Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Survey of Legacy System Modernization Approaches

Abstract : Information systems are critical assets for modern enterprises and incorporate key knowledge acquired over the life of an organization. Although these systems must be updated continuously to reflect evolving business practices, repeated modification has a cumulative effect on system complexity, and the rapid evolution of technology quickly renders existing technologies obsolete. Eventually, the existing information systems become too fragile to modify and too important to discard. However, organizations must consider modernizing these legacy systems to remain viable. The commercial market provides a variety of solutions to this increasingly common problem of legacy system modernization. However, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each modernization technique is paramount to select the correct solution and the overall success of a modernization effort. This paper provides a survey of modernization techniques including screen scraping, database gateway, XML integration, database replication, CGI integration, object-oriented wrapping, and "componentization" of legacy systems. This general overview enables engineers performing legacy system modernization to preselect a subset of applicable modernization techniques for further evaluation.
Characterization and modeling of the barrier properties in nanostructured systems

The object of the present study is the process of gas transport in nano-sized materials, i.e. systems having structural elements of the order of nanometers. The aim of this work is to advance the understanding of the gas transport mechanism in such materials, for which traditional models are not often suitable, by providing a correct interpretation of the relationship between diffusive phenomena and structural features. This result would allow the development new materials with permeation properties tailored on the specific application, especially in packaging systems. The methods used to achieve this goal were a detailed experimental characterization and different simulation methods. The experimental campaign regarded the determination of oxygen permeability and diffusivity in different sets of organic-inorganic hybrid coatings prepared via sol-gel technique. The polymeric samples coated with these hybrid layers experienced a remarkable enhancement of the barrier properties, which was explained by the strong interconnection at the nano-scale between the organic moiety and silica domains. An analogous characterization was performed on microfibrillated cellulose films, which presented remarkable barrier effect toward oxygen when it is dry, while in the presence of water the performance significantly drops. The very low value of water diffusivity at low activities is also an interesting characteristic which deals with its structural properties. Two different approaches of simulation were then considered: the diffusion of oxygen through polymer-layered silicates was modeled on a continuum scale with a CFD software, while the properties of n-alkanthiolate self assembled monolayers on gold were analyzed from a molecular point of view by means of a molecular dynamics algorithm. Modeling transport properties in layered nanocomposites, resulting from the ordered dispersion of impermeable flakes in a 2-D matrix, allowed the calculation of the enhancement of barrier effect in relation with platelets structural parameters leading to derive a new expression. On this basis, randomly distributed systems were simulated and the results were analyzed to evaluate the different contributions to the overall effect. The study of more realistic three-dimensional geometries revealed a prefect correspondence with the 2-D approximation. A completely different approach was applied to simulate the effect of temperature on the oxygen transport through self assembled monolayers; the structural information obtained from equilibrium MD simulations showed that raising the temperature, makes the monolayer less ordered and consequently less crystalline. This disorder produces a decrease in the barrier free energy and it lowers the overall resistance to oxygen diffusion, making the monolayer more permeable to small molecules.
The effect of daily repeated sedation using ketamine or ketamine combined with medetomidine on physiology and anesthetic characteristics in Rhesus Macaques

Background Non‐human primates are frequently sedated to permit handling that can alter physiological values. The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of daily serial sedation using ketamine (K) or ketamine combined with medetomidine (KM). We hypothesized KM would reduce observed effects of repeated sedation.
The Inhomogeneous Waves in a Rotating Piezoelectric Body

This paper presents the analysis and numerical results of rotation, propagation angle, and attenuation angle upon the waves propagating in the piezoelectric body. Via considering the centripetal and Coriolis accelerations in the piezoelectric equations with respect to a rotating frame of reference, wave velocities and attenuations are derived and plotted graphically. It is demonstrated that rotation speed vector can affect wave velocities and make the piezoelectric body behaves as if it was damping. Besides, the effects of propagation angle and attenuation angle are presented. Critical point is found when rotation speed is equal to wave frequency, around which wave characteristics change drastically.
MiR-101 Induces Senescence and Prevents Apoptosis in the Background of DNA Damage in MCF7 Cells

Moderately increased DNA damage due to the exogenous miR-101 (4 fold) over-expression in MCF7 cells was substantiated by an increase in the number of γ-H2AX foci, correlating with a simple-to-do Halo-assay. miR-101 induced mild/moderate DNA damage favoured senescence rather than apoptosis. An experimental support emanated from the induced mild/moderate DNA damage with 1 µM/5 µM etoposide in MCF7 cells, which resulted in an endogenous miR-101 over-expression (10/4 fold, respectively), followed by senescence. On the other hand, the severe DNA damage induced with 10 µM etoposide, resulted in a low (<1 fold) endogenous expression of miR-101 and an elevated percentage of apoptotic cells. Using bioinformatics tools along with in-vitro and in-vivo validations, miR-101 was found to target and downregulate the mRNA expression of UBE2N and SMARCA4, involved in DNA damage repair (DDR) pathways. Recovery of the expression of the two novel targets in anti-miR-101 transfection validated the results. We conclude that a threshold range of over-expressed miR-101, capable of inducing mild/moderate DNA damage, is sensed by cells to become senescent. The observation derives further support from in-silico protein-protein network analysis where the two novel targets showed their involvement in senescence pathway.
An approach to handle concept drift in financial time series based on Extreme Learning Machines and explicit Drift Detection

Financial markets are very important to the economical and social organization of modern society. Due to they importance, several researchers have investigated how to predict future market movements by using both statistical and soft computing methods based on historical time series data. However, as a typical data stream, financial time series frequently present concept drift, which is a change in the relationship between input data and the target variable over time. The concept drift phenomenon affects negatively the forecasting accuracy since the learned model becomes outdated after a change in the current concept. In this paper we investigate how to handle concept drift in financial time series prediction in order to improve the forecasting accuracy. Two explicit drift detector mechanisms, namely the Drift Detection Mechanism (DDM) and the Exponentially Weighted Moving Average for Concept Drift Detection Mechanism (ECDD), were investigated. The main contribution of this work is an approach that combines Online Sequential Extreme Learning Machines (OS-ELM) with explicit drift detection, in which the OS-ELM updates the decision model just in the presence of concept drift in data. Experimental results showed that the use of drift detection was able to speed up the prediction time of OS-ELM maintaining equivalent accuracy.
Specialization of inductively sequential functional logic programs

Functional logic languages combine the operational principles of the most important declarative programming paradigms, namely functional and logic programming. Inductively sequential programs admit the definition of optimal computation strategies and are the basis of several recent (lazy) functional logic languages. In this paper, we define a partial evaluator for inductively sequential functional logic programs. We prove strong correctness of this partial evaluator and show that the nice properties of inductively sequential programs carry over to the specialization process and the specialized programs. In particular, the structure of the programs is preserved by the specialization process. This is in contrast to other partial evaluation methods for functional logic programs which can destroy the original program structure. Finally, we present some experiments which highlight the practical advantages of our approach.
Novel flexible FBAR on PET substrate

A novel flexible Film Bulk Acoustic Wave Resonators (FBARs) based on ZnO/PET structure was fabricated without back-etch. The PET layer is applied as acoustic reflector and substrate of FBAR. It has 1.14GHz parallel resonant frequency, 1.229GHz series resonant frequency and about 150 Q factors. The FBARs acoustic impedance is improved by using harden metal Au instead of Al as the bottom electrodes. The ZnO/PET structure FBAR is also simulated by COSMOL to confirm its working mechanism.
Sketching as a Dynamic Process

Online sketching is an incremental and dynamic process; sketches are drawn over time, one stroke at a time, and can be captured with devices such as Tablet PCs and pen based PDAs. We have shown that the dynamic properties of the sketching process contain valuable information that can aid recognition. We describe a framework that can handle complex user input. Specifically, we show how we can take advantage of the regularities in sketching even when users draw objects in an interspersed fashion.
Tractable and Scalable Schatten Quasi-Norm Approximations for Rank Minimization

The Schatten quasi-norm was introduced to bridge the gap between the trace norm and rank function. However, existing algorithms are too slow or even impractical for large-scale problems. Motivated by the equivalence relation between the trace norm and its bilinear spectral penalty, we define two tractable Schatten norms, i.e.\ the bi-trace and tri-trace norms, and prove that they are in essence the Schatten-$1/2$ and $1/3$ quasi-norms, respectively. By applying the two defined Schatten quasi-norms to various rank minimization problems such as MC and RPCA, we only need to solve much smaller factor matrices. We design two efficient linearized alternating minimization algorithms to solve our problems and establish that each bounded sequence generated by our algorithms converges to a critical point. We also provide the restricted strong convexity (RSC) based and MC error bounds for our algorithms. Our experimental results verified both the efficiency and effectiveness of our algorithms compared with the state-of-the-art methods.
Perceptions about the management of dyslipidaemia among physicians in Jamaica and Trinidad.

BACKGROUND Proper management of dyslipidaemia in patients may reduce morbidity and mortality related to coronary heart disease. OBJECTIVE To determine physician perceptions of the management of dyslipidaemia in Jamaica and Trinidad METHODS Personal interviews were conducted from March to May, 2005, by an independent research firm using a structured questionnaire. RESULTS A total of 111 interviews were conducted, 61 in Jamaica and 50 in Trinidad Respondents were mostly primary care physicians (PCP) or internal medicine physicians (76.5%) and 58% were in private practice. The most important factors for prescribing a drug for dyslipidaemia were related to efficacy (76%), safety (59%) and price (36%). The majority (92%) reported using treatment guidelines. The National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) guidelines were the most widely mentioned by physicians but there were reports of using guidelines from other organizations and physician groups. Nearly a third of all physicians, most of whom were PCPs, had not heard of the NCEP The LDL-C level at which drug therapy should be started and the LDL-C treatment goals were higher among Jamaican physicians. CONCLUSIONS Physicians are aware of the existence of treatment guidelines for dyslipidaemia. However, the source and adherence to the guidelines varies according to country and specialty. Information about the proper management of dyslipidaemia must be reinforced by professional societies and government agencies.
Shoulder disorders in general practice: incidence, patient characteristics, and management.

OBJECTIVES--To study the incidence and management of intrinsic shoulder disorders in Dutch general practice, and to evaluate which patient characteristics are associated with specific diagnostic categories. METHODS--In 11 general practices (35,150 registered patients) all consultations concerning shoulder complaints were registered during a period of one year. Patients with an intrinsic shoulder disorder who had not consulted their general practitioner for the complaint during the preceding year (incident cases) were asked to participate in an observational study. Participants completed a questionnaire regarding the nature and severity of their complaints. The general practitioners recorded data on diagnosis and therapy. RESULTS--The cumulative incidence of shoulder complaints in general practice was estimated to be 11.2/1000 patients/year (95% confidence limits 10.1 to 12.3). Rotator cuff tendinitis was the most frequently recorded disorder (29%). There were 349 incident cases enrolled in the observational study. Patient characteristics showed small variations between different diagnostic categories. Age, duration of symptoms, precipitating cause and restriction of movement seemed to be discriminating factors. Twenty two percent of all participants received injections during the first consultation; most (85%) were diagnosed as having bursitis. The majority of patients with tendinitis (53%) were referred for physiotherapy. CONCLUSION--With respect to diagnosis and treatment, the practitioners generally appeared to follow the guidelines issued by the Dutch College of General Practitioners. Although the patient characteristics of specific disorders showed some similarities with the clinical pictures described in the literature, further research is required to demonstrate whether the proposed syndromes indeed constitute separate disorders with a different underlying pathology, requiring different treatment strategies.
The RNA-Binding Protein HuR Promotes Glioma Growth and Treatment Resistance

Posttranscriptional regulation is a critical control point for the expression of genes that promote or retard tumor growth. We previously found that the mRNA-binding protein, ELAV 1 (HuR), is upregulated in primary brain tumors and stabilizes growth factor mRNAs such as VEGF and IL-8. To better understand the role of HuR in brain tumor growth, we altered levels of HuR in glioma cells by short hairpin RNA or ectopic expression and measured tumor cell phenotype using in vitro and in vivo models. In HuR-silenced cells, we found a significant decrease in anchorage-independent growth and cell proliferation with a concomitant induction of apoptosis. Using an intracranial tumor model with primary glioblastoma cells, HuR silencing produced a significant decrease in tumor volume. In contrast, overexpression of HuR produced in vitro chemoresistance to standard glioma therapies. Because bcl-2 is abundantly expressed in glioma and associated with tumor growth and survival, we determined the impact of HuR on its regulation as a molecular validation to the cellular and animal studies. Using UV cross-linking and RNA immunoprecipitation, we show that HuR bound to the 3′-untranslated region of all bcl-2 family members. Silencing of HuR led to transcript destabilization and reduced protein expression. Polysome profiling indicated loss of HuR from the translational apparatus. In summary, these findings reveal a HuR-dependent mechanism for cancer cell survival and sensitivity to chemotherapeutic drugs suggesting that HuR should be considered as a new therapeutic target. Mol Cancer Res; 9(5); 648–59. ©2011 AACR.
Investigation and modeling of coarticulation in speech production

Coarticulation during speech production takes place at both the physiological level concerned with articulators' properties and the planning stage for elaborating motor commands. This study focuses on the investigation and modeling of planning aspects of coarticulation with the ultimate objective to implement human mechanism in controlling a physiological speech production model. A "carrier model" was derived from articulatory data to describe mechanisms of the coarticulation, in which the vocalic movement is considered to be the primary component as a "carrier wave" and the consonantal movement as a "modulation wave". Interactions between the carrier and modulation waves were evaluated using phoneme sequences of V/sub b/CV/sub c/CV/sub b/ (V/sub c/: the central vowel; V/sub b/: the bilateral vowel; C: consonants) out of articulatory data that was obtained from the electromagnetic articulographic system. The analysis of the articulatory data showed that the articulatory position of the central vowel tended to be assimilated towards that of the bilateral vowels.
Adaptive Object Retrieval with Kernel Reconstructive Hashing

Hashing is very useful for fast approximate similarity search on large database. In the unsupervised settings, most hashing methods aim at preserving the similarity defined by Euclidean distance. Hash codes generated by these approaches only keep their Hamming distance corresponding to the pairwise Euclidean distance, ignoring the local distribution of each data point. This objective does not hold for k-nearest neighbors search. In this paper, we firstly propose a new adaptive similarity measure which is consistent with k-NN search, and prove that it leads to a valid kernel. Then we propose a hashing scheme which uses binary codes to preserve the kernel function. Using low-rank approximation, our hashing framework is more effective than existing methods that preserve similarity over arbitrary kernel. The proposed kernel function, hashing framework, and their combination have demonstrated significant advantages compared with several state-of-the-art methods.
A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Global Seasonality of Norovirus

Background Noroviruses are the most common cause of acute gastroenteritis across all ages worldwide. These pathogens are generally understood to exhibit a wintertime seasonality, though a systematic assessment of seasonal patterns has not been conducted in the era of modern diagnostics. Methods We conducted a systematic review of the Pubmed Medline database for articles published between 1997 and 2011 to identify and extract data from articles reporting on monthly counts of norovirus. We conducted a descriptive analysis to document seasonal patterns of norovirus disease, and we also constructed multivariate linear models to identify factors associated with the strength of norovirus seasonality. Results The searched identified 293 unique articles, yielding 38 case and 29 outbreak data series. Within these data series, 52.7% of cases and 41.2% of outbreaks occurred in winter months, and 78.9% of cases and 71.0% of outbreaks occurred in cool months. Both case and outbreak studies showed an earlier peak in season-year 2002-03, but not in season-year 2006-07, years when new genogroup II type 4 variants emerged. For outbreaks, norovirus season strength was positively associated with average rainfall in the wettest month, and inversely associated with crude birth rate in both bivariate and multivariate analyses. For cases, none of the covariates examined was associated with season strength. When case and outbreaks were combined, average rainfall in the wettest month was positively associated with season strength. Conclusions Norovirus is a wintertime phenomenon, at least in the temperate northern hemisphere where most data are available. Our results point to possible associations of season strength with rain in the wettest month and crude birth rate.
Localized Route Selection for Traffic with Bandwidth Guarantees

Localized Quality of Service (QoS) routing has recently been proposed as a viable alternative approach to traditional QoS routing algorithms that use global state information. In this approach, problems associated with maintaining global state information are avoided by having the source nodes to infer the network QoS state based on flow blocking statistics collected locally, and perform flow routing using this localized view of the network QoS state. One of the most important QoS metrics is bandwidth and in this paper we introduce a localized routing scheme for providing bandwidth guarantees, based on a crediting scheme that uses an estimate of flow blocking probability to adjust credits and select routes. We compare its performance against the localized proportional sticky routing (PSR) algorithm using different types of network topologies, QoS requirements and traffic patterns and under a wide range of traffic loads. Extensive simulations show that our algorithm outperforms the PSR scheme while maintaining the same level of adaptivity and stability. We also compare performance against the well known widest-shortest path (WSP) algorithm that uses the global network QoS state and show that our algorithm gives a comparable performance with better time complexity and very much lower communication overhead. The simulations were implemented using OMNET ++, a discrete-event simulator that provides a rich set of functions and tools for simulating the elements of a communication network, such as nodes, links and packets.
AFRL-OSR-VA-TR-2011-0403 INFORMATION FUSION AND PERFORMANCE MODELING WITH DISTRIBUTED SENSOR NETWORKS

The focus of this project is to develop and demonstrate the fusion methodologies to enhance the ability to integrate multi-source information and to assess fusion performance for numerous applications such as situational awareness, surveillance, and tracking. The focus of the Year 1 effort was on developing a solid theoretical foundation and on developing autonomous and efficient information fusion algorithms with distributed sensors. The focus of Year 2 effort was to develop a set of fusion performance modeling methodologies based on explicit links of spatial and temporal relationships between target features and sensor observations. We have accomplished the goals. Specifically, we developed a set of scalable fusion algorithms and the corresponding theoretical performance analysis in a dynamic sensor network environment. We have also developed a framework for quantifying the classification performance of a set of sensors with varying qualities based on local confusion matrix and global confusion matrix using Bayesian network model. In addition, we have developed a software tool based on UnBBayes open source environment to test the performance modeling. The resulting methodology has significant potential for applications in high level fusion and situational assessment. This report summarizes our research accomplishments during the performance period from August 2008 to August. 2010.