Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Scheduling for response time in Hadoop MapReduce

In this paper, we propose a novel task scheduling algorithm for Hadoop MapReduce called dynamic priority multiqueue scheduler (DPMQS). DPMQS i) increases the data locality of jobs, and, ii) dynamically increases the priority of jobs that are near to completing their Map phase, to bridge the time gap between the start of the reduce tasks and the execution of the reduce function for these jobs. We discuss the details of DPMQS and its practical implementation, then assess its performance in a small physical cluster and large-scale simulated clusters and compare it to the other schedulers available in Hadoop. Both real experiments and simulation results show that DPMQS decreases significantly the response time, and demonstrate that DPMQS is insensitive to changes in the cluster geometry.
Techniques for Optimizing Information Exchange in Educational Settings : Stack Exchange as Case Study

Online communication is increasingly important in the education sector. Stack Exchange, a website for the free exchange of educational information among programmers, typifies this text-based approach to pedagogy. We seek to develop a machine learning algorithm to predict optimal answer techniques on Stack Exchange using empirically validated “best answers,” as rated by other users. Developing several models, we find vocabulary choice dominates prediction of best answers and use these results to suggest ways for Stack Exchange users to enhance communication outcomes.
Integrins: Signaling, disease, and therapy

Background: Integrins are a family of transmembrane receptors that mediate cell-cell and cell-matrix adhesion. They are involved in stable cell adhesion and migration of cells. In addition, integrin-mediated interactions modulate the response to most, if not all growth factors, cytokines, and other soluble factors. Purpose: In this review, we briefly explain how integrins can affect the multitude of signal transduction cascades in control of survival, proliferation, and differentiation. Subsequently, we primarily focus on targeting integrins α5β1 and αvβ3 in disease and we discuss how antagonists of these integrins, including disintegrins, RGD peptides, small molecules, and function blocking antibodies, may be of therapeutical value either alone or, especially in the treatment of cancer, in combination with existing therapeutical strategies.
SystemC Test Case Generation with the Gazebo Simulator

The current approach of hardware simulators are testbeds that supply the Device under Test (DUT) with inputs. These sequences of inputs are the result of engineers reverse engineering the use cases extracting the inputs from them and adding some extreme cases. This paper describes an approach where the input sequences are generated directly from the use case itself. The use case is therefore simulated in an environmental simulator such as Gazebo. This generates the stimuli for the DUT. To facilitate the compatibility between the different simulation environments we present an easy-to-use and easy-to-implement communication strategy.
Transporting compressed video over ATM networks with explicit rate feedback control

We propose a scheme for transmission of variable-bit-rate compressed video over ATM networks using the explicit-rate congestion control mechanisms proposed for the available bit rate (ABR) service. Compressed video is inherently bursty with rate fluctuations over both short and long time scales. We feel that this source behavior can naturally take advantage of the ABR service, since the ABR explicit-rate schemes allow sources to request varying amounts of bandwidth over time, while reserving a minimum for the entire duration of the connection. Moreover when the bandwidth demand cannot be met, the network provides feedback indicating the bandwidth currently available to a connection. This information can be used to match the video source rate to the available bandwidth by modifying the quantization level used during compression. We use trace driven simulations to examine how effective the enhanced explicit rate scheme is in "rate matching" between the network and the source and the effect on end-end delay. We also look at the sensitivity of the proposed scheme to the estimates of the network round-trip times and to inaccuracies in the rate requests made by sources.
Leaf contents of nitrogen and phenolic compounds and their bearing with the herbivore damage to Tibouchina pulchra Cogn. (Melastomataceae), under the influence of air pollutants from industries of Cubatão, São Paulo

The Atlantic Forest on the slopes of Serra do Mar around Cubatao (Sao Paulo, Brazil) has been affected by massive emissions of pollutants from the local growing industrial complex. The effects of air pollution on the amounts of leaf nitrogen, total soluble phenols and total tannins of Tibouchina pulchra Cogn. , a common species in the area of Cubatao, were investigated, as well as the possible influence of the altered parameters on the leaf area damaged by herbivores. Fully expanded leaves were collected at two sites: the valley of Piloes river (VP), characterized by a vegetation virtually not affected by air pollution and taken as a reference; and valley of Mogi river (VM), close to the core region of the industrial complex, and severely affected by air pollution. No differences were observed for any parameters between samples collected in the summer and winter in both sites. On the other hand, compared to VP, individuals growing in VM presented higher amounts of nitrogen and lower amounts of total soluble phenols and total tannins, as well as higher percentages of galls per leaf and higher leaf area lost to herbivores. Regression analysis revealed that the increase in leaf area lost to herbivores can be explained by the increase of the content of nitrogen and decrease in the contents of total soluble phenols and total tannins. Although significant, the coefficients of explanation found were low for all analyses, suggesting that other biotic or abiotic factors are likely to influence leaf attack by herbivores.
Cardiac Metabolic and Hemodynamic Effects of Insulin in Patients With Coronary Artery Disease

To assess the effects of insulin in stable coronary artery disease (CAD), 2 U i.v. insulin was given to 9 control and 10 CAD patients during coronary sinus catheterization. Hemodynamic and metabolic data were obtained before and for 90 min after insulin injection. Insulin induced no changes in heart rate, mean aortic pressure, rate-pressure product, coronary sinus flow, or coronary resistance. Metabolic changes were similar in both groups and included 1) 30% decrease of arterial glucose (P < .001) and 3-fold increase of myocardial glucose uptake (P < .001), 2) 1.5- to 2.5-fold elevation of arterial lactate (P < .001) and myocardial lactate usage (P < .001), respectively, 3) 50–70% suppression of arterial levels (P < .001) and myocardial uptake of free fatty acids (P < .01), and 4) 10% reduction of myocardial net oxygen consumption (P < .05). Myocardial citrate efflux increased in the CAD patients (P < .05), whereas alanine release rose only in control patients (P < .01), suggesting that glucose enters glycogen production in the CAD patients and pyruvate production in the control patients to a high degree. Myocardial glutamate uptake remained unchanged. In conclusion, insulin sensitivity was not altered in CAD. The insulin-induced shift from myocardial free fatty acid to carbohydrate usage may be beneficial to the ischemie heart by increasing glycogen stores, saving oxygen, and inhibiting an excess free-fatty acid concentration, which may be toxic during ischemia.
Distributed and Scalable Variance-reduced Stochastic Gradient Descent

1) There exists a study on employing mini-batch approach on SVRG, one of the VR methods. It shows that the approach cannot scale well that there is no significant difference between using 16 threads and more[2]. This study observes the cause of the poor scalability of this existing mini-batch approach on VR method. 2) The performance of mini-batch approach on distributed setting is improved by reducing the frequency of synchronization without significantly affecting the result.
Model světa hlasového dialogového systému

Abstrakt. C lanek popisuje model sveta hlasovžho dialogovžho systžmu a jeho vyuzitı pro rızenı dialogu. Hlavnım cılem bylo navrhnout obecnou metodu rızenı dialogu takovžhoto systžmu a obecnou reprezentaci znalostı ůlohy (sveta), kterou dialogovy systžm m ̊ze res it. Navrhovany prıstup rızenı dialogu je zalozen na tzv. plnenı cıl ̊. Vstupujıcı znalosti jsou integrovany do modelu sveta ůlohy a cıle jsou plneny podle dostupnych znalostı nutnych k jejich splnenı. V clanku je nastınena moznost reprezentace vnitrnıch i vnejsıch struktur pomocı objekt ̊ ci ramc ̊. Da le obsahuje prıklady v XML, je diskutovana moznost vyuzitı XSLT pro casti systžmu a jsou uvedeny prıklady vyuzitı v hlasovžm dialogovžm systžmu pro ctenı e-mail ̊.
Three patients with desmoplastic tricholemmoma with an incidental histological surprise impacting on management

A patient was referred for removal of a persistent ‘benign’ lower lid lesion. She previously had two shave excision biopsies for ‘papilloma’ of the right lower lid by the nurse practitioner. Her recurring symptoms included redness, and crusting at the lid margin. An excision biopsy showed an incompletely excised desmoplastic tricholemmoma (DT-figure 1A–D; see legend). A year later, a rapidly expanding, recurrent lesion was seen at the same site. An excision revealed an unexpected nodular basaloid tumour (figure 1E–G). Figure 1 (A) H&E-stained section containing the desmoplastic tricholemmoma (DT) from case 1. The white arrow points to the desmoplastic component, and the black arrow points to the non-desmoplastic component. Note how the desmoplastic component is composed of irregular cords of cells. (B) Higher-power-magnification H&E-stained section of the black arrowed area from (A). The cells of the nodular tricholemmoma component exhibit clear cytoplasm with bland nuclei. (C) H&E, showing a higher-power magnification of the desmoplastic component. The black arrow points to the stromal desmoplasia, and the white arrow points to the basement membrane. The sections are from case 1. (D) CD34 immunohistochemistry stain with the desmoplastic component and the non-desmoplastic component from case 1 (bottom-left inset) expressing CD34 strongly, confirming the diagnosis of desmoplastic tricholemmoma. The lesion was negative for BerEP4 (not shown). The sections are from case 1. (E) H&E. The black arrow points to the basal cell carcinoma that developed in case 1 after incomplete excision of the DT. (F) Higher-power-magnification H&E-stained section of (E) showing the basaloid cells, mitotic figures (black arrow), palisade of cells and lack of a distinct basement membrane (white arrow) around the tumour cells. These are typical features of a basal cell carcinoma. The sections are from case 1. (G) Immunohistochemistry with BerEP4 showing a positive signal on the nodular basal-cell carcinoma (BCC) …
Developmental expression of Drosophila melanogaster retrovirus‐like transposable elements.

We have determined the pattern of temporal expression of several Drosophila retrovirus‐like transposable elements. Some of these elements can be grouped into classes whose members show a similar profile of developmental transcription. The members of the 412 class, which includes 412, mdg1, 17.6 and 3S18, are transcribed mainly in the early larval and pupal stages of development, with small differences among the various members. HMS Beagle and Springer constitute another class where RNA accumulation in the larval stages is higher than in pupae and the adult flies accumulate more RNA than any other stage of development. Finally, the transcription of other elements such as copia, 297 and B104 follows a specific and individual pattern distinct from those described above. These results suggest the existence of evolutionary relationships among different transposable elements in Drosophila and the involvement of different cellular genes in the control of their expression.
Low-power multi-GHz and multi-Gb/s SiGe BiCMOS circuits

Over the last decade, SiGe HBT BiCIMOS technology has matured from a laboratory research effort to become a 50/65-GHz fT/fmax silicon-based 0.5-/spl mu/m BiCMOS production technology. This progress has extended silicon-based production technology into the multigigahertz (multi-GHz) and multigigabits-per-second (multi-Gb/s) range, thus, opening up an array of wireless and wired circuit and network applications and markets. SiGe circuits are now being designed in the same application space as GaAs MESFET and HBTs, and offer the yield cost, stability and manufacturing advantages associated with conventional silicon fabrication. A wide range of microwave circuits have been built in this technology including 5.8-GHz low-noise amplifiers with 1-V supply, up to 17-GHz fully monolithic VCOs with excellent figures of merit, high-efficiency 2.4-GHz power devices with supply voltage of 1.5 V, and move complicated functions such as 2.5/5.0-GHz frequency synthesizer circuits as well as 10/12.5-Gb/s clock and data recovery PLLs. This paper focuses on several key circuit applications of SiGe BiCMOS technology and describes the performance improvements that can be obtained by its utilization in mixed-signal microwave circuit design. By way of examples, the article highlights the fact that the combination of high-bandwidth, high-gain and low-noise SiGe HBTs with dense CMOS functionality in a SiGe BiCMOS technology enables implementation of powerful single-chip transceiver architectures for multi-GHz and multi-Gb/s communication applications.
Beyond the Startup Stage: The Founding Team's Human Capital, New Venture's Stage of Life, Founder-CEO Duality, and Breakthrough Innovation

Using a unique longitudinal study of U.S. biotechnology ventures, we advance extant research by showing that a founding team’s educational heterogeneity and prior founding experience have a positive and significant effect on the likelihood of a firm’s creating breakthrough innovation. However, we demonstrate that these relationships depend on the firm’s stage of life and decision-making structure as reflected in its founder–CEO duality. Specifically, we show that the positive effect of a founding team’s human capital is stronger in the growth stage than the early stages of a startup. While founder–CEO duality increases the positive effect of the founding team’s human capital in the startup stage, during the growth stage, such a structure reduces the impact of the founding team’s human capital. Therefore, to fully appreciate the effect of human capital on a venture’s success in breakthrough innovation, we must consider both the firm’s stage of life and its decision-making structure. As such, our theory pro.
Using EQ-5D in children with asthma, rheumatic disorders, diabetes, and speech/language and/or hearing disorders

Objectives: This study explores several variables of the EQ-5D child version, a multi-attribute utility instrument, in children with chronic conditions. Methods: A convenience sample was selected from hospital outpatient records and school records. The sample included children aged 7–18 years with the following chronic conditions: asthma, rheumatic disorders, diabetes, and speech/language and/or hearing disorders. The practicality, convergent validity, and discriminant power were compared with a generic quality of life questionnaire for children (TACQOL) and the 2-week test–retest reliability was assessed. Results: A total of 182 children or their parents completed the first questionnaire and 161 children/parents completed both questionnaires. The practicality of the EQ-5D was good. Low to moderate correlations were found between the utilities and VAS scores and the TACQOL scales. The discriminant power of the EQ-5D items was low overall and was greater for children with a rheumatic disorder than for children with the other conditions. In the subset of children who experienced no health change between the test and the retest, the reliability of the EQ-5D was moderate to high. Conclusions: The EQ-5D seems suitable for children, although the use of an additional disease-specific questionnaire is still recommended. The EQ-5D seems the most suitable for children with a chronic physical condition and appears to be reliable for children with a stable health status.
Word based off-line handwritten Arabic classification and recognition : design of automatic recognition system for large vocabulary offline handwritten Arabic words using machine learning approaches

I ACKNOWLEDGMENT . III PUBLICATIONS . IV TABLE OF CONTENTS . VI LIST OF FIGURES . IX LIST OF TABLES . X LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . XI CHAPTER ONE . 1
Taking The Game Out Of Gamification

Gamification purports to take elements from video games such as points, badges, levels, etc. and use them to motivate people to perform tasks outside of traditional video games. This paper challenges these claims by arguing that the core of video games is actually content, not game mechanics. It illustrates how game mechanics are not exclusive to video games and are used only to enhance the content naturally found in games. It further explores how gamification uses mechanics to limit the amount of content provided to players while at the same time gathering valuable personal information from players.
Respiratory sinus arrhythmia. A phenomenon improving pulmonary gas exchange and circulatory efficiency.

BACKGROUND The primary mechanisms of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) are understood to be the modulation of cardiac vagal efferent activity by the central respiratory drive and the lung inflation reflex, and the degree of RSA increases with cardiac vagal activity. However, it is unclear whether RSA serves an active physiological role or merely reflects a passive cardiovascular response to respiratory input. We hypothesized that RSA benefits pulmonary gas exchange by matching perfusion to ventilation within each respiratory cycle. METHODS AND RESULTS In seven anesthetized dogs, a model stimulating RSA was made. After elimination of endogenous autonomic activities, respiration-linked heartbeat fluctuations were generated by electrical stimulation of the right cervical vagus during negative pressure ventilation produced by phrenic nerve stimulation (diaphragm pacing). The vagal stimulation was performed in three conditions; phasic stimulation during expiration (artificial RSA) and during inspiration (inverse RSA) and constant stimulation (control) causing the same number of heartbeats per minute as the phasic stimulations. Although tidal volume, cardiac output, and arterial blood pressure were unchanged, artificial RSA decreased the ratio of physiological dead space to tidal volume (VD/VT) and the fraction of intrapulmonary shunt (Qap/Qt) by 10% and 51%, respectively, and increased O2 consumption by 4% compared with control. Conversely, reverse RSA increased VD/VT and Qap/Qt by 14% and 64%, respectively, and decreased O2 consumption by 14%. CONCLUSIONS These results support our hypothesis that RSA benefits the pulmonary gas exchange and may improve the energy efficiency of pulmonary circulation by "saving heartbeats. "
Estimating the Effect of Occupational Noise Exposure on Hearing Thresholds: The Importance of Adjusting for Confounding Variables

Objectives: To evaluate whether valid estimation of the effect of occupational noise exposure on hearing thresholds requires adjustment for factors other than age, sex, and race, which also influence hearing function. Design: Multivariate regression analyses were performed in the 1999-2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (N = 3527). Results: Occupational noise exposure was significantly associated with educational level, leisure time and firearm noise, and smoking. Incomplete adjustment for these factors leads to an overestimation of the effect of occupational noise exposure. Conclusions: Current methods of estimating the effect of occupational noise exposure (e.g., Annex C of American National Standards Institute S3.44) require better consideration of these confounding factors.
Analyzing the Basic Elements of Mobile Viral Marketing-An Empirical Study

As personal communication tools mobile devices are platforms for word-of-mouth marketing. Given the assigned usefulness of mobile viral marketing, it is surprising to find relatively few studies directed at its basic elements, i.e., mobile viral content and consumers forwarding this content. The paper presents the findings of an online survey conducted to empirically investigate the consumers' intention to participate in different kinds of mobile viral marketing strategies and to identify the characteristics of mobile viral mavens in terms of their forwarding behaviour.
Changes in Biomechanical Properties during Drop Jumps of Incremental Height

Peng, H-T. Changes in biomechanical properties during drop jumps of incremental height. J Strength Cond Res 25(9): 2510-2518, 2011—The purpose of this study was to investigate changing biomechanical properties with increasing drop jump height. Sixteen physically active college students participated in this study and performed drop jumps from heights of 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 cm (DJ20-DJ60). Kinematic and kinetic data were collected using 11 Eagle cameras and 2 force platforms. Data pertaining to the dominant leg for each of 3 trials for each drop height were recorded and analyzed. Statistical comparisons of vertical ground reaction force (vGRF), impulse, moment, power, work, and stiffness were made between different drop jump heights. The peak vGRF of the dominant leg exceeded 3 times the body weight during DJ50 and DJ60; these values were significantly greater than those for DJ20, DJ30, and DJ40 (all p < 0.004). The height jumped during DJ60 was significantly less than that during DJ20 and DJ30 (both p = 0.010). Both the landing impulse and total impulse during the contact phase were significantly different between each drop height (all p < 0.036) and significantly increased with drop height. There were no significant differences in the takeoff impulse. Peak and mean power absorption and negative work at the knee and ankle joints during DJ40, DJ50, and DJ60 were significantly greater than those during DJ20 and DJ30 (all p < 0.049). Leg, knee, and ankle stiffness during DJ60 were significantly less than during DJ20, DJ30, and DJ40 (all p < 0.037). The results demonstrated that drop jumps from heights >40 cm offered no advantages in terms of mechanical efficiency (SSC power output) and stiffness. Drop jumps from heights in excess of 60 cm are not recommended because of the lack of biomechanical efficiency and the potentially increased risk of injury.
Research on Radar Aided SINS Autonomous Navigation Scheme for Lunar Soft Landing

In order to meet the requirements of high precision orbit determination and prediction for the safe and pinpoint lunar soft landing, the paper presents an autonomous navigation based on SINS (strapdown inertial navigation system) /DOPPLER Radar/Radar Altimeter integrated navigation system. According to the error characteristics of each sensor, an effective information fusion algorithm is designed. The excellent result of vehicle experiment indicates that the integrated navigation has high precision, the system design method is successful, and it has better value of engineering application.