Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Advanced QoS Provisioning and Mobile Fog Computing for 5G

This paper presents a novel QoS and mobile cloud and fog computing framework for future fifth generation (5G) of mobile and fixed nodes with radio network aggregation capability. The proposed 5G framework is leading to high QoS provisioning for any given multimedia service, higher bandwidth utilization, traffic load sharing, mobile cloud plus fog computing features, and multi-radio interface capabilities. The framework is user-centric, targeted at always-on connectivity with using radio network aggregation for available mobile broadband connections, and empowered with mobile cloud and fog computing advantages. Moreover, our proposed framework is using Lyapunov drift-plus-penalty theorem that provides a methodology for designing algorithm to maximize the average throughput and stabilize the queuing. Also, we are showing the upper bound of the consumed power and the lower bound of the battery lifetime for the proposed 5G terminal. The advanced performance of our 5G QoS plus MCC framework is evaluated using simulations and analysis with multimedia traffic in heterogeneous mobile and wireless environment. The simulation results are showing that the maximal network utilization, maximal throughput, minimal end-to-end delay, efficient energy consumption, and other performance improvements are achieved.
Accelerating Unmodified Databases using Persistent Memory and Flash Storage Tiers

Recent breakthroughs in Storage Class Memory (SCM) technologies have driven Persistent Memory (PM) devices to become commodity off-the-shelf components in 2018. PM devices are byte addressable, plug into the memory interconnect, and run at near memory speeds, densities and price points. PM availability is led by Fast PM, comprised from backed-DRAM devices such as NVDIMM-N, and will follow soon with Slow PM, comprised of new SCM materials, such as Intel 3D XPoint NVDIMM. Fast and Slow PM devices vary in speeds, densities and cost, but both are orders of magnitude faster than Flash devices and an order of magnitude more expensive per GB. A PM-based file system was shown to accelerate unmodified transactional databases [2, 1], when the entire dataset was placed on NVDIMM-N cards. Most databases however are large and cannot fit entirely into the limited capacity provided by PM devices and even if they could - the high price per GB would prevent wide adoption. This work explores accelerating unmodifed databases using software that supports both NVDIMM-N and Flash devices and can transparently tier data between them. Ideally, this would provide the performance benefits of PM, while maintaining the cost structure of Flash solutions. We run a transactional workload (DBT-2) on an unmodified Postgresql [3] database, and compare the default block-based file system running on Flash NVMe to a file system, which is the first to support auto-tiering between byte-addressable NVDIMM devices and block-addressable Flash. The rest of the server and the operating system version are identical for both configurations (refer to Table 1). M1FS auto-tiering between PM pages and Flash blocks was implemented using the following architecture: • Each 4KB of data can reside on a PM page, a Flash block or both at the same time. • Data is speculatively copied to a Flash block ahead of needing to reuse the PM page, in order to hide the slower Flash access time. • Unless data is modified, an existing Flash copy is maintained in order to reduce Flash wearout. • PM pages are maintained in many queues in order to reduce the probability of lock contention when many cores are used concurrently • Page allocations are preferably done from PM attached to the CPU socket (NUMA-aware FS)
The atroviolacea Gene Encodes an R3-MYB Protein Repressing Anthocyanin Synthesis in Tomato Plants

The anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway is well characterized in plants. However, in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) an exhaustive knowledge of its regulation is still lacking. Tomato mutants showing higher levels of anthocyanins in fruits or vegetative tissues, such as Anthocyanin fruit (Aft) or atroviolacea (atv), have been extensively exploited in the attempt to clarify the process. Nevertheless, only candidate genes have been proposed as responsible for such phenotypes. The recessive atv mutation likely represents an allelic variant of a gene introgressed in tomato from wild Solanum species. We performed genome sequencing of atv/atv plants followed by candidate gene analysis, and identified a mutated gene encoding an R3-MYB protein. When overexpressed, this protein abolished anthocyanin production in tomato seedlings and plants, by silencing key regulators and biosynthetic genes of the pathway. The functional analysis of the protein clearly showed that it can negatively interfere with the activation of the anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway mediated by the endogenous MYB-bHLH-WDR (MBW) complexes. In particular, this R3-MYB protein can directly bind the bHLH factors which are part of the MBW complexes, therefore acting as a competitive inhibitor. The R3-MYB protein here described is therefore involved in a feedback mechanism that dampens the production of anthocyanins once activated by endogenous or exogenous stimuli. The atv mutation causes the production of a truncated version of the R3-MYB factor that cannot retain the full potential to inhibit the MBW complexes, thus leading to a constitutively higher production of anthocyanins.
Age and maturity related differences in motor coordination among male elite youth soccer players

ABSTRACT This study investigated differences in generic and soccer specific motor coordination, as well as speed and agility depending on age and maturity in elite youth soccer players (U10-U15, N = 619). Measurements included body height, body weight and sitting height to estimate age at peak height velocity (APHV); three Körperkoordinationstest für Kinder subtests (i.e. jumping sideways (JS), moving sideways (MS), balancing backwards (BB)) to assess generic motor coordination; the UGent dribbling test for soccer specific motor coordination; a 5m/30m sprint and T-test for speed and agility, respectively. Age specific z-scores of the predicted APHV identified players as earlier, on time or later maturing. (M)ANOVA analyses showed significant age by maturity interaction effects for the speed and agility test cluster, revealing maturity related differences in U14 and U15 players. Next to an overall higher performance with age for all test clusters (η2 0.080–0.468), earlier maturing players outperformed their later maturing peers in 5m/30m sprinting. The opposite was seen for JS and BB. So, players’ maturity status should be taken into account to adequately value performance in talent identification. Also, the focus on characteristics that appear to be minimally biased by an earlier maturational timing (i.e. motor coordination) should be increased.
Molt and gastroliths in Austropotamobius pallipes

Key-words: white-clawed crayfish, Astacidae, ecdysis, molting period, gastrolith size Knowledge of the molting cycle in crayfish may contribute (1) to improving a population analysis for monitoring and conservation purposes and (2) to imposing significant constraints on practices involved in culture. Two populations of Austropotamobius pallipes in central Italy were monitored from April to November for five years (2002–2006). Crayfish were collected, sexed, and the carapace length (CL) was measured. Molt cycle stages (premolt, molt, postmolt and intermolt) were identified depending on the exoskeleton hardness and color, and the abdomino-thorax splitting. The molt lasted for 6 minutes in juveniles, and maximally 16 minutes in adults in captivity. Males and females were treated separately, and divided into five age classes (0+; 1+; 2+; 3+; >4+). No significant differences were observed between females and males of the same age class. The molting event mainly occurred in April and May ongoing to November. The molting cycle occurred less frequently between July and August, and during the study period it was rarely observed between the last five days of July and the first week of August. Moreover, we measured and counted the gastrolith layers from a total of 124 crayfish (73 females + 51 males) collected twelve years ago, in order to discuss possible correlations between CL and gastrolith size.
How do entrepreneurs learn and engage in an online community-of-practice? A case study approach

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the ways in which entrepreneurs use communities of practice (CoPs) to express themselves, using narrative theory and rhetorical analysis, to gain insight into an electronic social network medium, namely, YoungEntrepreneur.com. In particular, the study focuses on CoPs themes, including why entrepreneurs engage in CoPs, what role the moderators and resident entrepreneurs can play in managing online CoPs, on communication rituals of the knowledge sharing through interactivity, and on ‘how to develop an intervention’ to maintain and stimulate entrepreneurs for engaging in an online community. Findings reveal that the topic title plays a major role in attracting people. Successful topics with successful conclusions (in terms of the original query that was answered) will not necessarily get high responses and vice versa. It is observed that the domain expert does not play a big role in keeping the discussion going. Finally, the study also discovered that entrepreneurs like to communicate in a story telling genre. A comprehensive set of engagement measurement tools are introduced to effectively measure the engagement in a virtual CoP, along with a classification to define and categorise discourse of messages in terms of content and context, which allow practitioners to understand the effectiveness of a social networking site.
An optimal consumption and investment problem with partial information

Abstract We consider a finite-time optimal consumption problem where an investor wants to maximize the expected hyperbolic absolute risk aversion utility of consumption and terminal wealth. We treat a stochastic factor model in which the mean returns of risky assets depend linearly on underlying economic factors formulated as the solutions of linear stochastic differential equations. We discuss the partial information case in which the investor cannot observe the factor process and uses only past information of risky assets. Then our problem is formulated as a stochastic control problem with partial information. We derive the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation. We solve this equation to obtain an explicit form of the value function and the optimal strategy for this problem. Moreover, we also introduce the results obtained by the martingale method.
Activity of Telavancin against Staphylococcus aureus Isolates, Including Those with Decreased Susceptibility to Ceftaroline, from Cystic Fibrosis Patients

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) acquisition in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients confers a clinical outcome worse than that in non-CF patients with an increased rate of declined lung function. Telavancin, an approved lipoglycopeptide used to treat infections due to S. aureus, has a dual mode of action causing inhibition of peptidoglycan synthesis and membrane depolarization. ABSTRACT Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) acquisition in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients confers a clinical outcome worse than that in non-CF patients with an increased rate of declined lung function. Telavancin, an approved lipoglycopeptide used to treat infections due to S. aureus, has a dual mode of action causing inhibition of peptidoglycan synthesis and membrane depolarization. MRSA infections in CF patients remain an important problem with no foreseeable decline in prevalence rates. Although telavancin is currently in clinical use for the treatment of complicated skin infections and hospital-acquired pneumonia, the activity against S. aureus infections in CF patients has not been investigated. In this work, we studied the activity of telavancin against CF patient-derived S. aureus strains collected from geographically diverse CF centers in the United States. We found that the telavancin MIC90 was 0.06 μg/ml, 8-fold lower than the ceftaroline or daptomycin MIC90 and 25-fold lower than the linezolid and vancomycin MIC90. We demonstrate that telavancin at serum free concentrations has rapid bactericidal activity, with a decrease of more than 3 log10 CFU/ml being achieved during the first 4 to 6 h of treatment, performing better in this assay than vancomycin and ceftaroline, including against S. aureus strains resistant to ceftaroline. Telavancin resistance was infrequent (0.3%), although we found that it can occur in vitro in both CF- and non-CF patient-derived S. aureus strains by progressive passages with subinhibitory concentrations. Genetic analysis of telavancin-resistant in vitro mutants showed gene polymorphisms in cell wall and virulence genes and increased survival in a Galleria mellonella infection model. Thus, we conclude that telavancin represents a promising therapeutic option for infections in CF patients with potent in vitro activity and a low resistance development potential.
Towards making block-based programming activities adaptive

Block-based environments are today commonly used for introductory programming activities like those that are part of the Hour of Code campaign, which reaches millions of students. These activities typically consist of a static series of problems. Our aim is to make this type of activities more efficient by incorporating adaptive behavior. In this work, we discuss steps towards this goal, specifically a proposal and implementation of a programming game that supports both elementary problems and interesting programming challenges and thus provides an environment for meaningful adaptation. We also discuss methods of adaptivity and the issue of evaluating student performance while solving a problem.
Effect of a Home-Based Lifestyle Intervention on Breastfeeding Initiation Among Socioeconomically Disadvantaged African American Women with Overweight or Obesity.

BACKGROUND Socioeconomically disadvantaged (SED) African American women with overweight or obesity are less likely to breastfeed. OBJECTIVE To test whether a home-based lifestyle intervention impacts breastfeeding initiation rates in SED African American women with overweight or obesity. STUDY DESIGN This was a secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial from October 2012 to March 2016 at a university-based hospital within the LIFE-Moms consortium. SED African American women with overweight or obesity and singleton gestations were randomized by 16 weeks to Parents as Teachers (PAT)-a home-based parenting support and child development educational intervention-or PAT+, PAT with additional content on breastfeeding. Participants completed a breastfeeding survey. Outcomes included breastfeeding initiation and reasons for not initiating or not continuing breastfeeding. RESULTS One hundred eighteen women were included: 59 in PAT+; 59 in PAT. Breastfeeding initiation rates were similar in each group (78.00% in PAT+; 74.58% in PAT). On a one to four scale, with four denoting "very important," women in PAT+ and PAT were equally likely to rate their beliefs that formula was better than breast milk or breastfeeding would be too inconvenient as the most important reasons to not initiate breastfeeding. On the same scale, women similarly rated their difficulty latching or concern for low milk supply as the most important reasons for breastfeeding cessation. CONCLUSION SED African American women with overweight or obesity who received a home-based educational intervention had higher breastfeeding rates than is reported nationally for black women (59%). However, the intervention with more breastfeeding content did not further increase breastfeeding rates or impact reasons for breastfeeding cessation. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov : NCT01768793.
DNestMap: Mapping Deeply-Nested Loops on Ultra-Low Power CGRAs

Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Arrays (CGRAs) provide high performance, energy-efficient execution of the innermost loops of an application. Most real-world applications, however, comprise of deeply-nested loops with complex and often irregular control flow structures that cannot be mapped to CGRAs by existing compilers. This leads to excessive data transfer costs as the execution continuously alternates between the outer loop-nests on the host processor and the innermost loop on the CGRA accelerator. Moreover, ultra-low power CGRAs can only include limited on-chip memory to cache the configuration bitstreams and need frequent swapping of configurations in the presence of multiple innermost loops. We introduce DNestMap, a partitioning and mapping tool for CGRAs, that can judiciously extract the most beneficial code segments of multiple deeply-nested loops and effectively cache them together statically in the configuration memory through spatio-temporal partitioning. DNestMap achieves 1.58X performance improvement compared to dynamic caching of configuration contexts of the innermost loops in the CGRAs with limited on-chip memory.
Percutaneous balloon dilatation for congenital aortic stenosis during infancy: A 15-year single-center experience

Background: Congenital aortic stenosis (AS) is a rare disease. Treatment options for newborns are challenging. Newborns may have higher reintervention rate and mortality. Objectives: The study aimed to identify the factors predictive of reintervention following balloon aortic valvuloplasty (BAV) for AS during infancy. Methods: Retrospectively, between 2001 and 2016, echocardiography (echo) and cardiac catheterization data for infants with AS were analyzed, including follow-ups and reinterventions. Percentage reduction was defined as the ratio between the drop of aortic valve (AV) peak gradient and the baseline peak gradient. Results: Sixty infants were included and 48 were followed up. Sixteen (27%) patients were neonates. Peak-to-peak gradient at AV was 64 ± 27 mmHg, which was reduced to 27 ± 13 mmHg. Percentage reduction was 53% ±24%. Forty-nine (82%) patients had adequate results (residual AV gradient <35 mmHg). There was no significant aortic insufficiency (AI) before procedure, while 6 (10%) patients had increased AI immediately after BAV. Of 48 patients, 14 (29%) required an additional BAV. Of 48 patients, 8 (17%) required surgical interventions following BAV. Reintervention was associated more with small left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT), high residual AV, and low percentage reduction. Mortality was 8.3%. Conclusions: BAV in infancy has a reasonable success rate (82%) with high rate of reintervention. Patent ductus arteriosus-dependent neonates carried the highest risk of mortality. Small LVOT, high AV residual gradient, and low percentage reduction resulted in more reinterventions.
Ultralow Power Acoustic Feature-Scoring using Gaussian I-V Transistors

This paper discusses energy-efficient acoustic feature-scoring using transistors with Gaussian-shaped IDS–VGS. Acoustic feature-scoring is a critical step in speech recognition tasks such as speaker recognition. Suited to the transistor, we discuss a novel acoustic model based on the harmonic mean of Gaussian functions, yielding a much-simplified physical implementation. Compared to digital CMOS, the discussed implementation reduces energy dissipation of a 13-dimensional mixture function by 45×. For a test-case recognizing among seven speakers, the design reduces power dissipation by 7.8× than digital CMOS. Exploiting the simplified mixture function, we present algorithmic overdesigning for resiliency against hardware imperfections.
An Architecture-Agnostic Integer Linear Programming Approach to CGRA Mapping

Coarse-grained reconfigurable architectures (CGRAs) have gained traction as a potential solution to implement accelerators for compute-intensive kernels, particularly in domains requiring hardware programmability. Architecture and CAD for CGRAs are tightly intertwined, with many prior works having combined architectures and tools. In this work, we present an architecture-agnostic integer linear programming (ILP) approach for CGRA mapping, integrated within an open-source CGRA architecture evaluation framework. The mapper accepts an application and an architecture description as input and can generate an optimal mapping, if indeed mapping is feasible. An experimental study demonstrates its effectiveness over a range of CGRA architectures.
Shifts to earlier selfing in sympatry may reduce costs of pollinator sharing

Coexisting plant congeners often experience strong competition for resources. Competition for pollinators can result in direct fitness costs via reduced seed set or indirect costs via heterospecific pollen transfer (HPT), causing subsequent gamete loss and unfit hybrid offspring production. Autonomous selfing may alleviate these costs, but to preempt HPT, selfing should occur early, before opportunities for HPT occur (i.e., “preemptive selfing hypothesis”). We evaluated conditions for this hypothesis in Collinsia sister species, C. linearis and C. rattanii. In field studies, we found virtually identical flowering times and pollinator sharing between congeners in sympatric populations. Compared to allopatric populations, sympatric C. linearis populations enjoyed higher pollinator visitation rates, whereas visitation to C. rattanii did not differ in sympatry. Importantly, the risk of HPT to each species in sympatry was strongly asymmetrical; interspecies visits comprised 40% of all flower‐to‐flower visits involving C. rattanii compared to just 4% involving C. linearis. Additionally, our greenhouse experiment demonstrated a strong cost of hybridization when C. rattanii was the pollen donor. Together, these results suggest that C. rattanii pays the greatest cost of pollinator sharing. Matching predictions of the preemptive selfing hypothesis, C. rattanii exhibit significantly earlier selfing in sympatric relative to allopatric populations.
Aortic Valve-in-Valve in Externally Mounted Bioprosthesis

Objective Aortic valve-in-valve implantation for prosthetic valve dysfunction is a good alternative to reoperative valve replacement. There are some limitations to this approach including the risk of coronary occlusion, patient prosthesis mismatch, and valve malposition. The incidence of coronary occlusion is higher in aortic valve-in-valve than de novo aortic stenosis cases. Multiple factors can contribute to this complication, and the type of bioprosthesis has been implicated. Methods We examined our experience of 80 aortic valve-in-valve cases with internally and externally mounted leaflet valves. Results Procedural success was achieved in 95% of cases with an overall 30-day mortality of 1.3%. Clinical and procedural outcomes were similar in the both cohorts. Conclusions Our data suggest that aortic valve-in-valve implantation can be safely performed in carefully selected patient with internally and externally mounted leaflet bioprosthesis.
STASH: SecuriTy Architecture for Smart Hybrid Memories

Whereas emerging non-volatile memories (NVMs) are low power, dense, scalable alternatives to DRAM, the high latency and low endurance of these NVMs limit the feasibility of NVM-only memory systems. Smart hybrid memories (SHMs) that integrate NVM, DRAM, and on-module processor logic are an efficient means to bridge the latency and endurance gaps between NVM-only and DRAM-only memory systems. However, these SHMs are vulnerable to data confidentiality and integrity attacks that can be executed on the unsecure NVM, DRAM, and/or memory buses. STASH is the first comprehensive end-to-end SecuriTy Architecture for SHMs that integrates (i) counter mode encryption for data confidentiality, (ii) low overhead page-level Merkle Tree (MT) authentication for data integrity, (iii) recovery-compatible MT updates to withstand power/system failures, and (iv) page-migration-friendly security meta-data management. For security guarantees equivalent to the closest state-of-the-art security solution extensible to SHMs, STASH reduces memory overhead by 12.7×, increases system performance by 65%, and improves NVM lifetime by 2.5×.