Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance monitoring of throughput constrained dataflow programs executed on shared-memory multi-core architectures. (Evaluation de performance d'applications flot de données executées sur des architectures multi-coeur)

Because of physical limits, hardware designers have switched to parallel systems to exploit the still growing number of transistors per square millimeter of silicon. These parallel systems are made of several independent computing units. To benefit from these computing units, software must be changed. Existing sequential applications have to be split into independent tasks to be executed in parallel on the different computing units. To that end, many concurrent programming models have been proposed and are in use today. We focus in this thesis on the dataflow concurrent programming model. This work is about performance evaluation of dataflow programs on multicore architectures. We propose to extend dataflow programming models with the notion of throughput constraints and to take this information into account in the compilation tool chain to detect at runtime the throughput bottlenecks. The profiling results gathered during the execution are used both for off-line analyzes and to adapt the application during its execution. In the former case, the developer uses this information to know which part of the dataflow program should be optimized and to efficiently distribute the program on the computing units. In the later case, the profiling information is used by runtime adaptation mechanisms to distribute differently the work on the computing units. We give a particular focus on the profiling of the usage of the memory subsystem. The data exchange information provide by the programming model allows to efficiently used the memory subsystem of multicore architectures. Nevertheless, the complexity of modern memory systems doesn't allow to statically evaluate the impact of memory accesses on the global performances of the application. We propose to set up memory profiling dedicated to dataflow applications based on hardware profiling mechanisms.
(Methyl)ammonium Transport in the Nitrogen-Fixing Bacterium Azospirillum brasilense

ABSTRACT An ammonium transporter of Azospirillum brasilense was characterized. In contrast to most previously reported putative prokaryotic NH4+ transporter genes, A. brasilense amtB is not part of an operon withglnB or glnZ which, in A. brasilense, encode nitrogen regulatory proteins PIIand PZ, respectively. Sequence analysis predicts the presence of 12 transmembrane domains in the deduced AmtB protein and classifies AmtB as an integral membrane protein. Nitrogen regulates the transcription of the amtB gene in A. brasilense by the Ntr system. amtB is the first gene identified in A. brasilense whose expression is regulated by NtrC. The observation that ammonium uptake is still possible in mutants lacking the AmtB protein suggests the presence of a second NH4+ transport mechanism. Growth ofamtB mutants at low ammonium concentrations is reduced compared to that of the wild type. This suggests that AmtB has a role in scavenging ammonium at low concentrations.
miR-34a mediates oxaliplatin resistance of colorectal cancer cells by inhibiting macroautophagy via transforming growth factor-β/Smad4 pathway

AIM To investigate whether microRNA (miR)-34a mediates oxaliplatin (OXA) resistance of colorectal cancer (CRC) cells by inhibiting macroautophagy via the transforming growth factor (TGF)-β/Smad4 pathway. METHODS miR-34a expression levels were detected in CRC tissues and CRC cell lines by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Computational search, functional luciferase assay and western blotting were used to demonstrate the downstream target of miR-34a in CRC cells. Cell viability was measured with Cell Counting Kit-8. Apoptosis and macroautophagy of CRC cells were analyzed by flow cytometry and transmission electron microscopy, and expression of beclin I and LC3-II was detected by western blotting. RESULTS Expression of miR-34a was significantly reduced while expression of TGF-β and Smad4 was increased in CRC patients treated with OXA-based chemotherapy. OXA treatment also resulted in decreased miR-34a levels and increased TGF-β and Smad4 levels in both parental cells and the OXA-resistant CRC cells. Activation of macroautophagy contributed to OXA resistance in CRC cells. Expression levels of Smad4 and miR-34a in CRC patients had a significant inverse correlation and overexpressing miR-34a inhibited macroautophagy activation by directly targeting Smad4 through the TGF-β/Smad4 pathway. OXA-induced downregulation of miR-34a and increased drug resistance by activating macroautophagy in CRC cells. CONCLUSION miR-34a mediates OXA resistance of CRC by inhibiting macroautophagy via the TGF-β/Smad4 pathway.
Efficient detection of projected concentric circles using four intersection points on a secant line

Concentric circles are often used for calibration. Based on the geometric properties of concentric circles, we proved that only four intersection edge points on one secant line of the two images of the concentric circles (ICC) are sufficient to determine the whole parameters of the ICC, when the ratio of the radii of two concentric circles is given. Experimental results validate the proposed approach.
Herbal Extract of Gynostemma Pentaphyllum Decreases Hepatic Glucose Output in Type 2 Diabetic Goto-Kakizaki Rats

The aim of the study was to explore the effect of Gynostemma pentaphyllum (GP) extract on hepatic glucose output (HGO) in spontaneously type 2 diabetic Goto-Kakizaki (GK) rats treated orally with GP or placebo extract 1600 mg/kg daily, during three days or three weeks. The three-week treatment of GP, but not three-day treatment, significantly reduced plasma glucose (PG) levels from 9.8 ± 0.6 to 6.8 ± 0.4 mmol/L (p=0.027) in GK rats, whereas PG levels were not significantly decreased in the placebo rats. Glucose tolerance assessed by an intra-peritoneal glucose tolerance test was significantly improved in GP treated compared to placebo treated group (areas under the glucose curves, AUCs, from 0 to 120 min were 1150 ± 200 vs. 1761 ± 87 mmol/L; p=0.013). The glucose response in an intra-peritoneal pyruvate tolerance test from minute 15 to minute 120, the AUC (15-120) was significantly lower in the GP group (415.5 ± 68.0 vs. 641.5 ± 41.8 mmol/L; p<0.05). In liver perfusions, the AUCs for HGO during 18 min (0-18 min) were significantly decreased in GP treated rats compared with control rats (302.8 ± 36.5 vs. 423.5 ± 44.7 μmol, p<0.05). The three-week GP treatment significantly reduced the hepatic glycogen content, but not glycogen synthase activity compared to placebo group (p<0.007). In conclusion, three-week treatment of GP extract exerted anti-diabetic effect in GK rats, reducing plasma glucose levels and HGO, suggesting that GP improves the hepatic insulin sensitivity by suppressing gluconeogenesis.
Head Direction Cell Activity in Mice: Robust Directional Signal Depends on Intact Otolith Organs

The head direction (HD) cell signal is a representation of an animal's perceived directional heading with respect to its environment. This signal appears to originate in the vestibular system, which includes the semicircular canals and otolith organs. Preliminary studies indicate the semicircular canals provide a necessary component of the HD signal, but involvement of otolithic information in the HD signal has not been tested. The present study was designed to determine the otolithic contribution to the HD signal, as well as to compare HD cell activity of mice with that of rats. HD cell activity in the anterodorsal thalamus was assessed in wild-type C57BL/6J and otoconia-deficient tilted mice during locomotion within a cylinder containing a prominent visual landmark. HD cell firing properties in C57BL/6J mice were generally similar to those in rats. However, in C57BL/6J mice, landmark rotation failed to demonstrate dominant control of the HD signal in 36% of the sessions. In darkness, directional firing became unstable during 42% of the sessions, but landmark control was not associated with HD signal stability in darkness. HD cells were identified in tilted mice, but directional firing properties were not as robust as those of C57BL/6J mice. Most HD cells in tilted mice were controlled by landmark rotation but showed substantial signal degradation across trials. These results support current models that suggest otolithic information is involved in the perception of directional heading. Furthermore, compared with rats, the HD signal in mice appears to be less reliably anchored to prominent environmental cues.
Datascalar Architectures

DataScalar architectures improve memory system performance by running computation redundantly across multiple processors, which are each tightly coupled with an associated memory. The program data set (and/or text) is distributed across these memories. In this execution model, each processor broadcasts operands it loads from its local memory to all other units. In this paper, we describe the benefits, costs, and problems associated with the DataScalar model. We also present simulation results of one possible implementation of a DataScalar system. In our simulated implementation, six unmodified SPEC95 binaries ran from 7% slower to 50% faster on two nodes, and from 9% to 100% faster on four nodes, than on a system with a comparable, more traditional memory system. Our intuition and results show that DataScalar architectures work best with codes for which traditional parallelization techniques fail. We conclude with a discussion of how DataScalar systems may accommodate traditional parallel processing, thus improving performance over a much wider range applications than is currently possible with either model.
Common Drug Side Effects and Drug‐Drug Interactions in Elderly Adults in Primary Care

Prescribing medications, recognizing and managing medication side effects and drug interactions, and avoiding polypharmacy are all essential skills in the care of older adults in primary care. Important side effects of medications commonly prescribed in older adults (statins, proton pump inhibitors, trimethoprim‐sulfamethoxazole and fluoroquinolone antibiotics, zolpidem, nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitors) were reviewed. Important drug interactions with four agents or classes (statins, warfarin, factor Xa inhibitors, and calcium channel blockers) are discussed.
A 2.3μW wireless intraocular pressure/temperature monitor

We present the design of an ultra-low power, wireless capacitance/temperature sensing device for continuous intraocular pressure monitoring. The device is wirelessly powered and demonstrates a power consumption of 2. 3μW at 1.5V during continuous reading. The chip converts both capacitance and temperature to frequency using a time-interleaved relaxation oscillator, which modulates RF backscatter to a reader for computation of measured samples. The chip exhibits measured capacitance and temperature standard deviations of 1.4fF and 0.4°C, respectively.
A novel special optical waveguide structure with magneto-optic nonreciprocal phase shift under transversely applied magnetic field

A novel special waveguide sensor, which is very sensitive to magnetic field, is proposed. This novel special wave guide is combined by two kinds material, YIG polymer and Bi:YIG polymer. The two beam lights counter-propagating in this kind of waveguide can generate large nonreciprocal phase shift. We designed the sensor structure, simulated the propagated characteristic of the structure. Based on the simulations, we concluded that waveguide with the core divided by two half circles can improve the sensitive to the magnetic field which is parallel to the interface of the two semicircles. We design a Sagnac interference demonstration with the light wavelength of 1550 nm, two difference-resonant loops. This sensor with 0.51pTesla-level sensitivity can be used in ultra-low magnetic field detection.
A multitarget adaptive array algorithms for wireless CDMA systems

In this paper, we compare the performance of different blind adaptive array algorithms in code division multiple access (CDMA) mobile systems using dynamic and static data blocks. Applying on the two algorithms, least-squares despread respread multitarget array (LSDRMTA) and least-squares despread respread multitarget constant modulus algorithm (LSDRMTCMA). The performance test assume that the channel has additive white gaussian noise (AWGN).
Drive and share: efficient provisioning of social networks in vehicular scenarios

Social Networks are one of the latest revolutions in networking, allowing users with common interests to stay connected and exchange information. They have enjoyed great success not only for traditional Internet users, but also for mobile users. Recent efforts are also being done to make social networks available within vehicles. However, to exploit social networks at their full potential in a vehicular context a number of technical challenges and design issues need to be faced. In this article, we analyze those challenges and present an innovative solution for providing Social services on the vehicle based on IP Multimedia Subsystem and Machine to Machine capabilities. To demonstrate the viability of the proposed scheme we present a social network service called Drive and Share which offers relevant information to vehicles using our proposed architecture.
Dynamic point location in fat hyperrectangles with integer coordinates

A data structure is presented for point location in a disjoint set of hyperrectangles in arbitrary fixed dimension with integer coordinates less than U . Point location query times are O(log logU), in any dimension. The space and construction costs are dependent of the fatness of the hyperrectangles stored in the structure. The fatness of a hyperrectangle x is defined to be the size of the smallest set of hypercubes whose union is x. Given a set of n hyperrectangles with average fatness f the time to construct the data structure is O(fn log U log log U) randomized, and the structure will use O(fn log log U) space. Semidynamic and fully dynamic variants of this data structure are also presented.
Prediction of Biological Functions on Glycosylation Site Migrations in Human Influenza H1N1 Viruses

Protein glycosylation alteration is typically employed by various viruses for escaping immune pressures from their hosts. Our previous work had shown that not only the increase of glycosylation sites (glycosites) numbers, but also glycosite migration might be involved in the evolution of human seasonal influenza H1N1 viruses. More importantly, glycosite migration was likely a more effectively alteration way for the host adaption of human influenza H1N1 viruses. In this study, we provided more bioinformatics and statistic evidences for further predicting the significant biological functions of glycosite migration in the host adaptation of human influenza H1N1 viruses, by employing homology modeling and in silico protein glycosylation of representative HA and NA proteins as well as amino acid variability analysis at antigenic sites of HA and NA. The results showed that glycosite migrations in human influenza viruses have at least five possible functions: to more effectively mask the antigenic sites, to more effectively protect the enzymatic cleavage sites of neuraminidase (NA), to stabilize the polymeric structures, to regulate the receptor binding and catalytic activities and to balance the binding activity of hemagglutinin (HA) with the release activity of NA. The information here can provide some constructive suggestions for the function research related to protein glycosylation of influenza viruses, although these predictions still need to be supported by experimental data.
Design Exploration for Decimal Floating-Point Arithmetic IBM University Partnership Program Proposal Professor

Commercial applications and databases typically store numerical data in decimal format. Currently, however, microprocessors do not provide instructions or hardware support for decimal floating-point arithmetic [ 1 ]. Consequently, decimal numbers are often read into computers, converted to binary numbers, and then processed using binary floating-point arithmetic. Results are then converted back to decimal before being stored. Besides being time-consuming, this process is error-prone, since most decimal numbers cannot be exactly represented as binary numbers [2,3]. Thus, if binary floating-point arithmetic is used to process decimal data, unexpected results may occur after a few computations [4]. In many commercial applications, including financial analysis, banking, tax calculation, currency conversions, insurance, accounting, and e-commerce, the errors introduced by converting between decimal and binary numbers are unacceptable and may violate legal accuracy requirements. Therefore, these applications often use software to perform decimal floating-point arithmetic. Although this approach eliminates errors due to converting between binary and decimal numbers, it leads to long execution times for numerically intensive commercial applications, since software implementations of decimal floating-point operation are typically 100 to 1,000 times slower than equivalent binary floating-point operations in hardware [ 5]. Due the growing importance of decimal floating-point arithmetic, specifications for it have recently been added to the draft revision of the IEEE 754 Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic [6]. For this project, we will research, design, and evaluate instruction set extensions, arithmetic algorithms, and hardware designs for decimal floating-point arithmetic. We will also enhance computer simulators and compilers to better evaluate the benefits of hardware support for decimal floating-point arithmetic. This research will include: • Investigating decimal floating-point instruction set extensions. We will select these instructions based on (a) their usefulness in reducing the execution times of commercial applications, (b) their ability to meet the requirements of the revised IEEE 754 Standard, and (c) their anticipated ease of implementation on high-performance processors. To estimate the execution times of current decimal floating-point software, we will use the decNumber C library [7], commercial benchmarks, the SimpleScalar simulator [8], and the prof and gprof profiling tools. • Developing and analyzing novel arithmetic algorithms and hardware designs. We will investigate the use of specialized encodings, hardware sharing, parallel speculative result computation, carry-free decimal addition, and other techniques to improve the area, critical path delay, performance, and/or power consumption of decimal floating-point arithmetic. We will also
Role of Platelet Microparticles in the Production of Thromboxane by Rabbit Pulmonary Artery

Abstract—This study examined the role of platelet microparticles in thromboxane A2 (TXA2) production. Incubation of microparticles with [14C]arachidonic acid and A23187 produced 14C-labeled TXB2, the stable metabolite of TXA2. To investigate the possibility that endothelial cells (ECs) transfer arachidonic acid to platelet microparticles and promote TXB2 synthesis, ECs with their cellular lipids prelabeled with tritiated arachidonic acid were incubated with microparticles. In the absence of microparticles, there was no production of tritiated TXB2 by the ECs. However, when microparticles were coincubated with prelabeled ECs, tritiated arachidonic acid was metabolized to tritiated TXB2. Aspirin was then used to inhibit cyclooxygenase. ECs coincubated with aspirin-treated platelet microparticles did not produce TXB2, as measured by radioimmunoassay. In contrast, aspirin-treated ECs coincubated with microparticles produced TXB2, and its production was enhanced by methacholine (10−4 mol/L), indicating that endothelially derived arachidonic acid, and not endothelially derived prostaglandin endoperoxide, was transferred to the microparticle and further metabolized to TXA2. Additional studies with rabbit aorta and pulmonary artery investigated whether microparticles contributed to vascular contractions. Preincubation with microparticles enhanced arachidonic acid–induced contractions in the aorta and methacholine-induced contractions in the pulmonary artery. The thromboxane receptor antagonist SQ29548 and the thromboxane synthase inhibitor dazoxiben blocked these effects. Because TXA2 is an important mediator in various pathophysiologic states, including hypertension, the ability of platelet microparticles to act as a cellular source of TXA2 might provide new insight into the role of platelets and platelet microparticles in the control of vascular tone.
Effectiveness, tolerability, and impact on quality of life of the 5% lidocaine patch in diabetic polyneuropathy.

BACKGROUND The treatment of painful diabetic polyneuropathy (DPN) is often inadequate and frequently limited by the systemic adverse effects of medications, necessitating the evaluation of novel treatments. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effectiveness, tolerability, and impact on quality of life of the 5% lidocaine patch in painful diabetic polyneuropathy. DESIGN Open-label, flexible-dosing, 3-week study with a 5-week extension. SETTING Outpatient clinics and clinical research centers.Patients Volunteer sample of 56 patients with clinically defined painful diabetic polyneuropathy of longer than 3 months' duration. Intervention The 5% lidocaine patch, with a maximum of 4 patches daily for 18 hours. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Change in mean daily pain diary ratings from baseline to week 3. Secondary end points included assessments of safety, tolerability, and quality of life. RESULTS Patients with painful diabetic polyneuropathy showed significant improvements in pain and quality-of-life outcome measures during a 3-week treatment period. These benefits were maintained in a subgroup of patients treated for an additional 5 weeks, during which taper of concomitant analgesic therapy was permitted. Adverse events were minimal, and systemic accumulation of lidocaine did not occur. CONCLUSIONS Up to four 5% lidocaine patches for up to 18 h/d are well tolerated in patients with painful diabetic polyneuropathy, significantly improve pain and quality-of-life ratings, and may allow tapering of concomitant analgesic therapy. Given the open-label design of this trial, a randomized controlled trial is necessary to confirm these results.
Meningococcal serogroup B vaccines: will they live up to expectations?

The prevention of invasive meningo coccal disease caused by serogroup B meningococci (MenB) has been the subject of intensive investigation. The MenB polysaccharide capsule is poorly immunogenic and outer membrane proteins, as part of outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) or in combinations of subunit surface proteins, are being investigated, but the genetic and antigenic diversity of the meningococcus represents a major obstacle. Meningococcal populations comprise a large number of genetic lineages, and although only a subset cause most disease, invasive meningococci can express a wide diversity of subcapsular antigen variants. Vaccination approaches therefore have to identify conserved antigen variants, or include carefully assembled ‘cocktails’ of antigen variants to provide broad coverage. Of the noncapsular vaccine candidates, the most advanced are vaccines containing factor H-binding protein (fHbp; also known as GNA1870 or LP2086), currently included in formulations under investigation by Novartis (rMenB-OMV) and Pfizer (bivalent rLP2086), and a range of OMV vaccines modified in various ways to improve strain coverage. A particular challenge is the induction of cross-bactericidal antibodies in naive infants.