Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combining Data Reuse With Data-Level Parallelization for FPGA-Targeted Hardware Compilation: A Geometric Programming Framework

A nonlinear optimization framework is proposed in this paper to automate exploration of the design space consisting of data-reuse (buffering) decisions and loop-level parallelization, in the context of field-programmable-gate-array-targeted hardware compilation. Buffering frequently accessed data in on-chip memories can reduce off-chip memory accesses and open avenues for parallelization. However, the exploitation of both data reuse and parallelization is limited by the memory resources available on-chip. As a result, considering these two problems separately, e.g., first exploring data reuse and then exploring data-level parallelization, based on the data-reuse options determined in the first step, may not yield the performance-optimal designs for limited on-chip memory resources. We consider both problems at the same time, exposing the dependence between the two. We show that this combined problem can be formulated as a nonlinear program and further show that efficient solution techniques exist for this problem, based on recent advances in optimization of so-called geometric programming problems. The results from applying this framework to several real benchmarks implemented on a Xilinx device demonstrate that given different constraints on on-chip memory utilization, the corresponding performance-optimal designs are automatically determined by the framework. We have also implemented designs determined by a two-stage optimization method that first explores data reuse and then explores parallelization on the same platform, and by comparison, the performance-optimal designs proposed by our framework are faster than the designs determined by the two-stage method by up to 5.7 times.
Association of Carotid Artery Intima-Media Thickness, Plaques, and C-Reactive Protein With Future Cardiovascular Disease and All-Cause Mortality: The Cardiovascular Health Study

Background— Carotid atherosclerosis, measured as carotid intima-media thickness or as characteristics of plaques, has been linked to cardiovascular disease (CVD) and to C-reactive protein (CRP) levels. We investigated the relationship between carotid atherosclerosis and CRP and their joint roles in CVD prediction. Methods and Results— Of 5888 participants in the Cardiovascular Health Study, an observational study of adults aged ≥65 years, 5020 without baseline CVD were included in the analysis. They were followed up for as long as 12 years for CVD incidence and all-cause mortality after baseline ultrasound and CRP measurement. When CRP was elevated (>3 mg/L) among those with detectable atherosclerosis on ultrasound, there was a 72% (95% CI, 1.46 to 2.01) increased risk for CVD death and a 52% (95% CI, 1.37 to 1.68) increased risk for all-cause mortality. Elevated CRP in the absence of atherosclerosis did not increase CVD or all-cause mortality risk. The proportion of excess risk attributable to the interaction of high CRP and atherosclerosis was 54% for CVD death and 79% for all-cause mortality. Addition of CRP or carotid atherosclerosis to conventional risk factors modestly increased in the ability to predict CVD, as measured by the c statistic. Conclusions— In older adults, elevated CRP was associated with increased risk for CVD and all-cause mortality only in those with detectable atherosclerosis based on carotid ultrasound. Despite the significant associations of CRP and carotid atherosclerosis with CVD, these measures modestly improve the prediction of CVD outcomes after one accounts for the conventional risk factors.
(Semi-)Automatic Detection of Errors in PoS-Tagged Corpora

This paper presents a simple yet in practice very efficient technique serving for automatic detection of those positions in a part-of-speech tagged corpus where an error is to be suspected. The approach is based on the idea of learning and later application of "negative bigrams", i.e. on the search for pairs of adjacent tags which constitute an incorrect configuration in a text of a particular language (in English, e.g., the bigram ARTICLE - FINITE VERB). Further, the paper describes the generalization of the "negative bigrams" into "negative n-grams", for any natural n, which indeed provides a powerful tool for error detection in a corpus. The implementation is also discussed, as well as evaluation of results of the approach when used for error detection in the NEGRA® corpus of German, and the general implications for the quality of results of statistical taggers. Illustrative examples in the text are taken from German, and hence at least a basic command of this language would be helpful for their understanding - due to the complexity of the necessary accompanying explanation, the examples are neither glossed nor translated. However, the central ideas of the paper should be understandable also without any knowledge of German.
Lethal Antibody Enhancement of Dengue Disease in Mice Is Prevented by Fc Modification

Immunity to one of the four dengue virus (DV) serotypes can increase disease severity in humans upon subsequent infection with another DV serotype. Serotype cross-reactive antibodies facilitate DV infection of myeloid cells in vitro by promoting virus entry via Fcγ receptors (FcγR), a process known as antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). However, despite decades of investigation, no in vivo model for antibody enhancement of dengue disease severity has been described. Analogous to human infants who receive anti-DV antibodies by transplacental transfer and develop severe dengue disease during primary infection, we show here that passive administration of anti-DV antibodies is sufficient to enhance DV infection and disease in mice using both mouse-adapted and clinical DV isolates. Antibody-enhanced lethal disease featured many of the hallmarks of severe dengue disease in humans, including thrombocytopenia, vascular leakage, elevated serum cytokine levels, and increased systemic viral burden in serum and tissue phagocytes. Passive transfer of a high dose of serotype-specific antibodies eliminated viremia, but lower doses of these antibodies or cross-reactive polyclonal or monoclonal antibodies all enhanced disease in vivo even when antibody levels were neutralizing in vitro. In contrast, a genetically engineered antibody variant (E60-N297Q) that cannot bind FcγR exhibited prophylactic and therapeutic efficacy against ADE-induced lethal challenge. These observations provide insight into the pathogenesis of antibody-enhanced dengue disease and identify a novel strategy for the design of therapeutic antibodies against dengue.
Handwritten Chinese character identification with Bagged One-Class support vector machines

Today, more and more foreigners go to China and are emerged into studying Chinese. Thereinto, how to write Chinese characters is a very important and difficult task. As computers and internets develop, many teachers for Chinese Education want to use pattern recognition technologies to automatically evaluate and direct the quality of Chinese characters written by foreign students through document scanning. Actually, this is a handwritten character evaluation and identification problem. In this paper, we investigate and compare several character identification methods for Chinese Education within a classification framework. First, some two-class classification techniques with different features and classifiers (BP neural networks and SVMs) are investigated to identify each handwritten Chinese character. Moreover, in character identification, positive examples are always conjunctive, but negative examples are diffused in most cases. Consequently, we use one-class classification technique (one-class SVMs) to perform this handwritten character identification. In order to overcome the sensitivity to the SVM parameters, we propose a variant one-class SVM system - Bagged One-Class SVMs, which integrate many one-class SVMs with sample bagging. Some experiments of evaluating real handwritten Chinese characters by foreigners are performed, which show that general handwritten character identification is a big challenge and one-class classification technique is a potential researching and developing direction.
Management of plant viral diseases through chemical control of insect vectors.

In this article we consider the role of epidemiological factors and transmission processes of insect-vectored viruses on the effectiveness of insecticides in a disease management program. We also discuss the use of insecticides within the broader framework of the chemical environment surrounding vectors, and how chemical-induced alterations in the behavior of vectors can influence transmission. Our analysis confirms the belief of Heathcote, who stated in 1973, that "no one method of control is likely to keep crops entirely free from virus infection and as many preventative measures should be taken as are economically justified. "
RNAi Suppression of Arogenate Dehydratase1 Reveals That Phenylalanine Is Synthesized Predominantly via the Arogenate Pathway in Petunia Petals[C][W]

This study analyzed the l-Phe biosynthetic pathways in Petunia hybrida flowers, which emit high levels of Phe-derived volatiles. RNA interference suppression of petunia arogenate dehydratase1 provides in planta evidence that l-Phe is synthesized via arogenate and uncovers a novel posttranscriptional regulation of the shikimate pathway. l-Phe, a protein building block and precursor of numerous phenolic compounds, is synthesized from prephenate via an arogenate and/or phenylpyruvate route in which arogenate dehydratase (ADT) or prephenate dehydratase, respectively, plays a key role. Here, we used Petunia hybrida flowers, which are rich in Phe-derived volatiles, to determine the biosynthetic routes involved in Phe formation in planta. Of the three identified petunia ADTs, expression of ADT1 was the highest in petunia petals and positively correlated with endogenous Phe levels throughout flower development. ADT1 showed strict substrate specificity toward arogenate, although with the lowest catalytic efficiency among the three ADTs. ADT1 suppression via RNA interference in petunia petals significantly reduced ADT activity, levels of Phe, and downstream phenylpropanoid/benzenoid volatiles. Unexpectedly, arogenate levels were unaltered, while shikimate and Trp levels were decreased in transgenic petals. Stable isotope labeling experiments showed that ADT1 suppression led to downregulation of carbon flux toward shikimic acid. However, an exogenous supply of shikimate bypassed this negative regulation and resulted in elevated arogenate accumulation. Feeding with shikimate also led to prephenate and phenylpyruvate accumulation and a partial recovery of the reduced Phe level in transgenic petals, suggesting that the phenylpyruvate route can also operate in planta. These results provide genetic evidence that Phe is synthesized predominantly via arogenate in petunia petals and uncover a novel posttranscriptional regulation of the shikimate pathway.
Fuzzy logic-based self-tuning autopilots for trajectory tracking of a low-cost quadcopter: A comparative study

In this work, we develop self-tuning PD-fuzzy autopilots for trajectory tracking of a low-cost Parrot AR.Drone2 quadcopter. We first recall the mathematical model of the system in terms of its multi-input, multi-output (MIMO) transfer function model acquired via system identification technique. Accordingly, we design three self-tuning autopilots by means of fuzzy inference systems to control the position of the drone in 3D space. This research serves as a preliminary study in our design process to investigate the feasibility of our fuzzy self-tuning autopilot before we can implement it into practice. We perform a systematic comparative study to highlight the effectiveness of our control algorithm with respect to fixed-gain autopilot as well as fuzzy logic controller.
Plantaricins S and T, Two New Bacteriocins Produced by Lactobacillus plantarum LPCO10 Isolated from a Green Olive Fermentation

Twenty-six strains of Lactobacillus plantarum isolated from green olive fermentations were tested for cross-antagonistic activities in an agar drop diffusion test. Cell-free supernatants from four of these strains were shown to inhibit the growth of at least one of the L. plantarum indicator strains. L. plantarum LPCO10 provided the broadest spectrum of activity and was selected for further studies. The inhibitory compound from this strain was active against some gram-positive bacteria, including clostridia and propionibacteria as well as natural competitors of L. plantarum in olive fermentation brines. In contrast, no activity against gram-negative bacteria was detected. Inhibition due to the effect of organic acids, hydrogen peroxide, or bacteriophages was excluded. Since the inhibitory activity of the active supernatant was lost after treatment with various proteolytic enzymes, this substance could be classified as a bacteriocin, designated plantaricin S. Plantaricin S was also sensitive to glycolytic and lipolytic enzymes, suggesting that it was a glycolipoprotein. It exhibited a bactericidal and nonbacteriolytic mode of action against indicator cells. This bacteriocin was heat stable (60 min at 100°C), active in a pH range of 3.0 to 7.0, and also stable in crude culture supernatants during storage. Ultrafiltration studies indicated that plantaricin S occurred as multimolecular aggregates and that the size of the smallest active form is between 3 and 10 kDa. In sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gels, plantaricin S migrated as a peptide of ca. 2.5 kDa. Maximum production of plantaricin S was obtained in a fermentor system in unregulated pH and log-phase cultures of L. plantarum LPCO10 in MRS broth plus 4% NaCl. In these culture conditions, a second bacteriocin (designated plantaricin T) was produced in late-stationary-phase cultures of L. plantarum LPCO10. On the basis of its biological activity, its sensitivity to various enzymes, and its molecular weight (lower than that of plantaricin S) as assessed in sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, plantaricin T appeared different from plantaricin S. Curing experiments with L. plantarum LPCO10 resulted in the appearance of variants that no longer produced either of the two bacteriocins but that were still immune to both of them.
Concurrent Analytical Query Processing with GPUs

In current databases, GPUs are used as dedicated accelerators to process each individual query. Sharing GPUs among concurrent queries is not supported, causing serious resource underutilization. Based on the profiling of an open-source GPU query engine running commonly used single-query data warehousing workloads, we observe that the utilization of main GPU resources is only up to 25%. The underutilization leads to low system throughput. To address the problem, this paper proposes concurrent query execution as an effective solution. To efficiently share GPUs among concurrent queries for high throughput, the major challenge is to provide software support to control and resolve resource contention incurred by the sharing. Our solution relies on GPU query scheduling and device memory swapping policies to address this challenge. We have implemented a prototype system and evaluated it intensively. The experiment results confirm the effectiveness and performance advantage of our approach. By executing multiple GPU queries concurrently, system throughput can be improved by up to 55% compared with dedicated processing.
The fluid dynamics of canine olfaction: unique nasal airflow patterns as an explanation of macrosmia

The canine nasal cavity contains hundreds of millions of sensory neurons, located in the olfactory epithelium that lines convoluted nasal turbinates recessed in the rear of the nose. Traditional explanations for canine olfactory acuity, which include large sensory organ size and receptor gene repertoire, overlook the fluid dynamics of odorant transport during sniffing. But odorant transport to the sensory part of the nose is the first critical step in olfaction. Here we report new experimental data on canine sniffing and demonstrate allometric scaling of sniff frequency, inspiratory airflow rate and tidal volume with body mass. Next, a computational fluid dynamics simulation of airflow in an anatomically accurate three-dimensional model of the canine nasal cavity, reconstructed from high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging scans, reveals that, during sniffing, spatially separate odour samples are acquired by each nostril that may be used for bilateral stimulus intensity comparison and odour source localization. Inside the nose, the computation shows that a unique nasal airflow pattern develops during sniffing, which is optimized for odorant transport to the olfactory part of the nose. These results contrast sharply with nasal airflow in the human. We propose that mammalian olfactory function and acuity may largely depend on odorant transport by nasal airflow patterns resulting from either the presence of a highly developed olfactory recess (in macrosmats such as the canine) or the lack of one (in microsmats including humans).
Analytics Toolkit for Business Big Data

As large amount of data is increasing at high velocity, companies are searching for scalable and effective solutions for storing and mining their data. Moreover, modeling data as networks is of great interest in business applications. Social network analysis (SNA) measures the relationships and structures with a set of metrics by building graphs for capturing influential actors and patterns. In this paper, to analyze a large volume of business data using graph models, we propose a software system which combines the big data analytics and social network analysis techniques. The system's workflow consists of data collection, graph generation, graph reuse, network property calculation, SNA result interpretation and application integration. The system operations are executable in a Hadoop-based distributed cluster with high throughput on large-scale data.
Tumor Angiogenesis Is Associated with Plasma Levels of Stromal-Derived Factor-1α in Patients with Multiple Myeloma

Purpose: Multiple myeloma is an incurable hematologic malignancy characterized by increased bone marrow angiogenesis and extensive lytic bone disease. We have previously shown that elevated levels of stromal-derived factor-1α (SDF-1α) in peripheral blood plasma are associated with osteolysis in multiple myeloma patients. We have now examined whether SDF-1α levels also correlate with angiogenesis. Experimental Design: We examined the contribution of multiple myeloma plasma cell–derived SDF-1α in the stimulation of in vitro angiogenesis using a tube formation assay. We also collected trephine and peripheral blood plasma samples from patients with multiple myeloma to analyze microvessel density and SDF-1α levels, respectively. Results: We show that multiple myeloma plasma cell line–derived conditioned medium containing SDF-1α stimulates in vitro angiogenesis. In addition, in a large cohort of patients with multiple myeloma and its precursor condition monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance, we confirm previous findings that plasma cell burden correlates with both angiogenesis and plasma levels of SDF-1α. We now extend these observations and show the novel finding that peripheral blood plasma levels of SDF-1α positively correlate with the degree of bone marrow angiogenesis in multiple myeloma and monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance patients. Conclusions: High levels of SDF-1α produced by multiple myeloma plasma cells promote osteolysis and bone marrow angiogenesis. Therefore, we propose that inhibition of SDF-1α may be an effective mechanism by which angiogenesis and osteolysis can be reduced in multiple myeloma patients.
Mesh Approximation for Animated Characters

A widely used method for character animation involves embedding a simple skeleton with a character model and then animating the character by moving the underlying skeleton. The character’s skin is required to move and deform along with the skeleton. Research into this problem has resulted in a number of different skinning frameworks. There has, however, been no objective attempt to compare these methods. We compare three of the skinning frameworks that are computationally efficient enough to be used for real-time animation. These frameworks are: Skeletal Subspace Deformation, Multi-Weight Enveloping and Animation Space. The performance of the three frameworks is tested by generating the skins for a number of poses for which the ideal skin is known. These generated skin meshes are then compared to the ideal skins using various mesh comparison techniques as well as user comparisons.
Efficient classical simulations of quantum fourier transforms and normalizer circuits over Abelian groups

The quantum Fourier transform (QFT) is an important ingredient in various quantum algorithms which achieve superpolynomial speed-ups over classical computers. In this paper we study under which conditions the QFT can be simulated efficiently classically. We introduce a class of quantum circuits, called normalizer circuits: a normalizer circuit over a finite Abelian group is any quantum circuit comprising the QFT over the group, gates which compute automorphisms and gates which realize quadratic functions on the group. In our main result we prove that all normalizer circuits have polynomial-time classical simulations. The proof uses algorithms for linear diophantine equation solving and the monomial matrix formalism introduced in our earlier work. Our result generalizes the Gottesman-Knill theorem: in particular, Clifford circuits for d-level qudits arise as normalizer circuits over the group Zdm. We also highlight connections between normalizer circuits and Shor's factoring algorithm, and the Abelian hidden subgroup problem in general. Finally we prove that quantum factoring cannot be realized as a normalizer circuit owing to its modular exponentiation subroutine.
The D Region Response to the August 2017 Total Solar Eclipse and Coincident Solar Flare

During the solar eclipse of 21 August 2017, the University of Florida monitored very low frequency (3–30 kHz) radio activity at ten locations, enabling the remote sensing of the D region ionosphere (∼50‐ to 100‐km altitude). Two of the locations were far enough away (Antarctica) that no response to the eclipse was detected despite the fact that the eclipse significantly shadowed the transmitter. A particularly rare observation is presented: Three receivers were at locations where the Moon blocked at least some of the solar X‐ray flare that occurred near 1800 UT, providing high‐resolution observations of solar flare occultation by the Moon. The remainder of the sites registered meaningful responses to both the solar eclipse and the solar flare. Observations indicate that very low frequency signal propagation is affected once 30–55% obscuration is achieved anywhere along the propagation path. No long‐term or delayed effects, such as atmospheric gravity waves, were observed.