Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of short-term and long-term earthquake forecast models for southern California

We consider the problem of forecasting earthquakes on two different time scales: years, and days. We evaluate some published forecast models on these time scales, and suggest improvements in forecast models on both time scales. For time scales of several years, we modify the smoothed seismicity method of Kagan and Jackson [1994; 2000] by smoothing the locations of magnitude 2 and larger earthquakes. Kagan and Jackson used only magnitude 5 and larger. The new long-term model outperforms the best known published models in a retrospective test on magnitude 5 and larger, primarily because it has much higher spatial resolution. We have also developed a model to estimate daily earthquake probabilities in southern California, using the Epidemic Type Earthquake Sequence model [Kagan and Knopoff, 1987; Ogata, 1988; Kagan and Jackson, 2000]. The forecasted seismicity rate is the sum of a constant background seismicity and of the aftershocks of all past earthquakes. The background rate is estimated by smoothing past seismicity. Each earthquake triggers aftershocks with a rate that increases exponentially with its magnitude and decreases with time following Omori's law. We use an isotropic kernel to model the spatial distribution of aftershocks for small (m 5.5) mainshocks, and by smoothing the location of early aftershocks for larger mainshocks. The model also assumes that all earthquake magnitudes follow the Gutenberg-Richter law with a uniform b-value. We use a maximum likelihood method to estimate the model parameters and test the short-term and long-term forecasts. A retrospective test using a daily update of the forecasts between 1985/1/1 and 2004/3/10 shows that the short-term model increases the average probability of an earthquake occurrence by a factor 11.5 compared to the long-term time-independent forecast.
Almost everywhere high nonuniform complexity

Investigates the distribution of nonuniform complexities in uniform complexity classes. The author proves that almost every problem decidable in exponential space has essentially maximum circuit-size and program-size complexity almost everywhere. In exponential-time complexity classes, he proves that the strongest relativizable lower bounds hold almost everywhere for almost all problems. He shows that infinite pseudorandom sequences have high nonuniform complexity almost everywhere. The results are unified by a refined formulation of the underlying measure theory and by the introduction of a new nonuniform complexity measure, the selective program-size complexity. <<ETX>>
IT Governance Institutionalisation: A Case of Thai Hospital

Information technology infrastructure in contemporary large-sized service organisations is growing exponentially in terms of purpose, kind, scope, and complexity. As a result, these organisations are adopting a variety of information technology governance practices to achieve sustained levels of service to meet organisational goals and objectives. This chapter presents a case study of information technology governance in a hospital. It shows that information technology governance practices need to be institutionalised in the social, cultural, technical, and structural environment to produce the desired or-ganisational behavior of responsibility and accountability. It highlights the key success factors that have led to successful assimilation of these practices with business processes, job functions, and workflows in the case organization. This study, thus, expands the theoretical and practical views on implementation of information technology governance.
Design of a new hybrid control and knee orthosis for human walking and rehabilitation

Simultaneously considering the physical interaction between the user and the robot within safety and performance constraints in rehabilitation and human walking situations, this paper proposes a new backdrivable torsion spring actuator (BTSA) with hybrid control that switches between direct electromyography (EMG) biofeedback control and zero impedance control, to provide a novel rehabilitation training and walking assistance mechanism for humans. The proposed backdrivable 1-DOF serial elastic actuator is designed to achieve intrinsic safety, compliance properties, and control performance. The proposed mechanical system can provide desirable backdrivable property and softer stiffness than that of traditional robots. In additional, the proposed hybrid control not only considers the assistive function, when human assistance is required, but also the compliance property, when assistance is not needed. Compared to state-of-the-art assistive methods, the BTSA with the proposed hybrid control system is unique in that it can simultaneously achieve assistance control through EMG biofeedback and compliance control through zero impedance control. A simple human-robot interaction model is built to investigate performance and explain the whole control concept. Further, a knee exoskeleton is built and three kinds of controls are used on a human subject to demonstrate the difference between them. Both simulation and experimental results show that the proposed BTSA mechanism with hybrid control offers the desired properties.
CS-1998-06 Architecture-e cient Strassen ' s Matrix Multiplication : A CaseStudy of Divide-and-Conquer Algorithms

Many fast algorithms in arithmetic complexity have hierarchical or recursive structures that make eecient implementations on high performance computers with memory hierarchies non-trivial. In this paper we present our ndings on eecient implementation of Strassen's algorithmm17] for the ubiquitous operation of matrix multiplication as a model for a class of recursive algorithms. In comparison to the conventional multiplication algorithm, Strassen's algorithm requires more storage space and exhibits poorer data locality. Although recent years have seen better representation and better implementations of the algorithm, the characterization of the optimization in implementation issues and hence the automatic optimization strategies are lacking. We present our schemes for optimizing data locality and reducing storage space in an increased scope of computation sequences with arithmetic and numerical constraints. Moreover, our characterization of the optimization schemes are based on the use of algorithmic operators and leads to automatic optimization for a class of recursive algorithms. We present experimental results and comparisons with the corresponding subroutine in BLAS and the recursive version of Strassen's algorithm.
Clinical Interventions in Aging Dovepress the Effect of Phosphatidylserine-containing Omega-3 Fatty Acids on Memory Abilities in Subjects with Subjective Memory Complaints: a Pilot Study

Objective: To evaluate for the first time the efficacy of safe-sourced phosphatidylserine-containing omega-3 long chain polyunsaturated fatty acid (PS-omega-3) in improving memory abilities. Methods: PS-omega-3 was administered daily for 6 weeks to eight elderly volunteers with subjective memory complaints. The Cognitive Drug Research test battery was used to assess the effect on their cognitive abilities. Results: PS-omega-3 supplementation resulted in 42% increase in the ability to recall words in the delayed condition. Conclusion: PS-omega-3 may have a favorable effect on memory in subjects with subjective memory complaints. PS-omega-3 may serve as a safe alternative to phosphatidylserine extracted from bovine cortex.
Emperor: cheap legal secure cryptography for the Web

The barriers to ubiquitous strong cryptography for low volume applications on the world wide web are analyzed. We propose a cryptographic protocol heavily influenced by the Difie-Hellman and ElCamal protocols which has the virtue of allowing secure communication with no previous key distribution, no random number generation on the browser side and no violation of the laws protecting intellectual property. A simpk extension allows for password encrypted signatures. We make a proposal whose successful implementation allows universal use of this protocol on the web without violating the laws prohibiting the export of strong cryptographic software. We report on both partial implementations and the legal reasons the complete implementation should be performed by someone else.
Null Dereference Detection via a Backward Analysis

Null dereferences are commonly occurring bugs in programming languages such as C. In this paper, we present a novel approach that performs a backward dataflow analysis to detect null-dereference bugs. The technical innovation of our approach is that owing to aliasing predicates, it can perform strong updates in the presence of aliasing, thus eliminating false positives. The aliasing predicates are introduced on the premise of a canonical representation for the program being analyzed. Moreover, the other features of our approach also contribute to improve accuracy. We have implemented this approach, and give an evaluation of it on a set of open source benchmarks. The experimental results prove the effectiveness of our approach, and show that it is suitable for exploring large real programs with reasonable accuracy.
Color image watermarking based on the DCT-domain of three RGB color channels

Color image water marking is becoming increasingly important and finding application in diverse areas of discipline. Developing robust image water marking algorithm which is immune to noise, cropping and compression is a challenging task. Altering the size of the image or its orientation reduces the recoverability of the watermarked image. In this paper, we proposed a new block DCT-based digital watermarking scheme based on embedding an adapted watermark in the three RGB channels of the original colour image. Voting is used to extract the best candidate pixel value. The proposed embedding procedure improves the imperceptibility and the robustness of the watermarked image against the different attacks such as noise, cropping and JPEG compression. Experimental results have shown superiority of the proposed scheme over a classic DCT watermarking.
From Plan to Plant: Effects of Certification on Operational Start-up in the Emergent Independent Power Sector

In this paper, we study the transition from planned venture to operational start-up in the emergent independent power sector. Planned ventures face tremendous obstacles in assembling the resources necessary to begin operations; we hypothesize and show that formal certification from authorized actors increases the likelihood of making this transition. Moreover, we find that the effects of certification are contingent on the legitimacy of the sector as a whole: Certifications have a stronger effect on start-ups when sector legitimacy is low than when it is high. This research helps us understand a rarely studied organizational transition---from entrepreneurial intention to actual operations---within nascent sectors. It directs attention to the legitimating effects of formal certification, highlights the importance of a multilevel approach to legitimacy, and contributes to the growing rapprochement between entrepreneurial studies and institutional theory.
A BIOCHEMICAL AND HISTOCHEMICAL STUDY OF GLUTAMIC OXALACETIC TRANSAMINASE ACTIVITY OF RAT HEPATIC MITOCHONDRIA FIXED IN SITU AND IN VITRO

Rat liver perfused in situ briefly with a glutaraldehyde-formaldehyde mixture was homogenized in isotonic sucrose. The mitochondria, isolated from a homogenate of the perfused liver by differential centrifugation, assumed a slender and compact appearance similar to those often seen in an intact cell. The glutamic oxalacetic transaminase (GOT) activity of this mitochondrial fraction survived an additional formaldehyde fixation and was studied by biochemical and histochemical methods. The biochemical assay of the enzyme activity revealed that the activity was only slightly less than that of an unfixed mitochondrial fraction. The reaction product due to mitochondrial GOT activity was found to be localized to the cristae, as had been demonstrated in an intact liver cell. GOT activity of the mitochondrial fraction isolated from fresh liver tissue homogenate in 0.25 M sucrose was inactivated readily by either glutaraldehyde or formaldehyde and was no longer demonstrable by biochemical and histochemical methods after fixation.
Advanced Knowledge Base Debugging for Rulelog

We present a novel approach to debugging expressively rich knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR) logic Rulelog. Rulelog is an extended form of declarative logic programs (LP) under the wellfounded semantics, which allows higher-order logic formulas as axioms in combination with defeasibility mechanisms that include rule cancellation and priorities, along with default and explicit negation. Rulelog also supports strong knowledge interchange with all current major semantic web standards for logical KRR. Rulelog has been implemented in Flora-2 and Silk, both on top of XSB; and (less completely) in Cyc. The debugging approach described here is part of an integrated development environment, most fully implemented in Silk. The approach includes: reasoning trace analysis, based on tabled LP inferencing tables and forestlog; and justification graphs, which treat why-not and defeasibility as well as provenance. The reasoning trace analysis treats performance and runaway computations, including non-termination as well as classic subgoal-ordering issues that arise in database query optimization. Non-termination can be prevented entirely by leveraging the restraint (bounded rationality) feature of Rulelog. Revision/authoring of knowledge is interactive, based on a rapid edit-test-inspect loop and incremental truth maintenance.
Impact of CPU reservation on end-to-end media data transmission

Current distributed multimedia applications usually use either best-effort or reservation-based network bandwidth allocation for media data transmission. We argue that end-system CPU reservation also plays an important role in media data transport. We present an analysis of the impact of CPU reservation on media data transmission tasks and its integration with the network bandwidth reservation mechanism. The underlying transport protocols considered are TCP and UDP, supporting flows over RSVP-capable networks. The integration comes together in a QoS-aware communication broker architecture which considers both CPU and network bandwidth reservation for media data transport. Our results show that the reservation of CPU for multimedia transmission tasks at end systems needs to be an integral part of the end-to-end resource management framework, in order to provide end-to-end QoS guarantees. Experiments on a prototype system with CPU reservation for transmission tasks show substantial improvement in the performance and service quality of media data transport, relative to its performance in the absence of CPU reservation. In the absence of CPU reservation, media data transport can exhibit non-trivial performance and QoS degradation, even in the presence of end-to-end bandwidth guarantees.
The Explicit-Cloud Parameterized-Pollutant hybrid approach for aerosol–cloud interactions in multiscale modeling framework models: tracer transport results

All estimates of aerosol indirect effects on the global energy balance have either completely neglected the influence of aerosol on convective clouds or treated the influence in a highly parameterized manner. Embedding cloud-resolving models (CRMs) within each grid cell of a global model provides a multiscale modeling framework for treating both the influence of aerosols on convective as well as stratiform clouds and the influence of clouds on the aerosol, but treating the interactions explicitly by simulating all aerosol processes in the CRM is computationally prohibitive. An alternate approach is to use horizontal statistics (e.g., cloud mass flux, cloud fraction, and precipitation) from the CRM simulation to drive a single-column parameterization of cloud effects on the aerosol and then use the aerosol profile to simulate aerosol effects on clouds within the CRM. Here, we present results from the first component of the Explicit-Cloud Parameterized-Pollutant parameterization to be developed, which handles vertical transport of tracers by clouds. A CRM with explicit tracer transport serves as a benchmark. We show that this parameterization, driven by the CRM’s cloud mass fluxes, reproduces the CRM tracer transport significantly better than a single-column model that uses a conventional convective cloud parameterization.
Lymphocutaneous Sporotrichosis during Treatment with Anti-TNF-Alpha Monotherapy

Sporotrichosis is an infectious disease caused by Sporothrix schenckii, a dimorphic fungus isolated for the first time in 1896 by Benjamin Schenck from a 36-year-old male patient presenting lesions on the right hand and arm. The infection generally occurs by traumatic inoculation of soil, plants, and organic matter contaminated with the fungus. Different clinical syndromes are described as a direct consequence of S. schenckii infection, including lymphocutaneous and disseminated forms, although extracutaneous presentations are reported most frequently in AIDS patients. Here we describe the case of a 57-year-old Caucasian male diagnosed in 2004 with ankylosing spondylitis under stable treatment with adalimumab monotherapy (40 mg every other week). During a routine follow-up visit in March 2013, he presented with multiple nodular lesions arranged in a linear fashion along the left hand and forearm. After diagnostic aspiration of the lesions, lymphocutaneous sporotrichosis was diagnosed and appropriate therapy started.
Accelerating BLAS on Custom Architecture through Algorithm-Architecture Co-design

Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS) play key role in high performance and scientific computing applications. Experimentally, yesteryear multicore and General Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs) are capable of achieving up to 15 to 57% of the theoretical peak performance at 65W to 240W respectively for compute bound operations like Double/Single Precision General Matrix Multiplication (XGEMM). For bandwidth bound operations like Single/Double precision Matrix-vector Multiplication (XGEMV) the performance is merely 5 to 7% of the theoretical peak performance in multicores and GPGPUs respectively. Achieving performance in BLAS requires moving away from conventional wisdom and evolving towards customized accelerator tailored for BLAS through algorithm-architecture co-design. In this paper, we present acceleration of Level-1 (vector operations), Level-2 (matrix-vector operations), and Level-3 (matrix-matrix operations) BLAS through algorithm architecture co-design on a Coarse-grained Reconfigurable Architecture (CGRA). We choose REDEFINE CGRA as a platform for our experiments since REDEFINE can be adapted to support domain of interest through tailor-made Custom Function Units (CFUs). For efficient sequential realization of BLAS, we present design of a Processing Element (PE) and perform micro-architectural enhancements in the PE to achieve up-to 74% of the theoretical peak performance of PE in DGEMM, 40% in DGEMV and 20% in double precision inner product (DDOT). We attach this PE to REDEFINE CGRA as a CFU and show the scalability of our solution. Finally, we show performance improvement of 3-140x in PE over commercially available Intel micro-architectures, ClearSpeed CSX700, FPGA, and Nvidia GPGPUs.
A Presumptive Developmental Role for a Sea Urchin Cyclin B Splice Variant

We show that a splice variant–derived cyclin B is produced in sea urchin oocytes and embryos. This splice variant protein lacks highly conserved sequences in the COOH terminus of the protein. It is found strikingly abundant in growing oocytes and cells committed to differentiation during embryogenesis. Cyclin B splice variant (CBsv) protein associates weakly in the cell with Xenopus cdc2 and with budding yeast CDC28p. In contrast to classical cyclin B, CBsv very poorly complements a triple CLN deletion in budding yeast, and its microinjection prevents an initial step in MPF activation, leading to an important delay in oocyte meiosis reinitiation. CBsv microinjection in fertilized eggs induces cell cycle delay and abnormal development. We assume that CBsv is produced in growing oocytes to keep them in prophase, and during embryogenesis to slow down cell cycle in cells that will be committed to differentiation.
Brados : Declarative , Programmable Object Storage

To meet the needs of a diverse and growing set of cloud-based applications, modern distributed storage frameworks expose a variety of composable subsystems as building blocks. This approach gives infrastructure programmers significant flexibility in implementing application-specific semantics while reusing trusted components. Unfortunately, in current storage systems the composition of subsystems is a low-level task that couples (and hence obscures) a variety of orthogonal concerns, including functional correctness and performance. Building an application by wiring together a collection of components typically requires thousands of lines of carefullywritten C++ code, an effort that must be repeated whenever device or subsystem characteristics change. In this paper, we propose a declarative approach to subservice composition that allows programmers to focus on the high-level functional properties that are required by applications. Choosing an implementation that is consistent with the declarative functional specification then can be posed as a search problem over the space of parameters such as block sizes, storage interfaces (e.g. key/value or block storage) and concurrency control mechanisms. We base our observations and conclusions on data mining the git repository of the Ceph storage system and performance evaluating our own prototype implementations.
An Approach to Text Mining using Information Extraction

In this paper we describe our approach to Text Mining by introducing TextMiner. We perform term and event extraction on each document to find features that are likely to have meaning in the domain, and then apply mining on the extracted features labelling each document. The system consists of two major components, the Text Analysis component and the Data Mining component. The Text Analysis component converts semi structured data such as documents into structured data stored in a database. The second component applies data mining techniques on the output of the first component. We apply our approach in the financial domain (financial documents collection) and our main targets are: a) To manage all the available information, for example classify documents in appropriate categories and b) To “mine” the data in order to “discover” useful knowledge. This work is designed to primarily support two languages, i.e. English and Greek.