Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Energy Efficient Shifted Logging Storage Architecture for Write-oriented Workloads

In this paper, we propose SiLo, a novel energy efficient shifted logging storage architecture, for write-oriented workloads. By organizing free storage space of redundant mirrored disks in a RAID10 system into a logical logging space pool and shifting logger among different mirrored disk pairs, only one or few mirrored disk pairs are used as the on-duty logger at a time and all the other off-duty mirrored disk pairs are set to low-power state for power saving. SiLo is extremely effective for the write-oriented workloads. Extensive trace-driven evaluations demonstrate the power saving potentiality and performance scalability. Thorough analysis and comparison of reliability between SiLo and typical RAID10 demonstrates that the MTTDL of SiLo is much larger than that of typical RAID10.
Effective and Efficient Feature Description of the Electric Customer Service Staffs Based on the Visual Clustering Algorithm

Effective and efficient description of the features of different staffs is the key problem to achieve scientific and meticulous management in customer service centers, because the features are essential for decision-making works, e.g., the formulation of the scheduling strategy, the placement strategy and the performance evaluation standard. In this paper, by introducing the visual clustering algorithm, the electric customer service staffs are divided into four types, i.e., the quality type, the efficiency type, the medium type and the problem type, on the basis of the workload, work quality and work efficiency of the staffs. The clustering results are helpful for the formulation of the scheduling strategy, the placement strategy and the performance evaluation standard objectively. The visual clustering algorithm is now regularly applied to divide electric customer service staffs into different groups so that related strategies and standards may be tuned timely and properly. The successful application of our proposed method in State Grid Customer Service Center shows the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed visual clustering algorithm.
Knowledge-Based Spatial-Temporal Hierarchical MIMO Radar Waveform Design Method for Target Detection in Heterogeneous Clutter Zone

Knowledge-based MIMO radar waveform design for target detection in heterogeneous clutter zone is addressed in this paper. In order to improve the detection probability efficiently, a new optimization cost function is developed via minimizing the output clutter peak level and peak sidelobe level of the correlation function on the premise of maintaining the output target signal energy. With constant modulus constraint of transmit waveform, the new cost function is an NP-hard problem. To tackle this problem, a spatial-temporal hierarchical optimization approach is proposed that can decompose the original problem to two hierarchical subproblems approximately. On the foundation of convex programming and cyclic algorithm, the first subproblem, i.e., knowledge-based transmit beampattern design, can be solved effectively. Based on CVX programming and the bi-iterative method, the joint mainlobe synthesized signal and mismatched receiving filter optimization method is proposed to solve the second subproblem. Numerical results show the efficiency of the proposed method.
Cytoplasmic cleavage in living zoosporangia of Allomyces macrogynus

We have used the vital fluorescent dye, FM4‐64, as a marker of membrane development during zoospore formation in living zoosporangia of Allomyces macrogynus. Membrane development was visualized and documented using standard epifluorescence and laser scanning confocal microscopy. Video‐enhanced light microscopy and transmission electron microscopy, using cryopreparation methods, were also employed in this study. In the first 10–12 min after the induction of zoospore formation, only the plasma membrane labelled with FM4‐64. During this time, nuclei were strictly located in the cortical cytoplasm with their associated centrosomes positioned immediately adjacent to the plasma membrane ( Lowry & Roberson, 1997 ). Between 12 and 20 min post‐induction, increased fluorescence appeared along regions of the plasma membrane adjacent to the nuclei. From these sites, membranes (i.e. cleavage elements) extended laterally within the cortex and then, in conjunction with nuclear migration, rapidly elongated into the sporangial cytoplasm. By 25–35 min post‐induction, cleavage elements had ramified throughout the cytoplasm forming a complex, interconnected membranous network. Transmission electron microscopy revealed that cleavage elements were paired membrane sheets with a lumen consisting of an electron opaque, granular matrix. Cleavage elements developed into a highly ordered network by 35–40 min post‐induction, which fully delimited zoospore initials into polyhedral‐shaped cells. Zoospore discharge occurred between 40 and 50 min post‐induction. Our results have shown that cleavage elements undergo four stages of development during zoospore formation in A. macrogynus: (i) development of membrane initials, (ii) cortical extension, (iii) cytoplasmic elongation and ramification and (iv) zoospore initial delimitation.
Effects of dapagliflozin on body weight, total fat mass, and regional adipose tissue distribution in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus with inadequate glycemic control on metformin.

CONTEXT Dapagliflozin, a selective sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor, reduces hyperglycemia in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) by increasing urinary glucose excretion, and weight loss is a consistent associated finding. OBJECTIVES Our objectives were to confirm weight loss with dapagliflozin and establish through body composition measurements whether weight loss is accounted for by changes in fat or fluid components. DESIGN AND SETTING This was a 24-wk, international, multicenter, randomized, parallel-group, double-blind, placebo-controlled study with ongoing 78-wk site- and patient-blinded extension period at 40 sites in five countries. PATIENTS Included were 182 patients with T2DM (mean values: women 63.3 and men 58.6 yr of age; hemoglobin A1c 7.17%, body mass index 31.9 kg/m2, and body weight 91.5 kg) inadequately controlled on metformin. INTERVENTION Dapagliflozin 10 mg/d or placebo was added to open-label metformin for 24 wk. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Primary endpoint was total body weight (TBW) change from baseline at wk 24. Key secondary endpoints were waist circumference and dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry total-body fat mass (FM) changes from baseline at wk 24, and patient proportion achieving body weight reduction of at least 5% at wk 24. In a subset of patients, magnetic resonance assessment of visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and sc adipose tissue (SAT) volume and hepatic lipid content were also evaluated. RESULTS At wk 24, placebo-corrected changes with dapagliflozin were as follows: TBW, -2.08 kg [95% confidence interval (CI)=-2.84 to -1.31; P<0.0001]; waist circumference, -1.52 cm (95% CI=-2.74 to -0.31; P=0.0143); FM, -1.48 kg (95% CI=-2.22 to -0.74; P=0.0001); proportion of patients achieving weight reduction of at least 5%, +26.2% (95% CI=15.5 to 36.7; P<0.0001); VAT, -258.4 cm3 (95% CI=-448.1 to -68.6; nominal P=0.0084); SAT, -184.9 cm3 (95% CI=-359.7 to -10.1; nominal P=0.0385). In the dapagliflozin vs. placebo groups, respectively, serious adverse events were reported in 6.6 vs. 1.1%; events suggestive of vulvovaginitis, balanitis, and related genital infection in 3.3 vs. 0%; and lower urinary tract infections in 6.6 vs. 2.2%. CONCLUSIONS Dapagliflozin reduces TBW, predominantly by reducing FM, VAT and SAT in T2DM inadequately controlled with metformin.
Effortless awareness: using real time neurofeedback to investigate correlates of posterior cingulate cortex activity in meditators' self-report

Neurophenomenological studies seek to utilize first-person self-report to elucidate cognitive processes related to physiological data. Grounded theory offers an approach to the qualitative analysis of self-report, whereby theoretical constructs are derived from empirical data. Here we used grounded theory methodology (GTM) to assess how the first-person experience of meditation relates to neural activity in a core region of the default mode network—the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). We analyzed first-person data consisting of meditators' accounts of their subjective experience during runs of a real time fMRI neurofeedback study of meditation, and third-person data consisting of corresponding feedback graphs of PCC activity during the same runs. We found that for meditators, the subjective experiences of “undistracted awareness” such as “concentration” and “observing sensory experience,” and “effortless doing” such as “observing sensory experience,” “not efforting,” and “contentment,” correspond with PCC deactivation. Further, the subjective experiences of “distracted awareness” such as “distraction” and “interpreting,” and “controlling” such as “efforting” and “discontentment,” correspond with PCC activation. Moreover, we derived several novel hypotheses about how specific qualities of cognitive processes during meditation relate to PCC activity, such as the difference between meditation and “trying to meditate. ” These findings offer novel insights into the relationship between meditation and mind wandering or self-related thinking and neural activity in the default mode network, driven by first-person reports.
Heterogeneous satellite-terrestrial technologies: Quality of service and availability testing

Due to rapid and constant evolution of wireless communication technologies, standards, protocols, applications, and systems, it is hard to rely on personal experience to make their selection, design and deployment. Testing helps to determine actual performance and limitations of technologies. Testing is also important to avoid the financial and reputation losses of the company as well as to ensure uninterrupted flow of the information for essential services such as healthcare, airports, railways, and military services. Testing covers many aspects of a communications network, including interoperability, conformance, performance and availability. The end-to-end quality of service management implies that features such as service scalability between different networks have to be available. However, wireless QoS requirements are very diverse due to its seamless applications, and moreover, , differences in QoS properties between both wired and wireless applications have a considerable effect on the level of user service quality as well as platform and application dimensions of network interoperability. The aim of this paper is to establish the network performance and availability requirements for the integrated use of satellite communication technology together with terrestrial network technology in a particular, niche application area, namely the seamless delivery of educational services in rural and remote areas. The suggested testing programme aims to identify the performance and availability issues for the operation of heterogeneous satellite-terrestrial network technologies.
A Dynamic Multi-Channel MAC for Ad Hoc LAN

Applying single channel ad hoc MAC protocol (such as 802.11b) in multichannel environment (such as the ISM band) has two potential problems: connectivity and load balancing. Connectivity problem refers to the fact that stations in one channel cannot connect to those in the other channels. As resource is partitioned into multiple independent channels, w hen the load of two channels are different, resource in the underloaded channel cannot be used to offload the overloaded channels, and thus, reduces the overall system performance. The use of m ultichannel protocols where each station is capable of accessing to more than one channel is a way of solving the two problems. This paper proposes a multichannel MAC protocol for that purpose. The preliminary result shows that the objective is achievabl e while, at the same time, maintain good performance. A. INTRODUCTION Ad hoc network does not have a predefined topology. Multiple stations pool together and communicate without assistance of any centralized control. The ad hoc nature makes network anywhere possible and adds convinence for local group communications. Due to the lack of centralized control, the size of an ad hoc LAN varies. Currently, the most popular ad hoc MAC implemented is the 802.11b [1] which utilizes CSMA/CA and channel reservation via Network Allocation Vector (NAV). IEEE 802.11b is a single-channel MAC protocol which operates in the ISM band. For CSMA type MAC protocol, the system throughput decreases as the network size increases due to collisions and longer backoff periods. Our simulation shows that the same effect occurs even in a single cell environment where all stations are in the transmission range of each other. The ISM band is a typical multichannel environment. In the band, spread spectrum is used for channellization. Each channel is identified by a code. Depends on the physical layer properties, a code refers to either a direct sequency spreading code or a frequency hopping pattern. In either case, multiple channels are allowed to co-exist in the same band. If more than one channel is available and the network size is large, it is logical to allocate the stations to operate in different channels in order to improve system throughput. This is acceptable if communication is confined to the stations in the same channel. Otherwise, special equipment will be needed to bridge the stations in different channels to allow cross-channel communicaton. However, in ad hoc networks, such equipment is usually …
Exploratory analysis of linguistic data based on genetic algorithm for robust modeling of the segmental duration of speech

This work presents a new method for exploratory analysis of linguistic data. This new method is based on Genetic Algorithm and it is used to improve the performance of linear regression models for predicting the segmental duration of speech. The proposed method was compared with Regression Trees and with a baseline Linear Regression model (a Linear Regression with topologies selected using multivariate analysis of variance). The experimental results has shown that the proposed method presents better generalization performance (properties to deal with database imbalance) than the Regression Trees and the baseline Linear Regression model. All the evaluations presented in this article were carried out using an American English database from the oshiba Speech Technology Laboratory in Cambridge, UK. T
Cerebral air embolism in the dog.

The problem of air embolism has attracted the attention of many investigators. The literature contains numerous reports of severe neurologic damage or unexpected death occurring during some types of thoracic or abdominal diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.2,4,5,8,21more recently, operations in the neck during cordotomy, laminectomy, and thyroidectomy have been blamed for air embolization with subsequent neurologic deficits or death.19-21Obstetricians and gynecologists also have encountered the problem in patients during postpartum kneechest exercises.28Interest in the danger of air embolism has increased since the advent of open-heart surgery and the use of the artificial oxygenator.24 Experimentally, the effects of air emboli differ greatly, depending on whether they are "venous" (injection usually in femoral or jugular vein) or "arterial" (injection in carotid artery or pulmonary vein). In the case of "venous" embolization, large amounts of air are tolerated by experimental animals, perhaps because of the filtering effect
The Metabolite Transporters of the Plastid Envelope: An Update

The engulfment of a photoautotrophic cyanobacterium by a primitive mitochondria-bearing eukaryote traces back to more than 1.2 billion years ago. This single endosymbiotic event not only provided the early petroalgae with the metabolic capacity to perform oxygenic photosynthesis, but also introduced a plethora of other metabolic routes ranging from fatty acids and amino acids biosynthesis, nitrogen and sulfur assimilation to secondary compounds synthesis. This implicated the integration and coordination of the newly acquired metabolic entity with the host metabolism. The interface between the host cytosol and the plastidic stroma became of crucial importance in sorting precursors and products between the plastid and other cellular compartments. The plastid envelope membranes fulfill different tasks: they perform important metabolic functions, as they are involved in the synthesis of carotenoids, chlorophylls, and galactolipids. In addition, since most genes of cyanobacterial origin have been transferred to the nucleus, plastidial proteins encoded by nuclear genes are post-translationally transported across the envelopes through the TIC–TOC import machinery. Most importantly, chloroplasts supply the photoautotrophic cell with photosynthates in form of reduced carbon. The innermost bilayer of the plastidic envelope represents the permeability barrier for the metabolites involved in the carbon cycle and is literally stuffed with transporter proteins facilitating their transfer. The intracellular metabolite transporters consist of polytopic proteins containing membrane spans usually in the number of four or more α-helices. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that connecting the plastid with the host metabolism was mainly a process driven by the host cell. In Arabidopsis, 58% of the metabolite transporters are of host origin, whereas only 12% are attributable to the cyanobacterial endosymbiont. This review focuses on the metabolite transporters of the inner envelope membrane of plastids, in particular the electrochemical potential-driven class of transporters. Recent advances in elucidating the plastidial complement of metabolite transporters are provided, with an update on phylogenetic relationship of selected proteins.
Is the Myocardial Blush Grade Scored by the Operator During Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention of Prognostic Value in Patients With ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction in Routine Clinical Practice?

Background—Multiple trials have documented that myocardial blush grade (MBG) after primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) has prognostic value for long-term clinical outcome. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study has determined the clinical use of MBG in routine clinical practice. We determined the prognostic value of MBG scored by the operator during primary PCI in consecutive patients with STEMI. Methods and Results—The prognostic value of MBG scored by the operator in relation to 1-year all cause mortality was evaluated in all patients with STEMI who underwent primary PCI between January 2004 and July 2008 in our hospital. The incidence of MBG 0, 1, 2, and 3 was 12%, 14%, 36%, and 38%, respectively, in 2118 consecutive patients with STEMI. Follow-up of all 2118 patients showed a 1-year all cause mortality rate of 8% (168 of 2118): 24%, 10%, 6%, and 4%, respectively, among patients with MBG 0, 1, 2, and 3 (P<0.001). In the 1763 patients with Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) flow grade 3 after PCI, these mortality rates were 17%, 10%, 6%, and 4%, respectively (P<0.001). MBG scored by the operator was a strong independent predictor of 1-year all cause mortality corrected for other well-known predictive variables, including TIMI flow grade. Conclusions—MBG scored by the operator during primary PCI has prognostic value for 1-year all cause mortality in patients with STEMI in routine clinical practice. Therefore, the MBG should be documented, in addition to the TIMI flow grade, during primary PCI in patients with STEMI in standard PCI reports in routine clinical practice.
SARANA: language, compiler and run-time system support for spatially aware and resource-aware mobile computing

Increasingly, spatial awareness plays a central role in many distributed and mobile computing applications. Spatially aware applications rely on information about the geographical position of compute devices and their supported services in order to support novel functionality. While many spatial application drivers already exist in mobile and distributed computing, very little systems research has explored how best to program these applications, to express their spatial and temporal constraints, and to allow efficient implementations on highly dynamic real-world platforms. This paper proposes the SARANA system architecture, which includes language and run-time system support for spatially aware and resource-aware applications. SARANA allows users to express spatial regions of interest, as well as trade-offs between quality of result (QoR), latency and cost. The goal is to produce applications that use resources efficiently and that can be run on diverse resource-constrained platforms ranging from laptops to personal digital assistants and to smart phones. SARANA's run-time system manages QoR and cost trade-offs dynamically by tracking resource availability and locations, brokering usage/pricing agreements and migrating programs to nodes accordingly. A resource cost model permeates the SARANA system layers, permitting users to express their resource needs and QoR expectations in units that make sense to them. Although we are still early in the system development, initial versions have been demonstrated on a nine-node system prototype.
Cytological findings in routine voided urine samples with hematuria from a tertiary care center in south India

Background: Regardless of the availability of newer and more sophisticated modalities of investigation, urinary tract cytology still remains the most commonly used non-invasive test for the diagnosis of bladder cancer. Aims: As hematuria is the commonest presenting symptom in patients with malignancy of urinary tract, we undertook this study to know the usefulness of urine cytology in evaluation of the hematuric patients for malignancy. Materials and Methods: A total of 21,557 fresh voided urine samples received at our tertiary care referral centre over a period of three years were included in the study. Of these, 1428 cases had hematuria, criteria of either gross or microscopic. Results: Among these hematuric cases included in the study, 32.5% (464 cases) were found to have positive finding of atypical cells. In these cases with atypia, 9.5% (136 cases) were proved to have malignancy both with the histopathological biopsy and cystoscopic findings. Other cases of atypia were found to be of reactive origin, either due to instrumentation or foreign body. A large number of hematuric cases, that is, 964 cases (67.5%) were negative for atypical cells. Conclusions: The limited ability of urine cytology to detect low grade bladder tumors, its subjectivity and lack of uniformity in reporting, all render urine cytology a less than perfect tool. With added collaboration between clinician and cytopathologist, urine cytology can be used an adjunct tool in evaluation of patients with hematuria.