Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantitative multiparametric MRI assessment of glioma response to radiotherapy in a rat model.

BACKGROUND The inability of structural MRI to accurately measure tumor response to therapy complicates care management for patients with gliomas. The purpose of this study was to assess the potential of several noninvasive functional and molecular MRI biomarkers for the assessment of glioma response to radiotherapy. METHODS Fourteen U87 tumor-bearing rats were irradiated using a small-animal radiation research platform (40 or 20 Gy), and 6 rats were used as controls. MRI was performed on a 4.7 T animal scanner, preradiation treatment, as well as at 3, 6, 9, and 14 days postradiation. Image features of the tumors, as well as tumor volumes and animal survival, were quantitatively compared. RESULTS Structural MRI showed that all irradiated tumors still grew in size during the initial days postradiation. The apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values of tumors increased significantly postradiation (40 and 20 Gy), except at day 3 postradiation, compared with preradiation. The tumor blood flow decreased significantly postradiation (40 and 20 Gy), but the relative blood flow (tumor vs contralateral) did not show a significant change at most time points postradiation. The amide proton transfer weighted (APTw) signals of the tumor decreased significantly at all time points postradiation (40 Gy), and also at day 9 postradiation (20 Gy). The blood flow and APTw maps demonstrated tumor features that were similar to those seen on gadolinium-enhanced T1-weighted images. CONCLUSIONS Tumor ADC, blood flow, and APTw were all useful imaging biomarkers by which to predict glioma response to radiotherapy. The APTw signal was most promising for early response assessment in this model.
On the spectroscopic nature of the cool evolved Am star HD 151878

Recently, Tiwari, Chaubey & Pandey detected the bright component of the visual binary HD 151878 to exhibit rapid photometric oscillations through a Johnson B filter with a period of 6 min (2.78 mHz) and a high, modulated amplitude up to 22 mmag peak-to-peak, making this star by far the highest amplitude rapidly oscillating Ap (roAp) star known. As a new roAp star, HD 151878 is of additional particular interest as a scarce example of the class in the northern sky, and only the second known case of an evolved roAp star – the other being HD 116114. We used the FIbre-fed Echelle Spectrograph at the Nordic Optical Telescope to obtain high time-resolution spectra at high dispersion to attempt to verify the rapid oscillations. We show here that the star at this epoch is spectroscopically stable to rapid oscillations of no more than a few tens of m s −1 . The high-resolution spectra furthermore show the star to be of type Am rather than Ap and we show the star lacks most of the known characteristics for roAp stars. We conclude that this is an Am star that does not pulsate with a 6-min period. The original discovery of pulsation is likely to be an instrumental artefact.
ASAR : Application-Specific Approximate Recovery to Mitigate Hardware Variability

Technology scaling in microelectronics has reached limits that are resulting in increasing variation in component design and performance characteristics. Chips and systems comprising of such components are starting to exhibit a rise in process-induced failures and soft errors. Conventional design time solutions such as conservative guardbands to hide such variations are increasingly not viable for cost and performance reasons. As an alternative, researchers have sought to expose hardware fault information to the software stack and enable a programmer to use the fault information during software development. In this work, we propose the use of Software Recovery Blocks (SRB) as a programming construct that enables a programmer to provide application-specific error recovery code. Recovery comes in two modes: a) rerunning or b) discarding the erroneous computation. While rerunning comes at a performance overhead, discarding erroneous computations could result in degraded output quality, giving a user two extreme operating points on the performance-quality trade-off curve. In order to exploit intermediate performance-quality trade-off points, this work proposes approximate recovery which is particularly beneficial to approximate-computing applications. Such applications offer a natural tolerance to errors and the work introduces a SRB extension called Application-Specific Approximate Recovery (ASAR). ASAR provides 3.8%–29.9% speedup relative to rerun for six approximate-computing applications. Furthermore, the work proposes a hybrid recovery mechanism which allows a user to set desired output quality and exploit the performance-quality tradeoff curve at a finer-granularity. Hybrid recovery uses a mixture of ASAR and rerun-based recovery to demonstrate 1.5%–11.6% speedup compared to only rerun, while maintaining user-specified output quality.
Challenges for Ubiquitous Computing

The main objective of this paper is to investigate and understand how ubiquitous computing framework is applied in next generation network (NGN) and what the major challenges which require looking into are. Due to converged network and standardization of more simplified protocols, now there are many deployments that are based on ubiquitous computing framework. However, there is not very much evidence to tackle complex events that are raised by very many devices in the framework in a uniform manner. The events thatare raised by devices are not the same due to heterogeneous software and network system. Also, events that are generated could be 'reactive' or 'proactive'; the, former is caused due to an action that causes an event to be triggered, for example software process failure, external change in the system state or just an informative message, latter ones need some sort of action required by the system to handle the futuristic reaction. The main challenge is to effectively handle both reactive and proactive events that are probabilistic in nature by looking into event context, timing and casualties. Also, the systems that are in use today in ubicomp framework mainly are custom made to meet specific domain. In this paper, a complex event processing framework for ubicomp by making use of industry standard protocols would be created. In order to demonstrate that such system is capable and required in ubiquitous computing framework in next generation network, a prototype middleware would be designed and developed which will be capable of handling various events and processes them proactively. This prototype model would be called a sPEPUS (Proactive Event Processing Using SIP).
Injury to muscle fibres after single stretches of passive and maximally stimulated muscles in mice.

1. Our purpose was to investigate the initial mechanisms responsible for contraction‐induced injury. Most studies of mechanisms of contraction‐induced injury have been based on observations made either shortly after many repeated contractions at the peak of fatigue, or days after, at the peak of delayed onset injury. As a result, conclusions based on these studies are complicated by interactions of mechanical and biochemical events, as well as the passage of time. We studied the initial mechanical events associated with contraction‐induced injury immediately following single stretches of whole skeletal muscles of mice in situ. 2. We tested the hypothesis that immediately following a single stretch, the severity of contraction‐induced injury is a function of both strain and average force. Consequently, the work done to stretch the muscle would be the best predictor of the magnitude of injury. Extensor digitorum longus muscles were adjusted to optimum length for force (L(o)). Passive (not stimulated) and maximally activated muscles were exposed to single stretches of 10, 20, 30, 50 or 60% strain, relative to muscle fibre length (Lf), at a rate of 2 Lf s‐1. 3. The magnitude of injury was represented by the force deficit 1 min after the stretch expressed as a percentage of the maximum force prior to the stretch. The occurrence of injury was confirmed directly by electron microscopic analysis of the ultrastructure of muscle fibres that were fixed immediately following single stretches. 4. For active muscles, a single stretch of only 30% strain produced a significant force deficit, whereas for passive muscles, a larger strain was required. Stretches of greater than 50% strain resulted in greater force deficits for passive than for maximally activated muscles. For either condition, the work done to stretch the muscle was the best predictor of the magnitude of injury, accounting for 76% of the variability in the force deficit for maximally activated muscles, and 85% for passive muscles.
Efficient Index-based Processing of Join Queries in DHTs

distributed applications require the integration of heterogeneous data from multiple sources. Peer-to-peer (P2P) is one possible network model for these distributed applications and among P2P architectures, distributed hash table (DHT) is well known for its routing performance guarantees. Under a general distributed relational data model, join query operator, an essential component to integrate data from multiple relational tables in centralized DBMS, can be realized over DHT to support data integration tasks in P2P networks. In this paper, we propose an efficient and adaptive index-based join query operator over DHTs. With attribute-value storage approach, we build decentralized join indices over DHT, facilitating join query processing with reduced bandwidth consumption. Join index information regarding each join query operator is maintained across multiple indexing peers via an adaptive scheme based on peer capacities, alleviating load-balancing problem. Moreover, we develop an algorithm to access distributed indices with proven performance guarantees. Based on the join indices, a semi-join-alike approach is exploited to handle join query processing at indexing peers concurrently, effectively realizing intra-operator parallelism and decreasing query processing latency. Through theoretic analysis and extensive simulation, we demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach.
Spatial Motion Constraints Using Virtual Fixtures Generated by Anatomy

This paper describes a spatial-motion-constraints-generation approach for a human-machine collaborative surgical-assistant system from registered computer tomography models. We extend constrained optimization formulation incorporating task goals, anatomy-based constraints, "no fly zones," etc. We use a fast potential-collision-constraint-detection method based on a 3-D surface model and covariance tree data structure. These boundary constraints, along with task behaviors and joint limits, serve as constraint conditions for constrained robot control. We are able to follow a complex path inside a human skull, phantom represented by a surface model composed of 99 000 vertices and 182 000 triangles in real time. Our approach enables real-time task-based control of a surgical robot in a precise interactive minimally invasive surgery task. We illustrate our approach based on two example tasks which are analogous to the procedures in endoscopic sinus surgery, and analyze the user's performance on both teleoperation and cooperative control for one of the example tasks. The experimental results show that a robotic assistant employing our approach on spatial motion constraints can assist the user in skilled manipulation tasks, while maintaining desired properties. Our approach is equally applicable to teleoperative and cooperative controlled robots
Local variability vector for text-independent speaker verification

Total variability modeling has shown to be effective for text-independent speaker verification task. It provisions a tractable way to estimate the so-called i-vector, which describes the speaker and session variability rendered in an utterance. Due to the low dimensionality of the i-vector, channel compensation techniques such as linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and probabilistic LDA can be applied for the purpose of channel compensation. This paper proposes the local variability modeling technique, the central idea of which is to capture the local variability associated with individual dimension of the acoustic space. We analyze the latent structure associated with both the i-vector and local variability vector and show that the two representations complement each other based on the experiment conducted on NIST SRE'08 and SRE'10 datasets.
Employment Relations in Transition: An Examination of Workers' Self-Assessments of Job Quality, 1970 - 2006

My dissertation uses data from three sources from 1970 to 2006 to explore trends in American workers’ selfassessed perceptions of job quality over time. I find evidence that contemporary workers tend to assess their jobs more negatively when compared to their 1970s counterparts. This finding is robust to examinations of measurement equivalency across survey instruments. Further, my findings are consistent with a body of research documenting a general deterioration of working conditions in the United States since the mid-1970s. To the best of my knowledge this is the first attempt to document trends on multiple dimensions of perceived job quality, over a span of thirtysix years.
Electromagnetic simulation on high-frequency solenoid inductors formed by focused-ion-beam stress-introducing technique

This paper reports the electromagnetic simulation on solenoid-structure inductors for high frequency applications. The components are achieved by the focused-ion-beam stress-introducing technique. The influence of various structure parameters such as the pitch, diameter, number of turns have been analyzed in detail using the Ansoft HFSS simulator. For the inductor with a diameter of about one hundred microns, a wide operation frequency range as well as a maximum quality factor (Q) of 114 can be obtained. For the inductor with a diameter of several hundred nanometers, a maximum Q of more than 7 at THz is predicted
Extension of the Semantic Sensor Network Ontology for Wireless Sensor Networks: The Stimulus-WSNnode-Communication Pattern

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are designed to collect large amounts of heterogeneous data to monitor environmental phenomenon. Our aim is to adapt WSN nodes communication to their context, in order to optimize the lifetime of the network. Our description of context and WSN characteristics are based on ontologies. Based upon a critical analysis of existing ontologies which formalize the WSN domain, we determine that the Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) ontology is the most suitable to represent the WSN issues. However, as the communication data policy is not characterized either by SSN or by other ontologies, we propose to enrich the SSN ontology with a new pattern describing communication. In this paper, we will first integrate the different concepts related to WSN in the SSN ontology and then we will use the resulting ontology, called Wireless Semantic Sensor Network ontology, in an agri-environmental scenario to illustrate the interest of our approach.
CONCURRENT OBJECT-ORIENTEDNESS WITH ACTORS VISUALIZED BY HIGH-LEVEL PETRI NETS

Recurrence formulations for various problems, such as finding an optimal order of matrix multiplication, finding an optimal binary search tree, and optimal triangulation of polygons, assume a similar form. These formulations are known as dynamic programming approaches. We study a distributed version of the CYK algorithm of membership problem for context-free languages as an example of the dynamic programming problem. This paper deals with concurrent object-oriented systems with Actors. Distributed computations , managing dynamic programming searches with Actors, are visualized using Colored Petri Nets. Example of the CYK algorithm for context-free languages is used to present the method of distributed Actor-based computations. Selected features of an Actor-based software system, using a concurrent extension of C++, are also discussed.
Invariant recognition of face

Facial recognition is a form of biometric identification. In recent years there has been an enormous growth in the machine recognition of faces such as film processing, law enforcement, person identification, access control systems etc. In the two dimensional face recognition, one is to find features that are not affected by viewing conditions, angles, and postures are aimed invariant approach. Early face recognition algorithms suggested the invariant approach by finding fiducial points in the internal features such as eyes, nose, mouth and comparing their geometric relations. In the present investigation the mathematical concepts of invariance to transformation is applied. A registration point, tip of the nose is used for normalization. In this recognition procedure, eight points of interest are identified and the angle of incidence of these points make with the registration points are used to recognize the faces. Finally, all the information are combined together to form the feature vector.
Green vs. Non-Green Customer Behavior: A Self-Organizing Time Map over Greenness

Companies have traditionally used segmentation approaches to study and learn more about their customer base. One area that has attracted considerable amounts of research in recent years is that of green customer behavior. However, the approaches used have often been static clustering approaches and have focused on identifying green vs. non-green customers. In fact, results have been non-unanimous and not seldom contradictory. An alternative approach is to study customers according to degrees of green purchases. Recently, a Self-Organizing Time Map (SOTM) over any variable of cardinal, ordinal or higher level of measurement has been proposed. The key idea is to enable the exploration of changes in cluster structures over not only the time dimension, but also any other variable. This paper presents an application of the SOTM to demographic and behavioral customer data, in which the key focus is on assessing how customer behavior varies over customers' degree of greenness.
The Impact of Bioactive Lipids on Cardiovascular Development

Lysophospholipids comprise a group of bioactive molecules with multiple biological functions. The cardinal members of this signalling molecule group are sphingosylphosphorylcholine (SPC), lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), and sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) which are, at least in part, homologous to each other. Bioactive lipids usually act via G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), but can also function as direct intracellular messengers. Recently, it became evident that bioactive lipids play a role during cellular differentiation development. SPC induces mesodermal differentiation of mouse ES cells and differentiation of promyelocytic leukemia cells, by a mechanism being critically dependent on MEK-ERK signalling. LPA stimulates the clonal expansion of neurospheres from neural stem/progenitor cells and induces c-fos via activation of mitogen- and stress-activated protein kinase 1 (MSK1) in ES cells. S1P acts on hematopoietic progenitor cells as a chemotactic factor and has also been found to be critical for cardiac and skeletal muscle regeneration. Furthermore, S1P promotes cardiogenesis and similarly activates Erk signalling in mouse ES cells. Interestingly, S1P may also act to maintain human stem cell pluripotency. Both LPA and S1P positively regulate the proliferative capacity of murine ES cells. In this paper we will focus on the differential and developmental impact of lysophospholipids on cardiovascular development.
Evaluation of the BSP Model

The paper presents the results of a theoretical and practical evaluation of the Bulk Synchronous Parallel model, as implemented by the Oxford BSP Library. BSP claims to provide a scalable, portable and predictable framework for developing parallel software, with a reliable and straightforward analytic cost model. This work addresses these claims, and tries to establish their validity in context of practical advantages offered to a software designed and implementer. The University of Birmingham
A Concurrent Trace-based Just-InTime Compiler for JavaScript

JavaScript is emerging as the ubiquitous language of choice for web browser applications. These applications increasingly execute on embedded mobile devices, and thus demand responsiveness (i.e., short pause times for system activities, such as compilation and garbage collection). To deliver responsiveness, web browsers, such as Firefox, have adopted trace-based Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation. A trace-based JIT restricts the scope of compilation to a short hot path of instructions, limiting compilation time and space. Although the JavaScript limits applications to a single-thread, multicore embedded and general-purpose architectures are now widely available. This limitation presents an opportunity to reduce compiler pause times further by exploiting cores that the application is guaranteed not to use. While method-based concurrent JITs have proven useful for multithreaded languages such as Java, trace-based JIT compilation for JavaScript offers new opportunities for concurrency. This paper presents the design and implementation of a concurrent trace-based JIT that uses novel lock-free synchronization to trace, compile, install, and stitch traces on a separate core such that the interpreter essentially never needs to pause. Our evaluation shows that this design reduces the total, average, and maximum pause time by 88%, 97%, and 93%, respectively compared to the base single-threaded JIT system. Our design also improves throughput by 5% on average and up to 36%, because it delivers optimized application code faster. This design provides a better end-user experience by exploiting multicore hardware to improve responsiveness and throughput.
Advances in Discrete Fracture Network Modeling

Since its introduction in the late 1970’s, considerable controversy has raged in the hydrogeologic community over the value of discrete fracture network (DFN) approach, and particularly about the merits of the DFN approach as compared to the stochastic continuum approach. Much of this controversy has been related to the fundamental concept of the representative elementary volume (REV) which underpins all continuum approaches (Bear, 1972).
Interlingua Development and Testing through Semantic Annotation of Multilingual Text Corpora

This paper describes a multi-site project to annotate the interlingual content of six sizable bilingual parallel corpora. The project addresses several principal problems in parallel: specification of interlingua content and notation, development of reliable annotation methods, and evaluation of annotated corpora. As a by-product, a growing corpus of annotated texts is being produced, which may eventually be useful for machine learning of semantics-based processing.