Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimistic Snapshot Consistency for Lock-Free Concurrency in Data Structures

The shift towards multicore processors offers new possibilities for exploiting concurrency and parallelism. Traditionally, programs have relied on threads to execute concurrent tasks in a fork/join style synchronization model, while using locks, semaphores, or other access modifiers to protect access to shared state. Other alternatives involve separate processes with inter-process communication, or message passing with the actor model as deployed in Erlang/Scala [1]. The issue with the traditional approach is that lock acquisition is slow and writing or debugging code involving locks has proved difficult. We propose an internal modification for data structures to use snapshots and allow threads to edit independent versions of data structures, while merging in the changes. Thus, we can allow concurrent access to shared objects without locks while still maintaining a consistent state, leading to simplified code and significant performance improvements.
Demography: The Science of Population

This comprehensive, introductory text takes an applied, interdisciplinary approach. Because one author is a sociologist and the other a demographer, the text introduces perspectives from many different disciplines. Demography: The Science of Population, Second Edition, includes two chapters focusing on quantitative models, a topic not usually covered so extensively in introductory texts. It uses case studies throughout to illustrate in a realistic and concrete manner key points made in the text. It draws examples from recent U.S. Census data, United Nations and World Bank reports, tables from the National Center for Health Statistics, and from U.S. state and county-level sources.
Synthetic Graph Generation for Data-Intensive HPC Benchmarking: Background and Framework

The benchmarking e ﬀ ort within the Extreme Scale Systems Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory seeks to provide High Performance Computing benchmarks and test suites of interest to the DoD sponsor. The work described in this report is a part of the e ﬀ ort focusing on graph generation. A previously developed benchmark, S ystem B urn , allows the emulation of a broad spectrum of application behavior proﬁles within a single framework. To complement this e ﬀ ort, similar capabilities are desired for graph-centric problems. This report examines existing synthetic graph generator implementations in preparation for further study on the properties of their generated synthetic graphs.
Exosomal miRNA-139 in cancer-associated fibroblasts inhibits gastric cancer progression by repressing MMP11 expression

Solid tumors consist of various types of stromal cells in addition to cancer cells. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are a major component of the tumor stroma and play an essential role in tumor progression and metastasis in a variety of malignancies, including gastric cancer. However, the effects of CAFs on gastric cancer cells' progression and metastasis are not well studied. Here we show that matrix metalloproteinase 11 (MMP11) in exosomes secreted from CAFs can be delivered into gastric cancer cells. Gastric CAFs promote gastric cancer cell migration partially through exosomal MMP11. Moreover, MMP11 is overexpressed in exosomes purified from plasma of gastric cancer patients and tumor tissues and associated with overall survival of gastric patients. We also find that MMP11 is negatively regulated by exosomal miR-139 in the CAFs of gastric cancer. Exosomal miR-139 inhibits tumor growth and metastasis of gastric cancer cells by decreasing the expression of MMP11 in vitro and in vivo. Thus, we propose that exosomal miR-139 derived from gastric CAFs could inhibit the progression and metastasis of gastric cancer by decreasing MMP11 in tumor microenvironment.
Information Content of Aggregate Implied Volatility Spread *

Aggregate implied volatility spread (IVS), defined as the cross-sectional average difference in the implied volatilities of at-the-money call and put equity options, is significantly and positively related to future stock market returns at daily, weekly, monthly, to semiannual horizons. This return predictive power is incremental to existing return predictors and is significant both in sample and out of sample. Furthermore, IVS can forecast macroeconomic news up to one year ahead. The return predictability concentrates around macro news announcement. Common informed trading in equity options offers an integrated explanation for the ability of IVS to predict both future stock market returns and real economic activity. JEL classification: G12, G13, G14, G17
PRODUCTION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF TANNASE FROM A NEWLY ISOLATED BACILLUS SUBTILIS

The work describes the production and characterization of tannase from a newly isolated Bacillus subtilis. The strain was isolated from the garden soil and was capable of producing tannase at particular temperature (41oC) and pH (5) in 24 h. Addition of 10 % glucose as a carbon source and 12% tannic acid as an inducer resulted in the improved rate of enzyme production. The enzyme was purified up to 4.86 fold with 96.25% yield. It exhibited optimal temperature and pH tolerance of 45oC and 5, respectively. However, the enzyme was found to be notably more functional in a broad range of temperature (20-80oC) and pH (3-10). Furthermore it remained remarkably stable at wide range of pH (3-8) and at a higher salt concentration (~3M). The shelf life of enzyme was also prolonged and remained stable up to a maximum of 8 months.
Modeling and Estimation Issues in Spatial Simultaneous Equations Models 1

Spatial dependence is one of the main problems in stochastic processes and can be caused by a variety of measurement problems that are associated with the arbitrary delineation of spatial units of observation (such as counties boundaries, census tracts), problems of spatial aggregation, and the presence of spatial externalities and spillover effects. The existence of spatial dependence would then mean that the observations contain less information than if there had been spatial independence. Consequently, hypothesis tests and the statistical properties for estimators in the standard econometric approach will not hold. Thus, in order to obtain approximately the same information as in the case of spatial independence, the spatial dependence needs to be explicitly quantified and modeled. Although advances in spatial econometrics provide researchers with new avenues to address regression problems that are associated with the existence of spatial dependence in regional data sets, most of the applications have, however, been in single-equation frame-works. Yet, for many economic problems there are both multiple endogenous variables and data on observations that interact across space. Therefore, researchers have been in the undesirable position of having to choose between modeling spatial interactions in a single equation frame-work, or using multiple equations but losing the advantage of a spatial econometric approach. In an attempt to address this undesirable position, this research work deals with the modeling and estimation issues in spatial simultaneous equations models. The first part discusses modeling issues in multi-equation Spatial Lag, Spatial Error, and Spatial Autoregressive Models in both cross sectional and panel data sets. Whereas, the second part deals with estimation issues in spatial simultaneous equations models in both cross sectional and panel data sets. Finally, issues related specification tests in spatial simultaneous equations models are discussed. Copyright 2007 by Gebremeskel Gebremariam. All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies. 1. A joint appointment by the Regional Research Institute and Division of Resource Management, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506
Apolipoprotein epsilon 4 and neuropsychological performance in Alzheimer ' s disease and vascular dementia

The apolipoprotein (APOE) 4 allele is a genetic risk factor for the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). It has also been associated with vascular dementia (VaD) in some but not all studies. Previous studies have examined the role of APOE in predicting performance on cognitive tests in both demented and non-demented populations. In cognitively intact individuals, statistically significant group differences between APOE 4 carriers and non-carriers have been demonstrated for several cognitive domains. In AD studies of the impact of APOE 4 on cognition have been conflicting while no previous study has assessed cognition and impact of APOE 4 in VaD. In this study we investigated the impact of APOE 4 on performance in neuropsychological tests including information processing speed in patients with mildmoderate AD and VaD. We incorporated both computerized and pen and paper tests to ensure a sensitive method of assessing cognition. 109 patients participated in the study (VaD = 41, AD = 68). Neurocognitive performance of 44 4 present AD patients was compared to 24 4absent patients and performance of 23 4 present VaD patients was compared to 18 4 absent patients. There was evidence that APOE 4 conferred a risk of poorer cognitive functioning in both patient groups. In the AD group presence of 4 conferred a negative impact on some measures of speed of information processing and immediate recall while in the VaD group 4 present patients had evidence of poorer accuracy on tasks such as choice reaction time and spatial working memory. In AD and VaD groups 4 present patients showed impairment in selective attention. These findings provide further support of the negative impact of the 4 allele in cognition. lzheimer’s disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD) constitute he most common forms of dementia. AD is thought to account for 0–60% of all cases and VaD for 25–30% of cases: mixed forms also ccur [8,34]. The apolipoprotein (APOE) 4 allele is a genetic risk actor for the development of AD [5]. Meta-analysis has shown that he APOE 4 allele increases the risk of the disease by three times in eterozygotes and by 15 times in homozygotes [9]. It acts mainly y modifying age of onset, with each copy of the allele lowering the ge of onset by almost 10 years [5]. APOE is involved in neuronal epair and acts as a cholesterol transporter in the brain [33]. APOE s encoded by a gene on chromosome 19, with three allelic varints ( 2, 3, and 4) yielding six possible genotypes. AD patients omozygous for the 4 allele demonstrate greater senile plaque ensity and amyloid burden than 3/ 3 or 3/ 4 patients [25]. Studies have examined the role of APOE in predicting perforance on cognitive tests in both demented and non-demented opulations. As AD usually appears later in life and progresses ∗ Corresponding author. Tel. : +44
Incorporating Contextual and Syntactic Structures Improves Semantic Similarity Modeling

Semantic similarity modeling is central to many NLP problems such as natural language inference and question answering. Syntactic structures interact closely with semantics in learning compositional representations and alleviating long-range dependency issues. How-ever, such structure priors have not been well exploited in previous work for semantic mod-eling. To examine their effectiveness, we start with the Pairwise Word Interaction Model, one of the best models according to a recent reproducibility study, then introduce components for modeling context and structure using multi-layer BiLSTMs and TreeLSTMs. In addition, we introduce residual connections to the deep convolutional neural network component of the model. Extensive evaluations on eight benchmark datasets show that incorporating structural information contributes to consistent improvements over strong baselines.
Mammalian faunal turnover across the Paleocene-Eocene boundary in NW Europe : the roles of displacement , community evolution and environment

Improved knowledge of the diversity of Late Paleocene mammal faunas of NW Europe indicates a higher level of turnover at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary than previously recognized. Possible causes of the large number of extinctions in Europe are investigated through ecological diversity analysis of the mammals and the plant fossil record. Predation by incoming groundand treedwelling specialized carnivores has been previously considered the main cause of the extinctions. However, the preferential extinction of small terrestrial and semiterrestrial insectivore-frugivores, (mainly stem macroscelideans and multituberculates), which are inferred to have inhabited forests with dense understorey in the Paleocene, is also linked to the arrival in Europe of a new ecological type, the large terrestrial browsing herbivore, namely the pantodont Coryphodon, which would have reduced understorey by feeding and physical disturbance. It is suggested that there was a delay in community evolution in Europe, which in North America had previously produced large herbivorous and specialized carnivorous types. The cause of the delay may have been the persistence throughout the Paleocene in Europe of thermophilic evergreen forests despite the cooling in the middle of the epoch. This contrasted with North America, where more open deciduous forests developed in the continental interior and provided the selection pressure for the new ecological types of mammal. _________________________________________________________________
IN VITRO SHOOT REGENERATION OF Citrus nobilis Lour . FROM INTACT SEED AND COTYLEDON EXPLANTS

Siam orange (Citrus nobilis Lour.) is a fruit from Kampar Riau, Indonesia, which has a sweet flavor, is fragrant, and thin-skinned. However, plantation of siam orange is decreasing due to diseases. Preservation is required to prevent loss of siam orange by planting citrus on a large area. Plant propagation through tissue culture (in vitro culture) is an alternative approach to obtain seedlings in large quantities and potential for production of pathogen‐free healthy plants. The effects of plant growth regulators of 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) on shoot regeneration of Citrus nobilis Lour. From intact seed and cotyledon explants were studied. The explants were cultured on Murashige and Skoog medium (MS) containing 30 g/L sucrose and 8 g/L agar supplemented with treatment of plant growth regulator (PGRs) (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 mg/L of BAP). The results showed that BAP treatment increased the number of shoots from cotyledon explants, but no increase the number of shoots from intact seed explants. The difference in BAP concentration (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 mg/L) indicates the number of shoots was not significantly different (3.6 to 4 shoots) from cotyledon explants. The growth of shoots on MS medium without supplementation with BAP produced shoots that are longer, thinner, and have lower number of leaves. The growth of shoots on MS medium containing BAP produces shorter and thicker shoots and higher number of leaves. Shoots in vitro were successfully acclimatized and established in sand, soil, and compost (1:1:1) mixture covered with transparent plastic in each polybag with a survival percentage of 93.3%.
A Framework for the Adoption of Knowledge Management System (KMS) in University of Jos, Nigeria

: KMS are information technology (IT) systems that manage the knowledge of organizations, these systems aid organizations generate new knowledge, record, utilize and allocate knowledge. This study examines the adoption of knowledge management systems at the University of Jos. Centred on the UTAUT2 theory, this study puts forth a framework and then investigates its constructs to explain individual’s behavioural intentions to adopt knowledge management system. This work also examines the moderating effects of individualism/Collectivism at individual level on knowledge management system adoption. Data was gathered from staff and faculty of the University of Jos using an online questionnaire. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS to perform an exploratory factor analysis. AMOS was then used to test the model fit and the proposed hypothesis of the research by conducting a confirmatory factor analysis test. The findings of this study showed that performance expectancy, hedonic motivation are important factors that explained individual’s behavioural intention to adopt knowledge management system. The results from this study also showed the impact of habit and facilitating condition on use behaviour. The result also showed that the moderating effect of individualism/collectivism at individual level on knowledge management system adoption was significant. Implications and future research works are presented and explained
Silica Gels for Atmospheric Water Harvesting

Hydrophobic organically modified silica gels were coated on sand-blasted steel substrates. The gel surfaces were patterned using silicone rubber molds and nickel mesh. Smooth, grooved and hexagonally imprinted surfaces were compared for their ability to condense water from water vapor. The patterns of horizontal lines were best able to condense the vapor in a way that lead to more liquid water collection per area. The motivation for the study is developing surfaces that harvest clean water in places that experience drought.
Years of Stereoblindness :

Whitman Richards (1932–2016) discovered some 50 years ago that about 30% of observers from the normal population exhibit stereoblindness: the disability to process binocular disparities in either far or near depth. We review the literature on stereoblindness entailing two insights. First, contemporary scholars in stereopsis undervalue the comprehension that disparity processing studies require precise assessments of observers’ stereoblindness. We argue that this frequently leads to suboptimal interpretations. Second, there is still an open conundrum: How can the established finding that disparity is processed by a continuum of detectors be reconciled with the disability of many observers to process a whole class of far or near disparities? We propose, based upon integration of literature, that an asymmetry between far and near disparity detection at birth—being present for a variety of reasons—can suppress the typical formation of binocular correlation during the critical period for the development of stereopsis early in life, thereby disabling a whole class of far or near disparities.
Controlling Anthracnose of Passion Fruit by Antagonistic Yeast

The purpose of this study was to survey, isolate and collect of the yeast fungi from fruits and vegetable crops. The collected yeasts are used for controlling Colletotrichum boninense a causal agent of passion fruit anthracnose, in the laboratory and in the greenhouse. Seventeen isolates of C. boninense are isolated from various locations of passion fruit farms in Chiang Mai. Of these three isolate are carbendazim resistance. The results shown that 49 isolates of the yeasts are isolated from 28 samples of fruits and vegetable crops. Using dual culture agar plating technique for screening the antagonistic activity against the growth of C. boninense which resistance to carbendazim found that 10 isolate of the yeasts are able to inhibit the growth of this fungus, of these, isolate BMF1 give the maximum inhibiting at 67.69 percent. This BMF1 will be used for the further experiment to control the passion fruit anthracnose in the greenhouse. C. boninense was first described from Crinum asiaticum var. sinicum (Amaryllidaceae) collected in the Bonin Islands, Japan (Moriwaki et al. 2003). According to these authors, the species was associated with a variety of host plants in Japan, including Clivia miniata (Amaryllidaceae), Cucumis melo (Cucurbitaceae), Cattleya sp. , Cymbidium sp. and Dendrobium kingianum (Orchidaceae), Passiflora edulis (Passifloraceae) and Prunus mume (Rosaceae).
focus on Parkinson ' s disease Assessing the availability and quality of online self-help videos : A pilot study with a

Objective: The Internet and other electronic media may provide one part of a solution for reducing disparities in availability of medical services. From a patient-centred perspective, an individual with a chronic, degenerative condition may ask what information is available that I can use to manage changes in my functional capacity over time, and how effective is this? The purpose of this study was to assess the availability and quality of a sample of online self-help videos which address common functional problems ubiquitous among individuals living with one such condition: Parkinson’s disease. Design: Cross-sectional survey. Setting: Internet. Method: An Internet search was conducted to identify self-help videos offering instruction on how to manage changes in function, and each video was assessed using 17 factors relevant to instructional quality. Results: Of 295 videos, 14 (4.7%) provided self-help instruction for three chosen skills. The quality of instructional presentation averaged 2.75 on a 5-point scale, where 1 was poor and 5 was excellent. Conclusion: The identified self-help videos that addressed maintaining functional outcomes for individuals living with Parkinson’s disease varied significantly in quality, and few met accepted standards of instructional design. Future research into effective presentation modes and patient functional capacity needs might usefully develop a patient-centred curriculum that can be delivered utilising multiple platforms. This area of research is critical in rehabilitation and other health settings to enhance assistance for individuals living with chronic health conditions and their families and caregivers.
Innovation at work: the influence of transformational leadership and context

Transformational leadership is theoretically predicted to influence both context and outcomes. Although evidence of a link among transformational leadership and innovation exists, the relationship is often not direct; rather leadership exerts its influence through mediating elements of the organizational context. A study of the influence of facets of transformational leadership may address equivocal results. One hundred and fifty-two managers from the top three layers of an Australian manufacturing company were surveyed. Findings indicate that context did not mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and innovation, rather a single facet of transformational leadership – individualised consideration had a direct effect on innovation and Inspirational motivation alone directly affected organisation context. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
The Effect of ISO 9001 to Oman Higher Education Operational Performance : Buraimi University College as a Case Study

This paper examines the relationship between the ISO 9001 Total Quality Management (TQM) factors, that are presented in the Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence framework (leadership, strategic planning, stakeholder and market focus, measurement and analysis, staff focus and process management), and the seventh element which is the operational performance results. The study, which was conducted at the Buraimi University College of Oman, showed that TQM is applicable to higher education according to the perception of the staff members. The study also showed that leadership, stakeholder and market focus and staff focus have a significant positive influence on operational performance of higher education. The results agreed with the literature findings that the success of TQM appears to be determined by intangible or soft practices rather than tangible or hard practices.