Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Service Brokering in Cloud Governance

The dawn of Cloud Computing has opened new opportunities for IT-based industries, enabling them to cut costs and extend their businesses to a level which was previously hard to attain. While Cloud adoption is an ongoing process, many enterprises are still reluctant to pursue it because its downside outweighs its benefits, especially due to problems related to security and privacy. Coming from Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Governance, Cloud Governance aims to cover these issues by offering a set of complementary services to the already available Cloud Management ones. This paper covers one of the core aspects of Cloud Governance, its ability to provide service brokering. A semantic approach is proposed where related services and cloud ontologies as well as brokering mechanisms are discussed.
RURAL ROUTES: FIRST YEAR COLLEGE EXPERIENCES OF STUDENTS FROM RURAL BACKGROUNDS

The experiences of college students from rural backgrounds have remained understudied. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to further understand how students from rural backgrounds perceive self, define rurality, describe their firstyear social and academic college experiences, and make meaning of these experiences. Eight first-time, full-time freshman from rural communities of less than 2,500 inhabitants were interviewed twice during their freshman year of college. Furthermore, data collection techniques also included photo elicitation, student drawings, a rural representation selected by the students, and subsequent discussions of these items. Participants described rurality and rural culture in the context of small-secluded areas, open space, sense of community, and connections to the land. They described themselves as hardworking honest, driven responsible, and family oriented. Emergent themes related to general college experiences and rural effects included opportunities, limited college knowledge, initial shock, size of college, just a number, and balancing act. Social preparedness, friends: knowing everyone to knowing a few to good friends, ease of social integration, and lack of diversity but open emerged as themes related to social college experiences and rural effects. Regarding academic college experiences and rural effects, the following themes surfaced: academic preparedness, shift in faculty student interactions: teachers to professors, peers and academics, perceptions of academic rigor, shift in study habits to meet academic rigor, and perceptions of academic success. A focal conclusion derived from this research study is that the participants define themselves in terms of their rurality. Regarding college experiences and rural effects, study participants did not know what to expect at college and their rural upbringing helped prepared them for the social aspects of college. Furthermore, they are relying on their drive, strong work ethic, and sense of responsibility to integrate academically and are utilizing their social skills to aid in their academic endeavors. The rural students in this study appear to be on a trajectory towards social and academic integration and in turn persistence. Finally, these college students from rural backgrounds understand their agency. They understand that they play the critical role in their own development.
How Organizations Learn: A Communication Framework.

Abstract : This report assesses the current state of organizational learning theory using the story of American LaFrance a manufacturing company that went bankrupt because it failed to respond to changes in material and design technology. Organizational learning has been implicit in the organizational literature for many years. Previous research and theorizing can be categorized into either the systems-structural perspective or the interpretive perspective on learning. These two perspectives are reflected in the need for both data logistics and interpretation within organizations. We proposed that the authors recommend specific design characteristics in written and oral communication on which could be used to facilitate either type of learning. The four learning modes--traditional bureaucracy, extended bureaucracy, self-designing organizations, and experimenting organizations presented.
Hybrid FEC / ARQ Performance and Audio Quality over Wireless Links

Real time flows transmission over wireless networks often suffers from packet loss, delay and jitter. The main problem to implement a wireless network is the high and variable bit error rate in the radio link. In this paper, a hybrid ARQ/FEC scheme with limiting the slots number between the loss of the last retransmission of the original block n and the reception of block n + φ is analyzed in an environment of real-time applications. If a block is lost, the link-level error mechanism turns to ARQ for the transmission the block. The retransmission will be done a maximum number of times denoted by δ. If after δ trials the block n does not get through the wireless link, ARQ assume that the block cannot be locally recovered. In that case, the copy of block n can be recovered if the block n+φ is well received with the slots number Sn such that it less or equal to the slots number threshold Sth. The effect of link layer parameters like the offset φ, number of LL transmission attempts, slots number threshold Sth and LL packet size on the performance is evaluated. We show that the combination of FEC and ARQ with limiting the Sth , keeps a reasonable delay and increases the packet reject rate at the wireless link.
Example-Based Facial Portraiture Style Learning

An example-based approach for facial portrait style learning is proposed. By learning a training set with the same style, this method can generate new portraitures which are similar to this style. To obtain facial features with high quality, there are two key elements in this paper: Using an Inhomogeneous Markov Random Field Model (MRF) and a nonparametric sampling scheme to learn the statistical relationship between the original images and the corresponding drawings, by identifying the facial contour area, the facial structure is trained from examples independently. Therefore, the output portraits can obtain more details with a clear and complete facial contour, while reducing the noise. Furthermore, an improved multi-samples texture synthesis method is also proposed to speed up the texture synthesis process without loss of the detail. Experimental results show that this approach is more efficient especially in the large image size and can generate satisfying new portraits of the desired styles.
Speckle Noise Reduction of Medical Ultrasound Images in Complex Wavelet Domain Using Mixture Priors

Speckle noise is an inherent nature of ultrasound images, which may have negative effect on image interpretation and diagnostic tasks. In this paper, we propose several multiscale nonlinear thresholding methods for ultrasound speckle suppression. The wavelet coefficients of the logarithm of image are modeled as the sum of a noise-free component plus an independent noise. Assuming that the noise-free component has some local mixture distribution (MD), and the noise is either Gaussian or Rayleigh, we derive the minimum mean squared error (MMSE) and the averaged maximum (AMAP) estimators for noise reduction. We use Gaussian and Laplacian MD for each noise-free wavelet coefficient to characterize their heavy-tailed property. Since we estimate the parameters of the MD using the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm and local neighbors, the proposed MD incorporates some information about the intrascale dependency of the wavelet coefficients. To evaluate our spatially adaptive despeckling methods, we use both real medical ultrasound and synthetically introduced speckle images for speckle suppression. The simulation results show that our method outperforms several recently and the state-of-the-art techniques qualitatively and quantitatively.
Passive Greenhouses and Ecological Reconstruction

This paper is discussing the ecological reconstruction opportunity opened by the extended use of the energetic passive greenhouses, independent of any conventional infrastructure (water, gas, electricity). A specific passive greenhouse configuration is considered: the main heating device is a heat pump extracting energy from cold underground water. A dc wind generator is supplying the small amount of energy necessary for the recirculation of the water. Solar panels are also included. The extensive use of passive greenhouses could significantly change the future agriculture: the replacement of the huge cereal cultivated surfaces by forests, orchards and pastures. This way the Earth vegetal matter will substantially increase the absorption of the CO2 from the atmosphere. A structural model of the passive greenhouse is proposed.
Redirecting the Cyanobacterial Bicarbonate Transporters BicA and SbtA to the Chloroplast Envelope: Soluble and Membrane Cargos Need Different Chloroplast Targeting Signals in Plants

Most major crops used for human consumption are C3 plants, which yields are limited by photosynthetic inefficiency. To circumvent this, it has been proposed to implement the cyanobacterial CO2-concentrating mechanism (CCM), principally consisting of bicarbonate transporters and carboxysomes, into plant chloroplasts. As it is currently not possible to recover homoplasmic transplastomic monocots, foreign genes must be introduced in these plants via nuclear transformation. Consequently, it is paramount to ensure that resulting proteins reach the appropriate sub-cellular compartment, which for cyanobacterial transporters BicA and SbtA, is the chloroplast inner-envelope membrane (IEM). At present, targeting signals to redirect large transmembrane proteins from non-chloroplastic organisms to plant chloroplast envelopes are unknown. The goal of this study was to identify such signals, using agrobacteria-mediated transient expression and confocal microscopy to determine the sub-cellular localization of ∼37 GFP-tagged chimeras. Initially, fragments of chloroplast proteins known to target soluble cargos to the stroma were tested for their ability to redirect BicA, but they proved ineffective. Next, different N-terminal regions from Arabidopsis IEM transporters were tested. We demonstrated that the N-terminus of AtHP59, AtPLGG1 or AtNTT1 (92–115 amino acids), containing a cleavable chloroplast transit peptide (cTP) and a membrane protein leader (MPL), was sufficient to redirect BicA or SbtA to the chloroplast envelope. This constitutes the first evidence that nuclear-encoded transmembrane proteins from non-chloroplastic organisms can be targeted to the envelope of plant chloroplasts; a finding which represents an important advance in chloroplast engineering by opening up the door to further manipulation of the chloroplastic envelope.
Extracellular Matrix-Induced Gene Expression in Human Breast Cancer Cells

Extracellular matrix (ECM) molecules modify gene expression through attachment-dependent (focal adhesion-related) integrin receptor signaling. It was previously unknown whether the same molecules acting as soluble peptides could generate signal cascades without the associated mechanical anchoring, a condition that may be encountered during matrix remodeling and degradation and relevant to invasion and metastatic processes. In the current study, the role of ECM ligand-regulated gene expression through this attachment-independent process was examined. It was observed that fibronectin, laminin, and collagen type I and II induce Smad2 activation in MCF-10A and MCF-7 cells. This activation is not caused by transforming growth factor (TGF)-β ligand contamination or autocrine TGF involvement and is 3- to 5-fold less robust than the TGF-β1 ligand. The resulting nuclear translocation of Smad4 in response to ECM ligand indicates downstream transcriptional responses occurring. Coimmunoprecipitation experiments determined that collagen type II and laminin act through interaction with integrin α2β1 receptor complex. The ECM ligand-induced Smad activation (termed signaling crosstalk) resulted in cell type and ligand-specific transcriptional changes, which are distinct from the TGF-β ligand-induced responses. These findings show that cell-matrix communication is more complex than previously thought. Soluble ECM peptides drive transcriptional regulation through corresponding adhesion and non-attachment-related processes. The resultant gene expressional patterns correlate with pathway activity and not by the extent of Smad activation. These results extend the complexity and the existing paradigms of ECM-cell communication to ECM ligand regulation without the necessity of mechanical coupling. (Mol Cancer Res 2009;7(3):319–29)
Modulation of firing and synaptic transmission of serotonergic neurons by intrinsic G protein-coupled receptors and ion channels

Serotonergic neurons project to virtually all regions of the central nervous system and are consequently involved in many critical physiological functions such as mood, sexual behavior, feeding, sleep/wake cycle, memory, cognition, blood pressure regulation, breathing, and reproductive success. Therefore, serotonin release and serotonergic neuronal activity have to be precisely controlled and modulated by interacting brain circuits to adapt to specific emotional and environmental states. We will review the current knowledge about G protein-coupled receptors and ion channels involved in the regulation of serotonergic system, how their regulation is modulating the intrinsic activity of serotonergic neurons and its transmitter release and will discuss the latest methods for controlling the modulation of serotonin release and intracellular signaling in serotonergic neurons in vitro and in vivo.
High-Dimensional Function Approximation for Knowledge-Free Reinforcement Learning: a Case Study in SZ-Tetris

SZ-Tetris, a restricted version of Tetris, is a difficult reinforcement learning task. Previous research showed that, similarly to the original Tetris, value function-based methods such as temporal difference learning, do not work well for SZ-Tetris. The best performance in this game was achieved by employing direct policy search techniques, in particular the cross-entropy method in combination with handcrafted features. Nonetheless, a simple heuristic hand-coded player scores even higher. Here we show that it is possible to equal its performance with CMA-ES (Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy). We demonstrate that further improvement is possible by employing systematic n-tuple network, a knowledge-free function approximator, and VD-CMA-ES, a linear variant of CMA-ES for high dimension optimization. Last but not least, we show that a large systematic n-tuple network (involving more than 4 million parameters) allows the classical temporal difference learning algorithm to obtain similar average performance to VD-CMA-ES, but at 20 times lower computational expense, leading to the best policy for SZ-Tetris known to date. These results enrich the current understanding of difficulty of SZ-Tetris, and shed new light on the capabilities of particular search paradigms when applied to representations of various characteristics and dimensionality.
Presence of baseline prehypertension and risk of incident stroke

Objective: To qualitatively and quantitatively assess the association of prehypertension with incident stroke through a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. Methods: We searched Medline, Embase, the Cochrane Library, and bibliographies of retrieved articles. Prospective cohort studies were included if they reported multivariate-adjusted relative risks (RRs) and corresponding 95%confidence intervals (CI) of stroke with respect to baseline prehypertension. Results: Twelve studies with 518,520 participants were included. Prehypertension was associated with risk of stroke (RR 1.55, 95% CI 1.35–1.79; p < 0.001). Seven studies further distinguished a low prehypertensive population (systolic blood pressure [SBP] 120–129 mm Hg or diastolic blood pressure [DBP] 80–84 mm Hg) and a high prehypertensive population (SBP 130–139 mm Hg or DBP 85–89 mm Hg). Among persons with lower-range prehypertension, stroke risk was not significantly increased (RR 1.22, 0.95–1.57). However, for persons with higher values within the prehypertensive range, stroke risk was substantially increased (RR 1.79, 95% CI 1.49–2.16). Conclusions: Prehypertension is associated with a higher risk of incident stroke. This risk is largely driven by higher values within the prehypertensive range and is especially relevant in nonelderly persons. Randomized trials to evaluate the efficacy of blood pressure reduction in persons with this designation are warranted.
Scoping the Discipline of Information Systems 1

INTRODUCTION In reflecting on the academic discipline of information systems (IS) we might first look at what we mean by 'discipline'. Here we mean 'a branch of instruction or learning' though we do not wish to imply the desirability of, nor actual, agreement on a limited field of study nor total 'control', 'obedience' nor too much 'order' about what we research. This would give grounds for concern, for information systems is a pluralistic field, founded on knowledge from other, more established, source disciplines and frequently borrowing from these disciplines. On the other hand, a lack of 'discipline'—for example, not having an agreed general area for teaching, research and practice—is also a concern, as it leads to a perceived lack of coherence in the discipline and a low status as a consequence. It is this balancing act, between too much control about limiting the issues relevant to the discipline on the one side and the danger of incoherence on the other, which is a central theme of this chapter. This balancing act might be considered to be only of academic interest except for the importance of information systems to industry and to society. Since the 1990s, applications of information and communication technology (ICT) have been fundamentally changing the way organizations conduct business. These changes create opportunities for 4 Scoping the Discipline of Information Systems researchers to make significant contributions to knowledge while they assist organizations to manage this change better. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) acknowledges the structural impact of these technology-enabled innovations: The Internet and related advances in information and communication technology (ICT) are transforming economic activity, much as the steam engine, railways and electricity did in the past (OECD, 2001). But we have reservations about the above as a basis for understanding the discipline of information systems in its concentration on economic activity with technology, rather than the broader activity between people and organizations and technology, and also in its comparison between ICT and the more static technologies mentioned. Major developments in ICT seem to occur every day and there are so many different strands and applications. Further, there can be no doubt that it is transforming society, at least in the developed world and some regions in the developing world. IS is a relatively new discipline. We consider the start of the discipline to be the widespread use of computers to process data in the …
Bayesian Optimal Active Search on Graphs

In many classification problems, including numerous examples on modern large-scale graph datasets, a large quantity of unlabeled data are available. The cost of obtaining a label for such data can be very expensive, for example when human intervention is required. Both the semi-supervised and active learning communities have approached such problems. The former focuses on how to aid the classification task by exploiting the distribution of unlabeled data, and the latter addresses the problem of choosing the most useful labels to acquire, that would subsequently minimize the cost incurred in the pursuit of the learning goal. Various algorithms have been proposed by these communities that learn from a large dataset with few labeled data, and graph datasets have in particular received a lot of attention for large-scale applications such as collaborative filtering for recommendation systems and link prediction in social networks. Here, we focus on a specific active binary-classification problem, where the goal is to find the members of a particular class as quickly as possible. In some situations, such as fraud detection or the investigative analysis of potentially criminal social networks, only the members of the malicious class are sought, whereas obtaining labels for points in the positive class is only useful for the purpose of facilitating that task. We derive the Bayesian optimal policy for this decision problem and test our proposed algorithm on two large-scale graph datasets. The optimal policy can be implemented in parallel, and it is our hope that the described algorithm can scale to even larger graphs.
Tactile Modulation of Whisking via the Brainstem Loop: Statechart Modeling and Experimental Validation

Rats repeatedly sweep their facial whiskers back and forth in order to explore their environment. Such explorative whisking appears to be driven by central pattern generators (CPGs) that operate independently of direct sensory feedback. Nevertheless, whisking can be modulated by sensory feedback, and it has been hypothesized that some of this modulation already occurs within the brainstem. However, the interaction between sensory feedback and CPG activity is poorly understood. Using the visual language of statecharts, a dynamic, bottom-up computerized model of the brainstem loop of the whisking system was built in order to investigate the interaction between sensory feedback and CPG activity during whisking behavior. As a benchmark, we used a previously quantified closed-loop phenomenon of the whisking system, touched-induced pump (TIP), which is thought to be mediated by the brainstem loop. First, we showed that TIPs depend on sensory feedback, by comparing TIP occurrence in intact rats with that in rats whose sensory nerve was experimentally cut. We then inspected several possible feedback mechanisms of TIPs using our model. The model ruled out all hypothesized mechanisms but one, which adequately simulated the corresponding motion observed in the rat. Results of the simulations suggest that TIPs are generated via sensory feedback that activates extrinsic retractor muscles in the mystacial pad. The model further predicted that in addition to the touching whisker, all whiskers found on the same side of the snout should exhibit a TIP. We present experimental results that confirm the predicted movements in behaving rats, establishing the validity of the hypothesized interaction between sensory feedback and CPG activity we suggest here for the generation of TIPs in the whisking system.
Metamorphic Virus Detection in Portable Executables Using Opcodes Statistical Feature

Metamorphic viruses engage different mutation techniques to escape from string signature based scanning. They try to change their code in new offspring so that the variants appear non-similar and have no common sequences of string as signature. However, all versions of a metamorphic virus have similar task and performance. This obfuscation process helps to keep them safe from the string based signature detection. In this study, we make use of instructions statistical features to compare the similarity of two hosted files probably occupied by two mutated forms of a specific metamorphic virus. The introduced solution in this paper is relied on static analysis and employs the frequency histogram of machine opcodes in different instances of obfuscated viruses. We use Minkowski-form histogram distance measurements in order to check the likeness of portable executables (PE). The purpose of this research is to present an idea that for a number of special obfuscation approaches the presented solution can be used to identify morphed copies of a file. Thus, it can be applied by antivirus scanner to recognize different versions of a metamorphic virus.