Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Parallel Algorithms for Sparse Linear Systems

This paper surveys recent progress in the development of parallel algorithms for solving sparse linear systems on computer architectures having multiple processors. Attention is focused on direct methods for solving sparse symmetric positive definite systems, specifically by Cholesky factorization. Recent progress on parallel algorithms is surveyed for all phases of the solution process, including ordering, symbolic factorization, numeric factorization, and triangular solution.
Deconfining phase transition as a matrix model of renormalized Polyakov loops

We discuss how to extract renormalized loops from bare Polyakov loops in $\mathrm{SU}(N)$ lattice gauge theories at nonzero temperature. Single loops in an irreducible representation are multiplicatively renormalized, without mixing, through mass renormalization. The values of renormalized loops in the four lowest representations of $\mathrm{SU}(3)$ were measured numerically on small, coarse lattices. We find that in magnitude, condensates for the sextet and octet loops are approximately the square of the triplet loop. This agrees with a large N expansion, where factorization implies that the expectation values of loops in adjoint and higher representations are powers of fundamental and antifundamental loops. The corrections to the large N relations at three colors are greatest for the sextet loop, $\ensuremath{\sim}1/N,$ and are found to be $l~25%. $ The values of the renormalized triplet loop can be described by a matrix model, with an effective action dominated by the triplet loop: the deconfining phase transition for $N=3$ is close to the Gross-Witten point at $N=\ensuremath{\infty}. $
Multilocus Microsatellite Typing as a New Tool for Discrimination of Leishmania infantum MON-1 Strains

ABSTRACT The Leishmania donovani complex, which consists of L. donovani, L. infantum-L. chagasi, and L. archibaldi, is responsible for visceral manifestations of leishmaniasis. Multilocus enzyme electrophoresis is the standard method for the characterization and identification of strains of Leishmania. For L. infantum, the predominance of zymodeme MON-1 significantly reduces the discriminative power of this approach. In the present study, we developed 17 independent polymorphic microsatellite markers for the typing of strains of L. infantum, with the main emphasis on zymodeme MON-1. The discriminative powers of 11 markers selected from among these markers were tested by using a panel of 63 isolates of the L. donovani complex. Unique multilocus genotypes were observed for the strains analyzed, with only three exceptions. Model-based and distance-based analyses of the data set showed comparable results. It was possible to discriminate between L. donovani sensu stricto, a non-MON-1 group of L. infantum isolates, and a MON-1 group of L. infantum isolates. Within MON-1, three clusters with geographical correlations became apparent. The frequency of heterozygosity in the alleles analyzed varied extremely between the different groups of isolates. The main clusters described are not consistent with species definitions based on isoenzyme analysis but confirm the results of former PCR-based investigations.
Infraslow EEG Changes in Infantile Spasms

Purpose: Infantile spasms (IS) are a devastating epileptic encephalopathy syndrome of infancy. Analysis of infraslow EEG activity (ISA) has shown potential in the presurgical evaluation of patients with epilepsy and in differentiating between focal and generalized epilepsy syndromes. Infraslow EEG activity analysis may provide insights into the pathophysiology of some difficult-to-treat epilepsy syndromes, such as IS. To our knowledge, there are no published reports describing ISA in patients with IS. The purpose of this study was to describe ictal patterns of ISA in patients with IS and to correlate with clinical data. Methods: EEG recordings of all cases of IS in the past 10 years at the Alberta Children's Hospital were reviewed. Inclusion criteria were a technically adequate video EEG recording that captured at least one spasm. For each patient, the first 10 confirmed spasms were examined. Spasms were evaluated for changes in ISA, which were either generalized, lateralized, or absent ISA (g-ISA, l-ISA, or n-ISA, respectively). Results were correlated with treatments, clinical course, and information pertinent to likely etiology of the IS. Results: A total of 77% of spasms were associated with ISA; 57% with g-ISA, 20% l-ISA, and 21% n-ISA. All patients with exclusively g-ISA showed at least a partial response to initial therapy, while this was the case in 66.7% of those with at least some l-ISA and 50% of those with exclusively n-ISA. Other seizure types occurred in 60% of patients with exclusively g-ISA versus 83% with some l-ISA and all patients with exclusively n-ISA. Conclusions: Ictal ISA was observed in the majority of IS. Trends were observed suggesting that the presence of exclusive g-ISA changes may be a positive prognostic factor in IS.
Reasoning on Interval and Point-based Disjunctive Metric Constraints in Temporal Contexts

We introduce a temporal model for reasoning on disjunctive metric constraints on intervals and time points in temporal contexts. This temporal model is composed of a labeled temporal algebra and its reasoning algorithms. The labeled temporal algebra defines labeled disjunctive metric point-based constraints, where each disjunct in each input disjunctive constraint is univocally associated to a label. Reasoning algorithms manage labeled constraints, associated label lists, and sets of mutually inconsistent disjuncts. These algorithms guarantee consistency and obtain a minimal network. Additionally, constraints can be organized in a hierarchy of alternative temporal contexts. Therefore, we can reason on context-dependent disjunctive metric constraints on intervals and points. Moreover, the model is able to represent non-binary constraints, such that logical dependencies on disjuncts in constraints can be handled. The computational cost of reasoning algorithms is exponential in accordance with the underlying problem complexity, although some improvements are proposed.
Fiber-Reinforced-Cementitious-Composites Plate for Anchoring FRP Sheet on Concrete Member

To improve the fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP)/concrete bond capacity, this paper presents a new anchoring approach with the gluing of precast fiber-reinforced cementitious composites (FRCC) plate on top of the FRP sheets. In order to measure the improvement in ultimate load and deformation capacity and to study the failure mechanisms around the anchored area, the direct shear bond test is performed on concrete prisms with bonded FRP. Several sets of tests have been carried out with anchoring plates of different FRCC compositions and lengths. Comparison with the control sample shows that the installation of FRCC plate can significantly increase both the bond and deformation capacities (by up to 100%). On the basis of the shear bond test, two types of FRCC plate materials were found to be particularly effective and were selected for strengthening of beam members to be tested under four-point bending. Comparison with control members (without anchor) and those with conventional U-shaped FRP anchors indicates that both the ultimate load and central deflection can be improved by the new anchoring method.
A High-Speed and Low-Offset Dynamic Latch Comparator

Circuit intricacy, speed, low-offset voltage, and resolution are essential factors for high-speed applications like analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). The comparator circuit with preamplifier increases the power dissipation, as it requires higher amount of currents than the latch circuitry. In this research, a novel topology of dynamic latch comparator is illustrated, which is able to provide high speed, low offset, and high resolution. Moreover, the circuit is able to reduce the power dissipation as the topology is based on latch circuitry. The cross-coupled circuit mechanism with the regenerative latch is employed for enhancing the dynamic latch comparator performance. In addition, input-tracking phase is used to reduce the offset voltage. The Monte-Carlo simulation results for the designed comparator in 0.18 μm CMOS process show that the equivalent input-referred offset voltage is 720 μV with 3.44 mV standard deviation. The simulated result shows that the designed comparator has 8-bit resolution and dissipates 158.5 μW of power under 1.8 V supply while operating with a clock frequency of 50 MHz. In addition, the proposed dynamic latch comparator has a layout size of 148.80 μm × 59.70 μm.
Social Browsing & Information Filtering in Social Media

Social networks are a prominent feature of many social media sites, a new generation of Web sites that allow users to create and share content. Sites such as Digg, Flickr, and Del.icio. us allow users to designate others as “friends” or “contacts” and provide a single-click interface to track friends’ activity. How are these social networks used? Unlike pure social networking sites (e.g., LinkedIn and Facebook), which allow users to articulate their offline professional and personal relationships, social media sites are not, for the most part, aimed at helping users create or foster offline relationships. Instead, we claim that social media users create social networks to express their tastes and interests, and use them to filter the vast stream of new submissions to find interesting content. Social networks, in fact, facilitate new ways of interacting with information: what we call social browsing. Through an extensive analysis of data from Digg and Flickr, we show that social browsing is one of the primary usage modalities on these social media sites. This finding has implications for how social media sites rate and personalize content.
Identifying Opinion Subgroups in Arabic Online Discussions

In this paper, we use Arabic natural language processing techniques to analyze Arabic debates. The goal is to identify how the participants in a discussion split into subgroups with contrasting opinions. The members of each subgroup share the same opinion with respect to the discussion topic and an opposing opinion to the members of other subgroups. We use opinion mining techniques to identify opinion expressions and determine their polarities and their targets. We opinion predictions to represent the discussion in one of two formal representations: signed attitude network or a space of attitude vectors. We identify opinion subgroups by partitioning the signed network representation or by clustering the vector space representation. We evaluate the system using a data set of labeled discussions and show that it achieves good results.
Effect of Cu-Excess on the Microstructure and Microwave Dielectric Properties of CaCu3Ti4O12 Ceramics

CaCu(3+x)Ti4O12 (CCTO) ceramics with different Cu-excess (x = 0 – 0.6) were prepared by conventional solid-state reaction method. Characterization of the prepared ceramics with XRD and FESEM showed that lattice parameter and grain size are slightly increased, indicating Cu-excess to have the big impact on the both phase structure and microstructure. The XRD profiles indicated that the secondary phase (CuO or Cu2O) existed at edge/corner of CCTO grain, which promoted inhibited grain growth behavior. The CCTO ceramics exhibited two trends of dielectric constant related to frequency, which showed a flatter curve about ~50 in 1 – 25 GHz regions, and it’s dropped rapidly to ~35 in 25 – 50 GHz region. With Cu-excess, the dielectric constant of the ceramics was increased for an average of a quarter-order of magnitude, while the tangent loss also increased up to triple times than x = 0, for the same frequency range. Despite enormous increase of dielectric constant related to varying Cu-excess, the tangent loss also increased.
Laparoscopic Hand-Assisted Hepatic Surgery

At Ninewells Hospital, we have changed from total to hand-assisted laparoscopic hepatic resections. We report here our initial experience on 10 anatomic hepatic resections with good outcome, and 1 with a significant postoperative complication (fall in the hemoglobin) requiring laparotomy. All resections were undertaken by using the Omniport device (Advanced Surgical Concepts, Dublin, Ireland). The hand-assisted laparoscopic surgery (HALS)-Omniport approach has also been used selectively in 5 patients undergoing in situ ablation for bilateral metastatic disease with lesions not easily accessible to the total laparoscopic approach, ie, situated in the posterior and inferior segments of the right liver. The HALS approach has several advantages; it facilitates and expedites the procedure, reduces the stress factor to the surgeon, greatly improves exposure, and provides an immediate and efficient control of bleeding vessels with the internal hand. The Omniport device, which essentially consists of a handcuff with a spiral inflatable valve, enables withdraw and reinsertion of the hand without loss of pneumoperitoneum during the procedure. The device was effective in maintaining pneumoperitoneum in all cases. All operations were completed with the HALS approach. Copyright © 2001 by W.B. Saunders Company.
Comparing hierarchies of total functionals

In this paper, we will address a problem raised by Bauer, Escardo and Simp- son. We define two hierarchies of total, continuous functionals over the reals based on domain theory, one based on an "extensional" representation of the reals and the other on an "intensional" representation. The problem is if these two hierarchies coincide. We will show that this coincidence problem is equivalent to the statement that the topology on the Kleene-Kreisel continuous functionals of a fixed type induced by all continuous functions into the reals is zero-dimensional for each type. As a tool of independent interest, we will construct topological embeddings of the Kleene-Kreisel functionals into both the extensional and the intensional hierarchy at each type. The embeddings will be hierarchy embeddings as well in the sense that they are the inclusion maps at type 0 and respect application at higher types.
Unsupervised morphological segmentation of tissue compartments in histopathological images

Algorithmic segmentation of histologically relevant regions of tissues in digitized histopathological images is a critical step towards computer-assisted diagnosis and analysis. For example, automatic identification of epithelial and stromal tissues in images is important for spatial localisation and guidance in the analysis and characterisation of tumour micro-environment. Current segmentation approaches are based on supervised methods, which require extensive training data from high quality, manually annotated images. This is often difficult and costly to obtain. This paper presents an alternative data-independent framework based on unsupervised segmentation of oropharyngeal cancer tissue micro-arrays (TMAs). An automated segmentation algorithm based on mathematical morphology is first applied to light microscopy images stained with haematoxylin and eosin. This partitions the image into multiple binary ‘virtual-cells’, each enclosing a potential ‘nucleus’ (dark basins in the haematoxylin absorbance image). Colour and morphology measurements obtained from these virtual-cells as well as their enclosed nuclei are input into an advanced unsupervised learning model for the identification of epithelium and stromal tissues. Here we exploit two Consensus Clustering (CC) algorithms for the unsupervised recognition of tissue compartments, that consider the consensual opinion of a group of individual clustering algorithms. Unlike most unsupervised segmentation analyses, which depend on a single clustering method, the CC learning models allow for more robust and stable detection of tissue regions. The proposed framework performance has been evaluated on fifty-five hand-annotated tissue images of oropharyngeal tissues. Qualitative and quantitative results of the proposed segmentation algorithm compare favourably with eight popular tissue segmentation strategies. Furthermore, the unsupervised results obtained here outperform those obtained with individual clustering algorithms.
Comparison of Wireless Standards-Setting -United States Versus Europe

When decisions about developing standards are left to individual firms, there are many advantages including a flexible response to market evolution, accommodation to rapid technology change, and avoidance of costly coordination. However, the market process does not necessarily lead to compatible standards, especially when there is no clear market dominator. Standards Institutions generally facilitate better communication among market participants, which may discourage early and/or primitive incompatible standards to emerge in the market. However, expenditures on institutional standards-setting can lead to diminishing returns, or even be counter-productive because institutional standards usually take longer to produce and are slower to respond to technology development. Government agencies can specify compulsory standards to avoid incompatibility. In addition, governments can tie their policy on standardization closely with their industrial, trade, and/or regulatory policies. However, many exogenous factors handicap a government's effective involvement. Government often fails to respond to the dynamics of technology development and consumer demand, and to pick up the "right technology". This study first discusses why two different models have emerged in the two regions. It then examines outcomes and implications of the two models, including impacts on domestic service deployment, global trade competition, technology innovations, and strategies of multinational corporations. The goal is to conduct an empirical comparison between the two contrasting models.
The secret key~private key capacity region for three terminals

We consider a model for secrecy generation, with three terminals, by means of public interterminal communication, and examine the problem of characterizing all the rates at which all three terminals can generate a "secret key," and - simultaneously - two designated terminals can generate a "private key" which is effectively concealed from the remaining terminal; both keys are also concealed from an eavesdropper that observes the public communication. Inner and outer bounds for the "secret key-private key capacity region" are derived. Under a certain special condition, these bounds coincide to yield the (exact) secret key-private key capacity region
Causal signals between codon bias, mRNA structure, and the efficiency of translation and elongation

Ribosome profiling data report on the distribution of translating ribosomes, at steady‐state, with codon‐level resolution. We present a robust method to extract codon translation rates and protein synthesis rates from these data, and identify causal features associated with elongation and translation efficiency in physiological conditions in yeast. We show that neither elongation rate nor translational efficiency is improved by experimental manipulation of the abundance or body sequence of the rare AGG tRNA. Deletion of three of the four copies of the heavily used ACA tRNA shows a modest efficiency decrease that could be explained by other rate‐reducing signals at gene start. This suggests that correlation between codon bias and efficiency arises as selection for codons to utilize translation machinery efficiently in highly translated genes. We also show a correlation between efficiency and RNA structure calculated both computationally and from recent structure probing data, as well as the Kozak initiation motif, which may comprise a mechanism to regulate initiation.
Early Cognitively Based Functional Limitations Predict Loss of Independence in Instrumental Activities of Daily Living in Older Adults

Abstract Older adults with early forms of neurodegenerative disease are at risk for functional disability, which is often defined by the loss of independence in instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs). The current study investigated the influence of mild changes in everyday functional abilities (referred to as functional limitations) on risk for development of incident functional disability. A total of 407 participants, who were considered cognitively normal or diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) at baseline, were followed longitudinally over an average 4.1 years (range=0.8–9.2 years). Informant-based ratings from the Everyday Cognition (ECog; Farias et al., 2008) and the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (Lawton & Brody, 1969) scales assessed the degree of functional limitations and incident IADL disability, respectively. Cox proportional hazards models revealed that more severe functional limitations (as measured by the Total ECog score) at baseline were associated with approximately a four-fold increased risk of developing IADL disability a few years later. Among the ECog domains, functional limitations in Everyday Planning, Everyday Memory, and Everyday Visuospatial domains were associated with the greatest risk of incident functional disability. These results remained robust even after controlling for participants’ neuropsychological functioning on tests of executive functions and episodic memory. Current findings indicate that early functional limitations have prognostic value in identifying older adults at risk for developing functional disability. Findings highlight the importance of developing interventions to support everyday abilities related to memory, executive function, and visuospatial skills in an effort to delay loss of independence in IADLs. (JINS, 2015, 21, 688–698)
Level-wise Construction of Decision Trees for Classification

A partition-based framework is presented for a formal study of classification problems. An information table is used as a knowledge representation, in which all basic notions are precisely defined by using a language known as the decision logic language. Solutions to, and solution space of, classification problems are formulated in terms of partitions. Algorithms for finding solutions are modelled as searching in a space of partitions under the refinement order relation. We focus on a particular type of solutions called conjunctively definable partitions. Two level-wise methods for decision tree construction are investigated, which are related to two different strategies: local optimization and global optimization. They are not in competition with, but are complementary to each other. Experimental results are reported to evaluate the two methods.
Inferring spatial interaction patterns from sequential snapshots of spatial distributions

ABSTRACT Spatial interactions underlying consecutive sequential snapshots of spatial distributions, such as the migration flows underlying temporal population snapshots, can reflect the details of spatial evolution processes. In the era of big data, we have access to individual-level data, but the acquisition of high-quality spatial interaction data remains a challenging problem. Most research has been focused on distributions of movable objects or the modelling of spatial interaction patterns, with few attempts to identify hidden spatial interaction patterns from temporal transitions of spatial distributions. In this article, we introduced an approach to infer spatial interaction patterns from sequential snapshots of spatial population distributions by incorporating linear programming and the spatial constraints of human movement. Experiments using synthetic data were conducted using four simple scenarios to explore the characteristics of our method. The proposed method was used to extract interurban flows of migrants during the Chinese Spring Festival in 2016. Our research demonstrated the feasibility of using discrete multi-temporal snapshots of population distributions in space to infer spatial interaction patterns and offered a general analytical framework from snapshot data to spatial interaction patterns.