroke trial. To assess the importance of the difference, a new sample size was calculated through the use of the risk-adjusted analysis. Results— We analyzed 615 subjects. The ORs for the Barthel Index were 1.76 (unadjusted) and 2.04 (adjusted). The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale and Glasgow Outcome Scale analyses also demonstrated increased ORs after adjustment. The estimated sample size required for the adjusted comparison was 13% smaller than the unadjusted sample. Conclusions— Risk adjustment in this data set suggests that the true treatment effect was larger than estimated by the unadjusted analysis. Stroke clinical trials should include prospective risk adjustment methodologies.
Hole-filling Based on Disparity Map and Inpainting for Depth- Image-Based Rendering

Due to the changes in viewpoint, holes may appear in the novel view synthesized by depth-image-based rendering (DIBR). A hole-filling method combining disparity-mapbased hole-filling and inpainting is proposed. The method first eliminates matching errors in destination image according to the disparity map. Then, holes are classified into different types according to their sizes. Finally, a disparity-map-based approach and an improved exemplar-based inpainting algorithm are used to fill different types of holes according to the type of hole. Experimental results show that the artifacts at the edge of foreground objects can be reduced in synthesized view since the matching errors are eliminated before hole-filling. In addition, the proposed method can achieve more natural and satisfactory results in filled areas in comparison with the disparity-mapbased approach and Gautier’s inpainting algorithm, though it may result in higher time complexity.
A comparative study of the patients with bilateral or unilateral chronic subdural hematoma: precipitating factors and postoperative outcomes.

BACKGROUND : Chronic subdural hematoma (CSDH) is a relatively frequent problem in neurologic or neurosurgical practice. Although CSDH is a well-known disease, data on bilateral CSDH are scarce compared with data on unilateral CSDH. The purpose of this study was to compare the clinical presentations, precipitating factors, computed tomography (CT) scan findings, postoperative complications, and outcomes between patients with bilateral and unilateral CSDH. METHODS : A retrospective study was performed on 129 surgical patients with CSDH from January 2002 to January 2005. These patients were divided into two groups: bilateral CSDH (45 cases) and unilateral CSDH (84 cases). Clinical presentations, precipitating factors, CT scan findings, postoperative complications, and outcomes of patients were analyzed. RESULTS : The mean age was 75 years for patients with bilateral CSDH and was 68 years for patients with unilateral CSDH (p = 0.696). Males predominated in each group (p = 0.696). The frequency of presenting symptoms of nausea and vomiting, headache, or unsteady gait was significantly greater in bilateral CSDH than in unilateral CSDH (p < 0.05). The incidence of usage of anticoagulant and antiplatelet therapy was significantly higher in bilateral CSDH group than in unilateral CSDH group (p < 0.05). The frequency of marked midline shift on CT scans was significantly greater in unilateral CSDH than in bilateral CSDH (p < 0.05). Coexisting systemic diseases, postoperative complications, and outcomes had no significant differences between both groups. CONCLUSIONS : Bilateral CSDH tended to occur more in patients with anticoagulant or antiplatelet therapy. Compared with patients with unilateral CSDH, patients with bilateral CSDH had more symptoms of increased intracranial pressure and lower incidences of midline shift on CT scans. Most patients with either bilateral or unilateral CSDH had a good postoperative outcome.
Human tracking in thermal images using adaptive particle filters with online random forest learning

Abstract. This paper presents a fast and robust human tracking method to use in a moving long-wave infrared thermal camera under poor illumination with the existence of shadows and cluttered backgrounds. To improve the human tracking performance while minimizing the computation time, this study proposes an online learning of classifiers based on particle filters and combination of a local intensity distribution (LID) with oriented center-symmetric local binary patterns (OCS-LBP). Specifically, we design a real-time random forest (RF), which is the ensemble of decision trees for confidence estimation, and confidences of the RF are converted into a likelihood function of the target state. First, the target model is selected by the user and particles are sampled. Then, RFs are generated using the positive and negative examples with LID and OCS-LBP features by online learning. The learned RF classifiers are used to detect the most likely target position in the subsequent frame in the next stage. Then, the RFs are learned again by means of fast retraining with the tracked object and background appearance in the new frame. The proposed algorithm is successfully applied to various thermal videos as tests and its tracking performance is better than those of other methods.
A stochastic approach of mobile robot navigation using customized RFID systems

Operating a mobile robot using the signal strength of a Radio Frequency (RF) system and/or line-of-sight distances to other known points or RF stations is a challenging task. This problem has been traditionally solved by several approaches suggested in the literature. Among the most common shortcomings of those approaches are the use of excessive number of sensors or multiple reference RF stations for the robot to estimate its location in an indoor environment. The current manuscript outlines two different aspects of a mobile robot navigation problem in an indoor environment using Received Signal Strength (RSS) of a customized Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) system. First, the robot's current location is estimated by a trilateration method where the localization problem is solved through a geometric approach based on Cayley-Menger determinants. The robot position is then better estimated by the application of conventional stochastic filters such as the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF). Second, the problem is explored by a set of points on the ground defining a desired path along which a mobile robot is supposed to navigate. The proposed robot navigation system is validated through a number of computer simulation for testbeds of various complexities.
Genomic and Proteomic Analysis of Mitochondrial Carrier Proteins in Arabidopsis1

Plant mitochondria maintain metabolic communication with the cytosol through a family of carrier proteins. In Arabidopsis, a subset of 45 putative genes encoding members of this family have been identified based on generalized mitochondrial carrier features. No gene clusters are apparent and few of the predicted protein products have mitochondrial targeting sequences recognized by bioinformatic predictors. Only nine genes are currently represented by more than 10 expressed sequence tags at The Institute for Genomic Research. Analyses of public microarray experiments reveal differential expression profiles of the more highly expressed members of this gene family in different plant organs and in response to plant hormone application and environmental stresses. A comparison of this Arabidopsis carrier subset (45) to the yeast gene family (35) reveals 10 orthologous groups between the two species. Recent surveys of the Arabidopsis mitochondrial proteome by two-dimensional gel separations have not identified any of these carrier proteins, presumably because of their hydrophobicity and basicity. Isolating integral membrane proteins from Arabidopsis mitochondria, using one-dimensional electrophoresis for protein separation and tandem mass spectrometry-based sequencing of doubly charged peptides, we have unequivocally identified specific carrier gene products located in mitochondria. This approach has identified six of the nine carriers represented highly in expressed sequence tag databases: adenine nucleotide translocator (At3g8580 and At5g13490), dicarboxylate/tricarboxylate carrier (At5g19760), phosphate carrier (At5g14040), uncoupling protein (At3g54110), and a carrier gene of unknown function (At4g01100). Overall, the combined transcript and protein expression data indicates that only a small subset of the carrier family of genes provide the majority of carrier proteins of Arabidopsis mitochondria.
Sequential Lifted Bayesian Filtering in Multiset Rewriting Systems

Bayesian Filtering for plan and activity recognition is challenging for scenarios that contain many observation equivalent entities (i.e. entities that produce the same observations). This is due to the combinatorial explosion in the number of hypotheses that need to be tracked. However, this class of problems exhibits a certain symmetry that can be exploited for state space representation and inference. We analyze current state of the art methods and find that none of them completely fits the requirements arising in this problem class. We sketch a novel inference algorithm that provides a solution by incorporating concepts from Lifted Inference algorithms, Probabilistic Multiset Rewriting Systems, and Computational State Space Models. Two experiments confirm that this novel algorithm has the potential to perform efficient probabilistic inference on this problem class.
Consumer sentiment and consumer spending: decomposing the Granger causal relationship in the time domain

It is often believed that the consumer sentiment index has predictive power for future consumption levels. While Granger causality tests have already been used to test for this, no attempt has been made yet to quantify the predictive power of the consumer sentiment index over different time horizons. In this article, we decompose the Granger causality at different time lags, by looking at a sequence of nested prediction models. Since the consumer sentiment index turns out to be cointegrated with real consumption, we resort to error correcting models. Four consumption series are studied, namely total real consumption, real consumption of durables, non-durables and services. Among other findings, we show that the consumer sentiment index Granger causes future consumption with an average time lag of 4–5 months. Furthermore, it is found that the consumer sentiment index has more incremental predictive power for consumption of services than for consumption of durables or non-durables, and that the index is not only useful as a predictor at the very short term, but keeps predictive power at larger time horizons.
An investigation into antidiabetic medication prescribing in South Africa

Background: The number of people with diabetes in Africa is expected to triple in the next 15 years, which will have a significant impact on the prescribing and use of antidiabetic medication. Objective: The primary aim of this study was to investigate the prescribing patterns of antidiabetic medication that are used on a chronic basis in South Africa. Method: Prescribing data of 1100 diabetic patients were retrospectively analysed over a 1‐year period. Results: The average age of patients was 53·2 years (SD=16·4 years), with more male than female patients. The oral antidiabetic drugs accounted for 67·4% of all the antidiabetic products prescribed, with the sulphonylureas the most frequently prescribed antidiabetic therapeutic subgroup. Glicazide was the single most frequently prescribed oral antidiabetic drug, accounting for 38·2% of all oral agents. Biphasic insulin was the most frequently prescribed class of insulin. Fifty‐seven patients were using insulin as well as one or more oral antidiabetic drugs. Cardiovascular system drugs, nervous system drugs and drugs acting on the alimentary tract and metabolism together accounted for more than half of the drugs that were prescribed concurrently with antidiabetic medication. Conclusion: Further research on the prescribing of antidiabetic medication should be conducted focusing on the qualitative aspects of treatment and treatment costs as well as studies on antidiabetic treatment in the public health sector.
Cardiometabolic Risk Factors Among US Adolescents and Young Adults and Risk of Early Mortality

OBJECTIVE: To determine the risk of mortality associated with cardiometabolic risk factors in a national sample of adolescents and young adults. METHODS: Prospective study of participants in the third NHANES (1988–1994), aged 12 to 39 years at the time of the survey (n = 9245). Risk factors included 3 measures of adiposity, glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) level, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, self-reported smoking status, and cotinine level. Death before age 55 (n = 298) was determined by linkage to the National Death Index through 2006. Proportional hazards models, with age as the time scale, were used to determine the risk of death before age 55 years after adjusting for gender, race/ethnicity, and presence of comorbid conditions. RESULTS: After adjusting for age, gender, and race/ethnicity, results of categorical analyses showed that current smokers were at 86% greater risk for early death than those classified as never smokers; that those with a waist-to-height ratio >0.65 were at 139% greater risk than those with a WHR <0.5; and that those with an HbA1c level >6.5% were at 281% greater risk than those with an HbA1c level <5.7%. Neither high-density lipoprotein nor non–high-density lipoprotein cholesterol measures were associated with risk for early death. CONCLUSIONS: Our finding that risk for death before age 55 among US adolescents and young adults was associated with central obesity, smoking, and hyperglycemia supports reducing the prevalence of these risk factors among younger US residents.
Multimodal random forest based tensor regression

This study presents a method, called random forest based tensor regression, for real-time head pose estimation using both depth and intensity data. The method builds on random forests and proposes to train and use tensor regressors at each leaf node of the trees of the forest. The tensor regressors are trained using both intensity and depth data and their votes are fused. The proposed method is shown to outperform current state of the art approaches in terms of accuracy when applied to the publicly available Biwi Kinect head pose dataset.
Ein Arbeitsmarktgesamtindikator zur regionalen Mittelverteilung für die aktive Arbeitsmarktpolitik

Mit dem Inkrafttreten der Vorschriften des Arbeitsforderungsreformgesetzes, vor allem niedergelegt im Sozialgesetzbuch (SGB) III, aber auch in anderen Gesetzen, anderte sich die bis dahin gultige Vorgehensweise bei der regionalen Verteilung der Mittel der Arbeitsmarktpolitik. Ein neuer Verteilungsschlussel wurde gesucht, der die vergleichsweise konkreten gesetzlichen Vorschriften uber die regionale Zuteilung der Budgetmittel fur die aktive Arbeitsforderung, also fur die Qualifizierung, fur ABM etc., umsetzen sollte. Das dazu im IAB entwickelte Verfahren zur Mittelverteilung wurde vom Vorstand der Bundesanstalt fur Arbeit 1997 beschlossen und vom Verwaltungsrat der BA 2000 leicht abgeandert. Der vorliegende Aufsatz gibt dazu Auskunft. Er aktualisiert den Stand von Blien (1998), indem die in den letzten Jahren vorgenommenen Weiterentwicklungen des Konzepts dargelegt werden, ist jedoch knapper als die altere Quelle.
Specific interaction with the nuclear transporter importin α2 can modulate paraspeckle protein 1 delivery to nuclear paraspeckles

Paraspeckle protein 1 (PSPC1), a component of nuclear paraspeckles, is identified as an importin α2 (IMPα2) binding partner in mouse spermatogenic cells. PSPC1-IMPα2 binding modulates PSPC1 delivery to paraspeckles, highlighting the potential for regulated importin synthesis to direct RNA metabolism and cellular differentiation.
Multiple autopolyploidizations and range expansion of Allium przewalskianum Regel. (Alliaceae) in the Qinghai‐Tibetan Plateau

We used the Allium przewalskianum diploid–tetraploid complex on the Qinghai‐Tibetan Plateau (QTP) as a model to examine how this complex responded to the Quaternary climatic oscillations, and whether multiple autopolyploidizations have occurred. We sequenced five chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) fragments (accD‐psaI, trnH‐psbA, trnL‐trnF, trnS‐trnG and rpl16‐intron) in 306 individuals (all of known ploidy level) from 48 populations across the distribution of this species complex. We identified a total of 32 haplotypes—11 in diploids only, 13 in tetraploids only, and 8 found in both cytotypes. This, plus network analyses, indicated that tetraploids have arisen independently from diploids at least eight times. Most populations in the eastern QTP contained multiple haplotypes, but only a single haplotype was found for 17 tetraploid populations on the western QTP, suggesting a recent colonization of the western QTP. We further found that this species complex underwent an earlier range expansion around 5–150 thousand years ago (kya), after the largest glacial period (800–170 kya) in the QTP. In addition, the high frequencies of tetraploids in the QTP suggested that the tetraploid A. przewalskianum cytotype has evolutionary advantages over diploids in colonizing and/or surviving the arid habitats of the QTP.
Complexities of Chromosome Landing in a Highly Duplicated Genome: Toward Map-Based Cloning of a Gene Controlling Blackleg Resistance in Brassica napus

The LmR1 locus, which controls seedling resistance to the blackleg fungus Leptosphaeria maculans in the Brassica napus cultivar Shiralee, was positioned on linkage group N7. Fine genetic mapping in a population of 2500 backcross lines identified three molecular markers that cosegregated with LmR1. Additional linkage mapping in a second population colocalized a seedling resistance gene, ClmR1, from the cultivar Cresor to the same genetic interval on N7 as LmR1. Both genes were located in a region that showed extensive inter- and intragenomic duplications as well as intrachromosomal tandem duplications. The tandem duplications seem to have occurred in the Brassica lineage before the divergence of B. rapa and B. oleracea but after the separation of Brassica and Arabidopsis from a common ancestor. Microsynteny was found between the region on N7 carrying the resistance gene and the end of Arabidopsis chromosome 1, interrupted by a single inversion close to the resistance locus. The collinear region in Arabidopsis was assayed for the presence of possible candidate genes for blackleg resistance. These data provided novel insights into the genomic structure and evolution of plant resistance loci and an evaluation of the candidate gene approach using comparative mapping with a model organism.