Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Elastic Paxos: A Dynamic Atomic Multicast Protocol

Replication is a common technique used to design reliable distributed systems by masking defective components. To cope with the requirements of modern Internet applications, replication protocols must allow for throughput scalability and dynamic reconfiguration, that is, on-demand replacement or provisioning of system resources. This paper describes Elastic Paxos, a new dynamic atomic multicast protocol that fulfills these requirements. Elastic Paxos allows to dynamically add and remove resources to an online partially replicated state machine. We implemented Elastic Paxos and evaluated its performance in OpenStack, a cloud environment. We demonstrate its practicality to dynamically scale up and down a partially replicated data store with itand to reconfigure a distributed system.
ElasticFlow: A complexity-effective approach for pipelining irregular loop nests

Modern high-level synthesis (HLS) tools commonly employ pipelining to achieve efficient loop acceleration by overlapping the execution of successive loop iterations. However, existing HLS techniques provide inadequate support for pipelining irregular loop nests that contain dynamic-bound inner loops, where unrolling is either very expensive or not even applicable. To overcome this major limitation, we propose ElasticFlow, a novel architectural synthesis approach capable of dynamically distributing inner loops to an array of loop processing units (LPUs) in a complexity-effective manner. These LPUs can be either specialized to execute an individual loop or shared amongst multiple inner loops for area reduction. We evaluate ElasticFlow using a variety of real-life applications and demonstrate significant performance improvements over a widely used commercial HLS tool for Xilinx FPGAs.
Communicating Low‐Probability High‐Consequence Risk, Uncertainty and Expert Confidence: Induced Seismicity of Deep Geothermal Energy and Shale Gas

Subsurface energy activities entail the risk of induced seismicity including low‐probability high‐consequence (LPHC) events. For designing respective risk communication, the scientific literature lacks empirical evidence of how the public reacts to different written risk communication formats about such LPHC events and to related uncertainty or expert confidence. This study presents findings from an online experiment (N = 590) that empirically tested the public's responses to risk communication about induced seismicity and to different technology frames, namely deep geothermal energy (DGE) and shale gas (between‐subject design). Three incrementally different formats of written risk communication were tested: (i) qualitative, (ii) qualitative and quantitative, and (iii) qualitative and quantitative with risk comparison. Respondents found the latter two the easiest to understand, the most exact, and liked them the most. Adding uncertainty and expert confidence statements made the risk communication less clear, less easy to understand and increased concern. Above all, the technology for which risks are communicated and its acceptance mattered strongly: respondents in the shale gas condition found the identical risk communication less trustworthy and more concerning than in the DGE conditions. They also liked the risk communication overall less. For practitioners in DGE or shale gas projects, the study shows that the public would appreciate efforts in describing LPHC risks with numbers and optionally risk comparisons. However, there seems to be a trade‐off between aiming for transparency by disclosing uncertainty and limited expert confidence, and thereby decreasing clarity and increasing concern in the view of the public.
An Energy-Efficient, Wireless Top-of-Rack to Top-of-Rack Datacenter Network Using 60GHz Links

Datacenters have become the digital backbone of the modern society and consume enormous amounts of power. Significant portion of the power consumption is due to the power hungry switching fabric necessary for communication in the datacenter. Additionally, the complex cabling in traditional datacenters pose design and maintenance challenges and increase the energy cost of the cooling infrastructure by obstructing the flow of chilled air. Recent research on wireless datacenters have proposed interconnecting rows of racks at the top-of-rack (ToR) level via wireless links to eliminate the need for complex network of power hungry routers and cables. Links are established using either highly directional phased array antennas or narrow-beam horned antennas between those ToR entities. ToR-to-ToR wireless links have also been used to augment existing wired networks, improving overall performance characteristics. All these wireless approaches advocate the use of 60GHz line-of-sight (LoS) communication paths between antennas for the establishment of reliable wireless channels. In this work, we explore the feasibility of a ToR-to-ToR wireless network for a small to medium-scale datacenter from the perspective of system-level performance. We evaluate a ToR-to-ToR wireless datacenter network (DCN) for network-level data rate and overall power consumption and compare it to a traditional fat-tree based DCN. We find that the ToR-to-ToR wireless DCN can sustain similar data rates for typical query based applications and consume less power compared to that of traditional datacenters.
Interplay of classic Exp and specific Vfm quorum sensing systems on the phenotypic features of Dickeya solani strains exhibiting different virulence levels.

Bacteria from the genus Dickeya cause severe symptoms on numerous economically important plants. Dickeya solani is the Dickeya species most frequently found on infected potato plants in Europe. D. solani strains from different countries show high genetic homogeneity, but significant differences in their virulence level. Dickeya species possess two quorum sensing (QS) mechanisms: the Exp system based on classic N-acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL) signals and a specific system depending on the production and perception of a molecule of unknown structure, Virulence Factor Modulating (VFM). To study the interplay between these two QS systems, five D. solani strains exhibiting different virulence levels were selected. Mutants were constructed by inactivating genes coding for each QS system. Double mutants were obtained by simultaneous inactivation of genes coding for both QS systems. Most of the D. solani mutants showed an attenuation of chicory maceration and a decreased production of plant cell wall-degrading enzymes (PCWDEs) and motility, but to different degrees depending on the strain. The VFM-QS system seems to regulate virulence in both D. solani and Dickeya dadantii, but the AHL-QS system has greater effects in D. solani than in D. dadantii. The inactivation of both QS systems in D. solani did not reveal any additive effect on the tested features. The inactivation of vfm genes generally has a more dominant effect relative to that of exp genes. Thus, VFM- and AHL-QS systems do not work in synergy to modulate the production of diverse virulence factors and the ability to macerate plant tissue.
Size-Dependent Photovoltaic Performance of CuInS2 Quantum Dot-Sensitized Solar Cells

The optical and electronic properties of quantum dots (QDs), which are drastically affected by their size, have a major impact on their performance in devices such as solar cells. We now report the size-dependent solar cell performance for CuInS2 QDs capped with 1-dodecanethiol. Pyramidal shaped CuInS2 QDs with diameters between 2.9 and 5.3 nm have been synthesized and assembled on mesoscopic TiO2 films by electrophoretic deposition. Time-resolved emission and transient absorption spectroscopy measurements have ascertained the role of internal and surface defects in determining the solar cell performance. An increase in power conversion efficiency (PCE) was observed with the increasing size of QDs, with maximum values of 2.14 and 2.51% for 3.9 and 4.3 nm size particles, respectively. The drop in PCE observed for larger QDs (5.3 nm) is attributed to decreased charge separation following bandgap excitation. Because the origin of photocurrent generation in CuInS2 QDSC arises from the defect-dominated charge .
Aspects of the apatite crystal : Two pathways for apatite formation, the mechanisms underlying crystal structure defects, and the pathological calcification event

Examination of biologically induced apatite crystals revealed three insights. 1) There are two different pathways for apatite formation : the octacalcium phosphate (OCP) pathway and the central dark line (CDL) pathway. 2) The mechanisms underlying crystal structure defects caused by exposure to harmful chemicals, such as fluoride or cadmium ions, or by estrogen deficiency, are associated with dental fluorosis and the risk of developing postmenopausal osteoporosis. 3) The recently prevalent phenotypic change theory, which proposes that soft tissue cells are converted into hard tissue forming cells under pathological conditions, was found invalid in vascular lesions. These findings are expected to contribute to resolving various controversial issues related to calcification events.
Data-Flow Based Detection of Loop Bounds

To calculate the WCET of a program, safe upper bounds on the number of loop iterations for all loops in the program are needed. As the manual annotation of all loops with such bounds is difficult and time consuming, the WCET analyzer aiT originally developed by Saarland University and AbsInt GmbH uses static analysis to determine the needed bounds as far as possible. This paper describes a novel data-flow based analysis for aiT to calculate the needed loop bounds on the assembler level. The new method is compared with a pattern based loop analysis already in use by this tool.
Eating psychopathology and psychosocial impairment in patients treated at a Singapore eating disorders treatment programme.

INTRODUCTION There is limited data on the psychopathology of eating disorders in Singapore. This study: (a) described levels of eating psychopathology and psychosocial impairment among individuals diagnosed with eating disorders at our hospital; and (b) compared the related psychopathology of these patients. METHODS Between 1 August 2010 and 31 July 2012, 257 individuals who met the diagnostic criteria for eating disorders completed the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) and Clinical Impairment Assessment questionnaire (CIA). RESULTS A majority of participants were women and of Chinese ethnicity. Diagnoses included anorexia nervosa (AN; 41.6%), bulimia nervosa (BN; 29.6%) and eating disorder not otherwise specified (EDNOS; 28.8%). Mean age at presentation was 20.52 ± 7.14 years and mean body mass index was 17.84 ± 4.18 kg/m2. Individuals with AN were significantly younger at presentation and had shorter duration of untreated illness compared to those with BN and EDNOS. There were no significant differences in the CIA scores of the diagnostic groups. Participants with BN scored higher in all subscales of the EDE-Q than those with AN and EDNOS. Our sample scored lower in most subscales of EDE-Q when compared to treatment centres in Sweden, Australia and the United States. CONCLUSION Our clinical sample reported lower scores of psychopathology compared to overseas centres. This could be attributed to the higher percentages of BN and EDNOS diagnosed in overseas populations. Individuals with AN showed higher levels of psychopathology in our study compared to patients from the United States.
Hormone‐sensitive lipase preferentially redistributes to lipid droplets associated with perilipin‐5 in human skeletal muscle during moderate‐intensity exercise

Hormone‐sensitive lipase (HSL) and adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL) are the key enzymes involved in intramuscular triglyceride (IMTG) lipolysis. In isolated rat skeletal muscle, HSL translocates to IMTG‐containing lipid droplets (LDs) following electrical stimulation, but whether HSL translocation occurs in human skeletal muscle during moderate‐intensity exercise is currently unknown. Perilipin‐2 (PLIN2) and perilipin‐5 (PLIN5) proteins have been implicated in regulating IMTG lipolysis by interacting with HSL and ATGL in cell culture and rat skeletal muscle studies. This study investigated the hypothesis that HSL (but not ATGL) redistributes to LDs during moderate‐intensity exercise in human skeletal muscle, and whether the localisation of these lipases with LDs was affected by the presence of PLIN proteins on the LDs. HSL preferentially redistributed to PLIN5‐associated LDs whereas ATGL distribution was not altered with exercise; this is the first study to illustrate the pivotal step of HSL redistribution to PLIN5‐associated LDs following moderate‐intensity exercise in human skeletal muscle.
Enhancement of cytokine‐driven NK cell IFN‐γ production after vaccination of HCMV infected Africans

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection drives the phenotypic and functional differentiation of NK cells, thereby influencing the responses of these cells after vaccination. NK cell functional differentiation is particularly advanced in African populations with universal exposure to HCMV. To investigate the impact of advanced differentiation on vaccine‐induced responses, we studied NK‐cell function before and after vaccination with Trivalent Influenza Vaccine (TIV) or diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, inactivated poliovirus vaccine (DTPiP) in Africans with universal, lifelong HCMV exposure. In contrast to populations with lower prevalence of HCMV infection, no significant enhancement of NK‐cell responses (IFN‐γ, CD107a, CD25) occurred after in vitro re‐stimulation of post‐vaccination NK cells with TIV or DTPiP antigens compared to pre‐vaccination baseline cells. However, both vaccinations resulted in higher frequencies of NK cells producing IFN‐γ in response to exogenous IL‐12 with IL‐18, which persisted for up to 6 months. Enhanced cytokine responsiveness was restricted to less differentiated NK cells, with increased frequencies of IFN‐γ+ cells observed within CD56brightCD57−, CD56dimCD57−NKG2C− and CD56dimCD57−NKG2C+ NK‐cell subsets. These data suggest a common mechanism whereby different vaccines enhance NK cell IFN‐γ function in HCMV infected donors and raise the potential for further exploitation of NK cell “pre‐activation” to improve vaccine effectiveness.
Bio-Inspired Modeling for the Enhancement of Historical Handwritten Documents

An important step for the document analysis and recognition pipeline is the document image binarization procedure. In the case of historical handwritten document images, the inherent degradation of the documents requires a preprocessing step aiming to enhance the image and improve the subsequent binarization step. To address this challenge a new document image enhancement method is proposed based on Bio-Inspired Models and especially on the OFF-center ganglion cells of the Human Vision System. Experimental results demonstrate the improvement of standard binarization methods when the proposed enhancement method is used.
Trade-offs between enzyme fitness and solubility illuminated by deep mutational scanning

Significance Enzymes find utility as therapeutics and for the production of specialty chemicals. Changing the amino acid sequence of an enzyme can increase solubility, but many such mutations disrupt catalytic activity. To evaluate this trade-off, we developed an experimental system to evaluate the relative solubility for nearly all possible single point mutants for two model enzymes. We find that the tendency for a given solubility-enhancing mutation to disrupt catalytic activity depends, among other factors, on how far the position is from the catalytic active site and whether that mutation has been sampled during evolution. We develop predictive models to identify mutations that enhance solubility without disrupting activity with an accuracy of 90%. These results have biotechnological applications. Proteins are marginally stable, and an understanding of the sequence determinants for improved protein solubility is highly desired. For enzymes, it is well known that many mutations that increase protein solubility decrease catalytic activity. These competing effects frustrate efforts to design and engineer stable, active enzymes without laborious high-throughput activity screens. To address the trade-off between enzyme solubility and activity, we performed deep mutational scanning using two different screens/selections that purport to gauge protein solubility for two full-length enzymes. We assayed a TEM-1 beta-lactamase variant and levoglucosan kinase (LGK) using yeast surface display (YSD) screening and a twin-arginine translocation pathway selection. We then compared these scans with published experimental fitness landscapes. Results from the YSD screen could explain 37% of the variance in the fitness landscapes for one enzyme. Five percent to 10% of all single missense mutations improve solubility, matching theoretical predictions of global protein stability. For a given solubility-enhancing mutation, the probability that it would retain wild-type fitness was correlated with evolutionary conservation and distance to active site, and anticorrelated with contact number. Hybrid classification models were developed that could predict solubility-enhancing mutations that maintain wild-type fitness with an accuracy of 90%. The downside of using such classification models is the removal of rare mutations that improve both fitness and solubility. To reveal the biophysical basis of enhanced protein solubility and function, we determined the crystallographic structure of one such LGK mutant. Beyond fundamental insights into trade-offs between stability and activity, these results have potential biotechnological applications.
Chromosome 5 of Human Pathogen Candida albicans Carries Multiple Genes for Negative Control of Caspofungin and Anidulafungin Susceptibility

ABSTRACT Candida albicans is an important fungal pathogen with a diploid genome that can adapt to caspofungin, a major drug from the echinocandin class, by a reversible loss of one copy of chromosome 5 (Ch5). Here, we explore a hypothesis that more than one gene for negative regulation of echinocandin tolerance is carried on Ch5. We constructed C. albicans strains that each lacked one of the following Ch5 genes: CHT2 for chitinase, PGA4 for glucanosyltransferase, and CSU51, a putative transcription factor. We demonstrate that independent deletion of each of these genes increased tolerance for caspofungin and anidulafungin, another echinocandin. Our data indicate that Ch5 carries multiple genes for negative control of echinocandin tolerance, although the final number has yet to be established.
Species‐specific susceptibility to cannabis‐induced convulsions

Numerous claims are made for cannabis' therapeutic utility upon human seizures, but concerns persist about risks. A potential confounder is the presence of both Δ9‐tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), variously reported to be pro‐ and anticonvulsant, and cannabidiol (CBD), widely confirmed as anticonvulsant. Therefore, we investigated effects of prolonged exposure to different THC/CBD cannabis extracts on seizure activity and associated measures of endocannabinoid (eCB) system signalling.
Experimental Study on Ductility and Toughness of HDPE-Pipe Concrete

Ductility ratio and strain energy that are regarded as the characteristic parameters of ductility and toughness were calculated from axial stress-strain curves of plain concrete and HDPE-pipe concrete.Effect of pipe thickness and core-concrete strength on ductility and toughness of HDPE-pipe concrete was studied.The results indicate that the ductility and toughness of HDPE-pipe concrete is much better than those of the plain concrete.The increase in pipe thickness can enhance the ductility and toughness of HDPE-pipe concrete significantly.However,the increase in core-concrete strength can only enhance the toughness of HDPE-pipe concrete limitedly and consumedly impair the ductility of HDPE-pipe concrete.
An Incremental Path-Following Splitting Method for Linearly Constrained Nonconvex Nonsmooth Programs

The linearly constrained nonconvex nonsmooth program has drawn much attention over the last few years due to its ubiquitous power of modeling in the area of machine learning. A variety of important problems, including deep learning, matrix factorization, and phase retrieval, can be reformulated as the problem of optimizing a highly nonconvex and nonsmooth objective function with some linear constraints. However, it is challenging to solve a linearly constrained nonconvex nonsmooth program, which is much complicated than its unconstrained counterpart. In fact, the feasible region is a polyhedron, where a simple projection is intractable in general. In addition, the per-iteration cost is extremely expensive for the high-dimensional case. Therefore, it has been recognized promising to develop a provable and practical algorithm for linearly constrained nonconvex nonsmooth programs. In this paper, we develop an incremental path-following splitting algorithm with a theoretical guarantee and a low computational cost. In specific, we show that this algorithm converges to an $\epsilon$-approximate stationary solution within $O(1/\epsilon)$ iterations, and that the per-iteration cost is very small for the randomized variable selection rule. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first incremental method to solve linearly constrained nonconvex nonsmooth programs with a theoretical guarantee. Experiments conducted on the constrained concave penalized linear regression (CCPLR) and nonconvex support vector machine (NCSVM) demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is more effective and stable than other competing heuristic methods.
The IlmSeven Dataset

Developing new ideas and algorithms or comparing new findings in the field of requirements engineering and management implies a dataset to work with. Collecting the required data is time consuming, tedious, and may involve unforeseen difficulties. The need for datasets often forces re-searchers to collect data themselves in order to evaluate their findings. However, comparing results with other publications is especially difficult on proprietary datasets. A big obstacle is the reproduction of a previously used dataset, which may include subtle preprocessing steps not explicitly mentioned by the original authors. Providing a predefined dataset avoids these problems. It establishes a common baseline and enables direct comparison for benchmarking. This paper provides a well defined dataset consisting of seven open source software projects. It contains a large number of typed development artifacts and links between them. Enriched with additional metadata, such as time stamps, versions, and component information, the dataset allows answering a broad range of research questions.