Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aegis: Partitioning data block for efficient recovery of stuck-at-faults in phase change memory

While Phase Change Memory (PCM) holds a great promise as a complement or even replacement of DRAM-based memory and flash-based storage, it must effectively overcome its limit on write endurance to be a reliable device for an extended period of intensive use. The limited write endurance can lead to permanent stuck-at faults after a certain number of writes, which causes some memory cells permanently stuck at either ‘0’ or ‘1’. State-of-the-art solutions apply a bit inversion technique on selected bit groups of a data block after its partitioning. The effectiveness of this approach hinges on how a data block is partitioned into bit groups. While all existing solutions can separate faults into different groups for error correction, they are inadequate on three fundamental capabilities desired for any partition scheme. First, it can maximize probability of successfully re-partitioning a block so that two faults currently in the same group are placed into two new groups. Second, it can partition a block into a small number of groups for space efficiency. Third, it should spread out faults across the groups as uniformly as possible, so that more faults can be accommodated within the same number of groups. A recovery solution with these capabilities can provide strong fault tolerance with minimal overhead. We propose Aegis, a recovery solution with a systematical partition scheme using fewer groups to accommodate more faults compared with state-of-the-art schemes. The uniqueness of Aegis's partition scheme lies on its guarantee that any two bits in the same group will not be in the same group after a re-partition. Empowered by the partition scheme, Aegis can recover significantly more faults with reduced space overhead relative to state-of-the-art solutions.
Mothers' perceptions concerning oral health of children and adolescents with Down syndrome: a qualitative approach.

AIM The aim of this qualitative study was to investigate the perceptions of a group of mothers of children and adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) concerning the overall health and oral health of their children. METHODS The information was collected interviewing in depth 19 mothers using an open-ended orientation form. To investigate the perceptions of the mothers was carried out a thematic content analysis. Two general themes were addressed: mothers' perceptions concerning the health of the child with DS and mothers' opinion on the impact of oral health on the life of the child with DS. RESULTS According to the interviews, for the mothers, overall health and oral health entail specificities associated mainly with the absence of illness, the performance of daily activities, and feelings of well-being. Mothers tended to hold themselves accountable for their children's health status. Within the situations these women experience, many of the interviewees reported difficulties in caring for their children's oral health. CONCLUSION Factors linked to financial constraints, time, and access to healthcare referral services hamper the search for specialised dental care for individuals with special needs.
Transfer of chloroplast genomic DNA to mitochondrial genome occurred at least 300 MYA.

With the completion of the first gymnosperm mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) from Cycas taitungensis and the availability of more mtDNA taxa in the past 5 years, we have conducted a systematic analysis of DNA transfer from chloroplast genomes (cpDNAs) to mtDNAs (mtpts) in 11 plants, including 2 algae, 1 liverwort, 1 moss, 1 gymnosperm, 3 monocots, and 3 eudicots. By using shared gene order and boundaries between different mtpts as the criterion, the timing of cpDNA transfer during plant evolution was estimated from the phylogenetic tree reconstructed independently from concatenated protein-coding genes of 11 available mtDNAs. Several interesting findings emerged. First, frequent DNA transfer from cpDNA to mtDNA occurred at least as far back as the common ancestor of extant gymnosperms and angiosperms, about 300 MYA. The oldest mtpt is trnV(uac)-trnM(cau)-atpE-atpB-rbcL. Three other mtpts--psaA-psaB, rps19-trnH(gug)-rpl2-rpl23, and psbE-psbF--were dated to the common ancestor of extant angiosperms, at least 150 MYA. However, all protein-coding genes of mtpts have degenerated since their first transfer. Therefore, mtpts contribute nothing to the functioning of mtDNA but junk sequences. We discovered that the cpDNA transfers have occurred randomly at any positions of the cpDNAs. We provide strong evidence that the cp-derived tRNA-trnM(cau) is the only mtpt (1 out of 3 cp-derived tRNA shared by seed plants) truly transferred from cpDNA to mtDNA since the time of the common ancestor of extant gymnosperms and angiosperms. Our observations support the proposition of Richly and Leister (2004) that "primary insertions of organellar DNAs are large and then diverge and fragment over evolutionary time. "
Measurement-driven temporal analysis of information diffusion in online social networks

The rapid development of online social networks (OSN) renders them a popular mechanism for information diffusion. Studying the temporal characteristics is critical in understanding the diffusion process. However, due to the lack of well-defined propagation data, hardly any study addresses the temporal feature of information diffusion in OSN. In this paper, we present a measurement study on information diffusion in the Renren social network. We investigate the latency of information propagation along social links and define the “activation time” for an OSN user, and find that the activation time follows the lognormal distribution. Based on this, we develop two new information diffusion models incorporating asynchronous activation times. Application of the models in the influence maximization problem shows that they capture the temporal diffusion behavior very well. This leads to fundamental ramifications to many related OSN applications.
Is Repetition Blindness a Visual Phenomenon ? A critical review

This report reviews the literature on whether people have difficulty seeing repeated items in rapid serial visual presentation displays (RSVP): the effect known as " repetition blindness " (RB). It is argued that the data originally cited in support of this hypothesis are weak, and that follow-up work puts the view in doubt. More recent work by advocates of the hypothesis is also discussed. In particular, RB experiments employing signal detection theory measures of sensitivity are carefully examined. It is concluded that signal detection theory is not appropriate for determining whether people fail to see repeated items in these experiments. Finally, the type of evidence that would be necessary to validate the " blindness " view of RB is discussed.
Reduced-set vector-based interval type-2 fuzzy neural network

This paper describes an interval type-2 fuzzy modeling framework, reduced-set vector-based interval type-2 fuzzy neural network (RV-based IT2FNN), to characterize the representation in fuzzy logic inference procedure. The model proposed introduces the concept of interval kernel to interval type-2 fuzzy membership, and provides an architecure to extract reduced-set vectors for generating interval type-2 fuzzy rules. Thus, the overall RV-based IT2FNN can be represented as series expansion of interval kernel, and it does not have to determine the number of rules in advance. By using a hybrid learning mechanism, the proposed RV-based IT2FNN can construct an input-ouput mapping from the training data in the form of fuzzy rules. At last, simulation results show that the RV-based IT2FNN obtained possesses nice generalization and transparency.
Functional heartburn: the stimulus, the pain, and the brain

Functional heartburn is a common disorder and appears to be composed of several distinct subgroups. Identifying the different subgroups based on clinical history only is not achievable at present. The mechanisms responsible for pain, clinical characteristics, and the optimal therapeutic approach remain poorly understood. Response to potent antireflux treatment is relatively limited. Current and future treatment strategies for functional heartburn patients who have failed standard dose proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) include increased PPI dose in some, as well as addition of pain modulators in others.
Non-Invasive Fibrosis Assessment Predicts Sustained Virological Response to Telaprevir with Pegylated Interferon and Ribavirin for Chronic Hepatitis C

Background Liver fibrosis remains one of the most important predictors of sustained virological response (SVR) in this era of direct-acting antiviral treatment of chronic hepatitis C. We compare non-invasive fibrosis assessment with liver biopsy (METAVIR) in terms of their ability to predict SVR by telaprevir (TVR)-based triple therapy. Methods This prospective study consisted of 108 patients with chronic HCV genotype 1 infection who received TVR in combination with pegylated interferon (PEG-IFN)-α2b and ribavirin (RBV). Non-invasive fibrosis data included transient elastography (FibroScan), FIB-4 index and aspartate aminotransferase to platelet ratio index (APRI). Results SVR was achieved by 84.3% of the patients by intention-to-treat analysis. In contrast to the high SVR rates for treatment-naive patients (87.1%, 27 of 31) and patients who previously relapsed (97.9%, 46 of 47), the SVR rate of prior partial/null responders was significantly lower (60.0%, 18 of 30). The impact of fibrosis on SVR was greater for prior partial/null responders, and fibrosis data, including both METAVIR score and non-invasive fibrosis assessments, were useful for predicting SVR. The METAVIR score (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve [AUROC] 0.91, cutoff ≤F2), FibroScan values (AUROC 0.99, cutoff ≤10.0 kPa), FIB-4 index (AUROC 0.91, cutoff ≤3.5) and APRI (AUROC 0.91, cutoff ≤0.80) were shown to have equal, excellent predictive power. Conclusions An alternative to METAVIR score by liver biopsy, non-invasive fibrosis assessments are useful options for predicting SVR by prior partial or null responders in TVR-based triple therapy.
Wait-free made fast

An implementation of an asynchronous shared-data structure is wait-free if no adversarial scheduler can stop an individual operation on the data structure from making progress (that is the implementation can tolerate a fail-stop fault of any number of processes). An implementation is non-blocking if an adversarial scheduler cannot stop the system from making progress. Existing wait-free implementations of shared data structures are slow when contention (processor concurrency) is low, namely, they have an Cl(n) term in their time complexity, where n is the total number of processes, however their time complexity for each operation is bounded. On the other hand, non-blocking implementations are fast when contention is low, but do not provide bounds on the time complexity of indwidual operations when contention is high. Neither seems to be satisfactory in practice. Inspired by Lamport’s fast mutual exclusion algorithm [Lam87], we pose in this paper the question of implementing fast and wait-free data-structures. We then devise universal methods that combine the advantages of both non-blocking and waitfree approaches, i.e., fast when contention is low and guaranteed progress of any individual operation. The time complexity of the algorithms presented here is not a function of n, but a function of k the actual number of processes that access the object concurrently, Two such methods are presented here; The first method, which is called group update, replaces the O(n) term in the time complexity of wait-free implementations by an O(min(n, k log k)) term (or more precisely, O(k log k +s + kf), where s and ~ are the data structure size and single update complexity, respectively). The second method, which is called individual update, rePermission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the ACM copyri ht notice and the % title of the publication and. KSdate appear,. an notice is given that copym IS by permwon of the Assoc! abon of Computing Machinery. o cop otherwse, or to repubhsh, requires y ‘/’ a fee ancf/or soecl ICoermisslon. STOC’ 95, L& Veg&, Nevada, USA @ 1995 ACM 0-89791 -718-9/95/0005. $3.50 places the O(n) term of wait-free implementations with an O(k) term (or O(k~log f)).
Segmentation Algorithms for Choroidal OCT Images

Choroid of the human eye mostly consists of blood vessels, through these vessels it supplies oxygen and nutrition to retina, sclera regions. Blood vessels of choroid are an indication of health of the eye. Opthamologist will observe the structural changes in the choroid through Optiacl Coherence Tomography (OCT) scans. To assist the ophthamologist in the diagnosis, we present an automated algorithm for detection of choroidal blood vessels. We are proposing two methods. One method is simple, finding the region of interest and applying Laplacian of Gaussian. In the second method we formulated this segmentation problem as a binary classification problem. Classification is done by estimating the probability density functions of choroidal vessel region and stromal region by using mixture of gaussians.
The « Intelligent Wardrobe »

In an ageing society technical systems that support the residents at home are becoming increasingly important. Many of the technologies available today focus on detecting falls or monitoring the health of residents. There are a few projects that focus the « smart home for the elderly » and offer support for the daily activities. The Institute of Medical Informatics of the Bern University of Applied Sciences has developed a prototype of an intelligent wardrobe. Based on sensor data from the apartment like inside temperature, weather forecast and todays events suggestions for appropriate clothes are generated and shown on a display. To facilitate the search, the garments are marked in the closet with colored LEDs.
Providing Quality of Service for Voice-over-IP over TD-SCDMA HSDPA

In this paper, the results of the quality of service for VoIP service over TD-SCDMA HSDPA system are presented. The performances of the system with different scheduling algorithms and different retransmission times are simulated and analyzed. Dynamic scheduling, adaptive modulation and code (AMC), dynamic HARQ are implemented in the system-level simulation and some recommends for HARQ channel number and retransmission time and optimality are given.
Nitric Oxide Synthase Inhibitors Have Opposite Effects on Acute Inflammation Depending on Their Route of Administration1

The bulk of published data has shown that NO is proinflammatory. However, there also exists the conflicting notion that NO may be protective during an inflammatory insult. In an attempt to resolve this issue, we have compared the effects on inflammation of a range of NO synthase (NOS) inhibitors given either directly to the site of the inflammatory lesion or systemically. It was found that in the carrageenin-induced pleurisy, a single intrapleural injection of the selective inducible NO inhibitors S-(2-aminoethyl) isothiourea (AE-ITU; 3 and 10 mg/kg) and N-(3-(aminomethyl)-benzyl) acetamidine (1400W; 10 mg/kg) or the selective endothelial cell NOS inhibitor l-N5(1-iminoethyl)-ornithine (10 mg/kg) not only exacerbated inflammation at the very early stages of the lesion (1–6 h), but also prevented inflammatory resolution. By contrast, administering NOS inhibitors systemically ameliorated the severity of inflammation throughout the reaction. To elucidate the mechanisms by which inhibition of NO synthesis locally worsened inflammation, we found an increase in histamine, cytokine-induced neutrophil chemoattractant, superoxide, and leukotriene B4 levels at the inflammatory site. In conclusion, this work shows that the local production of NO is protective by virtue of its ability to regulate the release of typical proinflammatory mediators and, importantly, that NOS inhibitors have differential anti-inflammatory effects depending on their route of administration.
Site-Based Partitioning and Repartitioning Techniques for Parallel PageRank Computation

The PageRank algorithm is an important component in effective web search. At the core of this algorithm are repeated sparse matrix-vector multiplications where the involved web matrices grow in parallel with the growth of the web and are stored in a distributed manner due to space limitations. Hence, the PageRank computation, which is frequently repeated, must be performed in parallel with high-efficiency and low-preprocessing overhead while considering the initial distributed nature of the web matrices. Our contributions in this work are twofold. We first investigate the application of state-of-the-art sparse matrix partitioning models in order to attain high efficiency in parallel PageRank computations with a particular focus on reducing the preprocessing overhead they introduce. For this purpose, we evaluate two different compression schemes on the web matrix using the site information inherently available in links. Second, we consider the more realistic scenario of starting with an initially distributed data and extend our algorithms to cover the repartitioning of such data for efficient PageRank computation. We report performance results using our parallelization of a state-of-the-art PageRank algorithm on two different PC clusters with 40 and 64 processors. Experiments show that the proposed techniques achieve considerably high speedups while incurring a preprocessing overhead of several iterations (for some instances even less than a single iteration) of the underlying sequential PageRank algorithm.
Ieee Transactions on Communications, Accepted for Publication 1 Interactive Joint Transfer of Energy and Information

—In some communication networks, such as passive RFID systems, the energy used to transfer information between a sender and a recipient can be reused for successive communication tasks. In fact, from known results in physics, any system that exchanges information via the transfer of given physical resources, such as radio waves, particles and qubits, can conceivably reuse, at least part, of the received resources. This paper aims at illustrating some of the new challenges that arise in the design of communication networks in which the signals exchanged by the nodes carry both information and energy. To this end, a baseline two-way communication system is considered in which two nodes communicate in an interactive fashion. In the system, a node can either send an " on " symbol (or " 1 "), which costs one unit of energy, or an " off " signal (or " 0 "), which does not require any energy expenditure. Upon reception of a " 1 " signal, the recipient node " harvests " , with some probability, the energy contained in the signal and stores it for future communication tasks. Inner and outer bounds on the achievable rates are derived. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategies and illustrate some key design insights.
Pressure ulcer risk during the perioperative period focusing on surgery duration and hypothermia

The perioperative period for many patients may be the time when they are at highest risk of developing pressure ulcers. The author’s literature search identified 24 risk factors which may be contributory factors to pressure ulcer development in the perioperative period. This article focuses on the evidence surrounding surgery duration and hypothermia. Although the findings of the studies reviewed are limited, they highlight the need for preventive interventions to limit these risks. The author concludes that pressure ulcer prevention must be a major concern for staff working in theatres.
Mining the Volatilomes of Plant-Associated Microbiota for New Biocontrol Solutions

Microbial lifeforms associated with land plants represent a rich source for crop growth- and health-promoting microorganisms and biocontrol agents. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced by the plant microbiota have been demonstrated to elicit plant defenses and inhibit the growth and development of numerous plant pathogens. Therefore, these molecules are prospective alternatives to synthetic pesticides and the determination of their bioactivities against plant threats could contribute to the development of control strategies for sustainable agriculture. In our previous study we investigated the inhibitory impact of volatiles emitted by Pseudomonas species isolated from a potato field against the late blight-causing agent Phytophthora infestans. Besides the well-documented emission of hydrogen cyanide, other Pseudomonas VOCs impeded P. infestans mycelial growth and sporangia germination. Current advances in the field support the emerging concept that the microbial volatilome contains unexploited, eco-friendly chemical resources that could help select for efficient biocontrol strategies and lead to a greener chemical disease management in the field.
Titanium implant functionalization with phosphate‐containing polymers may favour in vivo osseointegration

AIM Osseointegration of titanium implants is predictable, but can be improved via surface functionalization. MATERIALS AND METHODS One hundred and twenty implants were installed in parietal bone of 12 domestic pigs and left to heal for 1 or 3 months. Five groups were defined according surface treatments: immersion in water (H2 O), 10% polyphosphoric acid (PPA10), 1% phosphorylated pullulan (PPL1), 10% phosphorylated pullulan (PPL10) or 10% phosphorylated pullulan + 1 μg bone morphogenetic protein-2 (PPL10 BMP). As primary outcome, implant osseointegration was evaluated by quantitative histology, namely peri-implant bone formation (B/T in %) and bone-to-implant contact (BIC in %) for each healing period. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test and Mann-Whitney U-test with α = 0.05 were performed. RESULTS PPL10 and PPA10 groups showed significantly higher B/T and BIC results than the control (H2 O) group at 1-month (p < .05). No significant difference was found between PPL1 and H2 O or between PPL10 BMP and H2 O, irrespective of healing time (1 or 3 months) or investigated parameter (B/T and BIC; p > .05). After 3 months, no experimental group showed a significant difference compared to the control group (H2 O) for both investigated parameters (B/T and BIC; p > .05). CONCLUSION Functionalizing titanium implants with inorganic or organic phosphate-containing polymers at 10 wt% concentration may stimulate peri-implant bone formation and implant osseointegration at early healing times.
Improving Pattern Discovery and Visualization of SAGE Data Through Poisson-Based Self-Adaptive Neural Networks

Serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) allows a detailed, simultaneous analysis of thousands of genes without the need for prior, complete gene sequence information. However, due to its inherent complexity and the lack of complete structural and function knowledge, mining vast collections of SAGE data to extract useful knowledge poses great challenges to traditional analytical techniques. Moreover, SAGE data are characterized by a specific statistical model that has not been incorporated into traditional data analysis techniques. The analysis of SAGE data requires advanced, intelligent computational techniques, which consider the underlying biology and the statistical nature of SAGE data. By addressing the statistical properties demonstrated by SAGE data, this paper presents a new self-adaptive neural network, Poisson-based growing self-organizing map (PGSOM), which implements novel weight adaptation and neuron growing strategies. An empirical study of key dynamic mechanisms of PGSOM is presented. It was tested on three datasets, including synthetic and experimental SAGE data. The results indicate that, in comparison to traditional techniques, the PGSOM offers significant advantages in the context of pattern discovery and visualization in SAGE data. The pattern discovery and visualization platform discussed in this paper can be applied to other problem domains where the data are better approximated by a Poisson distribution.