Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding Bittorrent: an Experimental Perspective

— BitTorrent is a recent, yet successful peer-to-peer protocol focused on efficient content delivery. To gain a better understanding of the key algorithms of the protocol, we have instrumented a client and run experiments on a large number of real torrents. Our experimental evaluation is peer oriented, instead of tracker oriented, which allows us to get detailed information on all exchanged messages and protocol events. In particular, we have explored the properties of the two key algorithms of BitTorrent: the choke and the rarest first algorithms. We have shown that they both perform remarkably well, but that the old version of the choke algorithm, that is still widely deployed, suffers from several problems. We have also explored the dynamics of a peer set that captures most of the torrent variability and provides important insights for the design of realistic models of BitTorrent. Finally, we have evaluated the protocol overhead. We have found in our experiments a small protocol overhead and explain under which conditions it can increase.
Foresight: the future of computer trading in financial markets: final project report

SRC researchers were involved in a study that explores how computer generated trading in financial markets will evolve over the next 10 years. The project was led by the Government Office for Science. Advances in technology are transforming how our financial markets operate. The volume of financial products traded through computer automated trading taking place at high speed and with little human involvement has increased dramatically in the past few years. Today, over one-third of UK equity trading volume is generated through high frequency automated computer trading while in the US this figure is closer to three-quarters. This project examined the technological advances which have transformed market structures in recent years and explored how computer trading will evolve over the next 10 years.
Performance Prediction and Network Media Selection for PVM Clusters

Workstation clusters are becoming more popular as a parallel computing platform. Several programming libraries, including Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM), allow workstation clusters to be programmed as a single parallel computer. The performance of parallel programs is often affected by complex interactions between hardware and software. Performance prediction tools can help characterize the performance of parallel programs for different problem sizes, numbers of processors, and hardware configurations. This research investigates the feasability of developing a performance prediction system for PVM applications running on workstation clusters. We have developed the APACHE (Automated Pvm Application CHaracterization Environment) performance prediction system for PVMprograms. We review the system implementationand present some experimental results. The performance of workstation clusters in parallel processing has traditionally been limited by the communication network. New networking technologies such as Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) promise to relieve the performance bottleneck of workstation clusters. However, not all parallel applications will be helped by these new technologies. One objective of the current research is to investigate the use of information obtained from a performance prediction system as a basis for evaluating different network media for use with a particular set of parallel applications. COMMITTEEAPPROVAL: Mark J. Clement, Committee Chairman J. Kelly Flanagan, Committee Member Tony Martinez, Committee Member Tony Martinez, Graduate Coordinator
Action and representation in tangible systems: implications for design of learning interactions

In tangible learning systems, the facility to promote physically active engagement highlights the need to understand how different designs impact on action and interaction, and the subsequent implications for learning. This paper draws on studies involving two tangible learning systems to analyse the effect of design choices on the kinds of (inter)actions engendered and how they create, shape and constrain different learning opportunities. Main findings suggest the need to promote and allow for different kinds of opportunities for conceptual reflection within the collective physical interaction; the importance of balancing collective representations and individual action-effect links; and the need to enhance appropriate awareness when dealing with several loci of attention.
Hobbit-The Mutual Care Robot

One option to face the aging society is to build robots that help old persons to stay longer at home. We present Hobbit, a robot that attempts to let users feel safe at home by preventing and detecting falls. Falling has been identified as the highest risk for older adults of getting injured so badly that they can no longer live independently at home and have to move to a care facility. Hobbit is intended to provide high usability and acceptability for the target user group while, at the same time, needs to be affordable for private customers. The development process so far (1.5 years) included a thorough user requirement analysis, conceptual interaction design, prototyping and implementation of key behaviors, as well as extensive empirical testing with target users in the laboratory. We shortly describe the overall interdisciplinary decision-making and conceptualization of the robot and will then focus on the system itself describing the hardware, basic components, and the robot tasks. Finally, we will summarize the findings of the first empirical test with 49 users in three countries and give an outlook of how the platform will be extended in future.
Patients with the R133C mutation: is their phenotype different from patients with Rett syndrome with other mutations?

Rett syndrome is an X linked dominant neurodevelopmental disorder with an incidence of 1:10 000 females in Australia.1 It is characterised by apparently normal development between 6 and 18 months, followed by a period of regression with loss of purposeful hand use, deceleration of head growth, and onset of repetitive, stereotypic hand movements.2 Affected people also manifest gait ataxia and apraxia, autistic features, epileptic seizures, respiratory dysfunction, autonomic dysfunction, and decreased somatic growth.2,3 In recent years it has become apparent that the phenotypic range of this disorder is much wider than previously thought. Some patients may have a milder phenotype and retain the ability to walk or speak and others have an earlier onset and more severe features. People who have some but not all of the necessary criteria have been categorised as atypical4 or as one of six variant forms.5 Rett syndrome has now been shown to be associated with mutations in the methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 (MeCP2). 6 For many genetic disorders, the next stage in research after the identification of the gene involves describing the relation between genotype and phenotype, and the phenotypic diversity produced by different mutations in the same gene. Some research has found that people with missense MECP2 mutations may have a milder phenotype than those with truncating mutations.7,8 Weaving et al 9 found that age at onset of hand stereotypies was later and speech and height (but not head growth) were slightly more normal in those with missense mutations whereas Nielsen et al 10 found no difference in severity between these mutation types. In the study of Amir et al 11 breathing abnormalities were found to be more common with truncating mutations and scoliosis more common with missense mutations. Hoffbuhr et al 12 concluded that patients …
Searching raw datasets in data grids using ant colony optimization

A pure peer-to-peer method for (1) an efficient discovery of data in large distributed raw datasets and (2) collection of thus procured data is considered. It is based on ant colony optimization (ACO) and supports a user-specified extraction of structured metadata from raw datasets, and automatically performs aggregation of extracted metadata. The paper is focused on effective data aggregation and includes the detailed description of the modifications of the basic ACO algorithm that are needed for effective aggregation of the extracted data. Using a simulator, the method was vigorously tested on the wide set of different network topologies for different rates of data extraction and aggregation. Results of the most significant tests are included.
Identifying Nonlinear Correlations in High Dimensional Data with Application to Protein Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Complex biomolecules such as proteins can respond to changes in their environment through a process called allostery, which plays an important role in regulating the function of these biomolecules. Allostery occurs when an event at a specific location in a macromolecule produces an effect at a location in the molecule some distance away. An important component of allostery is the coupling of protein sites. Such coupling is one mechanism by which allosteric effects can be transmitted over long distances. To understand this phenomenon, molecular dynamic simulations are carried out with a large number of atoms, and the trajectories of these atoms are recorded over time. Simple correlation methods have been used in the literature to identify coupled motions between protein sites. We implement a recently developed statistical method for dimension reduction called principal fitted components (PFC) in the statistical programming language R to identify both linear and non-linear correlations between protein sites while dealing efficiently with the high dimensionality of the data. PFC models reduce the dimensionality of data while capturing linear and nonlinear dependencies among predictors (atoms) using a flexible set of basis functions. For faster processing, we implement the PFC algorithm using parallel computing through the Programming with Big Data in R (pbdR) package for R. We demonstrate the methods’ effectiveness on simulated datasets, and apply the routine to time series data from Molecular Dynamic (MD) simulations to identify coupled motion among the atoms.
Dendritic Hold and Read: A Gated Mechanism for Short Term Information Storage and Retrieval

Two contrasting theories have been proposed to explain the mechanistic basis of short term memory. One theory posits that short term memory is represented by persistent neural activity supported by reverberating feedback networks. An alternate, more recent theory posits that short term memory can be supported by feedforward networks. While feedback driven memory can be implemented by well described mechanisms of synaptic plasticity, little is known of possible molecular and cellular mechanisms that can implement feedforward driven memory. Here we report such a mechanism in which the memory trace exists in the form of glutamate-bound but Mg2+-blocked NMDA receptors on the thin terminal dendrites of CA1 pyramidal neurons. Because glutamate dissociates from subsets of NMDA receptors very slowly, excitatory synaptic transmission can leave a silent residual trace that outlasts the electrical activity by hundreds of milliseconds. Read-out of the memory trace is possible if a critical level of these bound-but-blocked receptors accumulates on a dendritic branch that will allow these quasi-stable receptors to sustain a regenerative depolarization when triggered by an independent gating signal. This process is referred to here as dendritic hold and read (DHR). Because the read-out of the input is not dependent on repetition of the input and information flows in a single-pass manner, DHR can potentially support a feedforward memory architecture.
Transaction Costs, Higher Education Preferences and Economic Development

There seems to be recent evidence of a relation between economic development and the college graduates profile. Some majors such as engineering apparently are more growth inductive than others. However, economic theory does not give us a strong support to this relation. Human capital theory tells us only that the more years of schooling the population of a country has, the more developed this country is likely to be. NIE and the Developmental State, an alternative institutional approach, on the other hand can both cast some light on this connection. Two hypotheses, on the NIE side, put this relation forward. The first, from North (1990) states that institutions alongside with technology determine production and transaction costs. The second hypothesis links undergraduate majors with production and transaction costs. Therefore, some jobs (and thus college majors) such as lawyers would be mainly linked to transaction costs while others like engineers would be related to production costs. According to this hypothesis, countries with proportionately large transaction costs will tend to have a larger share of transaction-cost related jobs. From the Developmental State point of view, these majors are more growth inductive since they allow a faster learning and innovation process, which is the key determinant to long-run economic development. Using data sets from UNESCO and collected directed from the ministries of education from Brazil and Korea, this paper searches for an empirical support to these hypotheses.
Trauma Training in Educational Settings: Developing a Universal Approach Training Manual

Children who have experienced trauma(s) may display a wide variety of symptoms, including withdrawal, behavioral challenges, difficulty with focus, learning disabilities, and social/emotional delays (Cole et al., 2005). Each of these challenges can present a barrier to learning. Therefore, in order to provide the highest quality support in the school setting, teachers and other school staff need to be educated and trained on the topic of trauma. Further, they need strategies and tools regarding how to best work with all of their students, including those who have, or may have, experienced trauma. The current study examined the available research, as well as a pilot program, in order to develop the Trauma-Informed Practices in Schools (TIPS) program manual for educators. Outcomes of the study included a program manual and supplemental materials needed to implement the program. Initial comments from reviewers, future directives, and limitations are also discussed.
La participación de los grupos de interés directamente influyentes en el proceso político: ¿una posibilidad para avivar el rol de los gobiernos?

A premix fuel nozzle and method of operation for use in a gas turbine combustor is disclosed. The premix fuel nozzle utilizes a fin assembly comprising a plurality of radially extending fins for injection of fuel and compressed air in order to provide a more uniform injection pattern. The fuel and compressed air mixes upstream of the combustion chamber and flows into the combustion chamber as a homogeneous mixture. The premix fuel nozzle includes a plurality of coaxial passages, which provide fuel and compressed air to the fin assembly, as well as compressed air to cool the nozzle cap assembly. An alternate embodiment includes an additional fuel injection region located along a conically tapered portion of the premixed fuel nozzle, downstream of the fin assembly. A second alternate embodiment is disclosed which reconfigures the injector assembly and fuel injection locations to minimize flow blockage issues at the injector assembly.
Vertical and horizontal distribution of Desmophyllum dianthus in Comau Fjord, Chile: a cold-water coral thriving at low pH

Cold-water corals provide an important habitat for a rich fauna along the continental margins and slopes. Although these azooxanthellate corals are considered particularly sensitive to ocean acidification, their responses to natural variations in pH and aragonite saturation are largely unknown due to the difficulty of studying their ecology in deep waters. Previous SCUBA investigations have shown an exceptionally shallow population of the cold-water coral Desmophyllum dianthus in near-surface waters of Comau Fjord, a stratified 480 m deep basin in northern Chilean Patagonia with suboxic deep waters. Here, we use a remotely operated vehicle to quantitatively investigate the distribution of D. dianthus and its physico-chemical drivers in so far uncharted naturally acidified waters. Remarkably, D. dianthus was ubiquitous throughout the fjord, but particularly abundant between 20 and 280 m depth in a pH range of 8.4 to 7.4. The persistence of individuals in aragonite-undersaturated waters suggests that present-day D. dianthus in Comau Fjord may show pre-acclimation or pre-adaptation to conditions of ocean acidification predicted to reach over 70% of the known deep-sea coral locations by the end of the century.
Prevalence of Non-Tuberculous Mycobacteria in Hospital Waters of Major Cities of Khuzestan Province, Iran

Non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) are among the emerging pathogens in immunocompromised individuals including hospitalized patients. So, it is important to consider hospitals water supplies as a source for infection. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of NTM in the hospital aquatic systems of Khuzestan, South west of Iran. In total, 258 hospital water samples were collected and examined. After initial sample processing, sediment of each sample were inoculated into two Lowenstein-Jensen medium. The positive cultures were studied with phenotypic tests including growth rate, colony morphology, and pigmentation, with subsequent PCR- restriction enzyme analysis (PRA) and rpoB gene sequence analysis. Mycobacterial strains were isolated from 77 samples (29.8%), comprising 52 (70.1%) rapid growing, and 25 (32.4%) slow growing mycobacteria. Based on the overall results, M. fortuitum (44.1%) was the most common mycobacterial species in hospital water samples, followed by M. gordonae (n = 13, 16.8%) and M. senegalense (n = 5, 7.7%). In conclusion, current study demonstrated the NTM strains as one of the major parts of hospital water supplies with probable potential source for nosocomial infections. This finding also help to shed light on to the dynamics of the distribution and diversity of NTM in the water system of hospitals in the region of study.
An approach to category classification of cosmetics reviews based on brand names

In this paper, we have investigated the relation among shopping items, especially the same shopping items of other brands, in consumers' reviews, aiming to use the result for proposing a better recommendation method. We firstly analyzed the reviews of Japan Yahoo! shopping to investigate which shopping categories the relation among brands often appear in, and found that it often appears in the reviews of cosmetics, then, we set the target reviews as cosmetic revies and extracted the brand's relation described in them. To extract the relation, we employed rule based knowledge and support vector machine. Through experiments, we have found the features working well to extract the relation.
Flexible Cognitive Strategies during Motor Learning

Visuomotor rotation tasks have proven to be a powerful tool to study adaptation of the motor system. While adaptation in such tasks is seemingly automatic and incremental, participants may gain knowledge of the perturbation and invoke a compensatory strategy. When provided with an explicit strategy to counteract a rotation, participants are initially very accurate, even without on-line feedback. Surprisingly, with further testing, the angle of their reaching movements drifts in the direction of the strategy, producing an increase in endpoint errors. This drift is attributed to the gradual adaptation of an internal model that operates independently from the strategy, even at the cost of task accuracy. Here we identify constraints that influence this process, allowing us to explore models of the interaction between strategic and implicit changes during visuomotor adaptation. When the adaptation phase was extended, participants eventually modified their strategy to offset the rise in endpoint errors. Moreover, when we removed visual markers that provided external landmarks to support a strategy, the degree of drift was sharply attenuated. These effects are accounted for by a setpoint state-space model in which a strategy is flexibly adjusted to offset performance errors arising from the implicit adaptation of an internal model. More generally, these results suggest that strategic processes may operate in many studies of visuomotor adaptation, with participants arriving at a synergy between a strategic plan and the effects of sensorimotor adaptation.
From human spine to humanoid robot torso

In recent years, humanoid robots have received a lot of attention. Many types of humanoid robots have been developed. For humanoid robots, human-like torso features are essential in obtaining humanlike motion features. However, there is still no satisfied torso design among them with their limited kinematic or dynamic features. It is necessary to carry out a deep study of human torso with the aim to get more inspirations from it. For this purpose, a characterization of human torso is carried out from a perspective of robotics. Then, a literature review of current humanoid robots which have torsos more or less inspired from human spine is presented, and some representative robot torsos are analyzed in detail in order to find possible ways to improve the current design. Based on these two aspects, analysis and discussions are given as benefit for a better torso design for humanoid robots.
Activation of AMPK by the Putative Dietary Restriction Mimetic Metformin Is Insufficient to Extend Lifespan in Drosophila

The biguanide drug, metformin, commonly used to treat type-2 diabetes, has been shown to extend lifespan and reduce fecundity in C. elegans through a dietary restriction-like mechanism via the AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and the AMPK-activating kinase, LKB1. We have investigated whether the longevity-promoting effects of metformin are evolutionarily conserved using the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. We show here that while feeding metformin to adult Drosophila resulted in a robust activation of AMPK and reduced lipid stores, it did not increase lifespan in either male or female flies. In fact, we found that when administered at high concentrations, metformin is toxic to flies. Furthermore, no decreases in female fecundity were observed except at the most toxic dose. Analysis of intestinal physiology after metformin treatment suggests that these deleterious effects may result from disruptions to intestinal fluid homeostasis. Thus, metformin appears to have evolutionarily conserved effects on metabolism but not on fecundity or lifespan.
Integration of formal specification, review, and testing for software component quality assurance

The reliability of software components is the most important quality required for software systems constructed using component-based development paradigm. This paper describes an approach to integrating formal specification, review, and testing for software component quality assurance. In this approach, requirements errors can be removed and missing requirements can be identified by formalizing requirements into a formal specification, and the resulting specification can then be used as a firm foundation for a rigorous review and testing of the program that is intended to provide a correct implementation. We discuss how formalization, review, and testing work together at different levels of software development for improving software quality through detecting and removing errors in documentation.
A Proposal for the DarkLight Experiment at the Jefferson Laboratory Free Electron Laser

J. Balewski, J. Bernauer, W. Bertozzi, J. Bessuille, B. Buck, R. Cowan, K. Dow, C. Epstein, P. Fisher ∗, S. Gilad, E. Ihloff, Y. Kahn, A. Kelleher, J. Kelsey, R. Milner, C. Moran, L. Ou, R. Russell, B. Schmookler, J. Thaler, C. Tschalaer, C. Vidal, A. Winnebeck Laboratory for Nuclear Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA and the Bates Research and Engineering Center, Middleton MA 01949