Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The State of the Luxembourg’s Welfare State: the Effects of the Crisis on a Corporatist Model Shifting to a Universalistic Model

Luxembourg was able to develop, enlarge and improve its corporatist welfare system with Scandinavian standards, creating one of, if not the most substantial regime in the EU/OECD. Several aspects are outstanding: expansion and improvement took place over the last two decades; important reserves for the pension insurance allowed replacement rates being on top within OECD countries; corporatist elements had been reduced in favour of a higher impact of the State; defamilzation took place, thus a significant recalibration. There is no experience of cutbacks or significant cost containment measures leading to losses and a higher responsibility for the insured. The question is, how did Luxembourg manage to increase and improve its welfare offer, while other developed countries have had to cutback since the 1970s? And what was the impact of the financial crisis on welfare policies up to the end of 2009. Luxembourg has the most regulated labour market within OECD, but also the most diversified in terms of migration and cross border movements. Two factors are commonly considered putting welfare systems under pressure: globalisation and ageing effects. Luxembourg avoided the last one via its permanently rejuvenating immigration and cross border movement: age- and family-member-dependency ratios are extremely low for cross border commuters compared to those of residents. The extremely transnationalised labour force might be considered as an implicit ? globalising? answer. This small nation-state used its sovereignty taking advantage of the imbrication of national and transnational (EU) law: crossers contribute fully, but are not fully entitled to benefits. Immigration is sometimes considered to be a threat to the sustainability of welfare schemes; in Luxembourg however immigrants and crossers were the main factors for expansion.
Evaluating the Influence of Social Selfishness on Cooperative D2D Communications

Cooperative D2D communication is an effective method to improve the throughput of regular cellular communications by choosing a relay device (RD) to help forward data to a non-relay device (NRD) who is supposed to receive information from the base station. This paper investigates how social selfishness influences the performance of cooperative D2D communications. A physical-social model is established and a graph-based approach is adopted to obtain a matching solution between RDs and NRDs. Evaluations demonstrate that 1) communities with more members are more immune to social selfishness and 2) the impact of social selfishness on the number of selected RDs is the largest when the total numbers of NRDs and RDs are equal.
Some Upper Bounds on the Redundancy of Optimal Binary Fix-Free Codes

In order to investigate the cost of employing fix-free codes instead of the well-established prefix-free codes, some upper bounds on the redundancy of the optimal fix-free codes and their difference with the corresponding Huffman codes are presented. Unlike the conventional approach, which is based on some Shannon-like suboptimal codes, we examine the redundancy of a better Huffman-like code. An algorithm is proposed for deriving optimal binary codeword lengths with Kraft-sum [5/8] for a given probability distribution. The existence of a fix-free code with such codelengths is guaranteed by Yekhanin's theorem. It is shown that the redundancy of this fix-free code is, at most, 0.8 bit greater than that of the Huffman code and does not exceed [8/3]-log3 ≅ 1.0817 bits. This upper bound is [4/3]-log[5/3] ≅0.5964 bit less than the best known one. If the [3/4]-conjecture is proved sometime in the future, the presented upper bound on the redundancy of the optimal fix-free codes (i.e., 1.0817) will be improved by only [5/3]-log3 ≅ 0.0817 . In addition to these general bounds, all known upper bounds in terms of the largest, the smallest, and an arbitrary given symbol probability are substantially improved.
Improving Cloud-Based Online Social Network Data Placement and Replication

Online social networks make it more convenient for people to find and communicate with other people based on shared interests, ideas, association with different groups, etc. Common social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have hundreds of millions or even billions of users scattered all around the world sharing interconnected data. Users demand low latency access to not only their own data but also their friends' data, often very large, e.g. videos, pictures etc. However, social network service providers have a limited monetary capital to store every piece of data everywhere to minimise users' data access latency. Geo-distributed cloud services with virtually unlimited capabilities are suitable for large scale social networks data storage in different geographical locations. Key problems including how to optimally store and replicate these huge datasets and how to distribute the requests to different datacenters are addressed in this paper. A novel genetic algorithm-based approach is used to find a near-optimal number of replicas for every user's data and a near-optimal placement of replicas to minimise monetary cost while satisfying latency requirements for all users. Experiments on a Facebook dataset demonstrate our technique's effectiveness in outperforming other representative placement and replication strategies.
Towards Performance Prediction for Cloud Computing Environments based on Goal-oriented Measurements

Scalability and performance are critical quality attributes of applications developed for the cloud. Many of these applications have to support hundreds or thousands of concurrent users with strongly fluctuating workloads. Existing approaches for software performance evaluation do not address the new challenges that arise for applications executed in cloud computing environments. The effects of virtualization on response times, throughput, and resource utilisation as well as the massive number of resources available require new platform and resource models for software performance evaluation. Modelling cloud environments using established approaches for software performance prediction is a cumbersome task that requires a detailed understanding of virtualization techniques and their effect on software performance. Additional complexity comes from the fact that cloud environments may combine multiple virtualization platforms which differ in implementation and performance properties. In this position paper, we propose an approach to infer performance models of cloud computing environments automatically through goal-oriented measurements. The resulting performance models can be directly combined with established model-driven performance prediction approaches. We outline the research challenges that have to be addressed in order to employ the approach for design-time performance predictions of software systems running in cloud computing environments.
Chandra and Swift observations of the quasi-persistent neutron star transient EXO 0748−676 back to quiescence

The quasi-persistent neutron star X-ray transient and eclipsing binary EXO 0748−676 recently started the transition to quiescence following an accretion outburst that lasted more than 24 years. We report on two Chandra and 12 Swift observations performed within five months after the end of the outburst. The Chandra spectrum is composed of a soft, thermal component that fits to a neutron star atmosphere model with kT ∞ ∼ 0.12 keV, joined by a hard power-law tail that contributes ∼20 per cent of the total 0.5–10 keV unabsorbed flux. The combined Chandra/Swift data set reveals a relatively hot and luminous quiescent system with a temperature of kT ∞ ∼ 0.11–0.13 keV and a bolometric thermal luminosity of ∼8.1 × 10 33 –1.6 × 10 34 (d/7.4 kpc) 2 erg s −1 . We discuss our results in the context of cooling neutron
Mutations in CD8 that affect interactions with HLA class I and monoclonal anti-CD8 antibodies

The T cell co-receptor, CD8, binds to the alpha 3 domain of HLA class I (Salter, R.D., R.J. Benjamin, P.K. Wesley, S.E. Buxton, T.P.J. Garrett, C. Clayberger, A.M. Krensky, A.M. Norman, D.R. Littman, and P. Parham. 1990. Nature [Lond.]. 345:41; Connolly, J.M., T.A. Potter, E.M. Wormstall, and T.H. Hansen. 1988. J. Exp. Med. 168:325; and Potter, T.A., T.V. Rajan, R.F. Dick II, and J.A. Bluestone. 1989. Nature [Lond.]. 337:73). To identify regions of CD8 that are important for binding to HLA class I, we performed a mutational analysis of the CD8 molecule in the immunoglobulin (Ig)-like variable domain. Our mutational analysis was based on our finding that using a cell-cell adhesion assay murine CD8 (Lyt-2) did not bind to human class I. Since the interaction of human CD8 with HLA class I is species specific, we substituted nonconservative amino acids from mouse CD8 and analyzed the ability of the mutated CD8 molecules expressed in COS 7 cells to bind HLA class I-bearing B lymphoblastoid cells, UC. Mutants with the greatest effect on binding were located in a portion of the molecule homologous to the first and second hypervariable regions of an antibody combining site. In addition, a panel of 12 anti-CD8 monoclonal antibodies were used to stain the 10 CD8 mutants, and amino acids that affected antibody binding were localized on the crystal structure of the Bence-Jones homodimer, REI. Support for an Ig-like structure of CD8 can be found in the pattern of substitutions affecting antibody binding. This work supports the similar tertiary structure of the CD8 alpha-terminal domain and an Ig variable domain.
Renormalization-group flow of the dilaton potential.

We consider a scalar-metric gauge theory of gravity with independent metric, connection and dilaton. The role of the dilaton is to provide the scale of all masses, via its vacuum expectation value. In this theory, we study the renormalization group flow of the dilaton potential, taking into account threshold effects at the Planck scale. Due to the running of the VEV of the dilaton all particles that would naively seem to have masses larger than Planck's mass, may actually not propagate. This could solve the problem of unitarity in these theories.
Black-Hole Security

The quest for economic security can sometimes exacerbate insecurity thereby leading to a black hole of regulations, spending and ever-worsening insecurity. This paper explores food security in the Philippines, demonstrating how the state-trading enterprise for rice increases prices, decreases price stability, and stifles agricultural development, all at an enormous cost to Philippine taxpayers.
Reflections on Design, Sustainability and Reverse Logistics: PET packaging recycling in Brazil

This paper analyses the interactions among the actors that take part of PET packaging recycling in Brazil, connecting the fields of Reverse Logistics and Sustainable Product Design. The main contribution of this research is to establish conceptual alternatives to develop products, presenting a discussion on the responsibility of designers when performing products according to the sustainability approach. The main focus is based on life cycle design and its support to broader decisions within the design process. A case study on PET recycling in Brazilian context is presented as example. This perspective can be seen as priority for research subjects, once there are very few studies that systematically propose strategies for product design taking into account its environmental and social impacts, according to the sustainability approach.
Improving Multipath TCP for Latency Sensitive Flows in the Cloud

Recent cloud datacenter network usually has multiple transmission paths for any pair of servers to increase the aggregate bandwidth and to improve the robustness of failure recovery. Therefore, Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is becoming one of the most important transport protocols exploring the multipath resource to improve the performance of cloud network. It is obvious that MPTCP could significantly increase the bandwidth for the throughput-oriented long flows by using multiple paths concurrently. However, for many latency-sensitive applications that require low latency other than high bandwidth, MPTCP performs poor. In this paper, we propose a set of extensions for MPTCP (called MPTCP-L) to improve its performance on the latency. Particularly, MPTCP-L replicates packets of latency-sensitive flows on two MPTCP subflows to proactively reduce retransmission delay of lost packets. Besides, we propose a rapid packet retransmission scheme that takes only 1-2 RTTs to recovery the lost packets for the TCP subflows of MPTCP. We conduct large scale simulations and testbed experiments based on real traffic load to evaluate MPTCP-L, and the results prove that MPTCP-L outperforms the standard MPTCP for latency-sensitive flows, and the induced redundancy overhead is negligible.
Edge locks and deadlock avoidance in distributed systems

Two locking protocols are defined for distributed database systems. One protocol provides deadlock avoidance without the need to roll back transactions. The other allows a useful weakening of the protocol in which only a limited class of easily handled deadlocks may occur. The protocols are capable of handling replicated as well as partitioned data. Like the centralized protocol on which they are based, the protocol of this paper permits locking at multiple granularities and allows collections of locks to be constructed to correspond to an arbitrary collection of database operations. Special provisions are made in the protocol to allow readers, and in particular, readers that touch data at only one site, to execute with less locking overhead than writers. Following the description of the protocol, comparisons are made between the protocol of this paper and other protocols previously published that offer similar features.
E-Mental Health Care Among Young Adults and Help-Seeking Behaviors: A Transversal Study in a Community Sample

Background The Internet is widely used by young people and could serve to improve insufficient access to mental health care. Previous information on this topic comes from selected samples (students or self-selected individuals) and is incomplete. Objective In a community sample of young adults, we aimed to describe frequency of e-mental health care study-associated factors and to determine if e-mental health care was associated with the use of conventional services for mental health care. Methods Using data from the 2011 wave of the TEMPO cohort study of French young adults (N=1214, aged 18-37 years), we examined e-mental health care and associated factors following Andersen’s behavioral model: predisposing factors (age, sex, educational attainment, professional activity, living with a partner, children, childhood negative events, chronic somatic disease, parental history of depression), enabling factors (social support, financial difficulties, parents’ income), and needs-related factors (lifetime major depression or anxiety disorders, suicidal ideation, ADHD, cannabis use). We compared traditional service use (seeking help from a general practitioner, a psychiatrist, a psychologist; antidepressant or anxiolytics/hypnotics use) between participants who used e-mental health care versus those who did not. Results Overall, 8.65% (105/1214) of participants reported seeking e-mental health care in case of psychological difficulties in the preceding 12 months and 15.7% (104/664) reported psychological difficulties. Controlling for all covariates, the likelihood of e-mental health care was positively associated with 2 needs-related factors, lifetime major depression or anxiety disorder (OR 2.36, 95% CI 1.36-4.09) and lifetime suicidal ideation (OR 1.91, 95% CI 1.40-2.60), and negatively associated with a predisposing factor: childhood life events (OR 0.60, 95% CI 0.38-0.93). E-mental health care did not hinder traditional care, but was associated with face-to-face psychotherapy (66.2%, 51/77 vs 52.4%, 186/355, P=.03). Conclusions E-mental health care represents an important form of help-seeking behavior for young adults. Professionals and policy makers should take note of this and aim to improve the quality of online information on mental health care and to use this fact in clinical care.
Flexible PersistenceFramework for Object-OrientedMiddleware

The ability to storeobjectstatespersistentlyin a convenientandflexible way is animportantrequirementfor middlewareenvironments.In this paperwe propose a languageindependentframework for flexible andextensiblepersistentstorage servicesfor object-orientedmiddleware. The framework is specifiedby interface definitionsandtherationaleof their interplay. To supportapplication-specificrequirementslike particulardatarepositoriesanddistribution aspects, differentpersistenceservicesarefeasiblewithin theproposedframework. Theseservicesare easyto use,sinceobjectsarestoredpersistentlyby inheritingfrom a singleclass; additionalauxiliary classes–lik e, for instance,factoryor sessionclassesin related approaches–are not required.Weremarkthatinter-objecttransactional behavior is not in thescopeof apersistentstorageservice;theseissuesareaddressedby transactionalservices.To show theopendesignof theproposedframework, we sketch how theframework canbeintegratedwith theTransactionServiceproposedby the ObjectManagement Group.
Properties of Ribbon and Non-Ribbon Release from Rod Photoreceptors Revealed by Visualizing Individual Synaptic Vesicles

Vesicle release from rod photoreceptors is regulated by Ca2+ entry through L-type channels located near synaptic ribbons. We characterized sites and kinetics of vesicle release in salamander rods by using total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy to visualize fusion of individual synaptic vesicles. A small number of vesicles were loaded by brief incubation with FM1–43 or a dextran-conjugated, pH-sensitive form of rhodamine, pHrodo. Labeled organelles matched the diffraction-limited size of fluorescent microspheres and disappeared rapidly during stimulation. Consistent with fusion, depolarization-evoked vesicle disappearance paralleled electrophysiological release kinetics and was blocked by inhibiting Ca2+ influx. Rods maintained tonic release at resting membrane potentials near those in darkness, causing depletion of membrane-associated vesicles unless Ca2+ entry was inhibited. This depletion of release sites implies that sustained release may be rate limited by vesicle delivery. During depolarizing stimulation, newly appearing vesicles approached the membrane at ∼800 nm/s, where they paused for ∼60 ms before fusion. With fusion, vesicles advanced ∼18 nm closer to the membrane. Release events were concentrated near ribbons, but lengthy depolarization also triggered release from more distant non-ribbon sites. Consistent with greater contributions from non-ribbon sites during lengthier depolarization, damaging the ribbon by fluorophore-assisted laser inactivation (FALI) of Ribeye caused only weak inhibition of exocytotic capacitance increases evoked by 200-ms depolarizing test steps, whereas FALI more strongly inhibited capacitance increases evoked by 25 ms steps. Amplifying release by use of non-ribbon sites when rods are depolarized in darkness may improve detection of decrements in release when they hyperpolarize to light.
EVIEW ON C OMMON C RITERIA AS A S ECURE S OFTWARE D EVELOPMENT M ODEL

Standards, models, frameworks and guidelines have been developed for secure software development such as such as Common Criteria, SSE-CMM, Microsoft SDL, OpenSAMM. Current standards and models provide guidance for particular areas such as threat modelling, risk management, secure coding, security testing, verification, patch management, configuration management etc. But there is not a generally accepted model for a secure software development lifecycle. Common Criteria provides objective evaluation methodology to validate that a product satisfies a specified set of security requirements. In this paper Common Criteria secure software development approach is examined and compared with other well known standards and models.
Application of the projective geometry in the density mapping based on CCTV monitoring

In this paper we address a problem of automatic generation of the so-called density maps (heat maps) using video recordings acquired from surveillance CCTV systems in urban areas (CCTV - closed circuit television). Our software for density map estimation increments the accumulation table only in case of detecting a new moving object, resulting in a count of moving objects density map. We also applied an algorithm for projective transformation of image to achieve better accuracy of the moving object density maps. We analyzed the proposed solution for different angles of camera positions. Next the results were compared with the density maps calculated from the top view camera position.
Polyketides from the Halotolerant Fungus Myrothecium sp. GS-17

Two new polyketides, myrothecol (1) and 5-hydroxy-3-methyl-4-(1- hydroxylethyl)-furan-2(5H)-one (2), were isolated from the fermentation broth of the halotolerant fungus Myrothecium sp. GS-17 along with three known compounds, 5-hydroxyl-3-[(1S)-1-hydroxyethyl]-4-methylfuran-2(5H)-one (3), 3,5-dimethyl-4- hydroxylmethyl-5-methoxyfuran-2(5H)-one (4), and 3,5-dimethyl-4-hydroxymethyl-5- hydroxyfuran-2(5H)-one (5). Compound 1 is the first natural occurring polyketide with a unique furylisobenzofuran skeleton. The structures of these compounds were established via extensive spectroscopic analyses including 1D-, 2D-NMR, HRESI-MS, and crystal X-ray diffraction analysis.
Model-based test case generation using symbolic execution

In this paper, we present a test case generation method in which test cases are generated from Excel-based functional specications, called error-check/update specications. This method has the following two characteristics. 1) Logical structures and constraint conditions in error-check/update specications are translated into Java code. Then the trans- lated Java code is executed symbolically. A solution found by solving combinations of the constraint conditions, during the symbolic execution can serve as a test case for the Excel- based specication. 2)We present test case selection method to extract a suitable test-suite from the large number of test cases typically generated by the above symbolic execution. Our test case selection is based on a path condition-based test case selection criterion, proposed in our previous work, in which the selected test cases covers all the atomic conditions of path conditions collected during symbolic execution. In this paper, we extend this method with classication of test cases and priority of variable values with the aim of improv- ing the quality of the selected test-suite. We implemented the test case generation method in our tool and evaluated this method with Excel-based test specications for a real- world nancial system.