Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cost Optimization Oriented Dynamic Resource Allocation for Service-based System in the Cloud Environment

Because of load fluctuating, the performance of service-based system(SBS) in the cloud environment may deviate from service level agreement(SLA). In the cloud environment, it is important to dynamically allocate resource for SBS according to the predicted system load, so as to satisfy global SLA constraint and minimize resource cost. By the analysis of complex business logic in SBS and the feature of dynamic resource allocation problem, this paper models the dynamic resource allocation problem as composite optimization problem and proposes the cost optimization oriented dynamic resource allocation model. Then this paper applies genetic algorithm to solve the dynamic resource allocation model so as to improve the resolving efficiency. Finally, the approach proposed in this paper is evaluated and compared with some related algorithms. It reveals very encouraging results in terms of the quality of resource allocation.
Bus-Stop Level Transit Ridership using Spatial Modeling Methods

The objective of this research is to develop and assess bus transit ridership models at a bus-stop level using two spatial modeling methods: spatial proximity method (SPM) and spatial weight method (SWM). Data for the Charlotte (North Carolina) area are used to illustrate 1) the working of the methods and 2) development and assessment of the models. Features available in Geographic Information System (GIS) software were explored to capture spatial attributes such as demographic, socioeconomic, and land use characteristics around each selected bus stop. These, along with on-network characteristics surrounding the bus stop, were used as explanatory variables. Models were then developed, using the generalized estimating equations (GEE) framework, to estimate riders boarding (dependent variable) at the bus stop as a function of selected explanatory variables that are not correlated to each other. Results obtained indicate that Negative Binomial with log-link distribution better fits the data to estimate ridership at the bus-stop level (for both SPM and SWM) than when compared to linear, Poisson with log-link and Gamma with log-link distributions. Although SPM models demonstrated distance decay behavior, statistical parameters indicate that SWM (based on functions 1/D, 1/D2, and 1/D3) does not yield better or more meaningful estimates than when compared to SPM using 0.25-mile buffer width data.
The Nonpenetrating Telescopic Sham Needle May Blind Patients with Different Characteristics and Experiences When Treated by Several Therapists

Background. Little is known which factors influence the blinding in acupuncture studies. Aim. To investigate if blinding varied between patients with different characteristics receiving verum or sham acupuncture. Methods. We randomised cancer patients to verum (n = 109) or sham acupuncture (n = 106) with a nonpenetrating telescopic sham needle for nausea. Level of blinding was compared between different sub-groups of patients using Bang's blinding index (BI) ranged −1 to 1 (−1 = all state the opposite treatment, 1 = all identify treatment). Results. Most patients in the verum (74 of 95; 78%, BI 0.72) and the sham (68 of 95; 72%, BI −0.60). acupuncture group believed they had received verum acupuncture. The probability for a patient to believe he/she received verum acupuncture was related to the received needling type (P = .003) and to the patient's belief in received treatment effects (P = .008). Hospital (P = .425), therapist (P = .434), previous acupuncture experience (P = .578), occurrence of nausea (P = .157), gender (P = .760), and age (P = .357) did not affect blinding. Conclusions. Blinding was successfully achieved irrespective of age, gender, acupuncture experience, treatment effect, or in which hospital or by which therapist the patient received treatment. Patients with higher belief in the effect of the treatment were more likely to believe they had received verum acupuncture.
On CDO Tranche Pricing When Copula is Nearly Comonotone

Pricing of a CDO base tranche is considered when copula is comonotone and approximations are derived for the base tranche expected loss, obtained with a one-factor Gaussian copula model, when correlations are sufficiently close to 100%. Numerical examples are provided showing that a two-term approximation reproduces the true value with no more than approximately 5% relative error, uniformly across detachments and average default probabilities for correlations between 95% and 100%.
An Emerging Framework for Analyzing School-Based Professional Community.

This paper attempts to blend the literature on professionalism with the literature of community, thus positing a framework for a school-based professional community. Sociologists have long distinguished between occupations--even high status ones--and professions. Among the key distinctions of professionalism are: a technical knowledge base shared among all members of the profession; membership control over entry to the profession; and a strong client-orientation which emphasizes putting client needs before personal interest. The literature on community has stressed the importance of broadly shared values and behavioral norms, a sense of responsibility for the collective good, and the need for an extended relationship of caring among individuals. Blending these two literature bases into a coherent framework for school-based professional community suggests an integrated professional-community model that combines a universally applicable knowledge base rooted in the discipline of teaching with organizational factors, such as values, climate, and caring relationships. The professional-community model assumes that knowledge of organizational settings improves performance and that a sustained focus on student learning, rather than on decision-making models or teacher-centered innovation, can prove beneficial for schools. A conclusion is that a combination of both structural and humanresource conditions are necessary for the professional community to exist. (Contains 58 references.) (LMI) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** U.S. DEPARTMENT Of EDUCATION Once or Educatronat Research and tmaadement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as recered horn the person or organaahon cmginating a Mona changes sane been made to mcgovO reptoduchon cioalttY Pants of rrewa oprrhons stated m ims document do not necessably represent °Mast OE RI posaron or policy An Emerging Framework for Analyzing School-Based Professional Community) Sharon D. Kruse Karen Seashore Louis College of Education, University of Minnesota April, 1993 "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY
Continuous control law from unilateral constraints

The control approaches based on tasks, and particularly based on a hierarchy of tasks, enable to build complex behaviors with some nice properties of robustness and portability. However it is difficult to consider directly unilateral constraints in such a framework. Unilateral constraints presents some strong irregularities (in particular at the level of their derivative) that prevents the insertion of unilateral-based tasks at the high-priority level of a hierarchy. In this paper, we present an original method to generalize the hierarchy-based control schemes to take unilateral constraint into account at the top-priority level. We develop our method first at the kinematic level then directly at the dynamic level using the operational space. The method is then validated on a various set of robots by realizing a visual servoing under the constraint of joint limits.
New Insights into Glomerular Parietal Epithelial Cell Activation and Its Signaling Pathways in Glomerular Diseases

The glomerular parietal epithelial cells (PECs) have aroused an increasing attention recently. The proliferation of PECs is the main feature of crescentic glomerulonephritis; besides that, in the past decade, PEC activation has been identified in several types of noninflammatory glomerulonephropathies, such as focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, diabetic glomerulopathy, and membranous nephropathy. The pathogenesis of PEC activation is poorly understood; however, a few studies delicately elucidate the potential mechanisms and signaling pathways implicated in these processes. In this review we will focus on the latest observations and concepts about PEC activation in glomerular diseases and the newest identified signaling pathways in PEC activation.
Combining Evaluation Metrics via the Unanimous Improvement Ratio and its Application to Clustering Tasks

Many Artificial Intelligence tasks cannot be evaluated with a single quality criterion and some sort of weighted combination is needed to provide system rankings. A problem of weighted combination measures is that slight changes in the relative weights may produce substantial changes in the system rankings. This paper introduces the Unanimous Improvement Ratio (UIR), a measure that complements standard metric combination criteria (such as van Rijsbergen's F-measure) and indicates how robust the measured differences are to changes in the relative weights of the individual metrics. UIR is meant to elucidate whether a perceived difference between two systems is an artifact of how individual metrics are weighted. Besides discussing the theoretical foundations of UIR, this paper presents empirical results that confirm the validity and usefulness of the metric for the Text Clustering problem, where there is a tradeoff between precision and recall based metrics and results are particularly sensitive to the weighting scheme used to combine them. Remarkably, our experiments show that UIR can be used as a predictor of how well differences between systems measured on a given test bed will also hold in a different test bed.
Corporate Taxation and Investment – Evidence from the Belgian Ace Reform

We contribute to the empirical literature on the relationship between corporate taxes and investment. We exploit the introduction of the so-called ACE corporate tax reform in Belgium that came into effect in January 2006 to evaluate this relationship in a quasiexperimental setting based on firm-level accounting data. To identify the causal effect of the reform on capital spending of Belgian corporations, we focus on the indirect effect of taxes on investment via their impact on free cash-flow. We use the systematic variation of the cash-flow sensitivity of investment between small and medium versus large firms to form treatment and control groups for difference-in-differences (DiD) estimations. Our benchmark results provide highly significant and robust estimates that correspond to an increase in investment activity by small and medium-sized firms of about 3 percent in response to the ACE reform. We substantiate the robustness of our results by means of triple differences estimations (DDD) that use a matched sample of French companies as an additional dimension of contrast.
Coexistence of Takayasu Arteritis and Crohn's Disease in a Maltese Patient

Takayasu arteritis (TA) and Crohn's disease (CD) are uncommon chronic granulomatous disorders affecting the large arteries and the gastrointestinal tract, respectively. At least 40 occurrences of these two conditions in the same patient have been reported in the literature, raising the possibility of an association between them. We report the coexistence of TA and CD in a young Maltese patient and review the literature to discuss possible aetiological mechanisms that might explain this association.
A wavelet-based system for event detection in online real-time sensor data

Sensors are increasingly being used for continuous monitoring purposes, the process of which generates huge volumes of data that need to be mined for interesting events in realtime. The purpose of this research is to develop a method to identify these events, and to provide users with an architecture that will allow them to analyze events online and in real-time, to act upon them, and to archive them for future offline analysis. This thesis is divided into two major portions. The first discusses a general software architecture that performs the functions defined above. The architecture proposed assumes no prior knowledge of the data, and is capable of dealing with multi-source data feed from any type of sensor(s) on one end, and can handle multiple clients on the other. The second part of the thesis discusses a wavelet-based algorithm for detecting certain types of events in real-time in one-dimensional numeric time-series data. Wavelets were judged to be the most appropriate technique for analyzing random sensor signals for which no prior information is available. The wavelet-based method in addition allows users to delve into different levels of abstraction (based on varying time periods) while looking at the data, which cannot be done by any previous method for real-time event detection. This thesis also touches on the fundamental question of how one defines an event, which is more easily possible in a particular domain, for a specific purpose, but is much harder to do in a generic, domain-independent level. Thesis Supervisor: Prof. Steven Lerman Title: Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Assembly of Latex Particles by Using Emulsion Droplets as Templates. 2. Ball-like and Composite Aggregates

We report data on using the emulsion-based method for the assembly of ball-like aggregates of a positively charged (amidine) latex. The latex particles are strongly hydrophobized with the use of sodium dodecyl sulfate, which induces their adsorption into the bulk of the emulsion droplets. The droplets are then sterically protected against coalescence, and the particles gathered inside them are fixed. After the emulsion droplets are dissolved, a suspension of ball-like latex aggregates is obtained. The aggregates do not appear to be ordered, but their overall shape is precisely spherical. The process of fabricating ball-like aggregates was then combined with the assembly scheme for hollow supraparticles (presented in the first paper of this series). As a result, we have been able to obtain composite particles, whose cores are ball-like aggregates of amidine latex, surrounded by a shell of negatively charged sulfate latex. The core−shell structure was visualized by fluorescent microscopy. We also report dat.
Informed choice, deaf children and families – underpinning ideas and project development

Informed choice, deaf children and families – underpinning ideas and project development. Abstract This article concerns informed choice and the provision of services for deaf children and their families. It first outlines the background to why informed choice has become such an issue of importance in the English context. It then goes on to describe the first stages of a research and development project designed to produce guidance for both professionals and parents on an informed choice approach. These stages consist of a comprehensive literature review and a series of consultations with multi professional service providers and parents of deaf children. Fifteen key principles are presented that have been derived from these stages of data collection. They underpin our understanding of the complexities of what constitutes informed choice. Examples of the actual professional guidance document and parent handbook are also given. These serve to highlight the core difficulties faced in translating the underpinning issues into practical and useful documents for parent and professional alike.
PARCelS: Pervasive Ad-hoc Relaying for Cellular Systems

Correlated usage of mobile devices intensifies traffic burstness and poses threat of congestion to current cellular-based wireless infrastructures. Inspired by the idea of integrating a cellular-based infrastructure with ad-hoc relaying, we propose a new architecture for the next-generation wireless networks, termed PARCelS, which utilizes roaming mobile hosts to perform route relaying. PARCelS is cost-effective as it saves the large investment in existent cellular-based infrastructures and does not need dedicated mobile devices. Our evaluations show that PARCelS can balance traffic load, avoid traffic congestion, and reduce latency.
Random Basketball Routing for ZigBee based Sensor Networks

Random basketball routing (BR) \cite {Hwang} is a simple protocol that integrates MAC and multihop routing in a cross-layer optimized manner. Due to its lightness and performance, BR would be quite suitable for sensor networks, where communication nodes are usually simple devices. In this paper, we describe how we implemented BR in a ZigBee-based (IEEE 802.15.4) sensor network. In \cite{Hwang}, it is verified that BR takes advantages of dynamic environments (in particular, node mobility), however, here we focus on how BR works under static situations. For implementation purposes, we add some features such as destination RSSI measuring and loop-free procedure, to the original BR. With implemented testbed, we compare the performance of BR with that of the simplified AODV with CSMA/CA. The result is that BR has merits in terms of number of hops to traverse the network. Considering the simple structure of BR and its possible energy-efficiency, we can conclude that BR can be a good candidate for sensor networks both under dynamic- and static environments.
A genome-wide association study for somatic cell score using the Illumina high-density bovine beadchip identifies several novel QTL potentially related to mastitis susceptibility

Mastitis is an inflammation-driven disease of the bovine mammary gland that occurs in response to physical damage or infection and is one of the most costly production-related diseases in the dairy industry worldwide. We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to identify genetic loci associated with somatic cell score (SCS), an indicator trait of mammary gland inflammation. A total of 702 Holstein-Friesian bulls were genotyped for 777,962 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and associated with SCS phenotypes. The SCS phenotypes were expressed as daughter yield deviations (DYD) based on a large number of progeny performance records. A total of 138 SNPs on 15 different chromosomes reached genome-wide significance (corrected p-value ≤ 0.05) for association with SCS (after correction for multiple testing). We defined 28 distinct QTL regions and a number of candidate genes located in these QTL regions were identified. The most significant association (p-value = 1.70 × 10−7) was observed on chromosome 6. This QTL had no known genes annotated within it, however, the Ensembl Genome Browser predicted the presence of a small non-coding RNA (a Y RNA gene) in this genomic region. This Y RNA gene was 99% identical to human RNY4. Y RNAs are a rare type of non-coding RNA that were originally discovered due to their association with the autoimmune disease, systemic lupus erythematosus. Examining small-RNA sequencing (RNAseq) data being generated by us in multiple different mastitis-pathogen challenged cell-types has revealed that this Y RNA is expressed (but not differentially expressed) in these cells. Other QTL regions identified in this study also encoded strong candidate genes for mastitis susceptibility. A QTL region on chromosome 13, for example, was found to contain a cluster of β-defensin genes, a gene family with known roles in innate immunity. Due to the increased SNP density, this study also refined the boundaries for several known QTL for SCS and mastitis.
An Introduction to Southern Legislative Coalitions

The South remains the most culturally distinct and fascinating region in the United States, prompting even today the convening of a biennial Symposium on Southern Politics at the Citadel. A region whose secession from the nation over 100 years ago prompted the bloodiest conflict in American history continues to dominate the political landscape. Referred to as The Vital South (Black and Black 1992) in one contemporary presidential election study, the current Republican president and all three of the last Democratic presidents have hailed from Dixie. The South also plays a pivotal role in the United States Congress, as it was not until the Republicans were able to gain a majority of congressional seats from Dixie in the 1994 elections that their party achieved control of both congressional chambers for the first time in forty years. Racial conflict has characterized much of the South’s history, and even today modern-day lynchings, jail hangings, church burnings, segregated college fraternities and sororities, and underfunded black colleges in Dixie prompt national concern. V. O. Key (1949), in Southern Politics in State and Nation, demonstrated how white citizens employed their one-party Democratic monopoly to maintain white supremacy by disfranchising African Americans through numerous voting devices. Even as late as the 1960s and 1970s, white legislators in states such as Mississippi employed multi-member districts to dilute the black vote in state legislative districts, and gerrymandered congressional districts to ensure white majorities in each district (Parker 1990; Davidson and Grofman 1994). As white Southerners began to realize the futility of continued resistance to integration, and during the stagflation of the 1970s became more concerned over economic issues that united the races, biracial electoral coalitions within Southern
Identification of Amino Acid Residues Important for Ligand Binding to Fas

The interaction of Fas (CD95), a member of the tumor necrosis factor receptor (TNFR) family, and its ligand (FasL) triggers programmed cell death (apoptosis) and is involved in the regulation of immune responses. Although the Fas–FasL interaction is conserved across species barriers, little is currently known about the molecular details of this interaction. Our aim was to identify residues in Fas that are important for ligand binding. With the aid of a Fas molecular model, candidate amino acid residues were selected in the Fas extracellular domain 2 (D2) and D3 and subjected to serine-scanning mutagenesis to produce mutant Fas molecules in the form of Ig fusion proteins. The effects of these mutations on FasL binding was examined by measuring the ability of these proteins to inhibit FasL-mediated apoptosis of Jurkat cells and bind FasL in ELISA and BIAcore™ assays. Mutation of two amino acids, R86 and R87 (D2), to serine totally abolished the ability of Fas to interact with its ligand, whereas mutants K84S, L90S, E93S (D2), or H126S (D3) showed reduced binding compared with wild-type Fas. Two mutants (K78S and H95S) bound FasL comparably to wild type. Therefore, the binding of FasL involves residues in two domains that correspond to positions critical for ligand binding in other family members (TNFR and CD40) but are conserved between murine and human Fas.
StreamDM: Advanced Data Mining in Spark Streaming

Real-time analytics are becoming increasingly important due to the large amount of data that is being created continuously. Drawing from our experiences at Huawei Noah's Ark Lab, we present and demonstrate here StreamDM, a new open source data mining and machine learning library, designed on top of Spark Streaming, an extension of the core Spark API that enables scalable stream processing of data streams. StreamDM is designed to be easily extended and used, either practitioners, developers, or researchers, and is the first library to contain advanced stream mining algorithms for Spark Streaming.