Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
S-RAC: SSD Friendly Caching for Data Center Workloads

Current data-center applications tend to process increasingly large volume of data sets. The caching effect of page cache is reduced by its limited capacity. Emerging flash-based solid state drives (SSD) have latency and price advantages compared to hard disk and DRAM. Thus, SSD-based caching is widely deployed in data centers. However, SSD caching faces two challenges. First, SSD has limited write endurance, which requires cache manager to reduce write amount to SSD. Second, data-center workloads exhibit a diverse I/O access patterns, which requires one to figure out SSD caching friendly access patterns. This paper first classifies 6 I/O access patterns among 32 data-center workloads using a cost-benefit analysis. We derive implications for designing SSD cache from analyzing the access patterns. We then propose an SSD cache manager S-RAC with re-adding blocks and ghost cache adaptation to retain SSD friendly blocks in SSD. The experimental evaluation shows the efficiency of S-RAC in reducing SSD write amount while improving/maintaining cache hit ratio.
Low accuracy sensor-based navigation and fully autonomous guidance control of small electric helicopter

In this research, we design the navigation and fully autonomous control system for small electric helicopter. Small and low-accuracy sensors (GPS which cannot output vertical velocity, low-accuracy accelerometers, and barometer) are used for navigation and control. Firstly, INS/GPS/Barometer navigation system is designed to obtain high-accuracy position and velocity of the helicopter. Secondly, 3-dimensional guidance control system is designed by using optimal control theory and quaternion kinematics. Lastly, whole systems designed in this research are validated by the flight experiments.
The Effects of Age, Refractive Status, and Luminance on Pupil Size

Purpose Pupil size is critical for optimal performance of presbyopic contact lenses. Although the effect of luminance is well known, little information is available regarding other contributing factors such as aging and refractive status. Methods The cohort population comprised 304 patients (127 male, 177 female) aged 18 to 78 years. Pupils were photographed at three controlled luminance levels 250, 50, and 2.5 cd/m2 using an infra-red macro video camera. Measurements of pupil diameter were conducted after transforming pixel values to linear values in millimeters. Results Luminance was the most influential factor with pupil diameter increasing with decreased luminance (p < 0.001, all comparisons). Age was also found to be a significant factor with a smaller diameter in the older groups, but overall the difference was only significant between the pre-presbyopes and the established presbyopes (p = 0.017). Pupil diameter decreased significantly with increasing age, the effect being most marked at low luminance (<0.001). The smallest pupil diameters were measured for hyperopes and the largest for myopes and although refractive error was not a significant factor alone, there was a significant interaction between luminance and refractive error with the greatest differences in pupil diameter between myopes and emmetropes at low luminance (p < 0.001). Pupil diameter changes modeled by multilinear regression (p < 0.001) identified age, luminance, best sphere refraction, and refractive error as significant factors accounting for just over 70% of the average variation in pupil diameter. Conclusions Both age and refractive status were found to affect pupil size with larger pupils measured for younger patients and myopes. Designs for multifocal contact lens corrections should take both age and refractive status into consideration; a faster progression from distance to near corrections across the optical zone of the lens is expected to be required for established presbyopes and hyperopes than it is for early presbyopes, myopes, and emmetropes.
Tuning-Robust Initialization Methods for Speaker Diarization

This paper investigates a typical speaker diarization system regarding its robustness against initialization parameter variation and presents a method to reduce manual tuning of these values significantly. The behavior of an agglomerative hierarchical clustering system is studied to determine which initialization parameters impact accuracy most. We show that the accuracy of typical systems is indeed very sensitive to the values chosen for the initialization parameters and factors such as the duration of speech in the recording. We then present a solution that reduces the sensitivity of the initialization values and therefore reduces the need for manual tuning significantly while at the same time increasing the accuracy of the system. For short meetings extracted from the previous (2006, 2007, and 2009) National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Rich Transcription (RT) evaluation data, the decrease of the diarization error rate is up to 50% relative. The approach consists of a novel initialization parameter estimation method for speaker diarization that uses agglomerative clustering with Bayesian information criterion (BIC) and Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) of frame-based cepstral features (MFCCs). The estimation method balances the relationship between the optimal value of the seconds of speech data per Gaussian and the duration of the speech data and is combined with a novel nonuniform initialization method. This approach results in a system that performs better than the current ICSI baseline engine on datasets of the NIST RT evaluations of the years 2006, 2007, and 2009.
An information retrieval system for technology analysis and forecasting

Expert evaluation of grant proposals and research projects is often facilitated by specialized decision support systems, which analyze research and industry trends in a large domain-dependent text corpus. Despite that there exist production-grade technological forecasting systems for English, Russian patent databases and citation indexes had been developed isolated from the global ones. This complicates technology analysis and forecasting in research conducted in Russia. In this paper, we present a scientific information retrieval system designed for the Russian language. The system uses patents, research papers and government contracts for facilitating the expertise process by providing the experts with relevant documents. Comparison of our system with a popular baseline shows promising results.
Role of p16INK4A in Replicative Senescence and DNA Damage-Induced Premature Senescence in p53-Deficient Human Cells

The p16INK4A (hereafter p16) tumor suppressor is encoded by the INK4A/ARF locus which is among the most commonly dysregulated sequences in human cancer. By inhibiting cyclin-dependent kinases, p16 activates the G1-S checkpoint, and this response is often considered to be critical for establishing a senescence-like growth arrest. Not all studies support a universal role for p16 in senescence. Single-cell analysis of noncancerous human fibroblast cultures undergoing senescence as a function of culture age (replicative senescence) has revealed that p16 is not expressed in the majority (>90%) of cells that exhibit features of senescence (e.g., flattened and enlarged morphology coupled with senescence-associated β-galactosidase expression), ruling out a requirement for p16 in this process. In addition, ionizing radiation triggers premature senescence in human cancer cell lines that do not express p16. These observations are made with cells that express wild-type p53, a key mediator of the DNA damage response. In this paper, we examine the growing evidence suggesting a negative regulatory relationship between p16 and p53 and discuss recent reports that implicate a role for p16 in replicative senescence and ionizing radiation-induced premature senescence in human cells that lack wild-type p53 function.
Speeding Up HILN-MPEG-4 Parametric Audio Encoding with Reduced Complexity

Parametric modelling permits an efficient representation of audio signals and is utilised for very low bit rate coding by the MPEG-4 Standard. Here we look at the MPEG-4 parametric audio coding tools ”Harmonic and Individual Lines plus Noise” (HILN) which are based on a decomposition of the audio signal into components that are described by appropriate source models and represented by model parameters. Until now, HILN encoding mainly focused on maximum audio quality at the expense of high computational complexity. In this paper, different approaches to speed up HILN encoding are presented and the tradeoff between computational complexity and audio quality is analysed.
Cholinergic stimulation blocks endothelial cell activation and leukocyte recruitment during inflammation

Endothelial cell activation plays a critical role in regulating leukocyte recruitment during inflammation and infection. Based on recent studies showing that acetylcholine and other cholinergic mediators suppress the production of proinflammatory cytokines via the α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (α7 nAChR) expressed by macrophages and our observations that human microvascular endothelial cells express the α7 nAChR, we examined the effect of cholinergic stimulation on endothelial cell activation in vitro and in vivo. Using the Shwartzman reaction, we observed that nicotine (2 mg/kg) and the novel cholinergic agent CAP55 (12 mg/kg) inhibit endothelial cell adhesion molecule expression. Using endothelial cell cultures, we observed the direct inhibitory effects of acetylcholine and cholinergic agents on tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-induced endothelial cell activation. Mecamylamine, an nAChR antagonist, reversed the inhibition of endothelial cell activation by both cholinergic agonists, confirming the antiinflammatory role of the nAChR cholinergic pathway. In vitro mechanistic studies revealed that nicotine blocked TNF-induced nuclear factor–κB nuclear entry in an inhibitor κB (IκB)α- and IκBɛ-dependent manner. Finally, with the carrageenan air pouch model, both vagus nerve stimulation and cholinergic agonists significantly blocked leukocyte migration in vivo. These findings identify the endothelium, a key regulator of leukocyte trafficking during inflammation, as a target of anti-inflammatory cholinergic mediators.
Forecast evaluation of economic sentiment indicator for the Korean economy

Survey data measuring economic agents’ sentiment provide useful information to assess the current state of the economy and forecast short-term economic development. Besides the information itself that business and consumer surveys provide, the survey data have many advantages. They have an informational lead in that the data are available ahead of hard economic data like GDP and industrial production that are usually published with delays of 1 or 2 months. In addition, the survey data are generally available at monthly frequencies and hence suitable for reflecting volatile economic developments. Therefore, the survey data such as business survey index (BSI) and consumer survey index (CSI) are widely used as a key complement to quantitative statistics.
Impact of prenatal chlorpyrifos exposure on neurodevelopment in the first 3 years of life among inner-city children.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos on 3-year neurodevelopment and behavior in a sample of inner-city minority children. METHODS As part of an ongoing prospective cohort study in an inner-city minority population, neurotoxicant effects of prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos were evaluated in 254 children through the first 3 years of life. This report examined cognitive and motor development at 12, 24, and 36 months (measured with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development II) and child behavior at 36 months (measured with the Child Behavior Checklist) as a function of chlorpyrifos levels in umbilical cord plasma. RESULTS Highly exposed children (chlorpyrifos levels of >6.17 pg/g plasma) scored, on average, 6.5 points lower on the Bayley Psychomotor Development Index and 3.3 points lower on the Bayley Mental Development Index at 3 years of age compared with those with lower levels of exposure. Children exposed to higher, compared with lower, chlorpyrifos levels were also significantly more likely to experience Psychomotor Development Index and Mental Development Index delays, attention problems, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder problems, and pervasive developmental disorder problems at 3 years of age. CONCLUSIONS The adjusted mean 36-month Psychomotor Development Index and Mental Development Index scores of the highly and lower exposed groups differed by only 7.1 and 3.0 points, respectively, but the proportion of delayed children in the high-exposure group, compared with the low-exposure group, was 5 times greater for the Psychomotor Development Index and 2.4 times greater for the Mental Development Index, increasing the number of children possibly needing early intervention services.
Temporal Self-Regulation of Energy Demand

The increase in the deployment of smart meters has enabled collection of fine-grained energy consumption data at consumer premises. Analysis of this real-time energy consumption data bestows new opportunities for better demand-response (DR) programs. This paper offers a new perspective to study energy demand and helps in designing novel mechanisms for decentralized demand-side management. Specifically, a new concept of finding the demand states using energy consumption of consumers over time and feasible transitions therein is introduced. It is shown that the orchestration of temporal transitions between the demand states can meet broad range of smart grid objectives. An online demand regulation model is developed that captures the temporal dynamics of energy demand to identify target consumers for different DR programs. This methodology is empirically evaluated and validated using data from more than 4000 households, which were part of a real-world smart grid project. This paper is the first one to comprehensively analyze the temporal dynamics of demands.
Accelerating Distributed Updates with Asynchronous Ordered Writes in a Parallel File System

Ordered writes mechanism is an efficient and widely used way to guarantee the consistency of distributed updates in a parallel file system. To keep the write order, remote commit operations should not be sent out until the local updates are forced to be stable. However, this can block the execution of applications and significantly degrade the overall performance. Thus, the I/O and network latency of commit requests serve non-negligible cost for file updates, especially for large amount of small files. In this paper, we argue that the write order keeping can be handed over from the applications to file systems i.e. the order keeping can be removed from the critical I/O path of applications. We propose the Delayed Commit Protocol that the requests of committing sub-operations are submitted to the commit queue and in the meanwhile the execution flow can be returned back to applications immediately. To reduce the total I/O and network overhead, we use space delegation and adaptive RPC (Remote Procedure Call) compound techniques. Experiments show an up to 2.6x speedup while applying such protocol in a CDN (Content Delivery Network) benchmark. No performance degradation occurs for workloads with large files or conflicted operations.
Analog VLSI-based, neuromorphic sensorimotor systems: modeling the primate oculomotor system

Using neuromorphic analog VLSI techniques for modeling large neural systems has several advantages over software techniques. By designing massively-parallel analog circuit arrays which are ubiquitous in neural systems, analog VLSI models are extremely fast, particularly when local interactions are important in the computation. While analog VLSI circuits are not as flexible as software methods, the constraints posed by this approach are often very similar to the constraints faced by biological systems. As a result, these constraints can offer many insights into the solutions found by evolution. This dissertation describes a hardware modeling effort to mimic the primate oculomotor system which requires both fast sensory processing and fast motor control. A one-dimensional hardware model of the primate eye has been built which simulates the physical dynamics of the biological system. It is driven by analog VLSI circuits mimicking brainstem and cortical circuits that control eye movements. In this framework, a visually-triggered saccadic system is demonstrated which generates averaging saccades. In addition, an auditory localization system, based on the neural circuits of the barn owl, is used to trigger saccades to acoustic targets in parallel with visual targets. Two different types of learning are also demonstrated on the saccadic system using floating-gate technology allowing the non-volatile storage of analog parameters directly on the chip. Finally, a model of visual attention is used to select and track moving targets against textured backgrounds, driving both saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movements to maintain the image of the target in the center of the field of view. This system represents one of the few efforts in this field to integrate both neuromorphic sensory processing and motor control in a closed-loop fashion.
Tractable robust predictive control approaches for freeway networks

Robust control aims to maintain predefined performance specifications for a wide range of uncertainties. In this paper, we consider the robust control problem for freeway networks, including the uncertainties explicitly in the control design step. We use min-max scheme for handling the uncertainties occurring in freeway networks. In order to reduce the computational complexity of min-max scheme, we propose scenario-based min-max Model Predictive Control (MPC) and scenario-based Receding-Horizon Parametrized Control (RHPC) in this paper, which solve the complete robust problem approximately. In addition, a new objective function is proposed to ensure the satisfaction of queue length constraints. A case study is implemented to assess the effectiveness of the proposed approaches. The results show that nominal MPC and nominal RHPC may result in a better performance than scenario-based min-max MPC and scenario-based min-max RHPC. However, nominal MPC and nominal RHPC cannot ensure the satisfaction of the queue length constraint. By applying scenario-based min-max MPC and scenario-based min-max RHPC, the queue length constraint is satisfied conservatively at the cost of an increase in the performance index.
Bilateral Carotid Sinus Control of Ventricular Performance in the Dog

Left and right carotid sinus pressures were independently varied while the left ventricular systolic pressure was recorded in an anesthetized canine preparation with an isolated, isovolumetric left heart. Intrasinus pressures were changed in steps of 50 mm Hg to produce either an increase or decrease in pressure from a mean level of 150 mm Hg. The response to eight combinations of increases and decreases in left- and right-sided pressures was examined. Blockade of the sympathetic impulses to the heart produced a loss of response of left ventricular systolic pressure when the intrasinus pressure was decreased from 150 to 100 mm Hg. Parasympathetic blockade produced a loss of response to an increase in pressure from 150 to 200 mm Hg. Left ventricular systolic pressure was more sensitive to a decrease in pressure from 150 to 100 mm Hg in the right sinus than in the left, but there was no difference in sensitivity between left and right sides when intrasinus pressure was raised from 150 to 200 mm Hg. The summation pattern of the response to simultaneous steps in left and right pressure was mutually facilitative for steps from 150 to 100 mm Hg and mutually inhibitory for steps from 150 to 200 mm Hg. The entire system was simulated with a hybrid computer model consisting of separate functional relations used to represent the baroreceptors, central nervous system, and left ventricle. Due to the baroreceptor characteristics and other nonlinearities, the simulation results suggest that a careful distinction should be drawn between transient and steady-state responses when assessing the relative role of each autonomic division in any baroreceptor reflex.
Knowledge-based expert systems and a proof-of-concept case study for multiple sequence alignment construction and analysis

The traditional approach to bioinformatics analyses relies on independent task-specific services and applications, using different input and output formats, often idiosyncratic, and frequently not designed to inter-operate. In general, such analyses were performed by experts who manually verified the results obtained at each step in the process. Today, the amount of bioinformatics information continuously being produced means that handling the various applications used to study this information presents a major data management and analysis challenge to researchers. It is now impossible to manually analyse all this information and new approaches are needed that are capable of processing the large-scale heterogeneous data in order to extract the pertinent information. We review the recent use of integrated expert systems aimed at providing more efficient knowledge extraction for bioinformatics research. A general methodology for building knowledge-based expert systems is described, focusing on the unstructured information management architecture, UIMA, which provides facilities for both data and process management. A case study involving a multiple alignment expert system prototype called AlexSys is also presented.
A centralized global automation group in a decentralized organization

In the latter part of the 1990s, many companies have worked to foster a ‘matrix’ style culture through several changes in organizational structure. This type of culture facilitates communication and development of new technology across organizational and global boundaries. At Glaxo Wellcome, this matrix culture is reflected in an automation strategy that relies on both centralized and decentralized resources. The Group Development Operations Information Systems Robotics Team is a centralized resource providing development, support, integration, and training in laboratory automation across businesses in the Development organization. The matrix culture still presents challenges with respect to communication and managing the development of technology. A current challenge for our team is to go beyond our recognized role as a technology resource and actually to influence automation strategies across the global Development organization. We shall provide an overview of our role as a centralized resource, our team strategy, examples of current and past successes and failures, and future directions.
Gravity duals of fractional branes in various dimensions

We derive type II supergravity solutions corresponding to space-filling regular and fractional Dp branes on (9 − p)-dimensional conical transverse spaces. Fractional Dp-branes are wrapped D(p + 2)-branes; therefore, our solutions exist only if the base of the cone has a non-vanishing Betti number b2. We also consider 11-dimensional SUGRA solutions corresponding to regular and fractional M2 branes on 8-dimensional cones whose base has a non-vanishing b3. (In this case a fractional M2-brane is an M5-brane wrapped over a 3-cycle.) We discuss the gauge theory intepretation of these solutions, as well as of the solutions constructed by Cvetiyc et al. in hep-th/0011023 and hep-th/0012011.