Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CoCoST: A Computational Cost Efficient Classifier

Computational cost of classification is as important as accuracy in on-line classification systems. The computational cost is usually dominated by the cost of computing implicit features of the raw input data. Very few efforts have been made to design classifiers which perform effectively with limited computational power; instead, feature selection is usually employed as a pre-processing step to reduce the cost of running traditional classifiers. We present CoCoST, a novel and effective approach for building classifiers which achieve state-of-the-art classification accuracy, while keeping the expected computational cost of classification low, even without feature selection. CoCost employs a wide range of novel cost-aware decision trees, each of which is tuned to specialize in classifying instances from a subset of the input space, and judiciously consults them depending on the input instance in accordance with a cost-aware meta-classifier. Experimental results on a network flow detection application show that, our approach can achieve better accuracy than classifiers such as SVM and random forests, while achieving 75%-90% reduction in the computational costs.
The large-scale logico-chemical structure of a transcriptional regulation network

Identity, response to external stimuli, and spatial architecture of a living system are central topics of molecular biology. Presently, they are largely seen as a result of the interplay between a gene repertoire and the regulatory machinery of the cell. At the transcriptional level, the cis-regulatory regions establish sets of interdependencies between transcription factors and genes, including other transcription factors. These ``transcription networks'' are too large to be approached globally with a detailed dynamical model. In this paper, we describe an approach to this problem that focuses solely on the compatibility between gene expression patterns and signal integration functions, discussing calculations carried on the simplest, Boolean, realization of the model, and a first application to experimental data sets.
Moral Hazard and Optimal Subsidiary Structure for Financial Institutions

Banks and related financial institutions often have two separate subsidiaries that make loans of similar type but differing risk, for example, a bank and a finance company, or a "good bank/bad bank" structure. Such "bipartite" structures may prevent risk shifting, in which banks misuse their flexibility in choosing and monitoring loans to exploit their debt holders. By "insulating" safer loans from riskier loans, a bipartite structure reduces risk-shifting incentives in the safer subsidiary. Bipartite structures are more likely to dominate unitary structures as the downside from riskier loans is higher or as expected profits from the efficient loan mix are lower. Copyright 2004 by The American Finance Association.
Systematic Review of Requirement Elicitation Techniques

Requirement Elicitation is one of the important factors in developing any new application. Most of systems fail just because of wrong elicitation practice. A requirement may be defined as a demand or need. In software engineering, a requirement is a description of what a system should do. System may have dozen to thousands of requirements. Without the elicitation techniques it is impossible to find out requirements and the needs of the developing system. It provides base to the developer to construct a structure of proposed system keeping in view the wish list of stake holders. This research paper is based on understanding elicitation techniques and their usage in real time applications, by implementing the Elicitation techniques for knowing the needs of stakeholder so that system developer can get clear view of requirement for the developing system.
A Cross-Layer QoS-Aware Communication Framework in Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks for Smart Grid Applications

Electromagnetic interference, equipment noise, multi-path effects and obstructions in harsh smart grid environments make the quality-of-service (QoS) communication a challenging task for WSN-based smart grid applications. To address these challenges, a cognitive communication based cross-layer framework has been proposed. The proposed framework exploits the emerging cognitive radio technology to mitigate the noisy and congested spectrum bands, yielding reliable and high capacity links for wireless communication in smart grids. To meet the QoS requirements of diverse smart grid applications, it differentiates the traffic flows into different priority classes according to their QoS needs and maintains three dimensional service queues attributing delay, bandwidth and reliability of data. The problem is formulated as a Lyapunov drift optimization with the objective of maximizing the weighted service of the traffic flows belonging to different classes. A suboptimal distributed control algorithm (DCA) is presented to efficiently support QoS through channel control, flow control, scheduling and routing decisions. In particular, the contributions of this paper are three folds; employing dynamic spectrum access to mitigate with the channel impairments, defining multi-attribute priority classes and designing a distributed control algorithm for data delivery that maximizes the network utility under QoS constraints. Performance evaluations in ns-2 reveal that the proposed framework achieves required QoS communication in smart grid.
Does colouring promote mindfulness and enhance wellbeing? : a randomised controlled trial.

Objectives: Colouring books for adults have become increasingly popular. Some of these books are marketed on the basis that they improve mindfulness and promote wellbeing. Using a randomised design, this study aimed to empirically explore whether the provision of guidance on how to colour mindfully is necessary to increase mindfulness, and to reduce worry, perceived stress and work-related rumination. Moreover, the study aimed to assess whether changes in mindfulness predicted changes in worry, perceived stress and work-related rumination. The extent to which trait perfectionism might impact on possible beneficial effects of colouring was also explored. Design: Sixty-four participants (49 female, 15 male, 84% Caucasian, mean age 36) were randomly assigned to either a mindfulness-instructed condition (MI) or non-mindfulness instructed condition (NI). Participants were instructed to colour in designs in a book on 10 occasions over a two-week period. Mindfulness, worry, perceived stress and work-related rumination were measured pre and post the colouring intervention and at one-month follow up. Perfectionism was measured once, prior to the two-week colouring period. Results: Analysis of Covariance indicated no significant differences between conditions in post-colouring and follow up levels of mindfulness, perceived stress, worry or work-related rumination whilst controlling for pre-intervention scores. Oneway Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance for the whole sample indicated significant increases in acting with awareness and nonreacting mindfulness subscales, and a significant decrease in worry, affective rumination and problem-solving pondering pre-to post intervention. Changes in the nonjudging mindfulness facet pre-to post intervention were found to predict changes in worry from pre-intervention to follow up. There was little evidence of a relationship between perfectionism and change in wellbeing variables. Conclusions: Colouring, with or without mindfulness guidance, appears to increase aspects of mindfulness and improve wellbeing. Replication of these results, and further research exploring whether colouring is intrinsically mindful is warranted
Efficiently Mining Top-K High Utility Sequential Patterns

High utility sequential pattern mining is an emerging topic in the data mining community. Compared to the classic frequent sequence mining, the utility framework provides more informative and actionable knowledge since the utility of a sequence indicates business value and impact. However, the introduction of "utility" makes the problem fundamentally different from the frequency-based pattern mining framework and brings about dramatic challenges. Although the existing high utility sequential pattern mining algorithms can discover all the patterns satisfying a given minimum utility, it is often difficult for users to set a proper minimum utility. A too small value may produce thousands of patterns, whereas a too big one may lead to no findings. In this paper, we propose a novel framework called top-k high utility sequential pattern mining to tackle this critical problem. Accordingly, an efficient algorithm, Top-k high Utility Sequence (TUS for short) mining, is designed to identify top-k high utility sequential patterns without minimum utility. In addition, three effective features are introduced to handle the efficiency problem, including two strategies for raising the threshold and one pruning for filtering unpromising items. Our experiments are conducted on both synthetic and real datasets. The results show that TUS incorporating the efficiency-enhanced strategies demonstrates impressive performance without missing any high utility sequential patterns.
Artificial parameter homotopy methods for the DC operating point problem

Efficient and robust computation of one or more of the operating points of a nonlinear circuit is a necessary first step in a circuit simulator. The application of globally convergent probability-one homotopy methods to various systems of nonlinear equations that arise in circuit simulation is discussed. The coercivity conditions required for such methods are established using concepts from circuit theory. The theoretical claims of global convergence for such methods are substantiated by experiments with a collection of examples that have proved difficult for commercial simulation packages that do not use homotopy methods. Moreover, by careful design of the homotopy equations, the performance of the homotopy methods can be made quite reasonable. An extension to the steady-state problem in the time domain is also discussed. >
The Evolution of Hourly Compensation in Canada between 1980 and 2010

Nous étudions l’évolution de la distribution des salaires au Canada au cours des trois dernières décennies à l’aide des données confidentielles du recensement et de la nouvelle Enquête nationale auprès des ménages. Le coefficient de variation des salaires des travailleurs à temps plein a presque doublé entre 1980 et 2010. La croissance rapide du 99,9e centile est la principale cause de cette hausse. Les changements dans la composition de la population active expliquent moins d’un tiers de la hausse de l’inégalité des salaires. Toutefois, ces mêmes changements expliquent la quasi-totalité de la hausse des salaires moyens sur la période étudiée, en dépit de la stagnation des salaires pour un niveau d’éducation ou d’expérience donné.
AUTOMATIC MULTITHREADED PARALLEL PROGRAM GENERATION FOR MESSAGE PASSING MULTIPROCESSORS USING PARAMETERIZED TASK GRAPHS

In this paper we describe a code generator prototype that uses parameterized task graphs (PTGs) as an intermediate model and generates a multithreaded code. A PTG is a compact and a problem size independent representation of some task graphs found in scientific programs. We show how, with this model, we can generate a parallel program that is scalable (it is able to execute million of tasks) and generic (it works for all parameter values).
IL-1β and IL-6 modulate apolipoprotein E gene expression in rat hepatocyte primary culture

Incubation of rat hepatocytes in primary culture with IL-1β at a concentration of 2.5 units/ml resulted in an increase (+80%) in the amount of apoE mRNA without any effect upon apoE synthesis. IL-6 at a low concentration (10 units/ml) induced a decrease (−35%) in the amount of apoE mRNA, but increased apoE synthesis (+28%). No effect was observed with higher concentrations of IL-1β (10 units/ml) or IL-6 (100 units/ml). These results suggest that inflammatory cytokines IL-1β and IL-6 modulate the expression of apoE gene in cultured rat hepatocytes, at a concentration that does not induce the acute phase response.
Novel Approaches to Enhance Mobile WiMAX Security

The IEEE 802.16 Working Group on Broadband Wireless Access Standards released IEEE 802.16-2004 which is a standardized technology for supporting broadband and wireless communication with fixed and nomadic access. After the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard, a new advanced and revised standard was released as the IEEE 802.16e-2005 amendment which is foundation of Mobile WiMAX network supporting handover and roaming capabilities. In the area of security aspects, compared to IEEE 802.16-2004, IEEE 802.16e, called Mobile WiMAX, adopts improved security architecture—PKMv2 which includes EAP authentication, AES-based authenticated encryption, and CMAC or HMAC message protection. However, there is no guarantee that PKMv2-based Mobile WiMAX network will not have security flaws. In this paper, we investigate the current Mobile WiMAX security architecture focusing mainly on pointing out new security vulnerabilities such as a disclosure of security context in network entry, a lack of secure communication in network domain, and a necessity of efficient handover supporting mutual authentication. Based on the investigation results, we propose a novel Mobile WiMAX security architecture, called RObust and Secure MobilE WiMAX (ROSMEX), to prevent the new security vulnerabilities.
Emergence and Modular Evolution of a Novel Motility Machinery in Bacteria

Bacteria glide across solid surfaces by mechanisms that have remained largely mysterious despite decades of research. In the deltaproteobacterium Myxococcus xanthus, this locomotion allows the formation stress-resistant fruiting bodies where sporulation takes place. However, despite the large number of genes identified as important for gliding, no specific machinery has been identified so far, hampering in-depth investigations. Based on the premise that components of the gliding machinery must have co-evolved and encode both envelope-spanning proteins and a molecular motor, we re-annotated known gliding motility genes and examined their taxonomic distribution, genomic localization, and phylogeny. We successfully delineated three functionally related genetic clusters, which we proved experimentally carry genes encoding the basal gliding machinery in M. xanthus, using genetic and localization techniques. For the first time, this study identifies structural gliding motility genes in the Myxobacteria and opens new perspectives to study the motility mechanism. Furthermore, phylogenomics provide insight into how this machinery emerged from an ancestral conserved core of genes of unknown function that evolved to gliding by the recruitment of functional modules in Myxococcales. Surprisingly, this motility machinery appears to be highly related to a sporulation system, underscoring unsuspected common mechanisms in these apparently distinct morphogenic phenomena.
Reforms and Productivity Dynamics in Chinese State-Owned Enterprises

Institutional change has taken place gradually since 1978 for State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in the Industrial Sector of China. In this paper we estimate the effect of deep reform (the right to hire and fire labour, buy and sell capital and operate on international markets) on the productivity dynamics of enterprises. Using a unique balanced panel of 681 SOEs for the period 1980 to 1994, we find consistent production function estimates using an algorithm put forward in Olley and Pakes (1996), which corrects for simultaneity bias. Furthermore, we allow selection to reform to be endogenous, and correct for this selection bias by formulating an entry rule to reform similar to the Olley and Pakes (1996) exit rule. We show that exposure to deep reform have lead to higher productivity realisations while remaining under state ownership.
Knowledge Acquisition with Selective Active Learning for Human-Robot Interaction

This paper describes an architecture for robots interacting with non-expert humans to incrementally acquire domain knowledge. Contextual information is used to generate candidate questions that are ranked using measures of information gain, ambiguity, and human confusion, with the objective of maximizing the potential utility of the response. We report results of preliminary experiments evaluating the architecture in a simulated environment.
Technological capital and digital divide among young people: an intersectional approach

ABSTRACT This article explores the digital divide among young people in Spain by examining four traditional socio-demographic variables (gender, age, education and employment situation). It proposes the concept of ‘technological capital’ as a means to put people’s socioeconomic conditions of existence into relation with the different forms of accessing and using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Methodologically, a quantitative approach is taken, based on the National Statistics Institute’s survey of ICT Equipment in households, which makes use of both bivariate and multivariate analysis. Finally, a typology of young users of the Internet is proposed (1 – Digitally Excluded; 2 – Basic Users; 3 – Users in Mobility; 4 – Cyber Consumers; 5 – Cyber Experts) which takes into account the importance of technological capital, the socio-economic position and cultural resources of subjects in their incorporation of ICTs into their daily life.
Quantification of the Forgiveness of Drugs to Imperfect Adherence

The circumstance of how sensitive therapeutic success is under imperfect adherence is driven by the property known as forgiveness. To date, no studies have considered variability in the pharmacokinetic‐pharmacodynamic process in conjunction with imperfect adherence patterns in order to develop a comparative criterion to determine the forgiveness of a drug. In this study, we have proposed a criterion to quantify forgiveness; illustrated the criterion for a theoretical example and evaluated the forgiveness of a motivating example, namely warfarin. A forgiveness criterion, relative forgiveness, is defined as the number of times more likely that a target is successfully attained under perfect adherence compared to imperfect adherence; or when comparing two drugs under a standard setting of imperfect adherence. The relative forgiveness criterion may have important implications for both drug development and clinical practice since the choice of drug can account for the likely influence of its forgiveness.
Extended Abstract: Superposition Coding for Wireless Mesh Networks

A major barrier for the adoption of wireless mesh networks is severe limits on throughput. In this paper, we apply superposition coding to substantially improve network capacity of large, dense wireless mesh networks. Superposition coding is a physical layer technique that allows a transmitter to simultaneously send independent packets to multiple receivers. While superposition coding has been studied extensively by the physical layer community, we present the first design of practical and effective MAC protocols to take advantage of superposition coding in wireless mesh networks. Extensive evaluations show that superposition coding can be a practical method to increase the throughput of large, dense wireless mesh networks. Specifically, in a mesh network with 2 to 64 active receivers and one gateway, we show that our system can increase throughput up to 154%, with average gain ranging from 10% to 21%. When there are multiple gateways forming a mesh network, our system gains up to 98%, with average gain ranging from 24% to 46%. These results clearly demonstrate the potential benefits of our system. We also present results from an implementation of superposition coding using GNU Radio.
Polar Localization of PhoN2, a Periplasmic Virulence-Associated Factor of Shigella flexneri, Is Required for Proper IcsA Exposition at the Old Bacterial Pole

Proper protein localization is critical for bacterial virulence. PhoN2 is a virulence-associated ATP-diphosphohydrolase (apyrase) involved in IcsA-mediated actin-based motility of S. flexneri. Herein, by analyzing a ΔphoN2 mutant of the S. flexneri strain M90T and by generating phoN2::HA fusions, we show that PhoN2, is a periplasmic protein that strictly localizes at the bacterial poles, with a strong preference for the old pole, the pole where IcsA is exposed, and that it is required for proper IcsA exposition. PhoN2-HA was found to be polarly localized both when phoN2::HA was ectopically expressed in a Escherichia coli K-12 strain and in a S. flexneri virulence plasmid-cured mutant, indicating a conserved mechanism of PhoN2 polar delivery across species and that neither IcsA nor the expression of other virulence-plasmid encoded genes are involved in this process. To assess whether PhoN2 and IcsA may interact, two-hybrid and cross-linking experiments were performed. While no evidence was found of a PhoN2-IcsA interaction, unexpectedly the outer membrane protein A (OmpA) was shown to bind PhoN2-HA through its periplasmic-exposed C-terminal domain. Therefore, to identify PhoN2 domains involved in its periplasmic polar delivery as well as in the interaction with OmpA, a deletion and a set of specific amino acid substitutions were generated. Analysis of these mutants indicated that neither the 183PAPAP187 motif of OmpA, nor the N-terminal polyproline 43PPPP46 motif and the Y155 residue of PhoN2 are involved in this interaction while P45, P46 and Y155 residues were found to be critical for the correct folding and stability of the protein. The relative rapid degradation of these amino acid-substituted recombinant proteins was found to be due to unknown S. flexneri-specific protease(s). A model depicting how the PhoN2-OmpA interaction may contribute to proper polar IcsA exposition in S. flexneri is presented.
Echocardiographic destruction of albumin microbubbles directs gene delivery to the myocardium.

BACKGROUND The noninvasive, tissue-specific delivery of therapeutic agents to the heart would be a valuable clinical tool. This study addressed the hypothesis that albumin-coated microbubbles could be used to effectively deliver an adenoviral transgene to rat myocardium by ultrasound-mediated microbubble destruction. METHODS AND RESULTS Recombinant adenovirus containing beta-galactosidase and driven by a constitutive promoter was attached to the surface of albumin-coated, perfluoropropane-filled microbubbles. These bubbles were infused into the jugular vein of rats with or without simultaneous echocardiography. Additional controls included ultrasound of microbubbles that did not contain virus, virus alone, and virus plus ultrasound. One group underwent ultrasound-mediated destruction of microbubbles followed by adenovirus infusion. Rats were killed after 4 days and examined for beta-galactosidase expression. The hearts of all rats that underwent ultrasound-mediated destruction of microbubbles containing virus showed nuclear staining with 5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl-beta-D-galactopyranoside substrate, indicating expression of the transgene. None of the control animals showed myocardial expression of the beta-galactosidase transgene. By quantitative analysis, beta-galactosidase activity was 10-fold higher in the treated group than in controls (P<0.0001). CONCLUSIONS Ultrasound-mediated destruction of albumin-coated microbubbles is a promising method for the delivery of bioactive agents to the heart.