Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Torus-Wrap Mapping for Dense Matrix Calculations on Massively Parallel Computers

Dense linear systems of equations are quite common in science and engineering, arising in boundary element methods, least squares problems, and other settings. Massively parallel computers will be necessary to solve the large systems required by scientists and engineers, and scalable parallel algorithms for the linear algebra applications must be devised for these machines. A critical step in these algorithms is the mapping of matrix elements to processors. In this paper, the use of the torus-wrap mapping in general dense matrix algorithms is studied from both theoretical and practical viewpoints. Under reasonable assumptions, it is proved that this assignment scheme leads to dense matrix algorithms that achieve (to within a constant factor) the lower bound on interprocessor communication. It is also shown that the torus-wrap mapping allows algorithms to exhibit less idle time, better load balancing, and less memory overhead than the more common row and column mappings. Finally, practical implementation i.
On the algebraicity of special $L$-values of Hermitian modular forms.

In this work we prove some results on the algebraicity of special L-values attached to Hermitian modular forms. Our work is based on techniques developed by Goro Shimura in his book “Arithmeticity in the Theory of Automorphic Forms”, and our results are in some cases complementary to results obtained previously by Michael Harris on the same question.
Face Aging Simulation Based on Image Warping

Facing aging is an attracting and challenging work in the area of computer vision and it has been widely used in many fields. In this paper, a novel method of simulating this complex aging process is proposed. We get the aging result through determining of feature points, triangulating and piece-wise affine warping. And importantly, we also improve the approach in two ways, making the result more realistic and natural. Our work and experiment demonstrate that the method used in face aging simulation is applicable.
Low awareness of intestinal schistosomiasis in northern Senegal after 7 years of health education as part of intense control and research activities

We evaluated the awareness of and knowledge about intestinal schistosomiasis in a highly infected rural community of northern Senegal where a variety of health information and education activities had taken place for 7 years as a component of different research and control programmes. As the infection had been introduced only recently, an initial ‘zero’ knowledge can be assumed. Most of the health education activities had been performed with adapted messages through local health and community workers. By a questionnaire, 566 individuals were asked simple questions on symptoms, mode of transmission, the sources of information and health‐seeking behaviour. About 86% of the respondents stated that they knew what schistosomiasis was, and 92% that in case of illness they would seek treatment at the health centre. However, only half of the people accurately quoted symptoms associated with intestinal schistosomiasis: diarrhoea, abdominal pain and bloody stools. The majority of respondents realized that the disease was somehow linked with water and (lack of) hygiene, but only 44% of respondents reported water contact as the source of infection. Ultimately, only 30% of the respondents gave adequate answers about both symptoms and mode of transmission. We conclude that even intense and long‐lasting education efforts for a specific and straightforward problem as schistosomiasis are not enough to have profound impact on the knowledge of rural traditional communities.
Minimizing heat loss in DC networks using batteries

Electricity transmission networks dissipate a non-negligible fraction of the power they transport due to the heat loss in the transmission lines. In this work we explore how the transport of energy can be more efficient by adding to the network multiple batteries that can coordinate their operations. Such batteries can both charge using the current excess in the network or discharge to meet the network current demand. Either way, the presence of batteries in the network can be leveraged to mitigate the intrinsic uncertainty in the power generation and demand and, hence, transport the energy more efficiently through the network. We consider a resistive DC network with stochastic external current injections or consumptions and show how the expected total heat loss depends on the network structure and on the batteries operations. Furthermore, in the case where the external currents are modeled by Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes, we derive the dynamical optimal control for the batteries over a finite time interval.
Cooperative register assignment and code compaction for digital signal processors with irregular datapaths

We address the phase ordering problem of code compaction and register assignment in a data flow graph compiler. During register assignment, we take into account the instruction-level parallelism available. Symbolic variables in straight-line code are allocated to register set/memory location pairs which maximally preserve the freedom available for code compaction. Whenever necessary, spill code is inserted during final register assignment and scheduled during code compaction. Register assignment is performed taking into account its impact on code compaction. This strategy results in final code of high quality.
DESIGN FOR DETERMINISTIC MONITORING OF DISTRIBUTED REAL-TIME SYSTEMS

In order to test, or debug, a system we must observe its run-time behavior and deem how well the observations comply with the system requirements. There are two significant differences between debugging and testing of software for desktop computers and embedded real-time systems: (1) It is more difficult to observe embedded computer systems, simply because they are embedded, and that they thus have very few interfaces to the outside world, and (2) the actual act of observing a real-time systems or distributed real-time system can change their behavior. Monitoring of sequential software is straightforward, but for distributed real-time systems it is more complicated, since race conditions with respect to order of access to shared resources occur naturally. Any intrusive observation, or probing, of the distributed real-time system affects the timing and consequently the outcome of the races. In this paper we present a method for deterministic observations of single tasking, multi-tasking, and distributed real-time systems. This includes a description of what to observe, how to eliminate the disturbances caused by the actual act of observing, how to correlate observations, and how to reproduce them.
Peripheral vascular applications of the Amplatzer vascular plug.

PURPOSE To present our experience using the Amplatzer vascular plug in various arterial and venous systems, and follow-up results. MATERIALS AND METHODS Between May 2005 and October 2006, 20 Amplatzer vascular plugs were used to achieve occlusion in 20 vessels in 12 patients (10 male, 2 female) aged between 24 and 80 years (mean age, 55 years). Localization and indications for embolotherapy were as follows: pulmonary arteriovenous malformations (n = 3; 9 vessels), internal iliac artery embolization before stent-graft repair for aortoiliac aneurysms (n = 4; 4 vessels), preoperative (right hemipelvectomy) embolization of bilateral internal iliac arteries (n = 1), bilateral internal iliac aneurysms (n = 1), large thoracic side branch of the left internal mammary artery coronary by-pass graft causing coronary steal syndrome (n = 1), closure of a transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (n = 1), and testicular vein embolization for a varicocele (n = 1). RESULTS The technical success rate was 100%, with total occlusion of all the targeted vessels. Only one device was used to achieve total occlusion of the targeted vessel in all patients (device size range, 6-16 mm in diameter). No major complications occurred. Target vessel occlusion time after deployment of the Amplatzer vascular plug was 6-10 min in pulmonary arteries (mean, 7.5 min) and 10-35 min (mean, 24.4 min) in systemic arteries. Mean follow-up was 6.7 months (range, 1-18 months). CONCLUSION Embolization with the Amplatzer vascular plug is safe, feasible, and technically simple with appropriate patient selection in various vascular territories.
Polypeptide GalNAc-transferases, ST6GalNAc-transferase I, and ST3Gal-transferase I Expression in Gastric Carcinoma Cell Lines

Mucin O-glycosylation in cancer is characterized by aberrant expression of immature carbohydrate structures leading to exposure of simple mucin-type carbohydrate antigens and peptide epitopes. Glycosyltransferases controlling the initial steps of mucin O-glycosylation are responsible for the altered glycosylation observed in cancer. We studied the expression in gastric cell lines of six UDP-GalNAc:polypeptide N-acetylgalactosaminyltransferases (GalNAc-T1, T2, T3, T4, T6, T11) that catalyze the initial key step in the regulation of mucin O-glycosylation, the transfer of GalNAc from UDP-GalNAc to serine and threonine residues. We also studied the expression of ST6GalNAc-I, the enzyme responsible for the synthesis of Sialyl-Tn antigen (NeuAcα2,6GalNAc) and the ST3Gal-I, the enzyme responsible for the synthesis of Sialyl-T antigen (NeuAcα2,3Galβ1,3GalNAc). This study was done using specific monoclonal antibodies, enzymatic assays, and RT-PCR. Our results showed that GalNAc-T1, -T2, and -T3 have an ubiquitous expression in all gastric cell lines, whereas GalNAc-T4, -T6, and -T11 show a restricted expression pattern. The immunoreactivity with MAb VU-2-G7 suggests that, apart from GalNAc-T4, another GalNAc transferase is involved in the glycosylation of the Thr in the PDTR region of the MUC1 tandem repeat. The expression of ST3Gal-I correlates with the expression of the Sialyl-T antigen in gastric cell lines and in the control cell lines studied. The expression of ST6GalNAc-I is low in gastric cell lines, in accordance with the low/absent expression of the Sialyl-Tn antigen.
Path Extension Analysis of Peer-to-Peer Communications in Small 6LoWPAN/RPL Sensor Networks

Researchers and manufacturers are currently putting a lot of efforts to design, improve and deploy the Internet of Things, involving a significant number of constrained and low cost embedded devices deployed in large scales with low power consumption, low bandwidth and limited communication range. For instance we can easily build a network composed by multiple sensors distributed in a building in order to monitor temperature in different offices. This kind of architecture is generally centralized as all sensors are mainly programmed to periodically transmit their data to the sink. The specific IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-power and Lossy Networks (RPL) had been designed in order to enable such communications. Support for point-to-point traffic is also available. In fact new applications may also consider peer-to-peer communications between any nodes of the network. In that case, RPL is not optimal as data packets are forwarded in respect with longer paths with larger metrics. In this paper we propose to study the effectiveness of RPL compared to a shortest path algorithm such like the Dijkstra's algorithm. We suggest to analyze peer-to-peer communications inside random wireless sensor network topologies with size limited to 250 nodes, corresponding to a reasonable cluster size. We have built a particular simulation environment named Network Analysis and Routing eVALuation (NARVAL). This toolbox permits to generate random topologies in order to study the impact of routing algorithms on the effectiveness of communication protocols. In our work, we first generated many random network topologies where we selected a sink node. We built the Destination Oriented Directed Acyclic Graph (DODAG) from the chosen sink in respect with the RPL algorithm. We finally performed all paths between each couple of two distinct sensor nodes and compared them to the corresponding shortest paths obtained by the Dijkstra's algorithm. This approach permits to retrieve some statistics on the path extension between RPL and the Dijkstra's algorithm. We also analyzed the impact of the sink position and the network size on this path extension.
Staffing Call Centers with Uncertain Arrival Rates and Co‐sourcing

In a call center, staffing decisions must be made before the call arrival rate is known with certainty. Once the arrival rate becomes known, the call center may be over‐staffed, in which case staff are being paid to be idle, or under‐staffed, in which case many callers hang‐up in the face of long wait times. Firms that have chosen to keep their call center operations in‐house can mitigate this problem by co‐sourcing; that is, by sometimes outsourcing calls. Then, the required staffing N depends on how the firm chooses which calls to outsource in real time, after the arrival rate realizes and the call center operates as a M/M/N + M queue with an outsourcing option. Our objective is to find a joint policy for staffing and call outsourcing that minimizes the long‐run average cost of this two‐stage stochastic program when there is a linear staffing cost per unit time and linear costs associated with abandonments and outsourcing. We propose a policy that uses a square‐root safety staffing rule, and outsources calls in accordance with a threshold rule that characterizes when the system is “too crowded. ” Analytically, we establish that our proposed policy is asymptotically optimal, as the mean arrival rate becomes large, when the level of uncertainty in the arrival rate is of the same order as the inherent system fluctuations in the number of waiting customers for a known arrival rate. Through an extensive numerical study, we establish that our policy is extremely robust. In particular, our policy performs remarkably well over a wide range of parameters, and far beyond where it is proved to be asymptotically optimal.
Surgical Resection of Ruptured Fibrolamellar Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma (FLH) is a rare primary tumor of the liver, which typically arises from noncirrhotic livers and affects patients below the age of 35. We report on a 29-year-old male patient who presented with a ruptured FLH and was treated with surgical resection. Options for treatment and review of the management are described.
Thermal icons: evaluating structured thermal feedback for mobile interaction

This paper expands the repertoire of non-visual feedback for mobile interaction, established through Earcons and Tactons, by designing structured thermal cues for conveying information. Research into the use of thermal feedback for HCI has not looked beyond basic 'yes-no' detection of stimuli to the unique identification of those stimuli. We first designed thermal icons that varied along two parameters to convey two pieces of information. We also designed intramodal tactile icons, combining one thermal and one vibrotactile parameter, to test perception of different tactile cues and so evaluate the possibility of augmenting vibrotactile displays with thermal feedback. Thermal icons were identified with 82.8% accuracy, while intramodal icons had 96.9% accuracy, suggesting thermal icons are a viable means of conveying information in mobile HCI, for when audio and/or vibrotactile feedback is not suitable or desired.
Tools for Data Translation and Integration

A broad spectrum of data is available on the Web in distinct heterogeneous sources, stored under different formats. As the number of systems that utilize this data grows, the importance of data conversion mechanisms increases greatly. We present here an overview of a French-Israeli research project aimed at developing tools to simplify the intricate task of data translation. The solution is based on a middleware data model to which various data sources are mapped, and a declarative language for specifying translations within the middleware model. A complementary schema-based mechanism is used to automate some of the translation. Some particular aspects of the solution are detailed in [3, 7, 10].
Leveraging Task-Parallelism with OmpSs in ILUPACK's Preconditioned CG Method

In this paper we describe how to efficiently exploit task parallelism for the solution of sparse linear systems on multithreaded processors via ILUPACK's multi-level preconditioned CG method. Using a pair of data structures, we capture the task dependencies that appear in the two most challenging operations in the method (calculation of the preconditioned and its application), passing this information to the OmpSs runtime which can then implement a correct and efficient schedule of the entire solver. Our results with high-end multicore platforms equipped with Intel and AMD processors report significant performance gains, demonstrating that OmpSs provides an efficient and close-to seamless means to leverage the concurrency in a complex scientific code like ILUPACK.
A Two-Level Hidden Markov Model-based Approach for Human Activity Recognition

A novel approach is proposed in this work for human activity recognition from depth video sensor data using features of human body and two-level Hidden M arkov Models. From depth video, different body part s of human activities are segmented first by means of ra ndom forests. Then, robust features are obtained us ing labeled body parts and body joint information which includes motion information as well. Traditionally , a dictionary of all trained HMMs for all the activiti es are built and the features are applied on the HM Ms to generate the maximum likelihood to obtain the prope activity which is time consuming if the activitie s are many. Hence, two-level activity recognition is prop osed in this work. Initially, all activities are di stributed in some groups. In first level, activity group is dete rmined by means of applying the features on activit y class HMMs. Finally, the features are applied again on th e trained activity HMMs of the group obtained from first level classification. The proposed approach shows b etter performance than traditional approaches.
Platelet Activation by Low Concentrations of Intact Oxidized LDL Particles Involves the PAF Receptor

Objective—Mitochondrial depolarization aids platelet activation. Oxidized LDL (oxLDL) contains the medium length oxidatively truncated phospholipid hexadecyl azelaoyl-lysoPAF (HAz-LPAF) that disrupts mitochondrial function in nucleated cells, so oxLDL may augment platelet activation. Methods and Results—Flow cytometry showed intact oxLDL particles synergized with subthreshold amounts of soluble agonists to increase intracellular Ca2+, and initiate platelet aggregation and surface expression of activated gpIIb/IIIa and P-selectin. oxLDL also induced aggregation and increased intracellular Ca2+ in FURA2-labeled cells by itself at low, although not higher, concentrations. HAz-LPAF, alone and in combination with substimulatory amounts of thrombin, rapidly increased cytoplasmic Ca2+ and initiated aggregation. HAz-LPAF depolarized mitochondria in intact platelets, but this required concentrations beyond those that directly activated platelets. An unexpectedly large series of chemically pure truncated phospholipids generated by oxidative fragmentation of arachidonoyl-, docosahexaneoyl-, or linoleoyl alkyl phospholipids were platelet agonists. The PAF receptor, thought to effectively recognize only phospholipids with very short sn-2 residues, was essential for platelet activation because PAF receptor agonists blocked signaling by all these medium length phospholipids and oxLDL. Conclusions—Intact oxLDL particles activate platelets through the PAF receptor, and the PAF receptor responds to a far wider range of oxidized phospholipids in oxLDL than anticipated.
Bioinformatics Strategies in Life Sciences: From Data Processing and Data Warehousing to Biological Knowledge Extraction

Summary With the large variety of Proteomics workflows, as well as the large variety of instruments and data-analysis software available, researchers today face major challenges validating and comparing their Proteomics data. Here we present a new generation of the ProteinScapeTM bioinformatics platform, now enabling researchers to manage Proteomics data from the generation and data warehousing to a central data repository with a strong focus on the improved accuracy, reproducibility and comparability demanded by many researchers in the field. It addresses scientists` current needs in proteomics identification, quantification and validation. But producing large protein lists is not the end point in Proteomics, where one ultimately aims to answer specific questions about the biological condition or disease model of the analyzed sample. In this context, a new tool has been developed at the Spanish Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia Proteomics Facility termed PIKE (Protein information and Knowledge Extractor) that allows researchers to control, filter and access specific information from genomics and proteomic databases, to understand the role and relationships of the proteins identified in the experiments. Additionally, an EU funded project, ProDac, has coordinated systematic data collection in public standards-compliant repositories like PRIDE. This will cover all aspects from generating MS data in the laboratory, assembling the whole annotation information and storing it together with identifications in a standardised format.
N ° 2010-41 Choosing choices : Agenda selection with uncertain issues

This paper studies selection rules i.e. the procedures committees use to choose whether to place an issue on their agenda. The main ingredient of the model is that committee members are uncertain about their final preferences at the selection stage: they only know the probability that they will eventually prefer the proposal to the status quo at the decision stage. This probability is private information. We find that a more stringent selection rule makes the voters more conservative. Hence individual behavior reinforces the effect of the rule instead of balancing it. For a voter, conditional on being pivotal, the probability that the proposal is adopted depends on which option she eventually favors. The probability that the proposal is adopted if she eventually prefers the proposal increases at a higher rate with the selection rule than if she eventually prefers the status quo. In order to compensate for that, the voters become more selective. The decision rule has the opposite effect. We describe optimal rules when there is a fixed cost of organizing the final election.
Modelling and Visualizing the Cahn-Hilliard-Cook Equation

The Cahn-Hilliard-Cook equation continues to be a useful model describing binary phase separation in systems such as alloys and other physical and chemical applications. We describe our investigation of this field equation and report on the various discretisation schemes we used to integrate the system in one-, twoand three-dimensions. We also discuss how the equation can be visualised effectively in these different dimensions and consider how these techniques can usefully be applied to other partial differential equations.