Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Architecture and software support in IBM S/390 Parallel Enterprise Servers for IEEE Floating-Point arithmetic

IEEE Binary Floating-Point is an industry-standard architecture. The IBM System/360™ hexadecimal floating-point architecture predates the IEEE standard and has been carried forward through the System/370™ to current System/390® processors. The growing importance of industry standards and floating-point combined to produce a need for IEEE Floating-Point on System/390. At the same time, customer investment in IBM floating-point had to be preserved. This paper describes the architecture, hardware, and software efforts that combined to produce a conforming implementation of IEEE Floating-Point on System/390 while retaining compatibility with the original IBM architecture.
Community Detection Using Geosocial Data and Geographical Point-Set Distances

The 2011 and 2012 UCLA REU Social Networks groups had inspected the gang activity in Hollenbeck and attempted to predict gang affiliations from geosocial information from LAPD Field Interview cards, using the spectral clustering algorithm. In the present work, we continue this method and aim to achieve a better clustering by using a more meaningful distance measure and modeling the geography and natural boundaries of the network. Temporal component of the data and effects of gang injunctions are discussed as well. Lastly, we compare the algorithmically generated communities to our ground truth to measure the quality of the clusters with three different metrics: purity score, z-rand score, and normalized mutual information.
MATHEMATICAL MODELS FOR REVERSE LOGISTICS : A GENETIC ALGORITHM FOR A TWO-LEVEL PROBLEM

The administration of reverse flows of products and materials in processes of industrial production has received considerable attention in recent years. Reverse logistics, and the corresponding distribution planning, involves the physical transportation of used products from the final user to collection/distribution and refurbishing facilities. The present work focuses on mathematical formulations that model the reverse distribution system. We study a linear-mixed integer programming model that considers the location of capacitated facilities in a two-level system: collection facilities in level 1 and refurbishing/remanufacturing facilities in level 2. We propose a genetic algorithm to solve the two-level problem. Tests are conducted using data generated according to a methodology available in the literature, with the heuristic solutions being compared with exact solutions obtained via a commercially available solver.
Amphetamines induce apoptosis and regulation of bcl‐x splice variants in neocortical neurons

Amphetamine analogs have emerged as popular recreational drugs of abuse. The number of reports of these substances producing severe acute toxicity and death is increasing. In ‘Ecstasy’ ‐associated deaths, focal necrosis in the liver and individual myocytic necrosis has been reported. Furthermore, serotonergic and dopaminergic neuronal cell damage has been observed in experimental amphetamine intoxication in laboratory animals. Here we demonstrate that subchronic exposure to D‐amphetamine, methamphetamine, methylenedioxyamphetamine, and methylenedioxymethamphetamine (‘Ecstasy’) results in significant neurotoxicity in rat neocortical neurons in vitro. This neuronal cell death is accompanied by endonucleosomal DNA cleavage and differential expression of anti‐ and proapoptotic bcl‐xL/S splice variants. In addition, we observed pronounced induction of cell stress‐associated transcription factor c‐jun and translation initiation inhibitor p97 after amphetamine treatment. These data support that the neurotoxic effects of different amphetamines are extended to rat neocortical neurons and that apoptotic pathways are involved in amphetamine‐induced neurotoxicity. —Stumm, G. , Schlegel, J., Schäfer, T. , Würz, C. , Mennel, H. D. , Krieg, J.‐C. , Vedder, H. Amphetamines induce apoptosis and regulation of bcl‐x splice variants in neocortical neurons. FASEB J. 13, 1065–1072 (1999)
Prevalence and genetic diversity of rotavirus infection in children with acute gastroenteritis in a hospital setting, Nairobi Kenya in post vaccination era: a cross-sectional study

Introduction Rotavirus is the leading cause of severe diarrhoea among infants and young children. Each year more than 611 000 children die from rotavirus gastroenteritis, and two million are hospitalized, worldwide. In Kenya, the impact of recent rotavirus vaccinations on morbidities has not been estimated. The study aimed at determining the prevalence and identity of rotavirus strains isolated from rotavirus-associated diarrhoea in vaccinated children presenting with acute gastroenteritis. Methods Two hundred and ninety eight specimen from children presented at Gertrude Childrens’ Hospital from January to June 2012 were tested by EIA (Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay) for rotavirus antigens. Molecular characterization was conducted on rotavirus-positive specimens. Extracted viral RNA was separated by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) and the specific rotavirus VP4 (P-types) and VP7 (G-types) determined. Results The prevalence rate of rotavirus was 31.5% (94/298). Of the rotavirus dsRNA, 57 (60.1%) gave visible RNA profiles, 38 (40.4%) assigned long electropherotypes while 19 (20.2%) were short electropherotypes. The strains among the vaccinated were G3P [4], G12P [6], G3P [6], G9P [4], G mixed G9/3P [4] and G1/3P [4]. Specifically, the G genotypes were G9/3 (5.3%), G9 (4.3%), G3 (4.3%), G12 (2.1%) and mixed G1/3 (1.1%). The P genotypes detected were P [4] (5.3%) and P [6] (5.3%). Conclusion The present study demonstrates diversity in circulating genotypes with emergence of genotypes G3, G9, G12 and mixed genotypes G9/3 and recommends that vaccines should be formulated with a broad range of strains to include G9 and G12.
Non-Uniform Corrosion-Induced Reinforced Concrete Cracking : An Analytical Approach

Corrosion of reinforcing steel in concrete is a global problem for reinforced concrete structures/infrastructures in a chloride and/or carbon dioxide-laden environment. It can lead to premature concrete cracking and spalling, and ultimately structural collapse. The costs of annual maintenance and repairs in the world have been reported as extremely high. In modelling of corrosion induced concrete cracking, the distribution of the corrosion products around the reinforcing steel is key to determining the expansive forces, whilst most researchers assume a uniform corrosion development. In this paper, a more realistic non-uniform corrosion distribution around the reinforcing steel is considered and an analytical model of the corrosion induced concrete cracking is derived. The effect of applied load on the corrosion induced cracking is also considered in the model. The complex variable method is employed to formulate the stress field in concrete. With the inputs from the actual corrosion rate history, the model developed can predict the time of the cracking initiation. The model derived can be used as a tool to assess the serviceability of corrosion affected concrete structures.
Primary Pulmonary Plasmacytoma with Diffuse Alveolar Consolidation: A Case Report

Solitary extramedullary plasmacytomas are plasma cell tumors that tend to develop in mucosa-associated lymphoid tissues including the sinonasal or nasopharyngeal regions. Primary plasmacytoma of the lung is exceedingly rare and often presents as a solitary mass or nodule in mid-lung or hilar areas and diagnosed after resection. Herein, we report a case of primary pulmonary plasmacytoma that presented with diffuse alveolar consolidation and diagnosed by transbronchial lung biopsy.
Iroquois Complex Genes Induce Co-Expression of rhodopsins in Drosophila

The Drosophila eye is a mosaic that results from the stochastic distribution of two ommatidial subtypes. Pale and yellow ommatidia can be distinguished by the expression of distinct rhodopsins and other pigments in their inner photoreceptors (R7 and R8), which are implicated in color vision. The pale subtype contains ultraviolet (UV)-absorbing Rh3 in R7 and blue-absorbing Rh5 in R8. The yellow subtype contains UV-absorbing Rh4 in R7 and green-absorbing Rh6 in R8. The exclusive expression of one rhodopsin per photoreceptor is a widespread phenomenon, although exceptions exist. The mechanisms leading to the exclusive expression or to co-expression of sensory receptors are currently not known. We describe a new class of ommatidia that co-express rh3 and rh4 in R7, but maintain normal exclusion between rh5 and rh6 in R8. These ommatidia, which are localized in the dorsal eye, result from the expansion of rh3 into the yellow-R7 subtype. Genes from the Iroquois Complex (Iro-C) are necessary and sufficient to induce co-expression in yR7. Iro-C genes allow photoreceptors to break the “one receptor–one neuron” rule, leading to a novel subtype of broad-spectrum UV- and green-sensitive ommatidia.
Influence of Thickness Deviation on crystalline Silicon Solar Cell Performance

This paper presents a novel method to measure the local thickness of silicon wafers spatially resolved. A camera detects the transmission of infrared radiation through a silicon wafer, which transforms to a local thickness map. Experiments with String Ribbon solar cells show that the local contact resistance depends on the local wafer thickness. The high resolution thickness map is therefore transformed into a local contact resistance map. A 3D-multi-diode array models the efficiency loss due to an inhomogeneous contact resistance. The fill factor loss FF due to the thickness deviation of solar cells amounts up to FF = -1 %abs, or an efficiency loss = -0.2 %abs.
Active placebos versus antidepressants for depression.

BACKGROUND Although there is a consensus that antidepressants are effective in depression, placebo effects are also thought to be substantial. Side effects of antidepressants may reveal the identity of medication to participants or investigators and thus may bias the results of conventional trials using inert placebos. Using an 'active' placebo which mimics some of the side effects of antidepressants may help to counteract this potential bias. OBJECTIVES To investigate the efficacy of antidepressants when compared with 'active' placebos. SEARCH STRATEGY The Cochrane Collaboration Depression, Anxiety and Neurosis review groups's search strategy was used to search MEDLINE (1966-2000), PsychLIT (1980-2000) and EMBASE (1974-2000) and this was last done in July 2000. Reference lists from relevant articles and textbooks were searched and 12 specialist journals were handsearched up to 1996. SELECTION CRITERIA Randomised and quasi randomised controlled trials comparing antidepressants with active placebos in people with depression. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Since many different outcome measures were used a standard measure of effect was calculated for each trial. A subgroup analysis of inpatient and outpatient trials was conducted. Two reviewers independently assessed whether each trial met inclusion criteria. MAIN RESULTS Nine studies involving 751 participants were included. Two of them produced effect sizes which showed a consistent and statistically significant difference in favour of the active drug. Combining all studies produced a pooled estimate of effect of 0.39 standard deviations (confidence interval, 0.24 to 0.54) in favour of the antidepressant measured by improvement in mood. There was high heterogeneity due to one strongly positive trial. Sensitivity analysis omitting this trial reduced the pooled effect to 0.17 (0.00 to 0.34). The pooled effect for inpatient and outpatient trials was highly sensitive to decisions about which combination of data was included but inpatient trials produced the lowest effects. REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS The more conservative estimates from the present analysis found that differences between antidepressants and active placebos were small. This suggests that unblinding effects may inflate the efficacy of antidepressants in trials using inert placebos. Further research into unblinding is warranted.
Diffusion-weighted imaging of radiation-induced brain injury for differentiation from tumor recurrence.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Differentiation between tumor recurrence and treatment-related brain injury is often difficult with conventional MRI. We hypothesized that the diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) could help differentiate these 2 conditions, because water diffusion may be greater for necrotic tissues in the treatment-related brain injury than for tumor tissues in recurrence. Our aim was to analyze whether DWI findings of recurrent tumor are distinct from those of radiation necrosis. METHODS Seventeen patients were examined prospectively. Two readers assessed the images by consensus for homogeneity and signal intensity of the lesions. Five regions of interest were drawn within the lesions on trace DWI images and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps. The minimal, maximal, and mean values of each lesion were compared between the 2 groups. Findings in 12 of 17 patients were verified histologically by surgery or biopsy; the diagnoses in the remaining 5 patients were made on the basis of follow-up MRI findings and clinical follow-up. RESULTS There were a total of 20 lesions; 12 lesions were due to radiation necrosis and 8 lesions to tumor recurrence. In the radiation necrosis group, 8 lesions had marked hypointensity. In the recurrence group, however, no marked hypointensity was seen. The maximal ADC values within each lesion were significantly smaller for the recurrence group than for the necrosis group (P = .039). CONCLUSION Radiation necrosis usually showed heterogeneity on DWI images and often included spotty, marked hypointensity. Significant difference was found in the maximal ADC values between radiation necrosis and tumor recurrence. DWI was useful in differentiating recurrent neoplasm from radiation necrosis.
Reasoning about Explicit and Implicit Representations of State

The semantics of imperative languages are often expressed in terms of a store-passing translation and an algebra for reasoning about stores. We axiomatize the semantics of several typical imperative languages via equational axioms by \inverting" the store-passing translation as well as the algebraic axioms for reasoning about the store. The inversion process is simple and systematic and results in theories that are similar to equational theories for imperative languages that have been derived in more complicated ways, and is likely to be applicable to languages other than those presented here. The mathematical semantics of imperative languages conventionally regards the store as a primitive concept 16:p. 203]. Using a \store-passing transformation", imperative operations are translated to explicit operations on a concrete representation of the store in an augmented lambda-calculus. The resulting store constructs typically have a simple semantics that is easy to reason about. Furthermore, such a store and its related operations can yield a natural \store algebra" that can be used for optimization purposes 9]. Since it is often the case that one wishes to reason about languages directly rather than by translation, there have been many proposals for logics for imperative languages 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 17]. Although each of these was designed independently, and diiers from the others in subtle ways, the similarities between them suggest the existence of a systematic way to derive equational logics from the semantics of the languages. We propose to construct logics for imperative languages by deriving an inverse to the store-passing transformation and applying it to the equational axioms of the enriched lambda-calculus. We explain the general strategy in detail in Section 2. In later sections, we demonstrate the feasibility of our technique by applying it to a variety of imperative languages that are extensions of the call-by-value-calculus. The rst language includes an innnite set of locations, facilities to assign values to these locations, and the ability to pass them to procedures. The second language extends the rst with facilities to perform
Stability and robustness of large platoons of vehicles with double‐integrator models and nearest neighbor interaction

We study the stability and robustness of a large platoon of vehicles, where each vehicle is modeled as a double integrator, for two decentralized control architectures: predecessor following and symmetric bidirectional. In the predecessor‐following architecture, the control action on each agent only depends on the information from its immediate front neighbor, whereas in the symmetric bidirectional architecture, it depends equally on the information from both its immediate front neighbor and back neighbor. We prove asymptotic stability of the formation for a class of nonlinear controllers with sector nonlinearity, with the linear controller as a special case. We show that the convergence rate of the predecessor‐following architecture is much faster than that of the symmetric bidirectional architecture. However, the predecessor‐following architecture suffers high algebraic growth of initial errors. We also establish scaling laws (with N) of certain H ∞ norms of the formation that measure its robustness to external disturbances for the linear case. It is shown that the robustness performance grows geometrically in N for predecessor‐following architecture but only polynomially in N for symmetric‐bidirectional architecture. Extensive numerical simulations are conducted to verify the predictions for the linear case and empirically estimate the corresponding performance metrics for a saturation‐type nonlinear controller. On the basis of the analytical and numerical results, it is seen that the symmetric bidirectional architecture outperforms the predecessor‐following architecture in all measures of performance. Within the predecessor‐following architecture, the nonlinear controller is seen to perform better in general than the linear one. A number of design guidelines are provided on the basis of these conclusions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The fish gill: site of action and model for toxic effects of environmental pollutants.

The gill epithelium is the site of gas exchange, ionic regulation, acid-base balance, and nitrogenous waste excretion by fishes. The last three processes are controlled by passive and active transport of various solutes across the epithelium. Various environmental pollutants (e.g., heavy metals, acid rain, and organic xenobiotics) have been found to affect the morphology of the gill epithelium. Associated with these morphological pathologies, one finds alterations in blood ionic levels, as well as gill Na,K-activated ATPase activity and ionic fluxes. Such physiological disturbances may underly the toxicities of these pollutants. In addition, the epithelial transport steps which are affected in the fish gill model resemble those described in the human gut and kidney, sites of action of a variety of environmental toxins. ImagesFIGURE 1. aFIGURE 1. bFIGURE 3.
An architecture for location dependent query processing

As the mobility of people increases, anytime, anywhere computing has become a must. With the advances in wireless communications, the geographical position of the mobile user can be estimated accurately enough to be used to access data dependent on it. Location awareness then enables new kinds of services specific to localized information. While this provides great flexibility for the end user, it creates many challenges for the content providers and wireless operators. We propose an architecture, location dependent services manager (LDSM), between the mobile user and the service/content providers to service location dependent applications which access location dependent data. The proposed middleware does location translation which we call location leveling, to adjust the location granularities and to solve the location mismatch problem. Quality of query results and the complicated queries involving more than one service provider is also supported in this middleware. We give an overview of the proposed architecture, examine the query processing issues and discuss the future work plans.
AND UTILITY MAXIMIZATION A General Framework *

Neoclassical theory of utility maximization assumes irrational behavior to be unsystematic and therefore impossible to model. Recent advances in behavioral decision theory suggests irrationality may be systematic. In line with these and earlier findings from the theory of cognitive dissonance, a simple descriptive model of utility maximization is developed with the ~-Aded feature of an information filter. The model is then used to explain a few "irration ~|' micro and macro behaviors.
Neuromagnetic characterization of the human secondary somatosensory cortex

This thesis aims to characterize functions of the secondary somatosensory cortex SII in humans by means of neuromagnetic recordings. It starts with a review of literature about methodological considerations concerning the generation of neuromagnetic fields and how they can be measured and modeled. Then follows a brief overview of the somatosensory system, its receptors, ascending pathways, and cortical regions. The main part of the text summarizes the individual publications. Studies I and II show a strong interaction at SII between inputs of the two hands and of different fingers in the same hand, suggesting that SII plays an important role in integrating sensory information from the two body halves. Studies III and IV reveal left hemisphere-dominant SII activation for median nerve stimulation and passive movements of the index finger, suggesting hemispheric specialization for the processing of somatosensory information. Study V analyzes functional connectivity between SI and SII cortices by means of phase-locked activity. Study VI shows that SII activation is distinctly affected by contraction of different muscles. Altogether these studies provide an insight in to the role of SII in somatosensory processing.
A particle filter to estimate non-Markovian states

Common particle filter algorithms are unable to differentiate between sensor noise and kidnap situations. These two problems are usual in realistic applications and, in general, ad-hoc heuristic are developed to deal with them. In this paper, we present a particle filter algorithm where the state is enriched with information about the coherence of the sensor readings. This additional information allows us to tackle non-Markovian environments and, thus to deal in a unified way with sensor noise and kidnap situations. The experiments we report show the advantages of this new particle filter approach w.r. t. existing ones.
Multi-Scale Local Phase Features for Anatomical Object Detection in Fetal Ultrasound Images

© 2012. The copyright of this document resides with its authors. It may be distributed unchanged freely in print or electronic forms. The presence and absence of anatomical landmarks in fetal ultrasound image are commonly used as indicators in finding the optimal ultrasound plane for fetal biometric measurement. We propose a machine learning framework for the automated detection of two important anatomical landmarks (stomach and umbilical vein) in fetal abdominal ultrasound images. Our proposed approach combines the unary features extracted from the multi-scale local phase image with the Haar features acquired from the intensity image. The results presented indicate an improvement over prior intensity-based approach.