Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Observed Changes in Software Architecture

Assignment text: SEVO (Software EVOlution) is a project, started early 2004, that studies software evolution, especially the evolution of component-based systems and their architecture. More information on the SEVO homepage The assignment intends to make a literature study over the subject, and to perform an empirical study on a software system. The focus is on identifying the most important factors that can explain and maybe foresee software evolution.Abstract Software development is rapidly changing and software systems are increasing in size and expected lifetime. To cope with this, several new languages and development processes have emerge, but there is also a trend towards more focus on design and software architecture and development with consideration for evolution and future change in requirements. There is a clear need for improvements, research shows that the portion of development cost used for maintenance is increasing and can be as high as 50%. We also see many software systems that grow into uncontrollable complexity where large parts of the system cannot be touched because of risks for unforeseeable consequence. Therefore the need to understand the nature of software evolution, especially on software architecture, to be better prepared when developing future software systems. This pre-diploma thesis (depth project) describes the various parts of the research fields around software evolution and software architecture. It gives a background on the current situation of the research, explores different ideas on why changes occur and presents view and metrics for measuring. Two research questions and three hypotheses where formulated and an empirical study was done on the open source project Portage from the Gentoo Linux project to test them.Preface This report is written as part of the course TDT4735 System development, in the final year of a mater study at the This pre-diploma thesis (depth project) intends to be a literature study of research relevant to evolution of software architecture and an empirical study. It looks at research done with focus on what causes software to change how empirical study can be used to foresee these changes. The empirical study was intended to look at architectures from two or three industrial examples for comparison, but no data source was found in time. Instead the open source project Portage developed by the Gentoo Linux project was used. It provided valuable data on software evolution though limited data on software architecture, which affected the focus of the empirical study. By writing this report, …
Amazon forests did not green‐up during the 2005 drought

The sensitivity of Amazon rainforests to dry‐season droughts is still poorly understood, with reports of enhanced tree mortality and forest fires on one hand, and excessive forest greening on the other. Here, we report that the previous results of large‐scale greening of the Amazon, obtained from an earlier version of satellite‐derived vegetation greenness data ‐ Collection 4 (C4) Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), are irreproducible, with both this earlier version as well as the improved, current version (C5), owing to inclusion of atmosphere‐corrupted data in those results. We find no evidence of large‐scale greening of intact Amazon forests during the 2005 drought ‐ approximately 11%–12% of these drought‐stricken forests display greening, while, 28%–29% show browning or no‐change, and for the rest, the data are not of sufficient quality to characterize any changes. These changes are also not unique ‐ approximately similar changes are observed in non‐drought years as well. Changes in surface solar irradiance are contrary to the speculation in the previously published report of enhanced sunlight availability during the 2005 drought. There was no co‐relation between drought severity and greenness changes, which is contrary to the idea of drought‐induced greening. Thus, we conclude that Amazon forests did not green‐up during the 2005 drought.
Long Maximal Incremental Tests Accurately Assess Aerobic Fitness in Class II and III Obese Men

This study aimed to compare two different maximal incremental tests with different time durations [a maximal incremental ramp test with a short time duration (8-12 min) (STest) and a maximal incremental test with a longer time duration (20-25 min) (LTest)] to investigate whether an LTest accurately assesses aerobic fitness in class II and III obese men. Twenty obese men (BMI≥35 kg.m-2) without secondary pathologies (mean±SE; 36.7±1.9 yr; 41.8±0.7 kg*m-2) completed an STest (warm-up: 40 W; increment: 20 W*min-1) and an LTest [warm-up: 20% of the peak power output (PPO) reached during the STest; increment: 10% PPO every 5 min until 70% PPO was reached or until the respiratory exchange ratio reached 1.0, followed by 15 W.min-1 until exhaustion] on a cycle-ergometer to assess the peak oxygen uptake [Formula: see text] and peak heart rate (HRpeak) of each test. There were no significant differences in [Formula: see text] (STest: 3.1±0.1 L*min-1; LTest: 3.0±0.1 L*min-1) and HRpeak (STest: 174±4 bpm; LTest: 173±4 bpm) between the two tests. Bland-Altman plot analyses showed good agreement and Pearson product-moment and intra-class correlation coefficients showed a strong correlation between [Formula: see text] (r=0.81 for both; p≤0.001) and HRpeak (r=0.95 for both; p≤0.001) during both tests. [Formula: see text] and HRpeak assessments were not compromised by test duration in class II and III obese men. Therefore, we suggest that the LTest is a feasible test that accurately assesses aerobic fitness and may allow for the exercise intensity prescription and individualization that will lead to improved therapeutic approaches in treating obesity and severe obesity.
Quality culture in romanian public administration

The idea of quality applied in public administration can sometimes seem utopian. However, it is not utopian, given that citizens are taxpayers and as such are entitled to impeccable service. Therefore, I consider it necessary to implement a real culture of quality in public administration, in order to ensure good quality services for citizens and achieve their interests, on one hand. On the other hand, the culture of quality is mandatory for serving the national public interest.
Plasmonics and the parallel programming problem

While many parallel computers have been built, it has generally been too difficult to program them. Now, all computers are effectively becoming parallel machines. Biannual doubling in the number of cores on a single chip, or faster, over the coming decade is planned by most computer vendors. Thus, the parallel programming problem is becoming more critical. The only known solution to the parallel programming problem in the theory of computer science is through a parallel algorithmic theory called PRAM. Unfortunately, some of the PRAM theory assumptions regarding the bandwidth between processors and memories did not properly reflect a parallel computer that could be built in previous decades. Reaching memories, or other processors in a multi-processor organization, required off-chip connections through pins on the boundary of each electric chip. Using the number of transistors that is becoming available on chip, on-chip architectures that adequately support the PRAM are becoming possible. However, the bandwidth of off-chip connections remains insufficient and the latency remains too high. This creates a bottleneck at the boundary of the chip for a PRAM-On-Chip architecture. This also prevents scalability to larger "supercomputing" organizations spanning across many processing chips that can handle massive amounts of data. Instead of connections through pins and wires, power-efficient CMOS-compatible on-chip conversion to plasmonic nanowaveguides is introduced for improved latency and bandwidth. Proper incorporation of our ideas offer exciting avenues to resolving the parallel programming problem, and an alternative way for building faster, more useable and much more compact supercomputers.
Relationship Marketing in the Internet Age

Relationship marketing emerged from a shift to a market orientated business climate focusing on long-term relationships with customers, competitors, and other important influence markets. In this perspective, many organisations are faced with new dilemmas since the conduct of business on the Internet. Is Internet really supporting relationship marketing, or on the contrary hindering it? In order to find some empirical support, we lead an interview with a winery which has, both, online and offline activities. Indeed, the case study method is adequate in order to extract key variables from real-life situations. The results testify of Internet’s support activity to the development of relationships but its impossibility to create credibility, trust and commitment without an offline organisation.
Performance Analysis of Top-Contact MLGNR Based Interconnects

In this paper transient behavior of both types of multi-layer graphene nanoribbon (MLGNR) interconnects i.e., side and top-contact MLGNRs are studied. The propagation delay of Driver Interconnect Load (DIL) model for different interconnect lengths is analyzed by taking different process induced parameters variations into consideration. The average deviations in propagation delay of DIL model are analyzed using Monte Carlo approach and it is observed that even for top-contact MLGNRs (TC-MLGNRs) the deviations are below 4% except for mean free path. The cross-talk analysis for TC-MLGNRs is also presented in this paper. Optimum TC-MLGNR is designed by decreasing interlayer resistance to meet the performance of side-contact MLGNRs (SC-MLGNR) and comparable with copper interconnects. For cross-talk analysis Transmission Line Modeling (TLM) is used and compared with simulation results, which shows an excellent accuracy. Finally optimized TC-MLGNR interconnects performance is comparable with the SC-MLGNR interconnects.
Robust Stability and Performance Analysis of a Longitudinal Aircraft Model Using Sum of Squares Techniques

In this paper we demonstrate how the recently developed sum of squares techniques can be used to analyze robust stability and robust performance of quasi-LPV models. We show the effectiveness of the methodology through the analysis of the stability and performance of a nonlinear control law applied to an uncertain quasi-LPV model of the short-period dynamics of an F/A-18 aircraft
Estimating Citizen Alertness in Crises Using Social Media Monitoring and Analysis

The use of social media for communication and interaction is becoming more and more frequent, which is also the case during crises. To monitor social media may therefore be a useful capability from a crisis management perspective, both for detecting new or emergent crises, as well as for getting a better situation awareness of how people react to a particular crisis. The work presented in this paper is part of the EU research project Alert4All, having the overall goal of improving the effectiveness of alert and communication toward the population in crises.
Renaissance of antibiotics against difficult infections: Focus on oritavancin and new ketolides and quinolones

Abstract Lipoglycopeptide, ketolide, and quinolone antibiotics are currently in clinical development, with specific advantages over available molecules within their respective classes. The lipoglycopeptide oritavancin is bactericidal against MRSA, vancomycin-resistant enterococci, and multiresistant Streptococcus pneumoniae, and proved effective and safe for the treatment of acute bacterial skin and skin structure infection (ABSSSI) upon administration of a single 1200 mg dose (two completed phase III trials). The ketolide solithromycin (two phase III studies recruiting for community-acquired pneumonia) shows a profile of activity similar to that of telithromycin, but in vitro data suggest a lower risk of hepatotoxicity, visual disturbance, and aggravation of myasthenia gravis due to reduced affinity for nicotinic receptors. Among quinolones, finafloxacin and delafloxacin share the unique property of an improved activity in acidic environments (found in many infection sites). Finafloxacin (phase II completed; activity profile similar to that of ciprofloxacin) is evaluated for complicated urinary tract and Helicobacter pylori infections. The other quinolones (directed towards Gram-positive pathogens) show improved activity on MRSA and multiresistant S. pneumoniae compared to current molecules. They are in clinical evaluation for ABSSSI (avarofloxacin (phase II completed), nemonoxacin and delafloxacin (ongoing phase III)), respiratory tract infections (zabofloxacin and nemonoxacin (ongoing phase III)), or gonorrhea (delafloxacin).
Large-scale optimization: Are co-operative co-evolution and fitness inheritance additive?

Large-scale optimization - here referring mainly to problems with many design parameters - remains a serious challenge for optimization algorithms. When the problem at hand does not succumb to analytical treatment (an overwhelmingly commonplace situation), the engineering and adaptation of stochastic black box optimization methods tends to be a favoured approach, particularly the use of Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs). In this context, many approaches are currently under investigation for accelerating performance on large-scale problems, and we focus on two of those in this paper. The first is co-operative co-evolution (CC), where the strategy is to successively optimize only subsets of the design parameters at a time, keeping the remainder fixed, with an organized approach to managing and reconciling these `subspace' optimizations. The second is fitness inheritance (FI), which is essentially a very simple surrogate model strategy, in which, with some probability, the fitness of a solution is simply guessed to be a simple function of the fitnesses of that solution's `parents'. Both CC and FI have been found successful on nontrivial and multiple test cases, and they use fundamentally distinct strategies. In this article we explore the extent to which employing both of these strategies at once provides additional benefit. Based on experiments with 50D-1000D variants of four test functions, we find `CCEA-FI' to be highly effective, especially when a random grouping scheme is used in the CC component.
Language Model Issues in Web Spam Detection

Language models have been widely used in the detection of spam pages in the web. However even though most of the experiments using language models to detect spam have got improved results, there exists several problems in the use of language models which affects the validity of the results. This paper points out the shortcomings of using language models specifically KL-Divergence and suggested improvements.
Game-Theoretic Approach for Load Balancing in Computational Grids

Load balancing is a very important and complex problem in computational grids. A computational grid differs from traditional high-performance computing systems in the heterogeneity of the computing nodes, as well as the communication links that connect the different nodes together. There is a need to develop algorithms that can capture this complexity yet can be easily implemented and used to solve a wide range of load-balancing scenarios. In this paper, we propose a game-theoretic solution to the grid load-balancing problem. The algorithm developed combines the inherent efficiency of the centralized approach and the fault-tolerant nature of the distributed, decentralized approach. We model the grid load-balancing problem as a noncooperative game, whereby the objective is to reach the Nash equilibrium. Experiments were conducted to show the applicability of the proposed approaches. One advantage of our scheme is the relatively low overhead and robust performance against inaccuracies in performance prediction information.
Adding spaces to Thai and English: Effects on reading

Most research on reading has used Western languages, which have the property of being spaced. This paper examines how spacing and meaning affect reading in Thai, a modern, alphabetic and unspaced language. Results show that subjects were faster in reading and made less errors when spaces were added. Meaning facilitates reading as well, and does not interact with spacing. Finally, ability to read unspaced texts in Thai does not transfer to English. The results support the hypothesis that spaces, when present at all, offer perceptual cues that facilitate reading. Efficiency considerations raise the question of whether Thai should follow the example of Western languages and incorporate spaces and punctuation.
Using a Discrepant Event to Facilitate Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Conceptual Change about Force and Motion

Both students and teachers have misconceptions about Force and Motion, often caused by teachers not being well-prepared to teach the accepted scientific theory. Besides, teachers rarely or never use a cognitive conflict strategy in their teaching. The present study is aimed at investigating the use of a discrepant event to facilitate preservice elementary teachers’ conceptual change on Force and Motion concepts. The main objectives were to (1) investigate conceptual changes in Force and Motion concepts and (2) track students’ conceptual change and their learning progression of these concepts. The research method used an intervention with a mixed method design. Second-semester students (N=120) participated in this study. The research instrument consisted of background information of respondents and their belief of conceptions about Force and Motion. The preliminary study using Direct Instruction and discussion methods. Once students’ conceptual change profiles were known, remedial teaching was conducted through Reflective Conceptual Change Modelassisted Visual Multimedia. The research findings have shown that a discrepant event could help participants engage in conceptual change and have better explanations than before. The profile of their conceptual change and pattern of learning progression are discussed.
Pre-stimulus Frontal-Parietal Coherence Predicts Auditory 1 Detection Performance in Rats 2

27 Electrophysiology in primates has implicated long-range neural coherence as a potential 28 mechanism for enhancing sensory detection. To test whether local synchronization and long29 range neural coherence supports detection performance in rats, we recorded local field potentials 30 (LFPs) in frontal and parietal cortex while rats performed an auditory detection task. We 31 observed significantly elevated power at multiple low frequencies (<15 Hz) preceding the target 32 beep when the animal failed to respond to the signal (misses), in both frontal and parietal cortex. 33 In terms of long-range coherence, we observed significantly more frontal-parietal coherence in 34 the beta band (15-30 Hz) before the signal on misses, as compared to hits. This effect persisted 35 after regressing away linear trends in the coherence values during a session, showing that the 36 excess frontal-parietal beta coherence prior to misses cannot be explained by slow motivational 37 changes during a session. In addition, a trend toward higher low-frequency (<15 Hz) coherence 38 prior to miss trials compared to hits became highly significant when we re-referenced the LFPs 39 to the mean voltage on each recording array, suggesting the results are specific to our frontal and 40 parietal areas. These results do not support a role for long-range frontal-parietal coherence or 41 local synchronization in facilitating the detection of external stimuli. Rather, they extend to 42 long-range frontal-parietal coherence previous findings that correlate local synchronization of 43 low-frequency (<15 Hz) oscillations with inattention to external stimuli, and synchronization of 44 beta rhythms (15-30 Hz) with voluntary or involuntary prolongation of the current cognitive or 45 motor state. 46
An EDSL approach to high performance Haskell programming

This paper argues for a new methodology for writing high performance Haskell programs by using Embedded Domain Specific Languages. We exemplify the methodology by describing a complete library, meta-repa, which is a reimplementation of parts of the repa library. The paper describes the implementation of meta-repa and contrasts it with the standard approach to writing high performance libraries. We conclude that even though the embedded language approach has an initial cost of defining the language and some syntactic overhead it gives a more tailored programming model, stronger performance guarantees, better control over optimizations, simpler implementation of fusion and inlining and allows for moving type level programming down to value level programming in some cases. We also provide benchmarks showing that meta-repa is as fast, or faster, than repa. Furthermore, meta-repa also includes push arrays and we demonstrate their usefulness for writing certain high performance kernels such as FFT.
Overlay techniques for scratchpad memories in low power embedded processors

Energy consumption is one of the important parameters to be optimized during the design of portable embedded systems. Thus, most of the contemporary portable devices feature low-power processors coupled with on-chip memories (e.g., caches, scratchpads). Scratchpads are better than traditional caches in terms of power, performance, area, and predictability. However, unlike caches they depend upon software allocation techniques for their utilization. In this paper, we present scratchpad overlay techniques which analyze the application and insert instructions to dynamically copy both variables and code segments onto the scratchpad at runtime. We demonstrate that the problem of overlaying scratchpad is an extension of the Global Register Allocation problem. We present optimal and near-optimal approaches for solving the scratchpad overlay problem. The near-optimal scratchpad overlay approach achieves close to the optimal results and is significantly faster than the optimal approach. Our approaches improve upon the previously known static allocation technique for assigning both variables and code segments onto the scratchpad. The evaluation of the approaches for ARM7 processor reports, average energy, and execution time reductions of 26% and 14% over the static approach, respectively. Additional experiments comparing the overlayed scratchpads against unified caches of the same size, report average energy, and execution time savings of 20% and 10%, respectively. We also report data memory energy reductions of 45%-57% due to the insertion of a 1024-bytes scratchpad memory in the memory hierarchy of a digital signal processor (DSP)