Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Applying Architectural Templates for Design-Time Scalability and Elasticity Analyses of SaaS Applications

Software architects plan, model, and analyze architectures of large software like Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. The scalability and elasticity of these applications is crucially impacted by architects' early decision for an architectural style. However, whether this decision fostered scalability and elasticity can currently only be tested with the final application deployed in the target cloud computing environment. This process leads to the high risk of unsatisfying scalability/elasticity and expensive re-implementations. To tackle this problem, we propose scalability/elasticity analyses using the architectural template (AT) language, a constraint language to specify templates (based on architectural styles) of component models for early quality analyses. This work-in-progress paper provides a first formalization of the AT language and investigates its applicability to analyze the scalability and elasticity of SaaS applications at early design-time by using a 3-tier example scenario. Our results indicate the language is applicable to such 3-tier scenarios.
Resumptions, Weak Bisimilarity and Big-Step Semantics for While with Interactive I/O: An Exercise in Mixed Induction-Coinduction

We look at the operational semantics of languages with interactive I/O through the glasses of constructive type theory. Following on from our earlier work on coinductive trace-based semantics for While [17], we define several big-step semantics for Whil e with interactive I/O, based on resumptions and termination-sensitive weak bisimilarity. These require nesting inductive definitions in coinductive definitions, which is interesting both mathe matically and from the point-of-view of implementation in a proof assistant. After first defining a basic semantics of statements in terms o f resumptions with explicit internal actions (delays), we introduce a semantics in terms of delay-free resumptions that essentially removes finite sequences of delays on the fly from those resumptions th at are responsive. Finally, we also look at a semantics in terms of delay-free resumptions supplemented with a silent divergence option. This semantics hinges on decisions between convergence and divergence and is only equivalent to the basic one classically. We have fully formalized our development in Coq.
Effects of audio and ASR quality on cepstral and high-level speaker verification systems

Speech data for NIST speaker recognition evaluations has traditionally been distributed in compressed, telephone quality form, even for microphone data that was originally recorded at higher quality. We evaluate the effect that improved audio quality has for speaker verification performance, using a recently released full-bandwidth version of microphone data from the SRE2010 evaluation. Remarkably, we find substantially improved results even though the underlying speaker recognition models remain based on a telephone-band feature front end. For a cepstral GMM system we show improvements purely from the elimination of lossy (μlaw) coding and more effective noise reduction filtering at the full bandwidth. We also find that higher-level speaker recognition systems can benefit from better ASR quality enabled by the improved audio quality. Specifically, we show that a speech recognizer trained on full-bandwidth, distant-microphone meeting speech data yields reduced speaker verification error for speaker models based on MLLR features and word-N-gram features.
Modulation of cortical-limbic pathways in major depression: treatment-specific effects of cognitive behavior therapy.

BACKGROUND Functional imaging studies of major depressive disorder demonstrate response-specific regional changes following various modes of antidepressant treatment. OBJECTIVE To examine changes associated with cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). METHODS Brain changes underlying response to CBT were examined using resting-state fluorine-18-labeled deoxyglucose positron emission tomography. Seventeen unmedicated, unipolar depressed outpatients (mean +/- SD age, 41 +/- 9 years; mean +/- SD initial 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale score, 20 +/- 3) were scanned before and after a 15- to 20-session course of outpatient CBT. Whole-brain, voxel-based methods were used to assess response-specific CBT effects. A post hoc comparison to an independent group of 13 paroxetine-treated responders was also performed to interpret the specificity of identified CBT effects. RESULTS A full course of CBT resulted in significant clinical improvement in the 14 study completers (mean +/- SD posttreatment Hamilton Depression Rating Scale score of 6.7 +/- 4). Treatment response was associated with significant metabolic changes: increases in hippocampus and dorsal cingulate (Brodmann area [BA] 24) and decreases in dorsal (BA 9/46), ventral (BA 47/11), and medial (BA 9/10/11) frontal cortex. This pattern is distinct from that seen with paroxetine-facilitated clinical recovery where prefrontal increases and hippocampal and subgenual cingulate decreases were seen. CONCLUSIONS Like other antidepressant treatments, CBT seems to affect clinical recovery by modulating the functioning of specific sites in limbic and cortical regions. Unique directional changes in frontal cortex, cingulate, and hippocampus with CBT relative to paroxetine may reflect modality-specific effects with implications for understanding mechanisms underlying different treatment strategies.
Modeling irrigated agricultural production and water use decisions under water supply uncertainty

Farmers make joint water and land use decisions for economic purposes based in part on water availability and reliability. A two‐stage economic production model is developed to examine the effects of hydrologic uncertainty and water prices on agricultural production, cropping patterns, and water and irrigation technology use. The model maximizes net expected farm profit from permanent and annual crop production with probabilistic water availability and a variety of irrigation technologies. Results demonstrate effects of water availability, price, and reliability on economic performance, annual and long‐run cropping patterns, and irrigation technology decisions. Variations in water price and availability affect the desirability of different irrigation technologies. Increased water supply reliability can raise the probability of higher economic returns and promote more effective use of water for permanent crops. Such economic benefits can be compared to costs of operational changes and programs to increase water supply reliability for agricultural areas.
Status and Future Prospects forγ-ray Polarimetry

The recent detection of linear polarization from GRB120206 has piqued the interest of the community in this relatively unexplored avenue of research. Here, we review the current status and prospects for GRB polarimetry at hard X-ray and soft γ -ray energies. After reviewing the most recent results, we present a brief survey of current and planned experiments that are capable of making GRB polarization measurements in the energy range between 30 keV and 30 MeV.
Lipoprotein-Associated Phospholipase A2 Predicts Future Cardiovascular Events in Patients With Coronary Heart Disease Independently of Traditional Risk Factors, Markers of Inflammation, Renal Function, and Hemodynamic Stress

Objectives—We sought to evaluate whether lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2), an emerging marker of cardiovascular risk, is associated with prognosis in patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). Methods and Results—Plasma concentrations and activity of Lp-PLA2 were determined in 1051 patients aged 30 to 70 years with CHD who were followed for ≈4 years. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to determine the prognostic value of Lp-PLA2 after adjustment for various covariates, including markers of inflammation, renal function, and hemodynamic stress. In multivariable analyses, Lp-PLA2 mass and activity were strongly associated with cardiovascular events after controlling for traditional risk factors, severity of CHD, statin treatment, cystatin C, and N-terminal proBNP. The hazard ratio (HR) for recurrent events was 2.65 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.47 to 4.76) for the top tertile of Lp-PLA2 mass compared with the bottom tertile and 2.40 (95% CI, 1.35 to 4.29) for Lp-PLA2 activity. After additional adjustment for low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the HRs were only moderately attenuated (mass: 2.09; 95% CI, 1.10 to 3.96; activity: 1.81; 95% CI, 0.94 to 3.49, respectively), but the latter was no longer statistically significant. Conclusions—Increased concentrations of Lp-PLA2 predict future cardiovascular events in patients with manifest CHD independent of a variety of potential risk factors including markers of inflammation, renal function, and hemodynamic stress.
Load flow solution using hybrid particle swarm optimization

Load flow (LF) is an important tool in the planning and operation of power systems. It is usually solved using conventional numerical techniques like Newton-Raphson (NR) or GaussSeidel (GS) methods. This paper presents an application of particle swarm optimization (PSO) in solving the load flow problem as an optimization problem. Examples on test systems are given to demonstrate the validity and applicability of the proposed method.
Improving parallel job scheduling by combining gang scheduling and backfilling techniques

Two different approaches have been commonly used to address problems associated with space sharing scheduling strategies: (a) augmenting space sharing with backfilling, which performs out of order job scheduling; and (b) augmenting space sharing with time sharing, using a technique called coscheduling or gang scheduling. With three important experimental results-impact of priority queue order on backfilling, impact of overestimation of job execution times, and comparison of scheduling techniques-this paper presents an integrated strategy that combines backfilling with gang scheduling. Using extensive simulations based on detailed models of realistic workloads, the benefits of combining backfilling and gang scheduling are clearly demonstrated over a spectrum of performance criteria.
A computational analysis of the antigenic properties of haemagglutinin in influenza A H3N2

MOTIVATION Modelling antigenic shift in influenza A H3N2 can help to predict the efficiency of vaccines. The virus is known to exhibit sudden jumps in antigenic distance, and prediction of such novel strains from amino acid sequence differences remains a challenge. RESULTS From analysis of 6624 amino acid sequences of wild-type H3, we propose updates to the frequently referenced list of 131 amino acids located at or near the five identified antibody binding regions in haemagglutinin (HA). We introduce a class of predictive models based on the analysis of amino acid changes in these binding regions, and extend the principle to changes in HA1 as a whole by dividing the molecule into regional bands. Our results show that a range of simple models based on banded changes give better predictive performance than models based on the established five canonical regions and can identify a higher proportion of vaccine escape candidates among novel strains than a current state-of-the-art model.
Protective effect of histamine microinjected into the cerebellar fastigial nucleus on stress-induced gastric mucosal damage in rats.

AIMS We investigated the effffects and the possible mechanism of microinjection of histamine into cerebellar fastigial nucleus (FN) on stress-induced gastric mucosal damage (SGMD) in rats. The effect of microinjection of histamine into FN on SGMD was observed. METHODS The model of SGMD was established by restraint and water (21 ± 1°C)-immersion (RWI) for 3 h in rats. The gastric mucosal damage index indicated the severity of SGMD. Western blotting was performed to assess gastric mucosal cell apoptosis and proliferation. RESULTS We observed that histamine microinjection into the FN markedly attenuated SGMD in a dose-dependent manner, and was prevented by pre-treatment with the ranitidine (a selective histamine H2 receptor antagonist) into the FN. The effect of histamine was abolished by pre-treatment with 3-MPA (a glutamic acid decarboxylase antagonist) into the FN. There was a decrease in the discharge frequency of greater splanchnic nerve, and an increase in gastric mucosal blood flow after histamine injection into the FN. Additionally, anti-apoptotic and anti-oxidative factors of gastric mucosa might be involved in this process. CONCLUSION The exogenous histamine in FN participates in the regulation of SGMD, and our results may help to provide new ideas on the treatment of gastroenterological diseases.
Physical modeling of heterogeneous embedded deformable object deformation

Simulation of the interactions with deformable models is important in many applications such as medical training and tissue engineering. To physically model the 3D object, both the inner and outer segments need to be considered. This implies dealing with different materials and hence different deformation behavior. Thus, a physically-based simulation needs to augment the behavior of embedded materials when the materials are in direct physical contact, and produce a plausible net result in both visual and haptic cues.
Machine Learning Methods and Asymmetric Cost Function to Estimate Execution Effort of Software Testing

Planning and scheduling of testing activities play an important role for any independent test team that performs tests for different software systems, developed by different development teams. This work studies the application of machine learning tools and variable selection tools to solve the problem of estimating the execution effort of functional tests. An analysis of the test execution process is developed and experiments are performed on two real databases. The main contributions of this paper are the approach of selecting the significant variables for database synthesis and the use of an artificial neural network trained with an asymmetric cost function.
On the Choice of Access Point Selection Criterion and Other Position Estimation Characteristics for WLAN-Based Indoor Positioning

The positioning based on Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) is one of the most promising technologies for indoor location-based services, generally using the information carried by Received Signal Strengths (RSS). One challenge, however, is the huge amount of data in the radiomap database due to the enormous number of hearable Access Points (AP) that could make the positioning system very complex. This paper concentrates on WLAN-based indoor location by comparing fingerprinting, path loss and weighted centroid based positioning approaches in terms of complexity and performance and studying the effects of grid size and AP reduction with several choices for appropriate selection criterion. All results are based on real field measurements in three multi-floor buildings. We validate our earlier findings concerning several different AP selection criteria and conclude that the best results are obtained with a maximum RSS-based criterion, which also proved to be the most consistent among the different investigated approaches. We show that the weighted centroid based low-complexity method is very sensitive to AP reduction, while the path loss-based method is also very robust to high percentage removals. Indeed, for fingerprinting, 50% of the APs can be removed safely with a properly chosen removal criterion without increasing the positioning error much.
Neuropathic pain and cytokines: current perspectives

Neuropathic pain represents a major problem in clinical medicine because it causes debilitating suffering and is largely resistant to currently available analgesics. A characteristic of neuropathic pain is abnormal response to somatic sensory stimulation. Thus, patients suffering peripheral neuropathies may experience pain caused by stimuli which are normally nonpainful, such as simple touching of the skin or by changes in temperature, as well as exaggerated responses to noxious stimuli. Convincing evidence suggests that this hypersensitivity is the result of pain remaining centralized. In particular, at the first pain synapse in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord, the gain of neurons is increased and neurons begin to be activated by innocuous inputs. In recent years, it has become appreciated that a remote damage in the peripheral nervous system results in neuronal plasticity and changes in microglial and astrocyte activity, as well as infiltration of macrophages and T cells, which all contribute to central sensitization. Specifically, the release of pronociceptive factors such as cytokines and chemokines from neurons and non-neuronal cells can sensitize neurons of the first pain synapse. In this article we review the current evidence for the role of cytokines in mediating spinal neuron–non-neuronal cell communication in neuropathic pain mechanisms following peripheral nerve injury. Specific and selective control of cytokine-mediated neuronal–glia interactions results in attenuation of the hypersensitivity to both noxious and innocuous stimuli observed in neuropathic pain models, and may represent an avenue for future therapeutic intervention.
Risk Factors for Perioperative Death and Stroke After Carotid Endarterectomy: Results of the New York Carotid Artery Surgery Study

Background and Purpose— The benefit of carotid endarterectomy is heavily influenced by the risk of perioperative death or stroke. This study developed a multivariable model predicting the risk of death or stroke within 30 days of carotid endarterectomy. Methods— The New York Carotid Artery Surgery (NYCAS) Study is a population-based cohort of 9308 carotid endarterectomies performed on Medicare patients from January 1998 through June 1999 in New York State. Detailed clinical data were abstracted from medical charts to assess sociodemographic, neurological, and comorbidity risk factors. Deaths and strokes within 30 days of surgery were confirmed by physician overreading. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify independent patient risk factors. Results— The 30-day rate of death or stroke was 2.71% among asymptomatic patients with no history of stroke/transient ischemic attack (TIA), 4.06% among asymptomatic ones with a distant history of stroke/TIA, 5.62% among those operated on for carotid TIA, 7.89% of those with stroke, and 13.33% in those with crescendo TIA/stroke-in-evolution. Significant multivariable predictors of death or stroke included: age ≥80 years (OR, 1.30; 95% CI, 1.03 to 1.64), nonwhite (OR, 1.83; 1.23 to 2.72), admission from the emergency department (OR, 1.95; 1.50 to 2.54), asymptomatic but distant history of stroke/TIA (OR, 1.40; 1.02 to 1.94), TIA as an indication for surgery (OR, 1.81; 1.39 to 2.36), stroke as the indication (OR, 2.40; 1.74 to 3.31), crescendo TIA/stroke-in-evolution (OR, 3.61; 1.15 to 11.28), contralateral carotid stenosis ≥50% (OR, 1.44; 1.15 to 1.79), severe disability (OR, 2.94; 1.91 to 4.50), coronary artery disease (OR, 1.51; 1.20 to 1.91), and diabetes on insulin (OR, 1.55; 1.10 to 2.18). Presence of a deep carotid ulcer was of borderline significance (OR, 2.08; 0.93 to 4.68). Conclusions— Several sociodemographic, neurological, and comorbidity risk factors predicted perioperative death or stroke after carotid endarterectomy. This information may help inform decisions about appropriate patient selection, assessments about the impact of different surgical processes of care on outcomes, and facilitate comparisons of risk-adjusted outcomes among providers.
Building Cost-Benefit Models of Information Interactions

Modeling how people interact with search interfaces has been of particular interest and importance to the field of Interactive Information Retrieval. Recently, there has been a move to developing formal models of the interaction between the user and the system, whether it be to: (i) run a simulation, (ii) conduct an economic analysis, (iii) measure system performance, or (iv) simply to better understand user interactions and hypothesise about user behaviours. In such models, they consider the costs and the benefits that arise through the interaction with the interface/system and the information surfaced during the course of interaction. In this half day tutorial, we will focus on describing a series of cost-benefit models that have been proposed in the literature and how they have been applied in various scenarios. The tutorial will be structured into two parts. First, we will provide an overview of Decision Theory and Cost-Benefit Analysis techniques, and how they can and have be applied to a variety of Interactive Information Retrieval scenarios. For example, when do facets helps? , under what conditions are query suggestions useful? and is it better to bookmark or re-find? The second part of the tutorial will be dedicated to building cost-benefit models where we will discuss different techniques to build and develop such models. In the practical session, we will also discuss how costs and benefits can be estimated, and how the models can help inform and guide experimentation. During the tutorial participants will be challenged to build cost models for a number of problems (or even bring their own problems to solve).
On the Evolution and Optimality of Mood States

Moods can be regarded as fluctuating dispositions to make positive and negative evaluations. Developing an evolutionary approach to mood as an adaptive process, we consider the structure and function of such states in guiding behavioural decisions regarding the acquisition of resources and the avoidance of harm in different circumstances. We use a drift diffusion model of decision making to consider the information required by individuals to optimise decisions between two alternatives, such as whether to approach or withdraw from a stimulus that may be life enhancing or life threatening. We show that two dimensions of variation (expectation and preparedness) are sufficient for such optimal decisions to be made. These two dispositional dimensions enable individuals to maximize the overall benefits of behavioural decisions by modulating both the choice made (e.g., approach/withdraw) and decision speed. Such a structure is compatible with circumplex models of subjectively experienced mood and core affect, and provides testable hypotheses concerning the relationships that occur between valence and arousal components of mood in differing ecological niches. The paper is therefore a useful step toward being able to predict moods (and the effect of moods) using an optimality approach.
Image Segmentation Using Wavelet-domain Classiication

We introduce a new image texture segmentation algorithm, HMTseg, based on wavelet-domain hidden Markov tree (HMT) models. The HMT model is a tree-structured probabilistic graph that captures the statistical properties of wavelet coeecients. Since the HMT is particularly well suited to images containing singularities (edges and ridges), it provides provides a good classiier for textures. Utilizing the inherent tree structure of the wavelet HMT and its fast training and likelihood computation algorithms, we perform multiscale texture classiication at various scales. We then fuse these multiscale classiications using a Bayesian probabilistic graph to obtain a reliable nal segmentation. Since HMTseg works on the wavelet transform of the image, it can directly segment wavelet-compressed images, without the need for decompression. We demonstrate the performance of HMTseg with synthetic, aerial photo, and document image segmentations.