Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
I/O issues in a multimedia system

In future computer system design, I/O systems will have to support continuous media such as video and audio, whose system demands are different from those of data such as text. Multimedia computing requires us to focus on designing I/O systems that can handle real-time demands. Video- and audio-stream playback and teleconferencing are real-time applications with different I/O demands. We primarily consider playback applications which require guaranteed real-time I/O throughput. In a multimedia server, different service phases of a real-time request are disk, small computer systems interface (SCSI) bus, and processor scheduling. Additional service might be needed if the request must be satisfied across a local area network. We restrict ourselves to the support provided at the server, with special emphasis on two service phases: disk scheduling and SCSI bus contention. When requests have to be satisfied within deadlines, traditional real-time systems use scheduling algorithms such as earliest deadline first (EDF) and least slack time first. However, EDF makes the assumption that disks are preemptable, and the seek-time overheads of its strict real-time scheduling result in poor disk utilization. We can provide the constant data rate necessary for real-time requests in various ways that require trade-offs. We analyze how trade-offs that involve buffer space affect the performance of scheduling policies. We also show that deferred deadlines, which increase buffer requirements, improve system performance significantly. <<ETX>>
Evidence of Nervous System Sensitization in Commonly Presenting and Persistent Painful Tendinopathies: A Systematic Review.

Study Design Systematic review. Objectives To elucidate if there is sensitization of the nervous system in those with persistent rotator cuff (shoulder), lateral elbow, patellar, and Achilles tendinopathies. Background Tendinopathy can be difficult to treat, and persistent intractable pain and dysfunction are frequent. It is hypothesized that induction or maintenance of persistent pain in tendinopathy may be, at least in part, based on changes in the nervous system. Methods The PRISMA guidelines were followed. Relevant articles were identified through a computerized search in Embase, PubMed, and Web of Science, followed by a manual search of reference lists of retained articles. To be eligible, studies had to include quantitative sensory testing and evaluate individuals diagnosed with a persistent tendinopathy of the rotator cuff (shoulder), lateral elbow, patella, or Achilles tendon. Methodological quality assessment was evaluated with the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. Results In total, 16 full-text articles met the criteria for inclusion, of which the majority were case-control studies with heterogeneous methodological quality. No studies on Achilles tendinopathy were found. Mechanical algometry was the predominant quantitative sensory testing used. Lowered pressure pain threshold was observed across different tendinopathies at the site of tendinopathy, as well as at other sites, the latter being suggestive of central sensitization. Conclusion Although more research on sensory abnormalities is warranted, it appears likely that there is an association between persistent tendon pain and sensitization of the nervous system. This evidence is primarily from studies of upper-limb tendinopathy, and caution should be exercised with inference to lower-limb tendinopathy. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 2015;45(11):864-875. Epub 21 Sep 2015. doi:10.2519/jospt.2015. 5895.
Prevalence and Determinants of Suboptimal Vitamin D Levels in a Multiethnic Asian Population

This population-based cross-sectional study examined the prevalence and risk factors of suboptimal vitamin D levels (assessed using circulating 25-hydroxycholecalciferol (25(OH)D)) in a multi-ethnic sample of Asian adults. Plasma 25(OH)D concentration of 1139 Chinese, Malay and Indians (40–80 years) were stratified into normal (≥30 ng/mL), and suboptimal (including insufficiency and deficiency, <30 ng/mL) based on the 2011 Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guidelines. Logistic regression models were used to assess the associations of demographic, lifestyle and clinical risk factors with the outcome. Of the 1139 participants, 25(OH)D concentration was suboptimal in 76.1%. In multivariable models, age ≤65 years (compared to age >65 years), Malay and Indian ethnicities (compared to Chinese ethnicity), and higher body mass index, HbA1c, education and income levels were associated with suboptimal 25(OH)D concentration (p < 0.05). In a population-based sample of Asian adults, approximately 75% had suboptimal 25(OH)D concentration. Targeted interventions and stricter reinforcements of existing guidelines for vitamin D supplementation are needed for groups at risk of vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency.
La influencia de jugar la Liga de Campeones en el resultado de los equipos en la Liga Española de Fútbol. La importancia de la densidad competitiva

This paper has two goals. First, studying the impact of playing in the Champions League on the results in the Spanish League. Second, analyzing whether being a beginner team in the Champions League is a relevant variable in explaining the impact of playing in the Champions League on the results in the Spanish League. The empirical analysis is based on data from 184 matches in the Spanish Soccer League for those teams playing at the same time both competitions. Data used in the research were given by GECA SPORT and taken from the official site of the Champions League and the Spanish League. According to the estimation of a mutinomial logit model, playing in the Champions League has no a statistically significant impact on the probability of winning a given match in the Spanish League. On the contrary, it has a positive effect for beginner teams in the Champions League: their probability of winning a given match is higher in those weeks when they play in the Champions League (p<0.01) Key words: result, soccer, Champions League, logit multinomial, Spanish Soccer League
La memoria y el aprendizaje escolar

Desde finales del siglo XIX, y quiza desde antes, una serie de autores han venido criticando que la actividad escolar consista fundamentalmente en aprender de memoria una serie de hechos y de datos. Las voces contra ese aprendizaje memoristico han sido muy numerosas, pero en muchas escuelas de multitud de paises se sigue teniendo que aprender de memoria una gran cantidad de cosas. Frente a ello un numero creciente de autores han defendido que la escuela no puede limitarse hoy en dia a transmitir informaciones y valores (Delval y Lomeli, 2013), sino que se debe aprender sobre todo a resolver problemas y que los sujetos desempenan un papel activo en su aprendizaje, que el conocimiento no se recibe ya hecho, sino que hay que construirlo, y que lo que se aprende tiene que tener un significado y relacionarse con el resto de los conocimientos y acciones que realizan los sujetos.
O trabalho e seus sentidos

Many researches, since the 1950's, seek to comprehend the meaning of work using different methodolo- gical approaches. Results obtained by the Meaning of Work group International Research Team ((MOW)) in 1987, in different countries, showed that work could assume different conditions from neutrality to centrality in relation to the subject's personal and social identity. The objective of this research is to present some qualitative data on the mea- nings of work for young Brazilian managers, using the approach developed by Morin (2002). Preliminary results of this research show that work is essential at the lives of this group, because work is related to survival. Results also indicate that values such as variations on the nature of the tasks, autonomy, recognition and security are also fundamental for a meaningful work.
Anesthesia for Cesarean Delivery in a Patient With Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Type II

Background and Objectives Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, an inherited connective tissue disease, is rarely seen in pregnancy. Presentation may be mild or severe, depending on which type of the syndrome the patient possesses. Methods A 38-year-old woman with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome type II presented for cesarean delivery at 34 weeks' gestation with premature rupture of membranes and breech presentation. Results A subarachnoid block was chosen to provide surgical anesthesia. No adverse side effects or complications developed. Conclusion In patients with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, it is important to be aware of which type is present and to be knowledgeable about and prepared for any potential complications.
Social processes, program verification and all that

In a controversial paper (De Millo et al. 1979) at the end of the 1970's, R. A. De Millo, R. J. Lipton and A. J. Perlis argued against formal verifications of programs, mostly motivating their position by an analogy with proofs in mathematics, and, in particular, with the impracticality of a strictly formalist approach to this discipline. The recent, impressive achievements in the field of interactive theorem proving provide an interesting ground for a critical revisiting of their theses. We believe that the social nature of proof and program development is uncontroversial and ineluctable, but formal verification is not antithetical to it. Formal verification should strive not only to cope with, but to ease and enhance the collaborative, organic nature of this process, eventually helping us to master the growing complexity of scientific knowledge.
Finding Justifications for the Practice of Peace Journalism: A Public Assessment of Media Roles towards Peace Promotion in Nigeria

The academic study of Peace Journalism across countries compels attentions as crises and wars abound. The argument for and against Peace Journalism is one of the fundamental issues among scholars on media involvement in peace keeping and peace building around the world. This study aimed to find justification for the practice of Peace Journalism in Nigeria by laying emphasis on the assessment of media roles in promoting peace without trampling on the ethics of the profession. It used survey method to examine how members of the public perceive mass media reports of crises in Nigeria. It also investigated whether or not the media reports during crises have elements of Peace Journalism. It again appraised the practice of Peace Journalism and its effect on peace promotion. The study found out that the pattern of media reports of crises in Nigeria is out of the context of Peace Journalism. Majority of the media practitioners take propaganda, stereotype and biased reports for Peace Journalism, thereby promoting crises rather than peace. The study recommended that the concept of Peace Journalism be redefined such that its objective is achieved. It also emphasized that Nigerian mass media should focus more on Investigative and Interpretative Journalism to ensure accurate and balance reports.
The Impact of Social Status, Family Structure, and Neighborhood on the Fertility of Black Adolescents

Black teenagers living in metropolitan areas of the United States initiate sexual intercourse at earlier ages than other teenagers and have higher rates of premarital pregnancy. Ethnographic studies of black families have claimed that economic uncertainties cause young blacks to delay marriage, while many young women achieve adulthood through premarital parenthood. It is also probable that girls who grow up in a female-headed family or who see their sisters become teenage parents are more likely to accept single-parenthood as a way to achieve adult status. These studies have suggested that ghetto neighborhoods are characterized by loosely defined and enforced norms of sexual behavior and age and sex compositions conducive to juvenile deviance. These features of ghetto life make it difficult for parents to regulate successfully their children's behaviors. As a consequence, residents of ghetto neighborhoods are expected to initiate sexual intercourse at earlier ages and to have higher rates of accidental premarital pregnancy than other teens. These hypotheses have received limited support in previous demographic research on teenage fertility. In this paper, these ethnographic explanations of the fertility behaviors of black adolescents are tested, using data from a random sample of more than 1,000 black females aged 13-19 who lived in the city of Chicago in 1979. This analysis improves on previous demographic research by both measuring the total effects of these varibles on fertility and decomposing them into components due to effects on rates of initial sexual intercourse and the probability of conception among the sexually active. A nonbiasing, continuous-time semi-Markov model is used to identify the net effects of these factors on rates of initial sexual intercourse and pregnancy.
Altered mRNA expression after long‐term soleus electrical stimulation training in humans with paralysis

In humans, spinal cord injury (SCI) induces deleterious changes in skeletal muscle that may be prevented or reversed by electrical stimulation muscle training. The molecular mechanisms underlying muscle stimulation training remain unknown. We studied two unique SCI subjects whose right soleus received >6 years of training (30 minutes/day, 5 days/week). Training preserved torque, fatigue index, contractile speed, and cross‐sectional area in the trained leg, but not the untrained leg. Training decreased 10 mRNAs required for fast‐twitch contractions and mRNA that encodes for myostatin, an autocrine/paracrine hormone that inhibits muscle growth. Conversely, training increased 69 mRNAs that mediate the slow‐twitch, oxidative phenotype, including PGC‐1α, a transcriptional coactivator that inhibits muscle atrophy. When we discontinued right soleus training, training‐induced effects diminished slowly, with some persisting for >6 months. Training of paralyzed muscle induces localized and long‐lasting changes in skeletal muscle mRNA expression that improve muscle mass and function. Muscle Nerve, 2011
Privacy-Preserving Fine-Grained Access Control in Public Clouds

With many economical benefits of cloud computing, many organizations have been considering moving their information systems to the cloud. However, an important problem in public clouds is how to selectively share data based on fine-grained attribute based access control policies while at the same time assuring confidentiality of the data and preserving the privacy of users from the cloud. In this article, we briefly discuss the drawbacks of approaches based on well known cryptographic techniques in addressing such problem and then present two approaches that address these drawbacks with different trade-offs.
On the advantages of subspace tracking for temporal updating

When doing parameter estimation, ESPRIT is an often used algorithm. As input, ESPRIT needs the eigenvectors of the signal subspace. These can be generated by an eigenvalue decomposition or by subspace tracking algorithms. In this paper, we demonstrate, that subspace tracking is superior not only regarding computational complexity but also regarding accuracy, which is due to its temporal updating character. We will also detail the circumstances for which this holds and that delay is a side-effect.
Dietary Modification Trial in Community-Dwelling Japanese Elderly: A Pilot Study

Background This study examined the effects of 6-month nutrition education programs for community-dwelling elderly. Methods This study enrolled 50 community-dwelling elderly who regularly visit outpatient clinics. The programs had three goals: salt reduction, increase in dietary fiber, and adequate protein intake. Since it would be difficult for elderly to achieve all goals concurrently, a single goal was chosen by participants themselves. Anthropometric measurements, blood sampling, and assessment of dietary intake were performed at baseline, 3 months, and 6 months. Results The nutrition education program for salt reduction was well accepted by the participants and the amount of daily salt intake showed median value of 9.6 g at baseline, 8.0 g at 3 months and 8.1 g at 6 months (P = 0.005). The amount of dietary fiber intake only slightly increased after taking the nutrition program (median value of 13.4 g at baseline, 15.3 g at 3 months and 15.5 g at 6 months; P = 0.695), because of difficulties in introducing new food options to the diet. After taking the adequate protein intake program, participants showed small decreases in protein (a modification from 1.24 g/kg IBW to 1.20 g/kg IBW) and salt intake (8.2 to 7.3 g) at 3 months, but the effects were not sustained at 6 months. Conclusion This nutrition education program focusing on a single nutrient may serve as a strategy to successfully reduce salt intake and improve systolic blood pressure control in community-dwelling elderly individuals who regularly visit outpatient clinics. In our view, dietary and lifestyle habits should be taken into account as much as possible in nutrition education for elderly individuals.
Instant messaging: a new target for hackers

Instant messaging is exploding as a means of personal and corporate communications. Individuals chat via IM; companies rely on beefed-up versions of the technology, with its real-time capabilities, for collaborative design work; and e-businesses use IM to provide live, immediate customer service to shoppers. Meanwhile, the technology is finding its way onto mobile devices, including PDAs and smart phones. However, as IM becomes more popular, particularly for businesses, it has also increasingly become the target of attacks, such as those using malicious code and phishing. Some security experts say IM is following the same patterns shown during the development of e-mail attacks. These include the use of tricks to encourage victims to click on virus-laden attachments or hyperlinks to Web pages that upload applets to either infect visitors with malware or drop unwanted software on their computers. The most dangerous part about the attacks is their speed of propagation, caused by IM's real-time capabilities. Traditional antivirus technology, in which vendors typically need 24 hours to find remedies for new malicious code, may be too slow to prevent many IM attacks from spreading rapidly.
Finite monoids and the fine structure of NC1

Recently a new connection was discovered between the parallel complexity class NC1 and the theory of finite automata, in the work of Barrington [Ba86] on bounded width branching programs. There (non-uniform) NC1 was characterized as those languages recognized by a certain non-uniform version of a DFA. Here we extend this characterization to show that the internal structures of NC1 and the class of automata are closely related. In particular, using Thérien's classification of finite monoids [Th81], we give new characterizations of the classes AC0, depth-k AC0, and ACC, the last being the AC0 closure of the mod q functions for all constant q. We settle some of the open questions in [Ba86], give a new proof that the dot-depth hierarchy of algebraic automata theory is infinite [BK78], and offer a new framework for understanding the internal structure of NC1.
Identification of cells secreting a thymostimulin-like substance and examination of some histoenzymatic pathways in aging avian primary lymphatic organs: II. Bursa of Fabricius.

The Bursa of Fabricius of 15 day, 1-, 3-, and 6 month-old adult chickens (White Leghorn strain) were studied by histological and histochemical staining, histoenzymatic reactions (LDH, SDH, a-GPDH, NAD, NADPH, Ca++-dependent ATP-ase, pH 8.5) and by anti-thymostimulin immunoreaction. Positive reactions for mucopolysaccharides and enzymatic activities were located in the epithelia of the follicles, i.e. in follicle-associated-epithelium (FAE), inter-follicle-epithelium (IFE) and in different epithelial compartments of cortical and medullary zones. Positive reaction for thymostimulin-like (TS-like) substance was restricted to FAE cells and weakly to the basal lamina of IFE. In 6-month-old chickens, the FAE cells disappeared; the phenomenon of bursal regression was evident, although not all the follicles were involved. In the few still normal follicles, the good reactivity to the enzymes tested suggests that residual physiological activity is still present, even if reduced.
Sensing foot gestures from the pocket

Visually demanding interfaces on a mobile phone can diminish the user experience by monopolizing the user's attention when they are focusing on another task and impede accessibility for visually impaired users. Because mobile devices are often located in pockets when users are mobile, explicit foot movements can be defined as eyes-and-hands-free input gestures for interacting with the device. In this work, we study the human capability associated with performing foot-based interactions which involve lifting and rotation of the foot when pivoting on the toe and heel. Building upon these results, we then developed a system to learn and recognize foot gestures using a single commodity mobile phone placed in the user's pocket or in a holster on their hip. Our system uses acceleration data recorded by a built-in accelerometer on the mobile device and a machine learning approach to recognizing gestures. Through a lab study, we demonstrate that our system can classify ten different foot gestures at approximately 86% accuracy.
Compressive Domain Interference Cancellation

In this paper we consider the scenario where a compressive sensing system acquires a signal of interest corrupted by an interfering signal. Under mild sparsity and orthogonality conditions on the signal and interference, we demonstrate that it is possible to efficiently filter out the interference from the compressive measurements in a manner that preserves our ability to recover the signal of interest. Specifically, we develop a filtering method that nulls out the interference while maintaining the restricted isometry property (RIP) on the set of potential signals of interest. The construction operates completely in the compressive domain and has computational complexity that is polynomial in the number of measurements.
Block-based multiscale error concealment using low-rank completion

In this paper, we introduce a novel block-based multiscale error concealment method using low-rank completion. The proposed method searches for similar blocks and utilizes low-rank completion to recover the missing pixels. In order to make the full use of the hidden redundant information of images, we seek for more similar blocks by building an image pyramid. The blocks collected from the pyramid are more similar to each other, which leads to a more accurate recovery. Moreover, instead of recovering the missing block at once, we propose a ringlike iterative process to partially minimize the number of unknown pixels and further enhance the recovery result. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Chapter 1 High-Dimensional Classification ∗

In this chapter, we give a comprehensive overview on high-dimensional classification, which is prominently featured in many contemporary statistical problems. Emphasis is given on the impact of dimensionality on implementation and statistical performance and on the feature selection to enhance statistical performance as well as scientific understanding between collected variables and the outcome. Penalized methods and independence learning are introduced for feature selection in ultrahigh dimensional feature space. Popular methods such as the Fisher linear discriminant, Bayes classifiers, independence rules, distance-based classifiers and loss-based classification rules are introduced and their merits are critically examined. Extensions to multi-class problems are also given.