Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
VIFI-CMP: variability-tolerant chip-multiprocessors for throughput and power

This paper proposes a new architecture of variability-tolerant chip-multiprocessor. To mitigate the impact of process variability on throughput and power, voltage and frequency islands are introduced into chip-multiprocessors. Thus, voltage island frequency island chip-multiprocessors enable per-core scaling on the supply voltage and operating frequency. It can naturally collaborate with dynamic voltage frequency scaling. The process variations are characterized through an analytical model, and are quantified through Monte Carlo analysis. Compared with the design without process variations, when 70 threads are run on a chip of 70 small cores, our results show throughput degradation is 0.06%, while power reduction is 36.27%.
Ventricular tachycardia ablation and substrate modification in ICD patients with electrical storm

Abstract The electrical storm (ES) is defined as a state of electrical instability with three or more sustained ventricular arrhythmias (VAs) occurring within twenty-four hours, which needs intravenous antiarrhythmic medications and frequent defibrillation. Recently, radiofrequency catheter ablation evolved as a sole therapy to terminate ES in patients with ICD, and the survival has been reported to be improved with successful ablation during follow-up. In this review, we briefly summarize substrate mapping and substrate ablation strategy in patients with ES, and discuss the reason of recurrence after ablation.
SPINSTARS at Low Metallicities

The main effect of axial rotation on the evolution of massive PopIII stars is to trigger internal mixing processes which allow stars to produce significant amounts of primary nitrogen 14 and carbon 13. Very metal poor massive stars produce much more primary nitrogen than PopIII stars for a given initial mass and rotation velocity. The very metal poor stars undergo strong mass loss induced by rotation. One can distinguish two types of rotationnaly enhanced stellar winds: 1) Rotationally mechanical winds occurs when the surface velocity reaches the critical velocity at the equator, i.e. the velocity at which the centrifugal acceleration is equal to the gravity; 2) Rotationally radiatively line driven winds are a consequence of strong internal mixing which brings large amounts of CNO elements at the surface. This enhances the opacity and may trigger strong line driven winds. These effects are important for an initial value of υ/υcrit of 0.54 for a 60 M⊙ at Z = 10−8, i.e. for initial values of υ/υcrit higher .
LogDet Rank Minimization with Application to Subspace Clustering

Low-rank matrix is desired in many machine learning and computer vision problems. Most of the recent studies use the nuclear norm as a convex surrogate of the rank operator. However, all singular values are simply added together by the nuclear norm, and thus the rank may not be well approximated in practical problems. In this paper, we propose using a log-determinant (LogDet) function as a smooth and closer, though nonconvex, approximation to rank for obtaining a low-rank representation in subspace clustering. Augmented Lagrange multipliers strategy is applied to iteratively optimize the LogDet-based nonconvex objective function on potentially large-scale data. By making use of the angular information of principal directions of the resultant low-rank representation, an affinity graph matrix is constructed for spectral clustering. Experimental results on motion segmentation and face clustering data demonstrate that the proposed method often outperforms state-of-the-art subspace clustering algorithms.
Effects of 8 weeks resistance training on plasma vaspin and lipid profile levels in adult men with type 2 diabetes

Background: Vaspin is associated with decreased blood glucose concentration. In this study, we aimed to investigate the effects of resistance exercise training on plasma vaspin and lipid profile levels in patients with type 2 diabetes. Methods: Thirty men were divided into 2 groups: control (n=15), and resistance exercise (n=15). The resistance group performed a resistance exercise consisting of 3 circuits of 8-15 repetitions of the 8 exercises. Lipid profiles and vaspin levels were measured at baseline and at the end of study. This study was registered in the Iranian Registry of Clinical Trial (www.irct.ir) with registration number ID: IRCT2013060911772N1. Results: Intergroup study showed that after an 8-week of resistance training, resistance group had reductions in vaspin (330.50±82.51 ng/ml vs 251.62±107.28 ng/ml, p=0.03), and TC levels (185.21±47.51 mg/dL vs 171.10±37.91 mg/dL p= 0.02); but, had increase in HDL-C levels (38.20±20.65 mg/dL vs 43.80±7.87 mg/dL p=0.01), whereas, vaspin levels significantly increased in control groups (344±78.64 ng/ml vs 436 ± 70.47 ng/ml, p= 0.03). On the other hand, significant difference was seen in plasma vaspin levels between two groups. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that resistance training significantly decreased the level of vaspin without affecting the lipid profile level.
Questionnaires: a framework using mobile code for component-based tele-exams

Applications for computer supported cooperative work can gain from component models and frameworks. The framework for "questionnaires", which is described in the paper offers a pattern to distribute artifacts to a group of receivers. We use mobile code to ensure highest flexibility and provide hooks to be able to collaborate with local applications on the receiver side. The questionnaire framework is not only interesting for tele-exams, which are described in detail, but can also be used to pass artifacts around in a workflow system. Our approach supports the whole life cycle of questionnaires. Standard tools support the design of the questions and their assembling into a questionnaire using components. A questionnaire is distributed to all students in an exam and collected at the end of the exam. The teacher application comprises a component to automatically evaluate the answered questionnaires and to store them persistently.
When Do Software Issues and Bugs get Reported in Large Open Source Software Project ?

In this paper we examine the reporting pattern of more than 7000 issue reports from five large open source software projects to evaluate two main characteristics: (1) when do defects get reported does there exist any distinct patterns, and (2) is there any difference between reported defect inflow and actual defect inflow for these projects. The two questions evaluated here are important from practical standpoint. Detailed knowledge of specific patterns in defect reporting can be useful for planning purposes, while differences between reported and actual defect inflow can have implications on accuracy of dynamic software reliability growth models used for defect prediction/reliability assessment. Our results suggest that while there exist distinct variation over when defects are reported, the ratio of reported to actual defects remains fairly stable over period of time. These results provide more insights into possible group of people who contribute to OSS projects and also enhance our confidence in applying SRGMs using reported defect inflow. Our test with logistic growth model show that using reported bugs provided asymptote (total expected bugs) predictions that were on average only 4.8% different than using actual bugs for making such predictions.
Narrow Baseline GLSL Multiview Stereo

• Basic plane-sweep approach. • Arbitrary viewpoints, as long as views overlap. • Pre-rectification is not required, but calibration is. •Matching cost is the total colour variance over the views. • GPGPU processing using standard OpenGL, GLSL, and ARB extensions provides extremely low CPUconsumption. • Uses 16-bit floating-point intermediate data storage (textures). • Code available under MIT-licence.
miRNA-regulated delivery of lincRNA-p21 suppresses β-catenin signaling and tumorigenicity of colorectal cancer stem cells

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are key cellular targets for effective cancer therapy, due to their critical roles in cancer progression and chemo/radio-resistance. Emerging evidence demonstrates that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are important players in the biology of cancers. However, it remains unknown whether lncRNAs could be exploited to target CSCs. We report that large intergenic non-coding RNA p21 (lincRNA-p21) is a potent suppressor of stem-like traits of CSCs purified from both primary colorectal cancer (CRC) tissues and cell lines. A novel lincRNA-p21-expressing adenoviral vector, which was armed with miRNA responsive element (MRE) of miR-451 (Ad-lnc-p21-MRE), was generated to eliminate CRC CSCs. Integration of miR-451 MREs into the adenovirus efficiently delivered lincRNA-p21 into CSCs that contained low levels of miR-451. Moreover, lincRNA-p21 inhibited the activity of β-catenin signaling, thereby attenuating the viability, self-renewal, and glycolysis of CSCs in vitro. By limiting dilution and serial tumor formation assay, we demonstrated that Ad-lnc-p21-MRE significantly suppressed the self-renewal potential and tumorigenicity of CSCs in nude mice. Importantly, application of miR-451 MREs appeared to protect normal liver cells from off-target expression of lincRNA-p21 in both tumor-bearing and naïve mice. Taken together, these findings suggest that lncRNAs may be promising therapeutic molecules to eradicate CSCs and MREs of tumor-suppressor miRNAs, such as miR-451, may be exploited to ensure the specificity of CSC-targeting strategies.
A Review of Support Vector Machines in Computational Biology

In the biological sciences, arguably moreso than in any other discipline, the amount of data is available to researchers is exploding exponentially. Making this information available in a consistent, accessible format is itself a non-trivial task, and categorizing or classifying the data in meaningful ways is especially daunting. Laboratory experiment and human review will likely continue to represent the gold standard for reliability in these classification tasks, but these processes are time-consuming and expensive. Consequently, the development of automated replacements for these is an extremely important and widely-studied problem. Due to the scope and complexity of the data in question, statistical and machine learning algorithms are a natural choice for these types of analyses. Support vector machines are a specific type of machine learning algorithm that are among the most widely-used for many statistical learning problems, such as spam filtering, text classification, handwriting analysis, face and object recognition, and countless others. Support vector machines have also come into widespread use in practically every area of bioinformatics within the last ten years, and their area of influence continues to expand today. This paper will present a brief description of support vector machines themselves, followed by a comprehensive study of how SVMs have been and are being used in computational biology, and finally a brief discussion of some novel variations on SVM classification as well as the future of SVMs in bioinformatics.
Scalable Data Representation in Risk Management Information Systems Using an XQuery Extension

Risk analysis has become recently an important activity in many industrial domains: mining, off-shore drilling, health services etc. For short, risk analysis studies the relationship between causes of an accident and the severity of its consequences. It comes as no surprise that Risk Management Information Systems (RMIS) for tracking and reporting the costs of preventing accidents and mitigating the consequences of critical events have attracted a lot of research and development efforts. The amount and especially the complexity of data in a typical RMIS make such systems very difficult to design. In this paper we present a popular model for risk management data representation, the bowtie model, which is almost the de facto model in risk management systems. The bowtie model we present is inherently a directed graph. Then we show how we define and use an extension of the XQuery language, called TreXQuery, to perform intricate searching of graph models in risk management systems.
Harmonization of conflicting medical opinions using argumentation protocols and textual entailment - a case study on Parkinson disease

Parkinson's disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, affecting more than 1.2 million people in Europe. Medications are available for the management of its symptoms, but the exact cause of the disease is unknown and there is currently no cure on the market. To better understand the relations between new findings and current medical knowledge, we need tools able to analyze published medical papers based on natural language processing and tools capable of identifying various relationships of new findings with the current medical knowledge. Our work aims to fill the above technological gap. To identify conflicting information in medical documents, we enact textual entailment technology. To encapsulate existing medical knowledge, we rely on ontologies. To connect the formal axioms in ontologies with natural text in medical articles, we exploit ontology verbalization techniques. To assess the level of disagreement between human agents with respect to a medical issue, we rely on fuzzy aggregation. To harmonize this disagreement, we design mediation protocols within a multi-agent framework.
INVESTIGATING PROBLEM SOLVING WITH COMPUTER-SUPPORTED COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

In this study, we investigated group problem solving behaviour of twelve graduate students using Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). The problems were ill-structured design problems about the critique on the design of multimedia educational software. The students were asked to participate in an asynchronous online discussion which involved the following tasks: identifying design problems, discussing the design problems, developing solutions, and discussing the suggested solutions. The software program Knowledge Community, a CSCL that allows scaffolded online discussions, was used. Results indicated that the graduate students participated significantly more in identifying design problems than in discussing the design problem. They also participated more in identifying solutions more than discussing the suggested solutions. Implications about scaffolding ill-structured design problems can be drawn from the results of this study.
Tuning OLSR

Optimised link state routing (OLSR) is a popular protocol for use in MANET networks. In this paper, we investigate the different impacts of tuning refresh interval timers on OLSR performance under various scenarios (varying node density and node speed). Based on the simulation results with NS2, we find that although reducing refresh intervals could improve OLSR's performance, the intervals for some message types (HELLO messages) have a bigger impact on OLSR performance than for other message types. We find that the impact of the interval timer grows with increased network mobility and node density
A Dominant-negative Clathrin Mutant Differentially Affects Trafficking of Molecules with Distinct Sorting Motifs in the Class II Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) Pathway

The role of clathrin in intracellular sorting was investigated by expression of a dominant-negative mutant form of clathrin, termed the hub fragment. Hub inhibition of clathrin-mediated membrane transport was established by demonstrating a block of transferrin internalization and an alteration in the intracellular distribution of the cation-independent mannose-6-phosphate receptor. Hubs had no effect on uptake of FITC-dextran, adaptor distribution, organelle integrity in the secretory pathway, or cell surface expression of constitutively secreted molecules. Hub expression blocked lysosomal delivery of chimeric molecules containing either the tyrosine-based sorting signal of H2M or the dileucine-based sorting signal of CD3γ, confirming a role for clathrin-coated vesicles (CCVs) in recognizing these signals and sorting them to the endocytic pathway. Hub expression was then used to probe the role of CCVs in targeting native molecules bearing these sorting signals in the context of HLA–DM and the invariant chain (I chain) complexed to HLA–DR. The distribution of these molecules was differentially affected. Accumulation of hubs before expression of the DM dimer blocked DM export from the TGN, whereas hubs had no effect on direct targeting of the DR–I chain complex from the TGN to the endocytic pathway. However, concurrent expression of hubs, such that hubs were building to inhibitory concentrations during DM or DR–I chain expression, caused cell surface accumulation of both complexes. These observations suggest that both DM and DR–I chain are directly transported to the endocytic pathway from the TGN, DM in CCVs, and DR–I chain independent of CCVs. Subsequently, both complexes can appear at the cell surface from where they are both internalized by CCVs. Differential packaging in CCVs in the TGN, mediated by tyrosine- and dileucine-based sorting signals, could be a mechanism for functional segregation of DM from DR–I chain until their intended rendezvous in late endocytic compartments.
Instruction-based Reuse Distance Prediction Replacement Policy

This paper presents a new cache replacement policy based on Instruction-based Reuse Distance Prediction (IbRDP) Replacement Policy originally proposed by Keramidas, Petoumenos, and Kaxiras [5] and further optimized by Petoumenos et al. [6]. In these works [5,6] we have proven that there is a strong correlation between the temporal characteristics of the cache blocks and the access patterns of instructions (PCs) that touch these cache blocks. Based on this observation we introduced a new class of instruction-based predictors which are able to directly predict with high accuracy at run-time when a cache block is going to be accessed in the future, a.k. a. the reuse distance of a cache block. Being able to predict the reuse distances of the cache blocks permits us to make near-optimal replacement decisions by “looking into the future. ” In this work, we employ an extension of the IbRDP Replacement policy [6]. We carefully re-design the organization as well as the functionality of the predictor and the corresponding replacement algorithm in order to fit into the tight area budget provided by the CRC committee [3]. Since our proposal naturally supports the ability to victimize the currently fetched blocks by not caching them at all in the cache (Selective Caching), we submit for evaluation two versions: the base-IbRDP and the IbRDP enhanced with Selective Caching (IbRDP+SC). Our performance evaluations based on a subset of SPEC2006 applications show that IbRDP achieves an IPC improvement of 4.66% (arithmetic average) over traditional LRU, while IbRDP+SC is able to further increase its distance compared to the baseline LRU to 6.04%. Finally, we also show that IbRDP outperforms the previous state of the art proposal (namely Dynamic Insertion Policy or DIP [7]) by 2.32% in terms of IPC (3.81% for the IbRDP+SC).
Witness Intimidation

Witness intimidation involves strategic complexity and two-sided uncertainty: criminals cannot know whether threats will deter witnesses, and witnesses cannot know whether threats will be carried out. We model this interaction and explore how rates of intimidation, testimony, and conviction respond to changes in the value of testimony, relations between the police and the community, and witness protection programs. If the value of testimony rises, criminals face stronger incentives to threaten, but threats are less credible. The increase in threats may be large enough to offset the greater value of testimony, with the paradoxical outcome that fewer criminals are convicted. Counterintuitive results are most likely when witness intimidation is a severe problem: few witnesses testify although prosecutors are competent. When the harm faced by witnesses depends on whether the criminal is convicted, communities can be trapped in equilibria with collective silence: no witness testifies because none expects others to testify.
Inequalities in outcomes of acute kidney injury in England.

BACKGROUND Renal replacement is managed by renal specialists and is well documented in national registries. In contrast, nation-wide data on acute kidney injury (AKI) are difficult to capture as it presents in many different ways to all acute hospitals. This paucity impacts on the coordination of appropriate services. AIMS We have set out to use all the information submitted by all hospitals in England to identify emergency patients in whom AKI was a major contributor to their hospital stay. We then examined workload in relation to specialist provision and outcomes of care. DESIGN AND METHODS All English hospitals submit a sequential list of International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision (ICD 10) codes to describe the diagnosis of each admission. An algorithm was applied to all emergency admissions over a 2-year period to identify AKI. The level of renal specialist care available within each hospital trust was compared with patient outcomes, including 30-day mortality. RESULTS The incidence of AKI was 1.34% of all emergency admissions. The numbers and types of AKI cases were similar in all trusts, regardless of the service available. Thirty-day mortality was 30.0%. More than half the acute hospitals did not have on-site renal specialists and their AKI mortality rates were significantly higher (P < 0.001). These differences persisted despite adjusting for multiple variables. CONCLUSION The country has created specialist renal units in 45% of hospital trusts, but AKI presents as emergencies to all hospitals and there is an increased risk of mortality in the 55% of trusts without renal specialists.
Improved estimates of the benefits of breastfeeding using sibling comparisons to reduce selection bias.

OBJECTIVE Better measurement of the health and cognitive benefits of breastfeeding by using sibling comparisons to reduce sample selection bias. DATA We use data on the breastfeeding history, physical and emotional health, academic performance, cognitive ability, and demographic characteristics of 16,903 adolescents from the first (1994) wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The sample includes 2,734 sibling pairs. STUDY DESIGN We examine the relationship between breastfeeding history and 15 indicators of physical health, emotional health, and cognitive ability, using ordinary least squares and logit regression. For each indicator, we estimate, in addition to the usual between-family model, a within-family model to see whether differences in siblings' outcomes are associated with differences in the siblings' breastfeeding histories. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Nearly all of the correlations found in the between-family model become statistically insignificant in the within-family model. The notable exception is a persistent positive correlation between breastfeeding and cognitive ability. These findings hold whether breastfeeding is measured in terms of duration or as a Yes/No variable. CONCLUSIONS This study provides persuasive evidence of a causal connection between breastfeeding and intelligence. However, it also suggests that nonexperimental studies of breastfeeding overstate some of its other long-term benefits, even if controls are included for race, ethnicity, income, and education.