Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Kahn Process Networks are a Flexible Alternative to MapReduce

Experience has shown that development using shared-memory concurrency, the prevalent parallel programming paradigm today, is hard and synchronization primitives nonintuitive because they are low-level and inherently nondeterministic. To help developers, we propose Kahn process networks, which are based on message-passing and shared-nothing model, as a simple and flexible tool for modeling parallel applications. We argue that they are more flexible than MapReduce, which is widely recognized for its efficiency and simplicity. Nevertheless, Kahn process networks are equally intuitive to use, and, indeed, MapReduce is implementable as a Kahn process network. Our presented benchmarks (word count and k-means) show that a Kahn process network framework permits alternative implementations that bring significant performance advantages: the two programs run by a factor of up to $\sim 2.8$ (word-count) and $\sim 1.8$ (k-means) faster than their implementations for Phoenix, which is a MapReduce framework specifically optimized for executing on multicore machines.
Stability evaluation of Neural and statistical Classifiers based on Modified Semi-bounded Plug-in Algorithm

—This paper illustrates a new criterion for evaluating neural networks stability compared to the Bayesian classifier. The stability comparison is performed by the error rate probability densities estimation using the modified semi-bounded Plug-in algorithm. We attempt, in this work, to demonstrate that the Bayesian approach for neural networks improves the performance and stability degree of the classical neural classifiers.
Forensics aided steganalysis of heterogeneous images

We tackle the problem of the steganalysis of images produced by different sources. We first use a classifier to try to understand the image source and then use a version of the steganalyzer that has been explicitly trained to work with images belonging to the correct class. These classifiers are widely available from the image forensics literature and have reached a good level of maturity hence making the proposed approach feasible. We tested the goodness of our approach on a case study in which a steganalyzer is asked to analyze both computer generated and camera images. The results we obtained are promising encouraging further research in this direction.
Neisseria meningitidis Serogroups W135 and A Were Equally Prevalent among Meningitis Cases Occurring at the End of the 2001 Epidemics in Burkina Faso and Niger

ABSTRACT Meningococcal infections occur as epidemics in the African meningitis belt. Neisseria meningitidis serogroup A is predominantly involved in these epidemics. We report here new data on the involvement of both serogroups A and W135 in meningitis cases in Burkina Faso and Niger at the end of the 2001 epidemic.
Improving PhD processes in management

One of the factors that can influence the economic status of countries is the education of the workforce. Improvements in education can positively impact economic growth. This paper is oriented on one program in particular, i.e. a PhD program in Industrial Engineering and Management with an emphasis on international issues. This program started in 1990 and recently more challenges with the quality of the research of PhD students were observed. This paper offers an exploratory analysis to determine key issues in the PhD program. It was concluded that many of the required skills should already be present in PhD students at the beginning of the PhD program in order to successfully complete it.
Media and Cultural Influences in African-American Girls' Eating Disorder Risk

Objective. To investigate media and cultural influences in eating disorder development in African-American adolescent females. Method. Fifty-seven participants were recruited through churches and community organizations to complete a questionnaire. Results. Mainstream sociocultural identification was associated with more eating disorder behavior in African-American females; cultural ethnic identification was not significantly associated with eating disorder behavior in African-American females, mainstream sociocultural identification, cultural ethnic identification, and body dissatisfaction significantly predicted eating disorder behavior; and cultural ethnic identification was positively correlated with mainstream sociocultural identification. This study provides support for the importance of eating disorder prevention interventions that focus specifically on African-American girls.
A REVIEW ON POTENT ANTITUBERCULAR AGENT ISONIAZID AND ITS ANALOGUES

There has been considerable interest in the development of new anti tubercular agents particularly against multidrug resistance and extensively drug resistant strain of tuberculosis because mycobacterium species have developed resistant against currently used drugs. The currently use antitubercular drugs having toxic effect and long period of therapeutic treatment. Therefore, many researchers have synthesized various newer drugs and analogues of currently used drugs for tuberculosis treatment. These observations have been guiding for the development of newer analogues that possess potent antitubercular activity with minimum side effects with effectiveness against multidrug resistant mycobacterium, and also in patient co-infected with HIV/AIDS. In this review we are discussed about isoniazid and it analogues as potent antitubercular agents. Keyword: Antitubercular, multidrug resistance, mycobacterium.
Laparoscopic Versus Open Gastrectomy With D2 Lymph Node Dissection for Gastric Cancer: A Meta-analysis

Background: Nowadays laparoscopic gastrectomy with D2 lymph node dissection (LGD2) is used for gastric cancer, which provides an alternative to open radical gastrectomy (OGD2). But it has not gained wide acceptance, and its oncological safety remains controversial. The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficiency and safety of LGD2 through a meta-analysis. Materials and Methods: Original articles of clinical trials comparing LGD2 and OGD2 for gastric cancer, published in English language from January 2001 to April 2010 were searched in the MEDLINE, Current Contents, and Pubmed. Strict literature appraisal and data extraction were carried out independently by 2 reviewers and then a meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 4.2. 5 to evaluate the items of operative time, blood loss, harvested lymph nodes, analgesic medication, first flatus day, postoperative hospital stay, postoperative complications, and cumulative survival rate. Results: Ten trials were involved in the meta-analysis, concerning a total of 1039 patients (495 in LGD2 and 544 in OGD2). Compared with OGD2, LGD2 showed advantages of less blood loss during operation [weighed mean difference (WMD), −114.98; 95% confidence interval (CI), −160.44 to −69.52; P<0.00001], less postoperative pain (WMD, −0.89; 95% CI, −1.54 to −0.32; P=0.002), earlier passage of flatus (WMD, −0.84; 95% CI, −1.25 to −0.43; P<0.0001), shorter hospital stay (WMD, −3.27; 95% CI, −4.54 to −2.00; P<0.00001), and less postoperative complications [odds ratio (OR), 0.56; 95% CI, 0.32-0.59; P=0.03]; but with longer operative time [WMD, 57.14; 95% CI, 38.12-76.15; P<0.00001]. There were no significant differences between LGD2 and OGD2 in harvested lymph nodes (WMD, −2.07; 95% CI, −4.27 to -0.14; P=0.07) and overall survival rate of 11 to 60 months’ follow-up (OR, 1.44; 95% CI, 0.92-2.27; P=0.11). Conclusions: The results of this meta-analysis suggest that LGD2 results in less blood loss and postoperative complications and also less pain and faster bowel function recovery, with similar harvested lymph nodes and overall survival rate comparing to OGD2. However, we also see the need for further high-quality randomized controlled trials comparing the 2 procedures.
Measuring Imputed Cost in the Semiconductor Equipment Supply Chain

We consider the order-fulfillment process of a supplier producing a customized capital good, such as production equipment, commercial aircraft, medical devices, or defense systems. As is common in these industries, prior to receiving a firm purchase order from the customer, the supplier receives a series of shared forecasts, which are called "soft orders. " Facing a stochastic internal manufacturing lead time, the supplier must decide at what time to begin the fulfillment of the order. This decision requires a trade-off between starting too early, leading to potential holding or cancellation costs, and starting too late, leading to potential delay costs. We collect detailed data of shared forecasts, actual purchase orders, production lead times, and delivery dates for a supplier-buyer dyad in the semiconductor equipment supply chain. Under the assumption that the supplier acts rationally, optimally balancing the cancellation, holding, and delay costs, we are able to estimate the corresponding imputed cost parameters based on the observed data. Our estimation results reveal that the supplier perceives the cost of cancellation to be about two times higher and the holding costs to be about three times higher than the delay cost. In other words, the supplier is very conservative when commencing the order fulfillment, which undermines the effectiveness of the overall forecast-sharing mechanism.
Serum interleukin-17 in Egyptian children with systemic lupus erythematosus: is it related to pulmonary affection?

Objective Pulmonary involvement in paediatric systemic lupus erythematosus (pSLE) is not an uncommon finding; however, subclinical affection occurs more frequently. Many studies have reported that cytokine dysregulation as interleukin-17 (IL-17) over-expression plays a key role in the pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). We aim to assess serum levels of IL-17 A and their association with pulmonary involvement in children with SLE. Methods Serum IL-17A levels – determined by solid phase sandwich ELISA – were assessed in forty-two pSLE patients and compared to 45 age-matched healthy controls. All patients were subjected to pulmonary function tests to detect subclinical pulmonary affection. High-resolution CT (HRCT) chest scan was carried out in patients with abnormal pulmonary function tests (PFTs) and those with chronic respiratory symptoms. Results Abnormal PFTs were found in 73% of patients; of them, only 25% had abnormal findings in HRCT chest. Serum levels of IL-17 A were significantly elevated in pSLE patients as compared to healthy controls (p < 0.001). The serum levels of IL-17 A had a highly significant positive correlation with SLEDAI (r = 0.811 and p < 0.001) Strong negative correlation was found between serum levels of IL-17A with both FEV1 and FVC (p < 0.05). Conclusions Serum IL-17A is elevated in pSLE patients, which correlates with disease activity. IL-17 seems to have a possible role in the pathogenesis of subclinical lung affection. Abnormal PFTS may be found in pSLE patients even with normal radiology.
Avian SERPINB12 Expression in the Avian Oviduct Is Regulated by Estrogen and Up-Regulated in Epithelial Cell-Derived Ovarian Carcinomas of Laying Hens

Serine protease inhibitors (SERPINs) are involved in a variety of biological processes such as blood clotting, angiogenesis, immune system, and embryogenesis. Although, of these, SERPINB12 is identified as the latest member of clade B in humans, little is known of it in chickens. Thus, in this study, we investigated SERPINB12 expression profiles in various tissues of chickens and focused on effects of steroid hormone regulation of its expression. In the chicken oviduct, SERPINB12 mRNA and protein are abundant in the luminal (LE) and glandular (GE) epithelia of the magnum in response to endogenous or exogenous estrogen. Furthermore, SERPINB12 mRNA and protein increase significantly in GE of cancerous ovaries of laying hens with epithelia-derived ovarian cancer. Collectively, these results indicate that SERPINB12 is a novel estrogen-stimulated gene that is up-regulated by estrogen in epithelial cells of the chicken oviduct and that it is a potential biomarker for early detection of ovarian carcinomas in laying hens and women.
Routing algorithm in legged robot with dynamic programming and Monte Carlo localization

This paper deals with routing algorithm of mobile robot, especially Legged Robot. A six-legged robot is set to run on a labyrinth and look for a fire to extinguish it. Robot start with identifying its initial position and then navigate to the fire position candidates. When the robot correctly identified its initial position then the routing can be done successfully. However, by only using mapping data, robot can be easily missed to detect its correct initial position, so the navigation and search of fire also become failed. Therefore, Monte Carlo localization is introduced as method to estimate robot position of robot continuously. Once position of the robot is estimated, dynamic programming will determine the fastest route to the target. This two step method is successfully navigating robots in tracing the labyrinth by providing an introduction to the robot's position against the maze and determining the fastest route to get to the target.
Asymmetric Tethering of Flat and Curved Lipid Membranes by a Golgin

Golgins, long stringlike proteins, tether cisternae and transport vesicles at the Golgi apparatus. We examined the attachment of golgin GMAP-210 to lipid membranes. GMAP-210 connected highly curved liposomes to flatter ones. This asymmetric tethering relied on motifs that sensed membrane curvature both in the N terminus of GMAP-210 and in ArfGAP1, which controlled the interaction of the C terminus of GMAP-210 with the small guanine nucleotide–binding protein Arf1. Because membrane curvature constantly changes during vesicular trafficking, this mode of tethering suggests a way to maintain the Golgi architecture without compromising membrane flow.
Midpregnancy Vaginal Fluid Defensins, Bacterial Vaginosis, and Risk of Preterm Delivery

OBJECTIVE: To assess relations among midpregnancy vaginal defensin levels, a component of the host innate immune response, bacterial vaginosis, and risk of preterm delivery. These relations are compared across race groups because previous studies have repeatedly shown that the prevalence of bacterial vaginosis and the risk of preterm delivery are greater in African-American women compared with that in white women. METHODS: Data are from a prospective study that enrolled pregnant women from 52 clinics in five Michigan communities. In the study subcohort, defensins (human neutrophil peptides 1, 2 and 3) and bacterial vaginosis (Nugent criteria) were measured in vaginal fluid collected at enrollment (15th through 27th week of pregnancy) from 1,031 non-Hispanic white and African-American women (787 term, 244 preterm). Preterm deliveries were categorized by clinical circumstances, ie, spontaneous and medically indicated. RESULTS: Among African Americans, vaginal human neutrophil peptides 1–3 levels greater than or equal to the median were associated with bacterial vaginosis and specifically with spontaneous preterm delivery only (adjusted odds ratio 2.3, 95% confidence interval 1.2–4.3). Once African-American women were stratified by human neutrophil peptide 1–3 levels, bacterial vaginosis added nothing to the prediction of spontaneous preterm delivery risk. None of the above associations were observed in non-Hispanic whites. CONCLUSION: The relations among human neutrophil peptide 1–3 levels, bacterial vaginosis, and preterm delivery vary by race group. In African Americans, midpregnancy human neutrophil peptide 1–3 levels were more informative to preterm delivery risk than was bacterial vaginosis, suggesting an important role for host response. In addition, elevated human neutrophil peptide 1–3 levels may be a marker for particular high-risk vaginal milieus that are not distinguished by the current bacterial vaginosis Nugent scoring system. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II
Split-and-merge segmentation employing thresholding technique

The conventional split-and-merge algorithm is lacking in the adaptability to the image semantics because of its stiff quadtree-based structure. A thresholding technique is employed in the splitting phase of the split-and-merge segmentation scheme to directly reflect the image semantics to the image segmentation results. Thus, the regions which contain distinct subregions can be extracted by one step, which significantly alleviating the computation load and the memory requirements. To overcome the problems, caused by the block-based thresholding, such as edge discontinuities over the borders of quadtree nodes, a prefilter is used to preserve and sharpen the edge information. Applying the proposed algorithm to aerial images results in the reduction of the number of intermediate regions generated in the splitting phase, demonstrating the improved ability to capture the image semantics. The simulation results shows that the proposed algorithm successfully extract arbitrary shaped regions in aerial images.
Deprotonation by Dehydration: The Origin of Ammonium Sensing in the AmtB Channel

The AmtB channel passively allows the transport of NH4 + across the membranes of bacteria via a “gas” NH3 intermediate and is related by homology (sequentially, structurally, and functionally) to many forms of Rh protein (both erythroid and nonerythroid) found in animals and humans. New structural information on this channel has inspired computational studies aimed at clarifying various aspects of NH4 + recruitment and binding in the periplasm, as well as its deprotonation. However, precise mechanisms for these events are still unknown, and, so far, explanations for subsequent NH3 translocation and reprotonation at the cytoplasmic end of the channel have not been rigorously addressed. We employ molecular dynamics simulations and free energy methods on a full AmtB trimer system in membrane and bathed in electrolyte. Combining the potential of mean force for NH4 +/NH3 translocation with data from thermodynamic integration calculations allows us to find the apparent pKa of NH4 + as a function of the transport axis. Our calculations reveal the specific sites at which its deprotonation (at the periplasmic end) and reprotonation (at the cytoplasmic end) occurs. Contrary to most hypotheses, which ascribe a proton-accepting role to various periplasmic or luminal residues of the channel, our results suggest that the most plausible proton donor/acceptor at either of these sites is water. Free-energetic analysis not only verifies crystallographically determined binding sites for NH4 + and NH3 along the transport axis, but also reveals a previously undetermined binding site for NH4 + at the cytoplasmic end of the channel. Analysis of dynamics and the free energies of all possible loading states for NH3 inside the channel also reveal that hydrophobic pressure and the free-energetic profile provided by the pore lumen drives this species toward the cytoplasm for protonation just before reaching the newly discovered site.
QoS and Congestion Control for Pervasive Event Driven Applications

Pervasive computing applications consist of many components ubiquitously embedded throughout the environment involving complex interactions to provide the networked service to the user as smoothly as possible. This paper focuses on the class of pervasive services that involve some form of sudden bursty traffic. Pervasive monitoring services that involve sensing are a classic example of this type of system whereby a basic telemetry service communicates periodic data perhaps accumulating or aggregating that data as it traverses the network to its destination. Moving some of the intelligence to the sensing nodes changes the periodic nature of data delivery to a more bursty one as when an event of note arises, that event is communicated and that communication should receive priority. Nevertheless, the vast majority of sensing network protocols has been viewing traffic in a monolithic way and the concepts of priority and Quality of Service (QoS) classifications are a relatively new departure. In this paper we propose a Priority Based ReRouting (PBR) scheme with rate control and experimentally evaluate the importance of data congestion control in event delivery. We show that our routing schemes not only ensure improved packet delivery performance for event data but do so more reliability over current schemes.
Rules-based Modeling of an Assembly Line and its Diagnosis

We study diagnosis of an assembly-line [13] that is modeled in the rules-based modeling formalism introduced in [7], and later extended in [14] to model failure-prone systems. An attractive feature of rules-based model is it’s compactness (size of the model is polynomial in number of input and output signals). A motivation for the work presented in [15] is to develop failure diagnosis techniques that can exploit this compactness. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of the rules-based model and of diagnosis techniques based on such a model in manufacturing systems, an educational test-bed that simulates an automated car assembly-line built using LEGO r © blocks is being employed. An automaton model based control of this system was presented in [13]. In this paper we provide a rules-based model of the assembly-line. Next we demonstrate the diagnosis technique for a rules-based model, that is based on 1order temporal logic model checking [15], by applying it to a part of the assembly-line. When the system is found to be not diagnosable, we use sensor refinement and sensor augmentation to make the system diagnosable.
Exploring common variations in state of the art chord recognition systems

Most automatic chord recognition systems follow a standard approach combining chroma feature extraction, filtering and pattern matching. However, despite much research, there is little understanding about the interaction between these different components, and the optimal parameterization of their variables. In this paper we perform a systematic evaluation including the most common variations in the literature. The goal is to gain insight into the potential and limitations of the standard approach, thus contributing to the identification of areas for future development in automatic chord recognition. In our study we find that filtering has a significant impact on performance, with self-transition penalties being the most important parameter; and that the benefits of using complex models are mostly, but not entirely, offset by an appropriate choice of filtering strategies.
A Note on Alternating Cycles in Edge-Coloured Graphs

Grossman and Haggkvist gave a sufficient condition under which a two-edge-coloured graph must have an alternating cycle (i.e., a cycle in which no two consecutive edges have the same colour). We extend their result to edge-coloured graphs with any number of colours. That is, we show that if there is no alternating cycle in an edge-coloured graphG, thenGcontains a vertexzsuch that no connected component ofG? zis joined tozwith edges of more than one colour. Our result implies that there is a polynomial-time algorithm for deciding whether an edge-coloured graph contains an alternating cycle.