Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of tree-shaped transactions in distributed real time systems

A worst case response time analysis exploiting precedence constraints between fixed priority scheduled tasks in tree-shaped transactions is presented. The algorithm extends existing methods for analysis of linear transactions allowing a wider range of systems, in which tasks may trigger more than one succeeding task on their completion, i.e. the transactions form trees. It also improves existing methods, producing tighter response time bounds for tasks in both linear and tree-shaped transactions. The improvement is due to better exploitation of the precedence relations between tasks, which also makes the analysis faster than earlier. Simulation results show a significant reduction of estimated worst case response times when compared to earlier analysis methods for both linear and tree-shaped transactions. Such improvement leads to less pessimistic schedulability tests for distributed fixed priority scheduled systems.
As organizações sociais e o contrato de gestão

Este trabalho visa mostrar a importância da Organizacao Social para odesenvolvimento social. Para tanto, o trabalho apresenta consideracoes sobre oEstado. Traca linhas gerais sobre o Terceiro Setor, destacando seu conceito eorigem. Por fim, as Organizacoes Sociais e os Contratos de Gestao. O enfoquecentraliza-se na Organizacao Social e sua necessidade nos dias de hoje, mostrandoque esta instituicao pode ser utilizada para a consecucao dos fins sociais derealizacao dos direitos fundamentais e, assim, alcancar melhorias nas condicoes devida dos cidadaos.
Two communicative levels and twofold illocutionary force in televised political debates

Abstract The paper offers a proposal of a new classification of hearer roles in media discourse represented by political debates. It is posited that broadcast talk operates on distinct, yet mutually dependent, communicative levels, entailing different hearers: listening interlocutors, recipients in the studio as well as TV recipients. Secondly, it is argued that Speech Act Theory, which is anchored in the dyadic model, must be extended to account for multi-party interactions, notably mediated ones. This is best appreciated on the basis of the problem of a twofold illocutionary intention underlying utterances in political broadcast talk. Such utterances are illustrated with jibes deployed in Polish PM pre-election debates with a view to deprecating the addressee and, simultaneously, entertaining the audience.
Small bowel ischemia caused by strangulation in complicated small bowel obstruction. CT findings in 20 cases with histopathological correlation.

PURPOSE To analyze the CT findings in 20 cases of complicated small bowel obstruction with surgically and histopathologically proven small bowel ischemia, caused by extrinsic venous outflow obstruction of the affected bowel loops and to discuss the question, if bowel wall thickening, abnormal bowel wall enhancement, ascites and mesenteric stranding correlate with the severity of bowel wall damage. METHODS CT scans of 20 patients with surgically an histopathologically proven isolated small bowel ischemia caused by strangulation (10 patients with only partial mural, still potentially reversible small bowel ischemia and 10 patients with transmural irreversible small bowel infarction) were analyzed retrospectively with special emphasis on the presence and degree of small bowel wall thickening, enhancement of the bowel wall, ascites and/or mesenteric stranding at CT and the question whether these findings correlated with the severity of ischemic small bowel wall damage in these patients. RESULTS Small bowel wall thickening, local mesenteric stranding and ascites were equally common in both groups of patients, regardless of whether obstruction and strangulation related small bowel ischemia was transmural or only partial mural. Out of those patients who were examined by contrast enhanced studies no patient showed lack of enhancement along the ischemic bowel loops. CONCLUSION Although highly sensitive and specific for small bowel ischemia in complicated small bowel obstruction, the presence and degree of bowel wall thickening, ascites or local mesenteric stranding at CT do not correlate with the severity of ischemic small bowel wall damage and even the presence of bowel wall enhancement does not exclude severe and potentially transmural bowel infarction in these patients.
Effects of chronic oestrogen treatment are not selective for uterine noradrenaline‐containing sympathetic nerves: a transplantation study

Previous studies have shown that chronic administration of oestrogen during postnatal rat development dramatically reduces the total content of noradrenaline in the uterine horn, abolishes myometrial noradrenergic innervation and reduces noradrenaline‐fluorescence intensity of intrauterine perivascular nerve fibres. In the present study we analysed if this response is due to a direct and selective effect of oestrogen on the uterine noradrenaline‐containing sympathetic nerves, using the in oculo transplantation method. Small pieces of myometrium from prepubertal rats were transplanted into the anterior eye chamber of adult ovariectomised host rats. The effect of systemic chronic oestrogen treatment on the reinnervation of the transplants by noradrenaline‐containing sympathetic fibres from the superior cervical ganglion was analysed on cryostat tissue sections processed by the glyoxylic acid technique. In addition, the innervation of the host iris was assessed histochemically and biochemically. The histology of the transplants and irises was examined in toluidine blue‐stained semithin sections. These studies showed that after 5 wk in oculo, the overall size of the oestrogen‐treated transplants was substantially larger than controls, and histology showed that this change was related to an increase in the size and number of smooth muscle cells within the transplant. Chronic oestrogen treatment did not provoke trophic changes in the irideal muscle. Histochemistry showed that control transplants had a rich noradrenergic innervation, associated with both myometrium and blood vessels. Conversely, in oestrogen‐treated transplants only occasional fibres were recognised, showing a reduced NA fluorescence intensity. No changes in the pattern and density of innervation or in the total content of noradrenaline of the host irises were detected after chronic exposure to oestrogen. We interpreted these results to indicate that the effects of oestrogen on uterine noradrenaline‐containing sympathetic nerves are neither selective or direct, but result from an interaction between sympathetic nerve fibres with the oestradiol‐primed uterine tissue. A potential effect of oestrogen on the neurotrophic capacity of the uterus is discussed.
Energy Efficient Execution of POMDP Policies

Recent advances in planning techniques for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) have focused on online search techniques and offline point-based value iteration. While these techniques allow practitioners to obtain policies for fairly large problems, they assume that a nonnegligible amount of computation can be done between each decision point. In contrast, the recent proliferation of mobile and embedded devices has lead to a surge of applications that could benefit from state-of-the-art planning techniques if they can operate under severe constraints on computational resources. To that effect, we describe two techniques to compile policies into controllers that can be executed by a mere table lookup at each decision point. The first approach compiles policies induced by a set of alpha vectors (such as those obtained by point-based techniques) into approximately equivalent controllers, while the second approach performs a simulation to compile arbitrary policies into approximately equivalent controllers. We also describe an approach to compress controllers by removing redundant and dominated nodes, often yielding smaller and yet better controllers. Further compression and higher value can sometimes be obtained by considering stochastic controllers. The compilation and compression techniques are demonstrated on benchmark problems as well as a mobile application to help persons with Alzheimer's to way-find. The battery consumption of several POMDP policies is compared against finite-state controllers learned using methods introduced in this paper. Experiments performed on the Nexus 4 phone show that finite-state controllers are the least battery consuming POMDP policies.
FGF21 induces PGC-1α and regulates carbohydrate and fatty acid metabolism during the adaptive starvation response

The liver plays a crucial role in mobilizing energy during nutritional deprivation. During the early stages of fasting, hepatic glycogenolysis is a primary energy source. As fasting progresses and glycogen stores are depleted, hepatic gluconeogenesis and ketogenesis become major energy sources. Here, we show that fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21), a hormone that is induced in liver by fasting, induces hepatic expression of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ coactivator protein-1α (PGC-1α), a key transcriptional regulator of energy homeostasis, and causes corresponding increases in fatty acid oxidation, tricarboxylic acid cycle flux, and gluconeogenesis without increasing glycogenolysis. Mice lacking FGF21 fail to fully induce PGC-1α expression in response to a prolonged fast and have impaired gluconeogenesis and ketogenesis. These results reveal an unexpected relationship between FGF21 and PGC-1α and demonstrate an important role for FGF21 in coordinately regulating carbohydrate and fatty acid metabolism during the progression from fasting to starvation.
Particle Swarm Optimization for the single container loading problem

This paper presents a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm to solve the Container Loading Problem (CLP) where a set of rectangular boxes of different sizes are packed into a single rectangular container. The CLP uses a packing scheme to generate feasible packing plan and calculate volume utilisation of the container. The packing scheme is based on the layer building approach which group boxes of the same type to create layers. The spaces where layers may be packed are represented by maximal empty spaces which are created using the Difference Process. A back bottom left heuristics is used to select the maximal empty space for each layer built. The PSO is used to evolve the order of box type sequence and layer type vector used in the packing scheme. The performance of the algorithm is tested on seven test cases; each test case consists of 100 instances. The results show that PSO performs very well in terms of significant improvement in volume utilization.
Herpesviruses: latency and reactivation – viral strategies and host response

Eight members of the Herpesviridae family commonly infect humans, and close to 100% of the adult population is infected with at least one of these. The five that cause the most health concerns are: herpes simplex virus (HSV) type 1 and 2, Epstein–Barr virus (EBV), cytomegalovirus (CMV), and varicella zoster virus (VZV). In addition, there are human herpes virus (HHV) types 6–8. The review starts by introducing possible viral strategies in general. The particular biology and host relationship of the various human herpesviruses, including their pathology, are examined subsequently. Factors that contribute to the maintenance of latency and reactivation of viral replication are discussed. There will be special reference to how these viruses exploit and contribute to pathology in the oral cavity. Reactivation does not necessarily imply clinical symptoms, as reflected in the asymptomatic shedding of EBV and CMV from oral mucosa. The immune response and the level of viral output are both important to the consequences experienced.
Long-term adjustment of early-stage ovarian cancer survivors

The objectives of this study were to describe the quality of life (QOL), consequences of treatment, complementary therapy use, and factors correlating with psychologic state in 58 survivors of early-stage ovarian cancer since little is known about the QOL of early-stage ovarian cancer survivors. Survivors were interviewed using standardized measures to assess physical, psychologic, social, and sexual functioning; impact of cancer on socioeconomic status; and complementary therapy use. Survivors reported good physical QOL scores and few unmet needs. However, menopausal symptoms and negative impact on sexuality were reported. Less than 10% of survivors reported either an interest in sex or were sexually active. Psychologic assessment yielded a subset of 26% of patients with scores suggestive of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and 40% of survivors scored below the norm on the Mental Health Inventory-17 Survey. One third of patients required treatment for family/personal problems and took antianxiety medications. About 56% of survivors reported fear of cancer recurrence and 59% reported anxiety when their CA125 is tested. Better mental health was significantly related to less fatigue (Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy [FACT]—fatigue, r= 0.61, P< 0.0001), less pain (European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer [EORTC], r= −0.54, P< 0.0001), fewer stressful life events (Life Event Scale, r= −0.44, P> 0.001), and greater social support (MOS Social Support Survey, r= 0.41, P< 0.01). Early-stage ovarian cancer survivors had few physical complaints and unmet needs, but psychologic distress was evident in a subset of survivors; the majority of survivors reported sexual dysfunction. These results indicate the need for intervention and improved distress screening in the early-stage ovarian cancer population.
Acute promyelocytic leukemia: from genetics to treatment.

A CUTE PROMYELOCYTIC leukemia (APL) has aroused interest well beyond the hematologic field during the last 4 to 5 years. Two features, both of which are unique to APL, have attracted the attention of various sectors of biomedical research: (1) the remission of the disease obtained with retinoic acid (RA) treatment, whose mechanism of action consists in inducing the APL blasts to differentiate term in all^"^; and (2) the presence in the APL blasts of an anomalous protein, the PML/RARa protein, a mutant of one of the retinoic acid receptor^. ^-^ The high sensitivity of the promyelocytic blasts to RA makes APL a unique model for differentiation therapy. Because this antineoplastic strategy is radically different from conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy, it potentially provides a further tactic for controlling neoplastic growth. Several attempts were made to treat hematologic neoplastic disorders with differentiation therapy in the past. ’ They were based on the observation that the differentiation block is a striking feature of the leukemic phenotype* and that it can be reversed in vitro by a number of substances (eg, low-dose Ara-C). ’ Unfortunately, on the whole, these clinical trials led to disappointing results. ” In contrast, differentiation therapy with RA induces clinical remission in the great majority of APL patient^. "^ The PML/RARa fusion protein is formed as the consequence of a chromosomal translocation, [t( 15; 17)] that involves the PML and RARa genes.4s5 The anomalous protein is thought to play a crucial role in promyelocytic leukemogenesis. RARa is a member of the super-family of nuclear hormone receptors that are involved in fundamental biologic processes such as development and differentiation. ” The discovery of a putative oncogenic RARa mutant, PML/RARa, raises questions of great importance concerning the normal function and oncogenic potential of all members of the nuclear receptor super-family. The association of these two unique features of APL is paradoxical. On one hand, the alteration in the RA signaling pathway by PML/RARa could contribute to the leukemic
Retinal Neovascularization Is Prevented by Blockade of the Renin-Angiotensin System

Both angiotensin II and vascular endothelial growth factor are angiogenic agents that have recently been implicated in the pathogenesis of proliferative diabetic retinopathy. In this study, retinal neovascularization was examined in a model of retinopathy of prematurity with the use of neonatal transgenic (mRen-2)27 rats, which overexpress renin in tissues, and Sprague-Dawley rats. Blockers of the renin-angiotensin system were administered during the neovascularization period. The ACE inhibitor lisinopril and the angiotensin type 1 receptor antagonist losartan both increased retinal renin levels and prevented inner retinal blood vessel growth. Quantitative in situ hybridization revealed that the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor and its type 2 receptor in the inner retina and proliferating blood vessels were increased in rats with retinopathy of prematurity. Lisinopril reduced both retinal vascular endothelial growth factor and its type 2 receptor mRNA in retinopathy of prematurity rats, whereas losartan had no effect. It is predicted that agents that interrupt the renin-angiotensin system may play an important role as retinoprotective agents in various forms of proliferative retinopathy.
Discovering expatriate reflective practitioners

Ignoring the effect that expatriate teachers have on English language teaching around the world is impossible. When there are many people leaving their countries each year to teach abroad, it seems essential to see whether those teachers are reflection-oriented or not as they are working throughout the world, and reflection plays a major role in teaching and professional development. The purpose of this study is to measure expatriate teachers’ reflection and to reveal to what extent they are reflective practitioners. The results indicate that most of the teachers who participated in the study could be called reflective practitioners within their own classroom setting and few of them are never reflection-oriented. They usually attribute the problem to others (students, colleagues, or management) or they have a lack of concern most of the time.
Time and decision: introduction to the special issue

This special issue showcases cutting-edge contributions to the ®eld of intertemporal choice, which refers to tradeos between costs and bene®ts occurring at dierent points in time. Although intertemporal choice is a central aspect of decision theory and decision research Ð it is dicult to think of any important decision that lacks an intertemporal component Ð research on it emerged and ̄owered only in the last two decades. Until the 1980s, the discounted utility (DU) model, which was ®rst proposed by Samuelson in 1939 (see Loewenstein, 1992, for a historical discussion), was adopted uncritically by economists and decision theorists. Discounted Utility theory assumes that individuals discount future events at a constant rate, so that the value of an experience extended over time is given by:
Comparing child and adult development of a visual phonological system

Research has documented systematic articulation differences in young children’s first signs compared with the adult input. Explanations range from the implementation of phonological processes, cognitive limitations and motor immaturity. One way of disentangling these possible explanations is to investigate signing articulation in adults who do not know any sign language, but have mature cognitive and motor development. Some preliminary observations are provided on signing accuracy in a group of adults using a sign repetition methodology. Adults make the most errors with marked handshapes and produce movement and location errors akin to child signers. Secondly, there are both positive and negative influences of iconicity on sign repetition in adults. Possible reasons are discussed for these iconicity effects based on gesture.
The After-effect of Seen Motion: The Role of Retinal Stimulation and of Eye Movements

An experiment is described in which movement after-effects are noted, following presentation of moving stripes under various conditions of eye movement. After-effects only occur when the retinal image moves systematically across the retina, though movement may be observed when this is not the case. The after-effects are due to specifically retinal stimulation, not to perception of movement pev se.
Adaptive mouse: a deformable computer mouse achieving form-function synchronization

In this paper, we implement a computer mouse for demonstrating the idea of form-function synchronization by embedding deformation sensing modules consisting of deformable foam and Hall-effect sensors. Due to its automatic sensing, recognizing and actuating mechanisms actively responding to users' diverse gestures, we have chosen to name it Adaptive Mouse. Working with Adaptive Mouse, all users have to do is to hold it with preferred hand gestures, then through the use of their fore and middle fingers the correct button functions will intuitively be triggered. Users can also freely move the mouse and always get accurate cursor feedbacks. This "intuitive holds then clicks" action creates sense of "magic", and the mouse shape with minimum visual clues not only lowers mental loads but also achieves the goal of simplicity design.
Performance Analysis of Ofdm in Combating Multipath Fading

Mobile Communication system has been on high rampage for high data transmission over wireless medium with various challenges caused by the transmission Channel. OFDM is been discovered in recent years to deal with this problems because of its ability to elegantly cope with multipath interference. This paper investigates the performance of different modulation schemes using M-ary Phase Shift Keying (M-PSK) and Mary Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (M-QAM) in information transmission with OFDM technique over Ideal channel AWGN and worst channel Rayleigh Fading channel in terms of Bits Error Rate (BER). Analysis was made for different types of modulation schemes BPSK, QPSK, 4-QAM and 16-QAM gray coded bit mapping. Also, a feasibility of OFDM been used to combat multipath fading was analyzed with comparison between a single carrier technique and OFDM multicarrier technique. Variation between SNR results with respect to BER is plotted to show the trade off differences between the modulation schemes with the result showing that OFDM allows data transmission with minimal error over fading channel than a Single Carrier.
Ieee Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics Isodiamond Hierarchies: an Efficient Multiresolution Representation for Isosurfaces and Interval Volumes

—Efficient multiresolution representations for isosurfaces and interval volumes are becoming increasingly important as the gap between volume data sizes and processing speed continues to widen. Our multiresolution scalar field model is a hierarchy of tetrahedral clusters generated by longest edge bisection, that we call a hierarchy of diamonds. We propose two multiresolution models for representing isosurfaces, or interval volumes, extracted from a hierarchy of diamonds which exploit its regular structure. These models are defined by subsets of diamonds in the hierarchy, that we call isodiamonds, which are enhanced with geometric and topological information for encoding the relation between the isosurface, or interval volume, and the diamond itself. The first multiresolution model, called a relevant isodiamond hierarchy, encodes the isodiamonds intersected by the isosurface, or interval volume, as well as their non-intersected ancestors, while the second model, called a minimal isodiamond hierarchy, encodes only the intersected isodiamonds. Since both models operate directly on the extracted isosurface or interval volume, they require significantly less memory and support faster selective refinement queries than the original multiresolution scalar field, but do not support dynamic isovalue modifications. Moreover, since a minimal isodiamond hierarchy only encodes intersected isodiamonds, its extracted meshes require significantly less memory than those extracted from a relevant isodiamond hierarchy. We demonstrate the compactness of isodiamond hierarchies by comparing them to an indexed representation of the mesh at full resolution.