Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Performance Model for GPU-Accelerated FDTD Applications

In this work we develop, validate and use a performance model for a Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) application which is parallelized on multiple GPUs. FDTD is a method for simulating electrodynamic interaction and is applied in a number of research and engineering areas. In this work we focus on a particular implementation called B-CALM (Belgium-California Light Machine). We adopt a simple, semi-empirical modelling approach to design a model which we validate for different hardware architectures. Using the model allows making implementation decisions and exploring the architectural design space with the goal of optimizing HPC systems for this application.
Microfluidics digital PCR reveals a higher than expected fraction of fetal DNA in maternal plasma.

BACKGROUND The precise measurement of cell-free fetal DNA in maternal plasma facilitates noninvasive prenatal diagnosis of fetal chromosomal aneuploidies and other applications. We tested the hypothesis that microfluidics digital PCR, in which individual fetal-DNA molecules are counted, could enhance the precision of measuring circulating fetal DNA. METHODS We first determined whether microfluidics digital PCR, real-time PCR, and mass spectrometry produced different estimates of male-DNA concentrations in artificial mixtures of male and female DNA. We then focused on comparing the imprecision of microfluidics digital PCR with that of a well-established nondigital PCR assay for measuring male fetal DNA in maternal plasma. RESULTS Of the tested platforms, microfluidics digital PCR demonstrated the least quantitative bias for measuring the fractional concentration of male DNA. This assay had a lower imprecision and higher clinical sensitivity compared with nondigital real-time PCR. With the ZFY/ZFX assay on the microfluidics digital PCR platform, the median fractional concentration of fetal DNA in maternal plasma was > or =2 times higher for all 3 trimesters of pregnancy than previously reported. CONCLUSIONS Microfluidics digital PCR represents an improvement over previous methods for quantifying fetal DNA in maternal plasma, enabling diagnostic and research applications requiring precise quantification. This approach may also impact other diagnostic applications of plasma nucleic acids, e.g., in oncology and transplantation.
Beyond Data Collection: Ethical Issues in Minority Research

This article examines ethical concerns surrounding research on minority issues. Specifically, it addresses whether researchers have an obligation to consider (a) the impact that minority research can have on vulnerable populations and (b) their own backgrounds before conducting or assessing minority research for publication. The article argues for such an obligation mainly from a consequentialist perspective and then explores possible strategies for assessing and meeting that obligation. Finally, it explores the possible negative secondary effects of those strategies and censorship concerns.
The Neglected Tropical Diseases of Latin America and the Caribbean: A Review of Disease Burden and Distribution and a Roadmap for Control and Elimination

The neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) represent some of the most common infections of the poorest people living in the Latin American and Caribbean region (LAC). Because they primarily afflict the disenfranchised poor as well as selected indigenous populations and people of African descent, the NTDs in LAC are largely forgotten diseases even though their collective disease burden may exceed better known conditions such as of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, or malaria. Based on their prevalence and healthy life years lost from disability, hookworm infection, other soil-transmitted helminth infections, and Chagas disease are the most important NTDs in LAC, followed by dengue, schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis, trachoma, leprosy, and lymphatic filariasis. On the other hand, for some important NTDs, such as leptospirosis and cysticercosis, complete disease burden estimates are not available. The NTDs in LAC geographically concentrate in 11 different sub-regions, each with a distinctive human and environmental ecology. In the coming years, schistosomiasis could be eliminated in the Caribbean and transmission of lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis could be eliminated in Latin America. However, the highest disease burden NTDs, such as Chagas disease, soil-transmitted helminth infections, and hookworm and schistosomiasis co-infections, may first require scale-up of existing resources or the development of new control tools in order to achieve control or elimination. Ultimately, the roadmap for the control and elimination of the more widespread NTDs will require an inter-sectoral approach that bridges public health, social services, and environmental interventions.
Lower serum magnesium concentration is associated with diabetes, insulin resistance, and obesity in South Asian and white Canadian women but not men

Background A large proportion of adults in North America are not meeting recommended intakes for magnesium (Mg). Women and people of South Asian race may be at higher risk for Mg deficiency because of lower Mg intakes relative to requirements and increased susceptibility to diabetes, respectively. Objective This study compared serum Mg concentrations in South Asian (n=276) and white (n=315) Canadian women and men aged 20–79 years living in Canada's Capital Region and examined the relationship with diabetes, glucose control, insulin resistance, and body mass index. Results Serum Mg concentration was lower in women of both races and South Asians of both genders. Racial differences in serum Mg were not significant after controlling for use of diabetes medication. A substantial proportion of South Asian (18%) and white (9%) women had serum Mg <0.75 mmol/L indicating hypomagnesemia. Use of diabetes medication and indicators of poorer glucose control, insulin resistance, and obesity were associated with lower serum Mg in women, but not in men. Conclusions These results suggest that the higher incidence of diabetes in South Asians increases their risk for Mg deficiency and that health conditions that increase Mg requirements have a greater effect on Mg status in women than men.
Software-Defined Networking (SDN): Layers and Architecture Terminology

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) refers to a new approach for network programmability, that is, the capacity to initialize, control, change, and manage network behavior dynamically via open interfaces. SDN emphasizes the role of software in running networks through the introduction of an abstraction for the data forwarding plane and, by doing so, separates it from the control plane. This separation allows faster innovation cycles at both planes as experience has already shown. However, there is increasing confusion as to what exactly SDN is, what the layer structure is in an SDN architecture, and how layers interface with each other. This document, a product of the IRTF Software-Defined Networking Research Group (SDNRG), addresses these questions and provides a concise reference for the SDN research community based on relevant peer-reviewed literature, the RFC series, and relevant documents by other standards organizations.
Vitamin D and Respiratory Tract Infections: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Background Low levels of 25-OH vitamin D are associated with respiratory tract infection (RTI). However, results from randomized controlled trials are inconclusive. Therefore, we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the preventive effect of vitamin D supplementation on RTI. Methods Randomized, controlled trials of vitamin D for prevention of RTI were used for the analysis. The risks of within-trial and publication bias were assessed. Odds ratios of RTI were pooled using a random-effects model. Heterogeneity was assessed using Cochran's Q and I2. Meta-regressions and subgroup analyses were used to assess the influence of various factors on trial outcome. The pre-defined review protocol was registered at the PROSPERO international prospective register of systematic reviews, registration number CRD42013003530. Findings Of 1137 citations retrieved, 11 placebo-controlled studies of 5660 patients were included in the meta-analysis. Overall, vitamin D showed a protective effect against RTI (OR, 0.64; 95% CI, 0.49 to 0.84). There was significant heterogeneity among studies (Cohran's Q p<0.0001, I2 = 72%). The protective effect was larger in studies using once-daily dosing compared to bolus doses (OR = 0.51 vs OR = 0.86, p = 0.01). There was some evidence that results may have been influenced by publication bias. Interpretation Results indicate that vitamin D has a protective effect against RTI, and dosing once-daily seems most effective. Due to heterogeneity of included studies and possible publication bias in the field, these results should be interpreted with caution.
Effects of Hearing Loss and Cognitive Load on Speech Recognition with Competing Talkers

Everyday communication frequently comprises situations with more than one talker speaking at a time. These situations are challenging since they pose high attentional and memory demands placing cognitive load on the listener. Hearing impairment additionally exacerbates communication problems under these circumstances. We examined the effects of hearing loss and attention tasks on speech recognition with competing talkers in older adults with and without hearing impairment. We hypothesized that hearing loss would affect word identification, talker separation and word recall and that the difficulties experienced by the hearing impaired listeners would be especially pronounced in a task with high attentional and memory demands. Two listener groups closely matched for their age and neuropsychological profile but differing in hearing acuity were examined regarding their speech recognition with competing talkers in two different tasks. One task required repeating back words from one target talker (1TT) while ignoring the competing talker whereas the other required repeating back words from both talkers (2TT). The competing talkers differed with respect to their voice characteristics. Moreover, sentences either with low or high context were used in order to consider linguistic properties. Compared to their normal hearing peers, listeners with hearing loss revealed limited speech recognition in both tasks. Their difficulties were especially pronounced in the more demanding 2TT task. In order to shed light on the underlying mechanisms, different error sources, namely having misunderstood, confused, or omitted words were investigated. Misunderstanding and omitting words were more frequently observed in the hearing impaired than in the normal hearing listeners. In line with common speech perception models, it is suggested that these effects are related to impaired object formation and taxed working memory capacity (WMC). In a post-hoc analysis, the listeners were further separated with respect to their WMC. It appeared that higher capacity could be used in the sense of a compensatory mechanism with respect to the adverse effects of hearing loss, especially with low context speech.
Jenaer Schriften zur Wirtschaftswissenschaft Assembly line balancing: Which model to use when?

Assembly lines are flow-line production systems which are of great importance in the industrial production of high quantity standardized commodities and more recently even gained importance in low volume production of customized products. Due to high capital requirements when installing or redesigning a line, configuration planning is of great relevance for practitioners. Accordingly, this attracted the attention of research, who tried to support practical configuration planning by suited optimization models. In spite of the great amount of extensions of basic assembly line balancing there remains a gap between requirements of real configuration problems and the status of research. This gap might result from research papers focusing on just a single or only a few practical extensions at a time. Real-world assembly systems require a lot of these extensions to be considered simultaneously. This paper structures the vast field of assembly line balancing according to characteristic practical settings and highlights relevant model extensions which are required to reflect real world problems. By doing so, open research challenges are identified and the practitioner is provided with hints on how to single out suited balancing procedures for his type of assembly system.
MCMC Inversion of Stokes Profiles

Stokes inversion techniques, based on the analysis of the polarization in spectral lines, are the most powerful tools to obtain the information about the magnetic and thermodynamic quantities in the solar atmosphere. In this paper, we present a Milne–Eddington inversion code based on Bayesian inference, which is implemented with the Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation. This kind of simulation is a random sampling method to visit a point in the parameter space with a probability proportional to the distribution function, and furthermore provides a powerful way to infer the parameters of a model, their errors, and mutual correlations between each of them. Detailed tests of the code with synthetic profiles and Hinode/SP observations manifest the applicability of this code to infer physical quantities from Stokes profiles. Applying the code, we investigate the spatial distributions of physical quantities and their errors, and find that the errors of B, θ, ϕ, Bx, and By are smaller in the active regions than in the quiet regions. In contrast, the errors of Bz are much smaller in the quiet regions than in the plage and umbral regions. Besides, the study of the mutual correlations between each model parameter indicates that the thermodynamic parameters are strongly correlated, while the correlations between magnetic field parameters are relatively weak.
Antecedent Avian Immunity Limits Tangential Transmission of West Nile Virus to Humans

Background West Nile virus (WNV) is a mosquito-borne flavivirus maintained and amplified among birds and tangentially transmitted to humans and horses which may develop terminal neuroinvasive disease. Outbreaks typically have a three-year pattern of silent introduction, rapid amplification and subsidence, followed by intermittent recrudescence. Our hypothesis that amplification to outbreak levels is contingent upon antecedent seroprevalence within maintenance host populations was tested by tracking WNV transmission in Los Angeles, California from 2003 through 2011. Methods Prevalence of antibodies against WNV was monitored weekly in House Finches and House Sparrows. Tangential or spillover transmission was measured by seroconversions in sentinel chickens and by the number of West Nile neuroinvasive disease (WNND) cases reported to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Results Elevated seroprevalence in these avian populations was associated with the subsidence of outbreaks and in the antecedent dampening of amplification during succeeding years. Dilution of seroprevalence by recruitment resulted in the progressive loss of herd immunity following the 2004 outbreak, leading to recrudescence during 2008 and 2011. WNV appeared to be a significant cause of death in these avian species, because the survivorship of antibody positive birds significantly exceeded that of antibody negative birds. Cross-correlation analysis showed that seroprevalence was negatively correlated prior to the onset of human cases and then positively correlated, peaking at 4–6 weeks after the onset of tangential transmission. Antecedent seroprevalence during winter (Jan – Mar) was negatively correlated with the number of WNND cases during the succeeding summer (Jul–Sep). Conclusions Herd immunity levels within after hatching year avian maintenance host populations <10% during the antecedent late winter and spring period were followed on three occasions by outbreaks of WNND cases during the succeeding summer. Because mosquitoes feed almost exclusively on these avian species, amplification was directly related to the availability of receptive non-immune hosts.
Perceptual Image Hashing Based on Virtual Watermark Detection

This paper proposes a new robust and secure perceptual image hashing technique based on virtual watermark detection. The idea is justified by the fact that the watermark detector responds similarly to perceptually close images using a non embedded watermark. The hash values are extracted in binary form with a perfect control over the probability distribution of the hash bits. Moreover, a key is used to generate pseudo-random noise whose real values contribute to the randomness of the feature vector with a significantly increased uncertainty of the adversary, measured by mutual information, in comparison with linear correlation. Experimentally, the proposed technique has been shown to outperform related state-of-the art techniques recently proposed in the literature in terms of robustness with respect to image processing manipulations and geometric attacks.
The anticancer flavonoid chrysin induces the unfolded protein response in hepatoma cells

Chrysin is a natural and biologically active flavonoid with anticancer effects. However, little is known about the adaptive response of cancer cells to chrysin. Chrysin reportedly has proteasome inhibitor activity. Previous studies demonstrated that proteasome inhibitors might induce endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response. In this study, we aimed to determine the effects of chrysin on hepatoma cells and roles of the ER‐resident protein GRP78 (glucose‐regulated protein 78) in its action. Also, we investigated the effects of green tea polyphenol (‐)‐epigallocatechin‐3‐gallate (EGCG), a natural GRP78 inhibitor, on the sensitivity of hepatoma cells to chrysin. Here, we report that chrysin inhibits hepatoma cells growth and induces apoptosis in a dose‐dependent manner. Chrysin induces GRP78 overexpression, X‐box binding protein‐1 splicing and eukaryotic initiation factor 2α phosphorylation, hallmarks of the unfolded protein response. GRP78 knockdown potentiates chrysin‐induced caspase‐7 cleavage in hepatoma cells and enhances chrysin‐induced apoptosis. EGCG overcomes chrysin‐induced GRP78 expression. Combination of EGCG potentiates chrysin‐induced caspase‐7 and poly (ADP‐ribose) polymerase (PARP) cleavage. Finally, EGCG sensitizes hepatoma cells to chrysin through caspase‐mediated apoptosis. These data suggest that chrysin triggers the unfolded protein response. Abrogation of GRP78 induction may improve the anticancer effects of chrysin. Combination of EGCG and chrysin represents a new regimen for cancer chemoprevention and therapeutics.
Analysing the Security Threats against Network Convergence Architectures

Current research trends in networks and telecommunications suggest that future architectures will aim for the convergence not only of fixed and mobile infrastructures, but also of different network layer technologies. Proposals like OCALA from UC Berkeley and our own TRANSIT can be used to converge different architectures and network layer overlays while supporting legacy applications. In this paper we analyse and assess the security threats against such systems. Our contribution constitutes the first step in designing security models for convergence architectures as part of their design and deployment phases, rather than as retrofitted mechanisms.
Do Attractiveness and Competition Influence Faking Intentions in Selection Interviews?

Faking models assume that characteristics of applicants as well as contextual factors determine whether applicants intend to fake. However, previous research on faking in interviews mainly investigated applicants’ characteristics while research on contextual factors is largely missing. Accordingly, we examined the influence of two such factors – attractiveness of the organization and competition among applicants – on the intention to fake in an interview. We conducted a vignette study with a 2 × 2 between-subjects design in which we varied competition and attractiveness. We found that attractiveness influenced faking intentions. However, we found no effect for competition. Accordingly, interviewers should be aware that applicants are more prone to faking when they want to get access to attractive organizations.
Managing inter-organisational transfer of competencies : a case study

Using the resource based theory, we highlight the strategic interests of inter-organisational relationships with a view to mobilizing boundary resources and competencies. We then study the way competencies transfer is organized by lead firms that structure a network of partnerships. This analysis covers three issues : the type of competence that is transferred, the relationships between the different corporate partners and the range of tools used to achieve the competencies transfer. The model is then applied to a case study concerning logistics competencies that Renault transferred to its local suppliers in Brazil.
Bs decays: CP asymmetries in left-right models with spontaneous CP violation

We present the contributions of new CP phases in CP asymmetries of twobody neutral Bs decays coming from a left{right model with spontaneous CP violation. Large deviations from the Standard Model predictions can be accommodated in a natural way by this type of models. The new physics eects on the mixing, width dierence and decays are analysed. In particular, we show how the measurement of the angle in electroweak penguin-dominated processes can be largely aected.
Hybrid Evolutionary Clonal Selection for Parameter Estimation of Biological Model

The Clonal Selection Algorithm (CSA) is a widely used Artificial Immune Optimization (AIO) approach that tends to mimic the immune response when the pathogenic pattern is detected by the immune cells. However, this method, in its standard form, shows slow convergence and frequently traps in one of the local optima, especially for high dimensional problems. Hence, in this paper, an improved CSA method is introduced by integrating evolutionary operations adopted from the Differential Evolution (DE) method. The proposed method, called Differential Clonal Evolution (DICE) method, utilizes the mutation and crossover operation to exploit the information of different antibodies in the population. Furthermore, antibodies that yield trivial fitness value are relocated randomly so that the method can escape from the local optima in a more straightforward manner. To show the effectiveness of this method, the method is used to estimate parameters of a bacterial lactose production model using noisy and incomplete time series data. The statistical results suggest that the proposed method has better speed and accuracy performance compared to the standard CSA, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) techniques.
Abductive coordination for logic agents

In this work, we introduce abduction in a (logic) multi-agent environment to achieve a basic coordination scheme among agents. In particular, we define and implement a distributed protocol to coordinate the reasoning of agents. Each agent performs hypothetical reasoning, achieved by means of abduction. To this purpose, each agent is character&d by a knowledge base represented by an abductive logic program. Agents coordinate themselves on the basis of knowledge represented by hypotheses posted into a tuple space. Agents might differ in their knowledge bases, but must agree on BS sumed hypotheses. We define a coordination protocol and tailor it for a basic abductive proof procedure. We also sketch an implementation, under development, obtained by using Java and SICStus Prolog.