Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Customized Processor for Energy Efficient Scientific Computing

The rapid advancements in the computational capabilities of the graphics processing unit (GPU) as well as the deployment of general programming models for these devices have made the vision of a desktop supercomputer a reality. It is now possible to assemble a system that provides several TFLOPs of performance on scientific applications for the cost of a high-end laptop computer. While these devices have clearly changed the landscape of computing, there are two central problems that arise. First, GPUs are designed and optimized for graphics applications resulting in delivered performance that is far below peak for more general scientific and mathematical applications. Second, GPUs are power hungry devices that often consume 100-300 watts, which restricts the scalability of the solution and requires expensive cooling. To combat these challenges, this paper presents the PEPSC architecture-an architecture customized for the domain of data parallel dense matrix style scientific application where power efficiency is the central focus. PEPSC utilizes a combination of a 2D single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) datapath, an intelligent dynamic prefetching mechanism, and a configurable SIMD control approach to increase execution efficiency over conventional GPUs. A single PEPSC core has a peak performance of 120 GFLOPs while consuming 2 W of power when executing modern scientific applications, which represents an increase in computation efficiency of more than 10X over existing GPUs.
Do adaptation rules improve web cost estimation?

Analogy-based estimation has, over the last 15 years, and particularly over the last 7 years, emerged as a promising approach with comparable accuracy to, or better than, algorithmic methods in some studies. In addition, it is potentially easier to understand and apply; these two important factors can contribute to the successful adoption of estimation methods within Web development companies. We believe therefore, analogy-based estimation should be examined further.This paper compares several methods of analogy-based effort estimation. In particular, it investigates the use of adaptation rules as a contributing factor to better estimation accuracy. Two datasets are used in the analysis; results show that the best predictions are obtained for the dataset that first, presents a continuous "cost" function, translated as a strong linear relationship between size and effort, and second, is more "unspoiled" in terms of outliers and collinearity. Only one of the two types of adaptation rules employed generated good predictions.
Regulation of RCAN1 translation and its role in oxidative stress‐induced apoptosis

Abnormal expression of regulator of calcineurin 1 (RCAN1) has been implicated in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Down's syndrome (DS). There are two major isoforms of RCAN1, isoforms 1 and 4. RCAN1 isoform 1 is predominantly expressed in the brain, particularly in neurons. In this report, we showed that there are two translation start codons in RCAN1 exon 1 serving as a functional translation initiation site to generate a longer 41‐kDa isoform 1 (RCAN1.1L) and a shorter 31‐kDa isoform 1 (RCAN1.1S). The first translation initiation site has higher translation efficiency than the downstream second one, and the translation initiation of two AUG sites is by a Cap‐dependent mechanism. Short‐term expression of RCAN1.1L protected SH‐SY5Y cells from oxidative stress‐induced apoptosis by inhibiting caspase‐3 activation. However, long‐term accumulation of RCAN1.1L in SH‐SY5Y cells promoted oxidative stress‐induced apoptosis via caspase‐3 activation, and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling assay showed that the apoptosis ratio was increased to 499.03 ± 47.56% in SH‐1.1L cells compared with 283.93 ± 28.66% in control cells. Furthermore, we found that RCAN1.1L is significantly elevated in the AD brains and patients with DS. RCAN1.1S is expressed at a low level in both human cells and brain tissues. Our results defined the regulatory mechanism underlying RCAN1 expression and the roles of RCAN1.1 in oxidative stress‐induced neurodegeneration in AD and DS pathogenesis. —Wu, Y. , Song, W. Regulation of RCAN1 translation and its role in oxidative stress‐induced apoptosis. FASEB J. 27, 208–221 (2013). www.fasebj. org
Simultaneous clustering and tracking unknown number of objects

In this paper, we present a novel on-line probabilistic generative model that simultaneously deals with both the clustering and the tracking of an unknown number of moving objects. The proposed model assumes that i) time series data are composed of a time-varying number of objects and that ii) each object is governed by a mixture of an unknown number of different patterns of dynamics. The problem of learning patterns of dynamics is formulated as the clustering of tracked objects based on a nonparametric Bayesian model with conjugate priors, and this clustering in turn improves the tracking. We present a particle filter for posterior estimation of simultaneous clustering and tracking. Through experiments with synthetic and real movie data, we confirmed that the proposed model successfully learned the hidden cluster patterns and obtained better tracking results than conventional models without clustering.
Set operations on polyhedra using binary space partitioning trees

We introduce a new representation for polyhedra by showing how Binary Space Partitioning Trees (BSP trees) can be used to represent regular sets. We then show how they may be used in evaluating set operations on polyhedra. The BSP tree is a binary tree representing a recursive partitioning of d-space by (sub-)hyperplanes, for any dimension d. Their previous application to computer graphics has been to organize an arbitrary set of polygons so that a fast solution to the visible surface problem could be obtained. We retain this property (in 3D) and show how BSP trees can also provide an exact representation of arbitrary polyhedra of any dimension. Conversion from a boundary representation (B-reps) of polyhedra to a BSP tree representation is described. This technique leads to a new method for evaluating arbitrary set theoretic (boolean) expressions on B-reps, represented as a CSG tree, producing a BSP tree as the result. Results from our language-driven implmentation of this CSG evaluator are discussed. Finally, we show how to modify a BSP tree to represent the result of a set operation between the BSP tree and a B-rep. We describe the embodiment of this approach in an interactive 3D object design program that allows incremental modification of an object with a tool. Placement of the tool, selection of views, and performance of the set operation are all performed at interactive speeds for modestly complex objects.
A Functional Two-Partner Secretion System Contributes to Adhesion of Neisseria meningitidis to Epithelial Cells

ABSTRACT Neisseria meningitidis is a frequent commensal of the human nasopharynx causing severe invasive infections in rare cases. A functional two-partner secretion (TPS) system in N. meningitidis, composed of the secreted effector protein HrpA and its cognate transporter HrpB, is identified and characterized in this study. Although all meningococcal strains harbor at least one TPS system, the hrpA genes display significant C-terminal sequence variation. Meningococcal genes encoding the TPS effector proteins and their transporters are closely associated and transcribed into a single mRNA. HrpA proteins are translocated across the meningococcal outer membrane by their cognate transporters HrpB and mainly released into the environment. During this process, HrpA is proteolytically processed to a mature 180-kDa form. In contrast to other known TPS systems, immature HrpA proteins are stable in the absence of HrpB and accumulate within the bacterial cell. A small percentage of mature HrpA remains associated with the bacteria and contributes to the interaction of meningococci with epithelial cells.
Political Risk , Political Capabilities and International Investment Strategy : Evidence from the Power Generation Industry

In this paper, I examine the effect of political risk on the international expansion strategies of firms in a single industry, electric power generation. I argue that due to differences in non-market capabilities, the impact of political risk will be unequal across firms, and that firms with stronger political risk-management skills will be more likely to enter higher political risk countries. I test my hypotheses using a data set covering all privately-financed power generation projects outside North America, spanning 10 years, 191 firms and 64 countries. Using the firm’s decision to enter a country in a given year as the dependent variable, I find first that the effect of political risk is indeed uneven across firms. While higher levels of political risk typically discourage entry, the impact is significantly lower for firms with greater levels of international experience. In addition to the level, I find that the type of prior experience is an important factor in explaining the variation in firm market entry strategy. Specifically, the experience that firms accumulate in monopsony generation markets – where firms negotiate and contract directly with governments – has a significantly greater impact on their propensity to expand into more politically risky environments than does experience in competitive generation markets (where firms interact less frequently with governments). Thus, as multinationals gain more experience over time in monopsony markets, they gradually expand into more politically risky environments. More generally, the paper provides empirical support for the sequential theory of foreign expansion. In contrast to much literature in this field, however, I demonstrate that firms build on their expertise not only by re-investing in their existing country markets, but also by systematically expanding into new countries where their mix of market and non-market skills gives them a competitive advantage. 1 Assistant Professor, Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario. 1151 Richmond Street North, London, Ontario. Canada. N6A 3K7. Tel: 519 661 4247. Fax: 519 661 3485. Email: gholburn@ivey.uwo. ca
Governance for health: Is the cultural ‘lone ranger’ behaviour still prevailing? Perspectives from policy-makers in Portugal

Increasing attention has been paid to the significant role of governance in health policy-making. The goal is to develop health policies more responsive to local preferences and needs, in coordination with other policies, and adapted to the most suitable spatial scale. Rather than acting as isolated actors, health institutions must look at ways to strengthen collaboration in a cross-sectoral and symbiotic way with other actors. This article reports the health governance structure of Portugal, a country in which health has become a hotly contested topic due to recent pressures to reduce costs, yet claiming at the central level a whole society and government approach. Based on policy-makers' perspectives, this article explores how institutions interact in health policy-making at the national, regional and local levels. Findings suggest that health decision-making processes are still very centralised and focused within the health sector boundaries, symptomatic of a wider cultural problem.
G UARANTEEING M ESSAGE L ATENCIES ON C ONTROL A REA N ETWORK (CAN) 1

A generally perceived problem with CAN is that it is unable to guarantee the timing performance of lower priority messages. Recent work has developed analysis to bound message latencies under arbitrary error rate assumptions. Messages are permitted to be periodic or sporadic, with few restrictions on deadlines. The analysis can give optimal identifier orderings, and be used to ask “what if” questions. In this paper we derive the analysis and apply it to an SAE ‘benchmark’, assuming the Intel 82527 stand-alone CAN controller is used.
Characterization and Transformation of Unstructured Control Flow in GPU Applications

Hardware and compiler techniques for mapping data-parallel programs with divergent control flow to SIMD architectures have recently enabled the emergence of new GPGPU programming models such as CUDA and OpenCL. Although this technology is widely used, commodity GPUs use different schemes to implement it, and the performance limitations of these different schemes under real workloads are not well understood. This study identifies important classes of program control flows, and characterize their presence in real workloads. It is shown that most existing techniques handle structured control flow efficiently, some are incapable of executing unstructured control flow directly, and none handles unstructured control flow efficiently. A suggestion to reduce the impact of this problem is provided. An unstructured-to-structured control flow transformation is implemented and its performance impact on a large class of GPU applications is assessed. The results quantify the importance of improving support for programs with unstructured control flow on GPUs. The transformation can also be used as a JIT compiler pass to execute programs with unstructured control flow on the GPU devices that do not support unstructured control flow. This is an important capability for execution portability of applications using GPU accelerators.
North Australian Sea Surface Temperatures and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation in the CMIP5 Models

AbstractAspects of the climate of Australia are linked to interannual variability of the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) to the north of the country. SST anomalies in this region have been shown to exhibit strong, seasonally varying links to ENSO and tropical Pacific SSTs.Previously, the models participating in phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) have been evaluated and found to vary in their abilities to represent both the seasonal cycle of correlations between the Nino-3.4 and north Australian SSTs and the evolution of SSTs during composite El Nino and La Nina events. In this study, the new suite of models participating in the CMIP5 is evaluated using the same method. In the multimodel mean, the representation of the links is slightly improved, but generally the models do not capture the strength of the negative correlations during the second half of the year. The models also still struggle to capture the SST evolution in the north Australian region during El Nino and La Nina ev.
Type I IFN Inhibits Alternative Macrophage Activation during Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection and Leads to Enhanced Protection in the Absence of IFN-γ Signaling

Tuberculosis causes ∼1.5 million deaths every year, thus remaining a leading cause of death from infectious diseases in the world. A growing body of evidence demonstrates that type I IFN plays a detrimental role in tuberculosis pathogenesis, likely by interfering with IFN-γ–dependent immunity. In this article, we reveal a novel mechanism by which type I IFN may confer protection against Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection in the absence of IFN-γ signaling. We show that production of type I IFN by M. tuberculosis–infected macrophages induced NO synthase 2 and inhibited arginase 1 gene expression. In vivo, absence of both type I and type II IFN receptors led to strikingly increased levels of arginase 1 gene expression and protein activity in infected lungs, characteristic of alternatively activated macrophages. This correlated with increased lung bacterial burden and pathology and decreased survival compared with mice deficient in either receptor. Increased expression of other genes associated with alternatively activated macrophages, as well as increased expression of Th2-associated cytokines and decreased TNF expression, were also observed. Thus, in the absence of IFN-γ signaling, type I IFN suppressed the switching of macrophages from a more protective classically activated phenotype to a more permissive alternatively activated phenotype. Together, our data support a model in which suppression of alternative macrophage activation by type I IFN during M. tuberculosis infection, in the absence of IFN-γ signaling, contributes to host protection.
Second Language Literacy Practices: A Case Study of a Chinese Student in Australia.

This article discusses the second-language literacy practice of an ESL student in Australia. It firstly explores the literacy practices (reading and writing) exercised both in China (the subject’s home country) and in Sydney, Australia, where the subject was taking an academic preparation course prior to her master study. Secondly, this article delves into literacy practices conducted inside and outside the classroom in the same contexts. This research aims to contribute to the existing literature on literacy practices by expanding the focus of investigation beyond writing and by bringing up a specific case study, which is hardly addressed in the literature: a Chinese student in non-American education setting. Through analyzing the results of semi-structured interview, it is revealed that the participant adopted several different literacy practices in reading and writing due to different learning objectives and contexts.
UNDERSTANDING AND DEVELOPING LITERACY IN THE ESL/EFL CLASSROOM

Abstract: Literacy in the Australian Curriculum is defined in terms of the important role language plays in the construction of meaning in diverse social and cultural contexts and their related situations (ACARA 2013, Halliday & Hasan,1985; Vygotsky,1976). To this end, in this paper we will briefly review some relevant pathways to literacy, namely, the teaching/and learning cycle that informs the literacy pedagogy, and the language learning theories that underpin the accepted literacy approach choices. In addition, this paper will address an important link to literacy, namely, the intercultural understanding general capability. This will be done via a brief coverage of the work of Golding (2005) in relation to his suggestions regarding the development of â€˜a thinking classroomâ€™. This will be achieved in an arena that also presents the views of other researchers (Pohl, 2000; Pope & Denicolo, 2001; Arthur, 2005; Lipson, 2006) who also believe in the importance of student and teacher wellbeing in the classroom. It is hoped that the discussions that are covered in this paper will provide a useful review of the relevant literature and related findings. Keywords:literacy, intercultural understanding, text types, genre theory
Emotional symptoms among adolescents: epidemiological analysis of individual-, classroom- and school-level factors.

BACKGROUND Large proportions of schoolchildren suffer from emotional symptoms and there are large variations across schools. It is unknown to what degree this variation is due to composition of schoolchildren in each school or to contextual factors. Objectives are to identify factors at individual, classroom and school levels associated with emotional symptoms. METHOD Data stem from the Danish contribution to the international Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study 2010 including 4922 schoolchildren aged 11-15-years from a random sample of schools and including data from school leaders. Emotional symptoms are defined as daily presence of at least one of four symptoms: feeling low, irritable or bad tempered, nervous and having difficulties falling asleep. Multilevel multivariable logistic regression analyses are applied to identify and quantify factors at individual, classroom and school level. RESULTS Schoolchildren from low (odds ratio (OR) 1.70, 95% CI: 1.33-2.17) and medium (OR 1.50, 95% CI: 1.22-1.85) occupational social class (OSC), girls (OR 1.32, 95% CI: 1.13-1.56) and schoolchildren exposed to bullying (OR 3.82, 95% CI: 2.71-5.40), had increased odds for emotional symptoms. A negative classroom climate was associated with emotional symptoms (OR 1.29, 95% CI: 0.99-1.69) and so was being part of classrooms with a high prevalence of bullying (OR 1.28, 95% CI: 1.0-1.60). CONCLUSION Female sex, low OSC, single parent family, exposure to bullying and a high prevalence of bullying within a class are all associated with emotional symptoms. Most variation across schools is explained by individual-level factors but psychosocial aspects of the classroom environment also play a role.
Automated blood sampling and the 3 Rs

Automated blood sampling (ABS) systems have been increasingly employed in biomedical research since the mid-1990s for use in pharmacokinetic, safety pharmacology, metabolism, biomarker and other studies in industry and academia. Originally conceived with the purpose of reducing animal use and stress, this article reviews the contribution of ABS systems to the 3Rs concept of Russell and Burch (1).
Modular Nature of Blimp-1 in the Regulation of Gene Expression during B Cell Maturation1

The transcription factor Blimp-1 induces the maturation of B cells into Ab-secreting plasma cells. DNA microarrays were used to analyze the transcription profiles of both Blimp-1-transduced murine B cell lines and the inducible B cell line BCL1. Hundreds of genes were differentially regulated, showing how Blimp-1 both restricts affinity maturation and promotes Ab secretion, homeostasis, migration, and differentiation. Strikingly, when different modes of plasma cell induction are used, very different genetic programs are used, suggesting that the transition from a B cell to plasma cell can occur in multiple ways, perhaps accounting for the different types of Ab-secreting cells observed in vivo. Furthermore, mutagenesis of Blimp-1 reveals multiple effector domains, which regulate distinct genes. This indicates that Blimp-1 subdivides the maturation program into select and tunable pathways.
Expression of the genes for peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ, cyclooxygenase-2, and proinflammatory cytokines in granulosa cells from women with polycystic ovary syndrome

Objective To identify differences in the expression of the genes for peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR)-γ, cyclooxygenase (COX)-2, and the proinflammatory cytokines interleukin (IL)-6 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α in granulosa cells (GCs) from polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) patients and controls undergoing controlled ovarian stimulation. Methods Nine patients with PCOS and six controls were enrolled in this study. On the day of oocyte retrieval, GCs were collected from pooled follicular fluid. Total mRNA was extracted from GCs. Reverse transcription was performed and gene expression levels were quantified by realtime quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Results There were no significant differences in age, body mass index, and total gonadotropin dose, except for the ratio of luteinizing hormone to follicle-stimulating hormone between the PCOS and control groups. PPAR-γ and COX-2 mRNA was significantly downregulated in the GCs of PCOS women compared with controls (p=0.034 and p=0.018, respectively), but the expression of IL-6 and TNF-α mRNA did not show significant differences. No significant correlation was detected between the expression of these mRNA sequences and clinical characteristics, including the number of retrieved oocytes, oocyte maturity, cleavage, or the good embryo rate. Positive correlations were found among the PPAR-γ, COX-2, IL-6, and TNF-α mRNA levels. Conclusion Our data may provide novel clues regarding ovarian GC dysfunction in PCOS, and indirectly provide evidence that the effect of PPAR-γ agonists in PCOS might result from alterations in the ovarian follicular environment. Further studies with a larger sample size are required to confirm these proposals.