Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamic Memory Partitioning for Cloud Caches with Heterogeneous Backends

Software caches, implemented with in-memory key-value stores, are important components of cloud architectures. In a common scenario, one server may serve requests from several applications with different workloads, each supported by a different backend (database or storage system); these applications compete for an allocation of the total memory. We present a model for dynamic memory partitioning for cloud caches with heterogeneous backends. Our work differs from recent work for cloud caches in that we consider: (1) the effect of having backends with different performance profiles, and (2) the cost of re-partitioning the memory. We discuss implementation issues that must be addressed, including the need for on-line and lightweight mechanisms for estimating the miss rate curves (MRCs) and ways to solve the non-convex optimization problem; specifically, we propose a probabilistic adaptive search algorithm that can be used for discontinuous, non-differentiable, or non-convex MRCs.
Ontology-Based Meta-Model for Semantically Interoperable Systems

Semantic interoperability became a critical issue today’s information systems. Ontology-based approach to solve semantic heterogeneity has been proposed by many researchers. In this paper, we claim that contextual knowledge is crucial for users who intend to share and exchange their conceptual models. Existing modeling languages are not capable for defining such type of knowledge; we propose a well-defined meta-model to describe contextual knowledge implicitly hidden in conceptual models. The meta-model tries to close the formality gap by using ontologies as a backbone. The meta-model provides ontological primitives allowing us to interpret correctly inherent semantics of conceptual models.
Disclosure and determinants studies: An extension using the Divisive Clustering Method (DIV)

Abstract Past accounting research contains an extensive range of disclosure and determinants studies. But these studies have one major methodological drawback: the disclosure analysis is often restricted to determination of the disclosure index, that is, the sum of disclosed items, weighted or unweighted. The disclosure profile (which reflects the structure of published information) is generally not part of the research design. The objective of this paper is to introduce a divisive (descendant) clustering method, which splits the sample into homogeneous sub-groups corresponding to disclosure patterns (or profiles), for clearer determination of the financial characteristics of each group. This methodology is illustrated by a study of disclosure on provisions by large French firms. The results show that the disclosure pattern is related to provision intensity, size, leverage and market expectation, but not to profit, return and industry. This new research method is a valuable complementary tool for expanding on disclosure and determinants studies, moving from disclosure levels to disclosure patterns.
The Effect of Prophylactic Antibiotics on Post Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy Infectious Complications: A Double-Blinded Clinical Trial

Background Laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) is one of the most common surgeries in laparoscopic surgery. Although, it is believed that LC has low-risk for post-operative infectious complications, the use of a prophylactic antibiotic is still controversial in elective LC. Objective To determine the impact of prophylactic antibiotics on postoperative infection complications in elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Methods In this double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized, clinical trial, patients who were candidates for elective LC, from March 2012 to 2015, in four hospitals in Babol, Iran, were studied. Patients were allocated randomly to two groups, i.e., group C: Cefazolin (n = 182) and group P: placebo (n = 247). Group C received 1 g of Cefazolin 30 minutes before anesthesia and and then, six and 12 hours after anesthesia. Group P patients received 10 ml of isotonic sodium chloride solution. Age, gender, type of gallbladder diseases (stone, polyp, or hydrops), the length of post-operative hospitalization, frequency of gallbladder rupture, the duration of surgery, and the kinds of complications associated with infections were collected for each patient in the two groups. The data were analyzed by IBM-SPSS version 20, using the t-test and the chi-squared test, and a p-value < 0.05 was considered as significant. Results There were no significant differences between the two groups in terms of gender (C versus P: 18 (9.9%) male versus 22 (9%); p = 0.74), age (C versus P: 43.75 + 13.30 years versus 40.91 + 13.05; p = 0.20), and duration of surgery (C versus P: 34.97 ± 8.25 min versus 34.11 ± 8.39; p = 0.71). There were no significant differences between the two groups in the incidences of post-operative infection (C versus P: 3 (1.7%) versus 5 (2%); p = 0.99) and rupture of the gallbladder (C versus P: 14 (7.8%) versus 17 (6.8%); p = 0.85). No other post-operative systemic infectious complications (e.g., sepsis, pneumonia, or urinary tract infection) were found in either group. Conclusion For patients who underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC), prophylactic antibiotics had no important role in the prevention of infections; so these antibiotics apparently are not necessary in treatment, and they are not recommended for patients with laparoscopic cholecystectomy as low-risk selective antibiotics. Trial registration The trial was registered at the Iranian Clinical Trial Registry (http://www.irct.ir) with the IRCT identification number IRCT2013070413865N1. Funding This research was supported financially by the Research Council of Babol University of Medical Sciences.
Multicomponent gap solitons in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates

We model the nonlinear behavior of spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) with repulsive spin-independent interactions and either ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic (polar) spin-dependent interactions, loaded into a one-dimensional optical lattice potential. We show that both types of BECs exhibit dynamical instabilities and may form spatially localized multicomponent structures. The localized states of the spinor matter waves take the form of vector gap solitons and self-trapped waves that exist only within gaps of the linear Bloch-wave band-gap spectrum. Of special interest are the nonlinear localized states that do not exhibit a common spatial density profile shared by all condensate components, and consequently cannot be described by the single mode approximation (SMA) frequently employed within the framework of the mean-field treatment. We show that the non-SMA states can exhibits Josephson-like internal oscillations and self-magnetization, i.e., intrinsic precession of the local spin. Finally, we demonstrate that nonstationary states of a spinor BEC in a lattice exhibit coherent undamped spin-mixing dynamics, and that their controlled conversion into a stationary state can be achieved by the application of an external magnetic field.
Corporate Governance in a Viable Market for Secondary Listings

The legal-bonding hypothesis explains international cross-listings with issuers' desire to lower their cost of capital by submitting to superior corporate governance institutions. This paper argues that the existence of precisely metered bonding-premiums with regard to relatively similarly developed corporate governance and disclosure regimes is doubtful. Investors are willing to accept a band of alternative institutional arrangements without charging significantly higher risk-premiums. Yet, the recent success of the London Stock Exchange in attracting foreign issuers does not indicate that its legal regime falls within this band. Although the regulatory environment allows issuers to submit to comparably stringent standards of investor protection with regard to black letter law, significantly lower enforcement levels account for measurable differences in bonding premiums. Issuers seeking cross-listings in London pursue different goals compared to their counterparts that are attracted by New York's exchanges. Hence, the City's success represents evidence for an occurring separating equilibrium in the global market for international cross-listings.
Integrating metrics in an ontological framework supporting SW-FMEA

The development process of safety-critical systems benefits from the early identification of failures affecting them. Several techniques have been designed in order to face this issue, among them Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA). Although FMEA has been mainly thought for hardware systems, the increasing responsibilities assigned to software (SW) have fostered its application to SW as well (SW-FMEA), exacerbating the complexity of the analysis. Ontologies have been proposed as a way to formalize the SW-FMEA process and to give precise semantics to the involved concepts and data. We present a framework, based on an ontological model, which, beyond other capabilities, supports the collection of SW metrics enabling automatic identification of SW components not attaining the required level of assurance.
Optimization via syntactic amalgam: Syntax-prosody mismatch and copula doubling

Abstract Many linguists have observed the emergence of the nonstandard English construction instantiated by the following sentence: “Now the problem is // is that nobody’s going to invade anybody else’s boundaries”. In this pattern (which we will refer to as ISIS), a clausal complement is preceded by two finite forms of the copula, the first of which is typically prosodically prominent and followed by a major intonational break. While Massam (1999), among others, views ISIS as a variant of Pseudocleft, we see two problems with this approach. First, there are distributional and discourse-pragmatic properties that distinguish ISIS from Pseudocleft, including the referential status of the subject NP and the topic-focus articulation of the clause. We will argue that ISIS, rather than being an instance of the Pseudocleft pattern, is a syntactic amalgam that is closely related to an appositive pattern that we will refer to as Hypotactic Apposition, e. g. , That’s the real problem is that you never really know. Second, the Massam analysis fails to explain why a speaker would select ISIS over a simpler and more compositional alternative construction, which we will refer to as Simplex: The problem is // there’s nothing else to buy. Using prosodically labeled data from the Switchboard corpus, we show that this choice involves optimization: Simplex has prosodic defects that ISIS repairs. In Simplex tokens the copula is typically followed by a break, creating misalignment of prosodic and syntactic phrases (Croft 1995; Watson and Gibson 2003); it is also typically prosodically prominent, although function words otherwise receive prominence only by deflection of accent from a discourse-old complement (Ladd 1995). While the Simplex copula performs double duty (as focus marker and as VP head) ISIS allocates these functions to the two respective copulas. Nevertheless, ISIS is far rarer than Simplex. If we view ISIS as a repair strategy, rather than a mere overgeneralization of the Pseudocleft pattern, this fact makes sense.
Computational identification of MoRFs in protein sequences

MOTIVATION Intrinsically disordered regions of proteins play an essential role in the regulation of various biological processes. Key to their regulatory function is the binding of molecular recognition features (MoRFs) to globular protein domains in a process known as a disorder-to-order transition. Predicting the location of MoRFs in protein sequences with high accuracy remains an important computational challenge. METHOD In this study, we introduce MoRFCHiBi, a new computational approach for fast and accurate prediction of MoRFs in protein sequences. MoRFCHiBi combines the outcomes of two support vector machine (SVM) models that take advantage of two different kernels with high noise tolerance. The first, SVMS, is designed to extract maximal information from the general contrast in amino acid compositions between MoRFs, their surrounding regions (Flanks), and the remainders of the sequences. The second, SVMT, is used to identify similarities between regions in a query sequence and MoRFs of the training set. RESULTS We evaluated the performance of our predictor by comparing its results with those of two currently available MoRF predictors, MoRFpred and ANCHOR. Using three test sets that have previously been collected and used to evaluate MoRFpred and ANCHOR, we demonstrate that MoRFCHiBi outperforms the other predictors with respect to different evaluation metrics. In addition, MoRFCHiBi is downloadable and fast, which makes it useful as a component in other computational prediction tools. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION http://www.chibi. ubc.ca/morf/.
Modeling Collaborative Reference

Previous work has shown the importance of the interaction between speakers and listeners in establishing the meanings of referring expressions. We investigate the use of shallow artificial neural networks (ANNs) in modeling how the meanings of referring expressions arise through collaborative reference. In particular, we replicate the findings of Vogel et al. (2014) for three-target, three-message reference games. We then extend their model to handle the more complex reference tasks described in the TUNA corpus (van der Sluis et al., 2006; Gatt et al., 2008).
Adaptive Synthesis Filter Banks for Image Compression

The subject of this paper is the design of adaptive synthesis filter bank for enhancement of image reconstruction by exploiting the phase diversity of synthesis filters in subband coding system. This paper for the first time, presents a comprehensive as well as an efficient approach of handling a large number of synthesis filters and reducing the computation complexity of the synthesis filter bank. The synthesis section comprises of linear phase filters along with a set of delay filters, where each filter has different phase characteristics to encounter reconstruction error especially at object edges in image compression applications.
Inborn resistance of mice to myxoviruses: macrophages express phenotype in vitro

A strain of avian influenza A virus was adapted to grow in mouse peritoneal macrophages in vitro. The adapted strain, called M-TUR, induced a marked cytopathic effect in macrophages from susceptible mice. Mice homozygous (A2G) or heterozygous (F1 hybrids between A2G and several susceptible strains) for the gene Mx, shown previously to induce a high level of resistance towards lethal challenge by a number of myxoviruses in vivo, yielded peritoneal macrophages which were not affected by M-TUR. Peritoneal macrophages could be classified as resistant or susceptible to M-TUR without sacrificing the cell donor. Backcrosses were arranged between (A2G X A/J)F1 and A/J mice. 64 backcross animals could be tested individually both for resistance of their macrophages in vitro after challenge with M-TUR, and for resistance of the whole animal in vivo after challenge with NWS (a neurotropic variant of human influenza A virus). Macrophages from 36 backcross mice were classified as susceptible, and all of these mice died after challenge. Macrophages from 28 mice were classified as resistant, and 26 mice survived challenge. We conclude that resistance of macrophages and resistance of the whole animal are two facets of the same phenomenon.
An integer programming proof of Cook ’ s theorem of NP-completeness

The theory of NP-completeness has its roots in a foundational result by Cook, who showed that Boolean satisfiability (SAT) is NP-complete and thus unlikely to admit an efficient solution. We prove an analogous result using binary integer programming in the place of SAT. The proof gives deeper insight into the theory of NP-completeness to operations researchers for whom the language of integer programming is more natural than that of Boolean logic.
Gröbner duality and multiplicities in polynomial system solving

This paper deals with the description of the solutions of zero dimensional systems of polynomial equations. Based on different models for describing solutions, we consider suitable representations of a multiple root, or more precisely suitable descriptions of the primary component of the system at a root. We analyse the complexity of finding the representations. We also discuss the current approach to the representation of real roots,
Multi-Agent Online Planning with Communication

We propose an online algorithm for planning under uncertainty in multi-agent settings modeled as DEC-POMDPs. The algorithm helps overcome the high computational complexity of solving such problems off-line. The key challenge is to produce coordinated behavior using little or no communication. When communication is allowed but constrained, the challenge is to produce high value with minimal communication. The algorithm addresses these challenges by communicating only when history inconsistency is detected, allowing communication to be postponed if necessary. Moreover, it bounds the memory usage at each step and can be applied to problems with arbitrary horizons. The experimental results confirm that the algorithm can solve problems that are too large for the best existing off-line planning algorithms and it outperforms the best online method, producing higher value with much less communication in most cases.
Two-step clustering of SIFT keypoints and relaxation based matching of clusters

Modern buildings in urban cities have repetitive structure such as windows or wall patterns. SIFT keypoints extracted from those buildings are so similar to each other that finding the most similar match between repetitive keypoints in building images has inherent ambiguity. Conventional similarity-based matching is highly prone to error. We propose a relaxation based matching of clusters of SIFT keypoints. First, the proposed two step mean shift clustering successfully groups keypoints in accordance with their structural and locational homogeneity. Then, relaxation based matching reliably matches clusters, by preserving the structural consistency among matched clusters over matched frames. We tested the proposed methods on several images of buildings and achieved significant improvement both in the precision rate and in the recall rate.
US Labor Demand: a Discourse Analysis on the "Hidden Force" behind Illegal Immigration

The dominant ideology within the illegal immigration discourse in the US primarily faults illegal workers for the problem by highlighting the act of illegally entering the US as the origin of the problem. As the dominant ideology goes, illegal immigrants evade law enforcement at the border; they deceive employers to secure work. They disrupt labor markets by lowering wages which displaces lower class US workers. The illegal immigrants and their families abuse social services that they do not pay into at the US taxpayers expense. They form ethnic enclaves, and those who remain in the US resist assimilation into US culture. So the story goes. This thesis challenges this dominant ideology, a subset of the illegal immigration discourse, by documenting decades of immigration law in the US created to serve US employers’ demand for labor, and alternately, closing the immigrant worker pipeline when it suited the government’s political objectives or the special interests of employers. Loopholes in the immigration laws have tended to insulate employers from prosecution. Meanwhile, undocumented workers have faced lower wages and increased risk. This thesis examines what constitutes the dominant ideology of the illegal immigration discourse. It also includes a discourse analysis of illegal immigration by reviewing national, regional, and local media coverage of the simultaneous raids in December 2006 of six Midwest meat processing plants operated by Swift & Company. The discourse analysis explores media coverage of the raids conducted by the Department of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The raids led to the arrest of 1,282 suspected illegal immigrants, and the analysis will attempt to understand to what extent media coverage supports or challenges the dominant ideology of the illegal immigration discourse.
On the use of parallel texts in the comparison of languages

This paper provides a critical presentation of what has recently come to be called "corpusbased contrastive studies", or, more specifically, the study of parallel corpora (corpora of pairs of texts in two different languages, which are translationally related). After describing several questions posed by this research paradigm in Section 1, I suggest, in Section 2, an argument for its adequacy and present, informally, in Section 3, a particular method for dealing with tense and aspect taking into account the issues previously mentioned: the Translation Network. The languages discussed will be Portuguese and English.
Moderation of the association between childhood maltreatment and neuroticism by the corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor 1 gene.

BACKGROUND Neuroticism is a personality trait reflecting the tendency to experience negative affect. It is a major risk for psychopathology, especially depression and anxiety disorders. Childhood maltreatment is another major risk factor for psychopathology and may influence personality. Maltreatment may interact with genotype to predict developmental outcomes. Variation in three polymorphisms of the CRHR1 gene has been found to moderate the association of childhood maltreatment with depression, and we hypothesized that it would also be linked to neuroticism. METHODS Variation in three CRHR1 SNPs (rs110402, rs242924, rs7209436) was assessed in 339 maltreated and 275 demographically similar nonmaltreated children, who participated in a day camp research program. Maltreated children were further categorized based on the number of types of maltreatment they had experienced and the most severe form of maltreatment experienced. Genotype and maltreatment status were used to predict the Big Five personality traits, as assessed by camp counselors following a week of interaction with children. RESULTS CRHR1 genotype significantly moderated the association of maltreatment with neuroticism but none of the other traits. Having two copies of the TAT haplotype of CRHR1 was associated with higher levels of neuroticism among maltreated children relative to nonmaltreated children, with the exception of sexually abused children and children who had experienced 3 or 4 types of abuse. Effects sizes of these interactions ranged from η2=. 01 (p=.02) to η2=. 03 (p=.006). CONCLUSIONS Variation in CRHR1 moderates the association of maltreatment with neuroticism. The effects of specific types of maltreatment on neuroticism are differentially moderated by CRHR1 genotype, as are the effects of experiencing more or fewer types of maltreatment.
Intersecting brane worlds on tori and orbifolds

We review the construction and phenomenology of intersecting brane worlds. The breaking of chiral and supersymmetry together with a reduction of gauge symmetry by introducing D-branes at generic angles into type I or type II string compactifications is taken as a starting point for the engineering of phenomenologically appealing four-dimensional vacua. Examples that come very close to Standard Model and GUT physics are considered and issues like the cancellation of anomalies and the emergence of global symmetries studied in some detail. Concerning the gravitational backreaction, the perturbative potential generated at the disc level is shown to lead to a run-away instability of geometric moduli within the purely toroidal compactifications. It can at least partly be avoided in certain orbifold vacua, where the relevant moduli are frozen. These more restricted models still possess sufficient freedom to find semi-realistic brane world orbifolds.