Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Arbeidsmigrasjon, makt og styringsideologier: Norsk byggenæring i en brytningstid

Labour migration, power relations and ideology in the Norwegian construction industry We discuss the impact of increased labour migration on the social organization of work in the Norwegian construction industry. The recent influx of large numbers of labour migrants represents a supply shock that has shifted the fundamental balance of power and class relations in the Norwegian construction industry. This is reflected in a gradual drift from production methods based on piecework and permanent employment to hired workers supplied by staffing agencies and flexible subcontractors. We describe this shift in terms of workers’ market position, status and social relations at work, and discuss how these changes have been closely associated with an ideological shift from «craft-oriented» to «neo-Taylorist» management principles.
Instance-based ensemble learning algorithm with stacking framework

Nowadays the most active research in supervised learning includes an integration of several base classifiers into the combined classification system. Such systems are known under the names multiple classifiers, ensembles methods. This topic attracts an interest of machine learning researchers as multiple classifiers are often much more accurate than the component classifiers that make them up. In this paper, we proposed a Lazy Stacking approach to classification (LS), a stacking framework with lazy local learning for building a classifier ensemble learner. Stacking is an ensemble that uses different “type” of base classifiers for labeling new instance. So by using stacking along with lazy learners, we can provide the desire accuracy. To investigate LS's performance, we test LS against four rival algorithms on a large suite of 10 real-world benchmark numeric datasets. Empirical results confirm that LS can statistically significantly outperform alternative methods in terms of classification accuracy.
1 Matrix Functions and Matrix Equations

Solving large-scale algebraic Riccati equations (AREs) is one of the central tasks in solving optimal control problems for linear and, using receding-horizon techniques, also nonlinear instationary partial differential equations. Large-scale AREs also occur in several model reduction methods for dynamical systems. Due to sparsity and large dimensions of the resulting coefficient matrices, standard eigensolver-based methods for AREs are not applicable in this context. In the recent two decades, several approaches for such large-scale AREs have been suggested. They mainly fall into two categories:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Reminiscence Therapy in the Treatment of Depression: A Convergent Palliative Care Methodology in Geriatric Psychotherapy

That there is a relative void in the training of palliative care health professionals in geriatric psychotherapy, particularly as relates to the treatment of depression, is very evident according to recent American Medical Association sponsored studies. In the following essay, we will consider briefly two evidence-based treatment options available to the counseling and psychotherapeutic community dealing particularly with palliative psychotherapeutic depression, namely, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Reminiscence Therapy (RT). Following this brief discussion, we will explore the integration of CBT and RT into a single treatment modality used in palliative care of the elderly suffering from debilitating depression. Five brief case studies will be presented as illustrations of its use and effectiveness as reported in recent clinical studies. As we know, biogenic depression calls for pharmacological intervention and, therefore, medical oversight. However, our interest here is rather to call attention to two proven modalities of treatment available for the non-medically trained psychotherapist dealing with palliative psychogenic depression. These studies are consistently showing evidence-based findings validating the use of each of these modalities of treatment of depression and depressive symptoms in older adults
Amyloid beta(1-42) and phosphorylated tau in CSF as markers for early-onset Alzheimer disease.

OBJECTIVE To determine the diagnostic value of CSF amyloid beta(1-42) (Abeta42), CSF total tau, and CSF tau phosphorylated at threonine-181 (Ptau-181) in early-onset Alzheimer disease (EAD) vs frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). METHODS Levels of Abeta42, total tau, and Ptau-181 in CSF were measured using commercially available ELISA in 47 EAD patients, 28 FTLD patients, and 21 nondemented control subjects. RESULTS CSF Abeta42 was significantly lower and CSF total tau and CSF Ptau-181 significantly higher in EAD patients than FTLD patients and control subjects. There was an increase in diagnostic accuracy for CSF Ptau-181 vs CSF total tau (p = 0.067). Combining low CSF Abeta42 and high CSF Ptau-181 allowed EAD patients to be distinguished from FTLD patients with a sensitivity of 72% and a specificity of 93%. Logistic regression analysis with CSF Abeta42 and CSF Ptau-181 as independent continuous variables resulted in correct classification of 46 of 47 (98%) EAD patients and 23 of 28 (82%) FTLD patients. The diagnostic accuracy for EAD was independent of gender, disease duration, and disease severity. CONCLUSION The combination of CSF Abeta42 and CSF Ptau-181 may help in differentiating EAD from FTLD.
On the Tradeoff among Capacity , Routing Hops , and Being Peer-to-Peer in the Design of Structured Overlay Networks

The routing tables of Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs) can vary from size O(1) to O(n). Currently, what is lacking is an analytic framework to suggest the optimal routing table size for a given workload. This paper (1) compares heterogeneous DHTs with O(1) to O(n) routing tables and identifies the good design points for typical workloads; and (2) proposes practical protocols to realize the potential of those good design points. We validate our protocols through both analysis and extensive simulation. Our comparison is novel in two aspects. First, we compare totally heterogeneous DHTs and use capacity as the uniform metric to evaluate them. Second, we emphasize that a good design should strike a balance between maintenance cost and lookup cost. Our analysis shows that, for typical workloads, large routing tables actually lead to both low total traffic and low lookup hops. These good design points translate into one-hop routing for systems of medium size and two-hop routing for large systems. Existing one-hop or two-hop protocols are based on a hierarchy. We instead demonstrate that it is possible to achieve one-hop or two-hop routing without giving up being peer-to-peer. We propose 1h-Calot for one-hop routing and 2h-Calot for two-hop routing. They are purely peer-to-peer, efficient in traffic, and resilient in the face of frequent node arrivals and departures. Moreover, they are extremely simple for practical uses. Compared with traditional DHTs that use O(log n) routing tables, 1h-Calot and 2h-Calot save total traffic by up to 70% under typical workloads, while resolving lookups in one or two hops as opposed to O(log n) hops.
P2012: Building an ecosystem for a scalable, modular and high-efficiency embedded computing accelerator

P2012 is an area- and power-efficient many-core computing fabric based on multiple globally asynchronous, locally synchronous (GALS) clusters supporting aggressive fine-grained power, reliability and variability management. Clusters feature up to 16 processors and one control processor with independent instruction streams sharing a multi-banked L1 data memory, a multi-channel DMA engine, and specialized hardware for synchronization and scheduling. P2012 achieves extreme area and energy efficiency by supporting domain-specific acceleration at the processor and cluster level through the addition of dedicated HW IPs. P2012 can run standard OpenCL and OpenMP parallel codes well as proprietary Native Programming Model (NPM) SW components that provide the highest level of control on application-to-resource mapping. In Q3 2011 the P2012 SW Development Kit (SDK) has been made available to a community of R&D users; it includes full OpenCL and NPM development environments. The first P2012 SoC prototype in 28nm CMOS will sample in Q4 2012, featuring four clusters and delivering 80GOPS (with single precision floating point support) in 15.2mm2 with 2W power consumption.
Security Aspects of Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is the new buzz word in today‟s computing world. Although there is huge buzz, many people are confused as to exactly what cloud computing is, especially as the term can be used to mean almost anything. The paper is categorized in three parts. The first part of this paper briefly explains the cloud computing model. The second part of paper follows a discussion on what security threats and challenges pose in front of this technology. While the final part focuses on how virtualization plays an important role in cloud computing and talks about techniques for securing the virtual machines over the cloud. The paper talks about what assumptions are made by existing kernel integrity-checking mechanisms which may not work in cloud environment and finally discuss an integrity discovery system using secure introspection [1] for virtual environments which ensures high security.
DESIGN AND SCHEDULING OF MULTIPURPOSE PLANTS USING A RTN CONTINUOUS-TIME FORMULATION

This paper considers the problem of designing a plant according to its operational constraints. A uniform time grid, continuous-time formulation is proposed that considers the design and scheduling aspects simultaneously. Under the condition of linear task durations and equipment cost, the Resource Task Network (RTN) based formulation gives rise to Mixed Integer Linear Programs (MILPs) for total cost minimization. Its performance is illustrated through the solution of two batch-plant example problems taken from the literature and compared to the design and scheduling, non-uniform time grid, State Task Network (STN) based continuous-time formulation of Lin and Floudas (2001).
Different gestational ages and changing vulnerability of the premature brain

Abstract In recent decades, there has been a general increase in survival rates of preterm and low birth weight infants, but this overall decrease in perinatal mortality has not been accompanied by a decrease in long-term physical and mental disability. In order to reduce the long-term sequelae of prematurity and to establish preventive measures, it is important to identify risk factors since the main determinant of specific vulnerability to different types of lesions is gestational age. The regional tissue vulnerability at a given gestational age is probably determined by the local metabolic requirements together with specific cell characteristics and their level of maturation. In this article, we discuss the most common neonatal cerebral lesions (cerebellar haemorrhage, germinal matrix intraventricular haemorrhage, periventricular leukomalacia, arterial ischaemic stroke, cerebral vein sinus thrombosis and hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy) related to the gestational age-dependent vulnerability of the premature brain.
Inhibition of IL-10 Production by Maternal Antibodies against Group B Streptococcus GAPDH Confers Immunity to Offspring by Favoring Neutrophil Recruitment

Group B Streptococcus (GBS) is the leading cause of neonatal pneumonia, septicemia, and meningitis. We have previously shown that in adult mice GBS glycolytic enzyme glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) is an extracellular virulence factor that induces production of the immunosuppressive cytokine interleukin-10 (IL-10) by the host early upon bacterial infection. Here, we investigate whether immunity to neonatal GBS infection could be achieved through maternal vaccination against bacterial GAPDH. Female BALB/c mice were immunized with rGAPDH and the progeny was infected with a lethal inoculum of GBS strains. Neonatal mice born from mothers immunized with rGAPDH were protected against infection with GBS strains, including the ST-17 highly virulent clone. A similar protective effect was observed in newborns passively immunized with anti-rGAPDH IgG antibodies, or F(ab')2 fragments, indicating that protection achieved with rGAPDH vaccination is independent of opsonophagocytic killing of bacteria. Protection against lethal GBS infection through rGAPDH maternal vaccination was due to neutralization of IL-10 production soon after infection. Consequently, IL-10 deficient (IL-10−/−) mice pups were as resistant to GBS infection as pups born from vaccinated mothers. We observed that protection was correlated with increased neutrophil trafficking to infected organs. Thus, anti-rGAPDH or anti-IL-10R treatment of mice pups before GBS infection resulted in increased neutrophil numbers and lower bacterial load in infected organs, as compared to newborn mice treated with the respective control antibodies. We showed that mothers immunized with rGAPDH produce neutralizing antibodies that are sufficient to decrease IL-10 production and induce neutrophil recruitment into infected tissues in newborn mice. These results uncover a novel mechanism for GBS virulence in a neonatal host that could be neutralized by vaccination or immunotherapy. As GBS GAPDH is a structurally conserved enzyme that is metabolically essential for bacterial growth in media containing glucose as the sole carbon source (i.e., the blood), this protein constitutes a powerful candidate for the development of a human vaccine against this pathogen.
Author ' s personal copy A review of 3 D vessel lumen segmentation techniques : Models , features and extraction schemes

Vascular diseases are among the most important public health problems in developed countries. Given the size and complexity of modern angiographic acquisitions, segmentation is a key step toward the accurate visualization, diagnosis and quantification of vascular pathologies. Despite the tremendous amount of past and on-going dedicated research, vascular segmentation remains a challenging task. In this paper, we review state-of-the-art literature on vascular segmentation, with a particular focus on 3D contrast-enhanced imaging modalities (MRA and CTA). We structure our analysis along three axes: models, features and extraction schemes. We first detail model-based assumptions on the vessel appearance and geometry which can embedded in a segmentation approach. We then review the image features that can be extracted to evaluate these models. Finally, we discuss how existing extraction schemes combine model and feature information to perform the segmentation task. Each component (model, feature and extraction scheme) plays a crucial role toward the efficient, robust and accurate segmentation of vessels of interest. Along each axis of study, we discuss the theoretical and practical properties of recent approaches and highlight the most advanced and promising ones. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
A Combined Optical–Microwave Method to Retrieve Soil Moisture Over Vegetated Areas

A simple approach for correcting for the effect of vegetation in the estimation of the surface soil moisture (wS) from L-band passive microwave observations is presented in this study. The approach is based on semi-empirical relationships between soil moisture and the polarized reflectivity including the effect of the vegetation optical depth which is parameterized as a function of the normalized vegetation difference index (NDVI). The method was tested against in situ measurements collected over a grass site from 2004 to 2007 (SMOSREX experiment). Two polarizations (horizontal/vertical) and five incidence angles (20°, 30°, 40°, 50°, and 60°) were considered in the analysis. The best wS estimations were obtained when using both polarizations at an angle of 40°. The average accuracy in the soil moisture retrievals was found to be approximately 0.06 m3/m3, improving the estimations by 0.02 m3/m3 with respect to the case in which the vegetation effect is not considered. The results indicate that information on vegetation (through a vegetation index such as NDVI) is useful for the estimation of soil moisture through the semi-empirical regressions.
Top-down 3 D Tracking and Pose Estimation of a Die Using Checkpoints

Real-time 3D pose estimation from monocular image sequences is a challenging research topic. Although current methods are able to recover 3D pose, they require a high computational cost to process high-resolution images in a video sequence at high frame-rates. To address that problem, we introduce the new concept of check-points. They are the minimum number of points needed to detect a 3D object motion. Our method tracks the 2D projections of the check-points over a 2D maximum pyramid. To handle large displacements of the object, our approach evaluates the projection of the check-points at highest levels of the pyramid. Moreover, it refines the pose localization by utilizing the check-points at lowest levels of the hierarchy. We show that just checking a few cells per frame, our method estimates the 3D pose of the tracked object. This early version of the method works with a specific type of object a 3D cube, with six well distinguished faces and which salient features in all the faces are dots, a die.
Providing e-Transaction Guarantees in Asynchronous Systems with No Assumptions on the Accuracy of Failure Detection

In this paper, we address reliability issues in three-tier systems with stateless application servers. For these systems, a framework called e-Transaction has been recently proposed, which specifies a set of desirable end-to-end reliability guarantees. In this article, we propose an innovative distributed protocol providing e-Transaction guarantees in the general case of multiple, autonomous back-end databases (typical of scenarios with multiple parties involved within a same business process). Differently from existing proposals coping with the e-Transaction framework, our protocol does not rely on any assumption on the accuracy of failure detection. Hence, it reveals suited for a wider class of distributed systems. To achieve such a target, our protocol exploits an innovative scheme for distributed transaction management (based on ad hoc demarcation and concurrency control mechanisms), which we introduce in this paper. Beyond providing the proof of protocol correctness, we also discuss hints on the protocol integration with conventional systems (e.g., database systems) and show the minimal overhead imposed by the protocol.
Acid Production by Vaginal Flora In Vitro Is Consistent with the Rate and Extent of Vaginal Acidification

ABSTRACT Perinatally, and between menarche and menopause, increased levels of estrogen cause large amounts of glycogen to be deposited in the vaginal epithelium. During these times, the anaerobic metabolism of the glycogen, by the epithelial cells themselves and/or by vaginal flora, causes the vagina to become acidic (pH ∼4). This study was designed to test whether the characteristics of acid production by vaginal flora in vitro can account for vaginal acidity. Eight vaginalLactobacillus isolates from four species—L. gasseri, L. vaginalis, L. crispatus, andL. jensenii—acidified their growth medium to an asymptotic pH (3.2 to 4.8) that matches the range seen in theLactobacillus-dominated human vagina (pH 3.6 to 4.5 in most women) (B. Andersch, L. Forssman, K. Lincoln, and P. Torstensson, Gynecol. Obstet. Investig. 21:19–25, 1986; L. Cohen, Br. J. Vener. Dis. 45:241–246, 1969; J. Paavonen, Scand. J. Infect. Dis. Suppl. 40:31–35, 1983; C. Tevi-Bénissan, L. Bélec, M. Lévy, V. Schneider-Fauveau, A. Si Mohamed, M.-C. Hallouin, M. Matta, and G. Grésenguet, Clin. Diagn. Lab. Immunol. 4:367–374, 1997). During exponential growth, all of theseLactobacillus species acidified their growth medium at rates on the order of 106 protons/bacterium/s. Such rates, combined with an estimate of the total number of lactobacilli in the vagina, suggest that vaginal lactobacilli could reacidify the vagina at the rate observed postcoitally following neutralization by the male ejaculate (W. H. Masters and V. E. Johnson, Human sexual response, p. 93, 1966). During bacterial vaginosis (BV), there is a loss of vaginal acidity, and the vaginal pH rises to >4.5. This correlates with a loss of lactobacilli and an overgrowth of diverse bacteria. Three BV-associated bacteria, Gardnerella vaginalis, Prevotella bivia, andPeptostreptococcus anaerobius, acidified their growth medium to an asymptotic pH (4.7 to 6.0) consistent with the characteristic elevated vaginal pH associated with BV. Together, these observations are consistent with vaginal flora, rather than epithelial cells, playing a primary role in creating the acidity of the vagina.
Work-family conflict and family stress processes: Developmental implications for youth social-emotional functioning

Work-family Conflict and Family Stress Processes: Developmental Implications for Youth Social-emotional Functioning Terese J. Lund Dissertation Chair: Eric Dearing, Ph.D. Recent decades have seen historic increases in maternal employment. The developmental implications of work-family conflict, however, remain poorly understood. Children’s (n= 1,364) social-emotional problems through early childhood and preadolescence were examined as a function of mother’s work-family conflict using longitudinal data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (NICHD SECCYD). Hierarchical linear modeling techniques were utilized to examine the lagged and contemporaneous associations between work-family conflict and children’s social-emotional outcomes (i.e., internalizing and externalizing problems). Furthermore, family stress processes— maternal depression and maternal sensitivity—were examined as mediators of the associations between work-family conflict and social-emotional outcomes. Developmental timing of work-family conflict (i.e., child age) was also examined as a moderator of associations between conflict and social-emotional growth. Results indicated that within-family changes in work-family conflict predicted later within-child changes in children’s internalizing problems in lagged models. With regard to betweenfamily differences, average work-family conflict was associated with both average levels of internalizing and externalizing problems. Maternal depression and maternal sensitivity mediated the association between work-family conflict and children’s externalizing problems between-families; maternal depression mediated the association between workfamily conflict and children’s internalizing problems between-families. There was little evidence to suggest, however, that the effects of work-family conflict differed as a function of developmental timing. Results from this research suggest that the developmental consequences of work-family conflict may not be immediate, but rather accrue over time. Moreover, results indicate that the effects of work-family conflict are both direct and indirect via family stress processes. These findings are further discussed regarding their implications for developmental research, policy and practice.
A New Binary Floating-Point Division Algorithm and Its Software Implementation on the ST231 Processor

This paper deals with the design and implementation of low latency software for binary floating-point division with correct rounding to nearest.The approach we present here targets a VLIW integer processor of the ST200 family, and is based on fast and accurate programs for evaluating some particular bivariate polynomials. We start by giving approximation and evaluation error conditions that are sufficient to ensure correct rounding. Then we describe the heuristics used to generate such evaluation programs, as well as those used to automatically validate their accuracy.Finally, we propose, for the binary32 format, a complete C implementation of the resulting division algorithm. With the ST200 compiler and compared to previous implementations, the speed-up observed with our approach is by a factor of almost 1.8.