Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fine-grained queue measurement in the data plane

Short-lived surges in traffic can cause periods of high queue utilization, leading to packet loss and delay. To diagnose and alleviate performance problems, networks need support for real-time, fine-grained queue measurement. By identifying the flows that contribute significantly to queue build-up directly in the data plane, switches can make targeted decisions to mark, drop, or reroute these flows in real time. However, collecting fine-grained queue statistics is challenging even with modern programmable switch hardware, due to limited memory and processing resources in the data plane. We present ConQuest, a compact data structure that identifies the flows making a significant contribution to the queue. ConQuest operates entirely in the data plane, while working within the hardware constraints of programmable switches. Additionally, we show how to measure queues in legacy devices through link tapping and an off-path switch running ConQuest. Simulations show that ConQuest can identify contributing flows with 90% precision on a 1 ms timescale, using less than 65 KB of memory. Experiments with our Barefoot Tofino prototype show that ConQuest-enabled active queue management reduces flow-completion time.
Premigration Traumatic Events and Psychological Distress Among Five Immigrant Groups

Aim: There is a lack of data on the psychological health status of people migrating from different countries and the possible impact of premigration traumatic events. The aim of this study is to examine the association between psychological distress among five immigrant groups living in Oslo and premigration traumatic events such as war experience, imprisonment, and torture due to political persecution. Method: The Oslo immigrant study, a cross-sectional survey with self-administered questionnaires was conducted among 3,019 adult immigrants from Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam living in Oslo in 2002. The Hopkins Symptom Checklist was used to measure psychological distress. Data on sociodemographic characteristics, experience of traumatic life events, and integration in Norwegian society were collected. Results: We find major differences in prevalence of psychological distress between the different immigrant groups. Turkish immigrants reported the highest and Sri-Lankan the lowest prevalence of distress. Experience of torture and imprisonment due to political reasons are the preimmigration traumatic events most strongly associated with psychological distress among all five immigrant groups. Postmigration variables, except employment status, were not associated with psychological distress. The adjusted odd ratios for the association between psychological distress and experience of war, imprisonment for political reason, and experience of torture were strongest for immigrants from Pakistan and weakest for immigrants from Vietnam. The odds ratios changed only slightly after adjustment for postmigratory factors. Conclusion: Tortured and political victims and unemployed migrants should be targeted in promoting psychological health and preventing distress among immigrants in Norway.
Leaching of Nano-SiO2 from Municipal Solid Waste

The commercial use of nanomaterials has significantly increased in recent years. However, there is still limited information about the potential impacts of nanomaterials on the environment within the integrated solid waste management systems (Boldrin et al., 2014). Nano SiO2 is used in numerous commercial applications ranging from paint, coating, fire resistant glassware, electronics, pharmaceuticals and UV protection (Marcoux et al., 2013). The widespread synthesis and uses of SiO2 mean that large volumes of this nanomaterial will ultimately end up in landfills (Keller et al., 2013). The main objective of this experimental work is to evaluate the leaching potential and behavior of nano SiO2 within the municipal solid waste-leachate matrix. Therefore, batch experiments were conducted using fresh solid waste samples obtained from a real municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill located close to Istanbul, Turkey. The waste samples were spiked with different concentrations of SiO2 in batch reactors. During the experiments, two different pH values were considered, namely basic 8-9 and acidic 5-6. The effect of ionic strength on the leaching characteristics of SiO2 was also evaluated. Leachate samples were regularly collected over a three-day period and analyzed for pH, conductivity, particle size distribution and total Si concentration. A kinetic model was also developed to evaluate the deposition and detachment of SiO2 onto the solid surface.
Toward a Regional-Scale Seasonal Climate Prediction System over Central Italy based on Dynamical Downscaling

Anticipating seasonal climate anomalies is essential for defining short-term adaptation measures. To be actionable, many stakeholders require seasonal forecasts at the regional scale to be properly coupled to region-specific vulnerabilities. In this study, we present and preliminarily evaluate a regional-scale Seasonal Forecast System (SFS) over Central Italy. This system relies on a double dynamical downscaling performed through the Regional-scale Climate Model (RCM) RegCM4.1. A twelve-member ensemble of the NCEP-CFSv2 provides driving fields for the RegCM. In the first step, the RegCM dynamically downscales NCEP-CFSv2 predictions from a resolution of 100 to 60 km over Europe (RegCM-d1). This first downscaling drives a second downscaling over Central Italy at 12 km (RegCM-d2). To investigate the added value of the downscaled forecasts compared to the driving NCEP-CFSv2, we evaluate the driving CFS, and the two downscaled SFSs over the same (inner) domain. Evaluation involves winter temperatures and precipitations over a climatological period (1982–2003). Evaluation for mean bias, statistical distribution, inter-annual anomaly variability, and hit-rate of anomalous seasons are shown and discussed. Results highlight temperature physical values reproduction benefiting from the downscaling. Downscaled inter-annual variability and probabilistic metrics show improvement mainly at forecast lead-time 1. Downscaled precipitation shows an improved spatial distribution with an undegraded but not improved seasonal forecast quality.
Enhancement of Bioelectricity Production using Different Chamber Design, Catholytes and Varied Electrode in MFCS

s: Bioelectricity generation through Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) technology is an alternative source of energy generation to fossil fuel which has been shown to have negative environmental impact. Microbial degradation of biomass could possibly be the most renewable means of generating electrical and thermal energy. This study was designed to evaluate different factors to enhanced bioelectricity generation in MFCs which include: architectural design of MFCs chamber, selected catholytes, and different local with foreign electrode, different mediators and the use of different proton exchange membrane for bioelectricity generation. Different yeast species were isolated from cassava waste water, whey waste water, human urine and rabbit dung using spread plate method. These isolates were identified using Analytical profile index (API). Results obtained revealed the identity of the isolated yeast species as Candida famata, Candida hellenical. Candida tropicalis, and Saccharomyces cerevisia (using API method). Out of the four wastes used, cassava processing wastewater gave the highest bioelectricity potential and was subsequently used as substrate for further study. Among different types of electrode evaluated, galvanized plate exhibited the highest potential for bioelectricity generation with 936.53mV. There was no significant difference (p-value>0.05) between galvanized plate and an imported electrode (graphite rod) in their ability to generate electricity. There was also no significant difference (P value >0.05) in the voltage generated using different catholytes (potassium ferric cyanide 932.54mV, Methylene blue 925. 23mV and neutral red 936.53mV).
Sword of Damocles: Job Security and Earnings Management

The CEO dismissal risk may have a disciplinary or opportunistic effect on earnings management. The disciplinary effect incentivizes CEOs to improve real performance, which reduces the necessity for CEOs to exaggerate earnings, though CEOs with opportunistic motives may still choose to do so. Using a large sample of U.S. public firms, we show that, on average, the disciplinary effect dominates. That is, an increase of the CEO dismissal hazard is associated with less income-inflating accruals and real earnings management. Consistent with the prediction of the discipline hypothesis, we find an improvement in firm performance following a high CEO dismissal hazard. In contrast, the opportunistic effect exists but only when the dismissal risk is extremely high. Our evidence thus supports the notion that the forced turnover is an effective corporate governance measure that motivates CEOs to undertake rightful actions. JEL Classification: G34, M41
Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Tuck School of Business Working Paper No. 2011-94 Merger negotiations with stock market feedback

The takeover literature suggests that bidders systematically mark up offer prices with pre-bid target stock price runups. Such “markup pricing” is surprising because it suggests either a lack of market deal anticipation—despite the media frenzy often surrounding takeover bids—or that bidders tend to “pay twice” for the target shares (costly feedback loop). To resolve this puzzle, we first characterize the theoretical relationship between target runups and offer price markups under rational deal anticipation. The theory provides testable implications for the existence of a costly feedback loop, and for how target stand-alone value changes may be inferred from runups in equilibrium. We then provide large-sample empirical tests which strongly support deal anticipation in runups while rejecting the existence of a costly feedback loop in the data. Contrary to the prevailing view, pre-offer target runups do not appear to increase bidder takeover costs. ∗This paper, and an early precursor entitled “Markup pricing revisited”, were presented in seminars at Boston University, Dartmouth College, HEC Montreal, Lille University, London Business School, Norwegian School of Economics, BI Norwegian School of Management, Southern Methodist University, Texas Tech University, Tulane University, York University, University of Adelaide, University of Arizona, University of British Columbia, University of Calgary, University of Colorado, University of Connecticut, University of Georgia, University of Maryland, University of Melbourne, University of Notre Dame, University of Oregon, University of Stavanger, and the meetings of the Financial Management Association (FMA), FMA European Meetings, European Finance Association, the European Financial Management Association, the Paris Spring Corporate Finance Conference, the Northern Finance Association, and the UBC Summer Finance Conference. We are also grateful for the comments of Laurent Bach, Michael Lemmon, Pablo Moran, Annette Poulsen and, in particular, Eric de Bodt.
Bayesian Posterior Sampling via Stochastic Gradient Fisher Scoring

In this paper we address the following question: "Can we approximately sample from a Bayesian posterior distribution if we are only allowed to touch a small mini-batch of data-items for every sample we generate? ". An algorithm based on the Langevin equation with stochastic gradients (SGLD) was previously proposed to solve this, but its mixing rate was slow. By leveraging the Bayesian Central Limit Theorem, we extend the SGLD algorithm so that at high mixing rates it will sample from a normal approximation of the posterior, while for slow mixing rates it will mimic the behavior of SGLD with a pre-conditioner matrix. As a bonus, the proposed algorithm is reminiscent of Fisher scoring (with stochastic gradients) and as such an efficient optimizer during burn-in.
One Size Doesn't Fit All: Quantifying Performance Portability of Graph Applications on GPUs

Hand-optimising graph algorithm code for different GPUs is particularly labour-intensive and error-prone, involving complex and ill-understood interactions between GPU chips, applications, and inputs. Although the generation of optimised variants has been automated through graph algorithm DSL compilers, these do not yet use an optimisation policy. Instead they defer to techniques like autotuning, which can produce good results, but at the expense of portability. In this work, we propose a methodology to automatically identify portable optimisation policies that can be tailored (“semi-specialised”) as needed over a combination of chips, applications and inputs. Using a graph algorithm DSL compiler that targets the OpenCL programming model, we demonstrate optimising graph algorithms to run in a portable fashion across a wide range of GPU devices for the first time. We use this compiler and its optimisation space as the basis for a large empirical study across 17 graph applications, 3 diverse graph inputs and 6 GPUs spanning multiple vendors. We show that existing automatic approaches for building a portable optimisation policy fall short on our dataset, providing trivial or biased results. Thus, we present a new statistical analysis which can characterise optimisations and quantify performance trade-offs at various degrees of specialisation. We use this analysis to quantify the performance tradeoffs as portability is sacrificed for specialisation across three natural dimensions: chip, application, and input. Compared to not optimising programs at all, a fully portable approach provides a $1.15\times$ improvement in geometric mean performance, rising to $1.29 \times$ when specialised to application and inputs (but not hardware). Furthermore, these semi-specialised optimisations provide insights into performance-critical features of specialisation. For example, optimisations specialised by chip reveal subtle, yet performance-critical, characteristics of various GPUs.
Discussion Paper Series Where does Education go ? – The Role of Corruption

This paper provides an explanation for recent empirical evidence on the heterogeneous effects of human capital on economic growth in developing countries. In a two-period overlapping generations economy with physical and capital accumulation, state-appointed bureaucrats are responsible for procuring productive public goods. Corruption arises because of an opportunity for bureaucrats to misappropriate public funds. The decision of the corruptible bureaucrat affects public finances and hence the capital accumulation in the economy. Alongside the positive productivity enhancing effect, human capital is assumed to increase the efficiency of corrupt bureaucrats in embezzlement. If the latter dominates the former, the incentive for bureaucrats to acquire education rises. The net effect may result in an insignificant (or even negative) effect of human capital on growth. Our main results are as follows: (1) corruption is always bad for economic development, but its effect is worse in the economy with (more) human capital; (2) the incidence of corruption may, itself, be affected by both the development and human capital level of the economy; (3) education is good for development when accompanied by good governance, but may be bad for development when governance is bad; and (4) corruption and poverty may coexist as permanent, rather than just transitory, fixtures of an economy.
Long Term Protection after Immunization with P. berghei Sporozoites Correlates with Sustained IFNc Responses of Hepatic CD8+ Memory T Cells

Protection against P. berghei malaria can successfully be induced in mice by immunization with both radiation attenuated sporozoites (RAS) arresting early during liver stage development, or sporozoites combined with chloroquine chemoprophylaxis (CPS), resulting in complete intra-hepatic parasite development before killing of blood-stages by chloroquine takes place. We assessed the longevity of protective cellular immune responses by RAS and CPS P. berghei immunization of C57BL/6j mice. Strong effector and memory (TEM) CD8+ T cell responses were induced predominantly in the liver of both RAS and CPS immunized mice while CD4+ T cells with memory phenotype remained at base line levels. Compared to unprotected naı̈ve mice, we found high sporozoite-specific IFNc ex vivo responses that associated with induced levels of in vivo CD8+ TEM cells in the liver but not spleen. Long term evaluation over a period of 9 months showed a decline of malaria-specific IFNc responses in RAS and CPS mice that significantly correlated with loss of protection (r = 0.60, p,0.0001). The reducing IFNc response by hepatic memory CD8+ T cells could be boosted by re-exposure to wildtype sporozoites. Our data show that sustainable protection against malaria associates with distinct intra-hepatic immune responses characterized by strong IFNc producing CD8+ memory T cells. Citation: Nganou-Makamdop K, van Gemert G-J, Arens T, Hermsen CC, Sauerwein RW (2012) Long Term Protection after Immunization with P. berghei Sporozoites Correlates with Sustained IFNc Responses of Hepatic CD8+ Memory T Cells. PLoS ONE 7(5): e36508. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0036508 Editor: Stefan Kappe, Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, University of Washington, United States of America Received February 10, 2012; Accepted April 2, 2012; Published May 1, 2012 Copyright: 2012 Nganou-Makamdop et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: Financial support for this study was provided by NWO-Mozaı̈ek (The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) grant No. 017.005. 011 (K. Nganou-Makamdop recipient). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: r.sauerwein@mmb.umcn. nl
Capacity and Distribution of Water Stored in the Vadose Zone of the Chinese Loess Plateau

Core Ideas Vadose zone water is up to 3.1 × 1012 m3 in the Chinese Loess Plateau. The deep vadose zone (below 5 m) stores 92.4% of the total vadose zone water. Vadose zone water distribution is uneven, depending on loess thickness and precipitation. Vadose zone water accounts for 42.1% of water resources in the Chinese Loess Plateau.
Synthesis of Carbon Nanotubes by Catalytic Chemical Vapor Deposition

As a new carbon material in the twenty-first century, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have excellent optical, electrical, magnetic, thermal, chemical, and mechanical properties. There are many synthesis methods to produce CNTs. Compared with other methods, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is the most effective method that has broad prospects for large-scale control of CNTs in recent years due to its simple equipment, simple operation, and lower cost. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the controlling parameters about the formation of CNTs, this chapter reviews the latest progress in the preparation of CNTs by CVD from three of the most important influencing factors: carbon sources, catalysts, and substrates. Among them, the catalyst is the most influential factor for the morphology, structure, and properties of CNTs. It should be pointed out that many growth factors can control the particle size distribution, composition, and structure of the catalysts, such as catalyst substrate, metal transition components added, calcination temperature, etc.
Sorption Behavior of Cesium Ions on Calcium Aluminosilicate Hydrate under the Condition Saturated with Saline Water– 17096

This study focused on the interaction of cesium (Cs) ions with calcium silicate hydrate (CSH) and calcium aluminosilicate hydrate (CASH) gel, of which sorption effect may retard the migration of Cs ions in the radioactive waste disposal system. In the sorption experiments, the influences of the Al/Si molar ratio of C(A)SH and the curing periods on the sorption of Cs ions into C(A)SH under the saline conditions were examined without drying processes by monitoring the concentrations of Cs, Ca, Si and Al. Besides, Raman spectroscopy were applied to the structure analysis of C(A)SH. As a result, the sorption of Cs ions on C(A)SH became larger with the increase in the Al/Si molar ratios under the all conditions. Furthermore, Raman spectra showed the formation of Al-tetrahedrons and Aloctahedrons, and the increase in the polymerization degree of silicate chain in CASH with adding Al. These results mean that the negative layer-charge of the sheets containing Siand Al-tetrahedrons and Al-octahedron will accelerate the sorption of Cs ions of positive charge, electrostatically.
DESORPTION OF CHLOROBENZENES FROM NATURAL SUSPENDED SOLIDS AND SEDIMENTS

The desorption of chlorobenzenes from heterogeneous suspended solid mixtures and sediments at nonequilibrium conditions was investigated, using a gas purge method. This technique offers the possibility to measure equilibrium and rate data from adsorbent suspensions, without phase separation. The desorption patterns were interpreted and fitted in terms of multiple box models. The results show that when the equilibration time for sediment suspensions contaminated in the laboratory is longer, desorption is slower. At nonequilibrium conditions, the more hydrophobic chlorobenzenes are released faster than the less hydrophobic ones. For ten suspended solid samples the model parameters were related to adsorbent characteristics, such as organic matter, phytoplankton and clay content by means of correlation analysis, and compared to similar desorption data for algal cultures obtained in earlier studies in our laboratory. It was found that all desorption data could be described with a two-compartment desorption model. The partition coefficient was proportional to the content of organic matter, which in turn was mainly determined by the concentration of phytoplankton in the samples. The desorption rate was positively correlated with the phytoplankton content as well. This suggests that phytoplankton cells form an easily accessible fraction of the total adsorbent.
Modeling Long-Range Context for Concurrent Dialogue Acts Recognition

In dialogues, an utterance is a chain of consecutive sentences produced by one speaker which ranges from a short sentence to a thousand-word post. When studying dialogues at the utterance level, it is not uncommon that an utterance would serve multiple functions. For instance, “Thank you. It works great. ” expresses both gratitude and positive feedback in the same utterance. Multiple dialogue acts (DA) for one utterance breeds complex dependencies across dialogue turns. Therefore, DA recognition challenges a model’s predictive power over long utterances and complex DA context. We term this problem Concurrent Dialogue Acts (CDA) recognition. Previous work on DA recognition either assumes one DA per utterance or fails to realize the sequential nature of dialogues. In this paper, we present an adapted Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network (CRNN) which models the interactions between utterances of long-range context. Our model significantly outperforms existing work on CDA recognition on a tech forum dataset. ACM Reference Format: Yue Yu, Siyao Peng, and Grace Hui Yang. 2019. Modeling Long-Range Context for Concurrent Dialogue Acts Recognition. In The 28th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM ’19), November 3–7, 2019, Beijing, China. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3357384.3358145