Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Reward-Maximizing Spiking Neuron as a Bounded Rational Decision Maker

Rate distortion theory describes how to communicate relevant information most efficiently over a channel with limited capacity. One of the many applications of rate distortion theory is bounded rational decision making, where decision makers are modeled as information channels that transform sensory input into motor output under the constraint that their channel capacity is limited. Such a bounded rational decision maker can be thought to optimize an objective function that trades off the decision maker’s utility or cumulative reward against the information processing cost measured by the mutual information between sensory input and motor output. In this study, we interpret a spiking neuron as a bounded rational decision maker that aims to maximize its expected reward under the computational constraint that the mutual information between the neuron’s input and output is upper bounded. This abstract computational constraint translates into a penalization of the deviation between the neuron’s instantaneous and average firing behavior. We derive a synaptic weight update rule for such a rate distortion optimizing neuron and show in simulations that the neuron efficiently extracts reward-relevant information from the input by trading off its synaptic strengths against the collected reward.
The Importance of Multichannel Intraluminal Impedance in the Evaluation of Children with Persistent Respiratory Symptoms

OBJECTIVES:Previous evidence suggests an association between gastroesophageal reflux disease and chronic respiratory disease in children. Despite antisecretory antacid therapy, respiratory symptoms often persist supporting a role for nonacid reflux. The aim of this study was to determine whether nonacid reflux occurs in children with chronic respiratory disease.METHODS:Twenty-eight children (mean age: 6.5 ± 5.6 yr) with persistent respiratory symptoms on antacid medications underwent 24 h pH/multichannel intraluminal impedance (pH/MII) recording. The symptom index (SI) and the symptom sensitivity index (SSI) were calculated for each patient. Logistic regression was performed to determine which reflux characteristics were associated with a high degree of symptom correlation present during the occurrence of symptoms.RESULTS:A total of 1,822 reflux episodes were detected by pH/MII, 45% of which were nonacidic. The mean SI increased using pH/MII (35.7 ± 28.5) compared to pH probe alone (14.6 ± 18.9; p= 0.002); no differences in the mean SSI using pH/MII compared to pH probe alone were identified. Significantly more patients had a positive SI using pH/MII than pH probe alone (p= 0.035); there was no difference in the number of patients with a positive SSI using pH/MII compared to pH probe alone. Multivariate analysis revealed that symptoms occurred more frequently when the reflux was nonacidic, mixed, and full column. Also, younger children were more likely to have the simultaneous occurrence of symptoms and reflux.CONCLUSIONS:Nonacid reflux may be an important predictor of respiratory symptoms. pH/MII provided important information in the evaluation of children with intractable respiratory symptoms.
Estimating the annual rate of de novo multiple aneurysms: three statistical approaches.

OBJECT Individuals with unruptured intracranial aneurysms experience a higher rate of rupture if their history includes another aneurysm that has previously bled. The authors used systematic review and metaregression to estimate the annual rate of development of second de novo aneurysms after subarachnoid hemorrhage. METHODS This investigation included studies in which more than 300 patients with intracranial aneurysms were described, and in which the age of the patients and the proportion with multiple aneurysms were documented. Studies describing delayed follow-up angiography that was performed after treatment of aneurysms were also reviewed. Twenty studies were included in a between-study analysis. The univariate odds ratio (OR) for multiple intracranial aneurysms per year of age was 1.085 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.015-1.165); this value was calculated using a hierarchical model for between-study heterogeneity. Five studies were included that provided age stratification. The estimated OR for multiple intracranial aneurysms per year was 1.011 (95% CI 1.005-1.018). Four follow-up studies were available. CONCLUSIONS According to the three different approaches (study-level, patient-level, and follow-up analyses), the estimated annual rates of development of de novo aneurysms were 1.62% (95% CI 0.28-3.59%), 0.28% (95% CI 0.12-0.49%), and 0.92% (95% CI 0.64-1.25%), respectively. The estimated annual rate of development of second de novo aneurysms ranged from 0.28 to 1.62%.
Hyfs: design and implementation of a reliable file system

Building reliable data storage systems is crucial to any commercial or scientific applications. Modern storage systems are complicated, and they are comprised of many components, from hardware to software. Problems may occur to any component of storage systems and cause data loss. When this kind of failures happens, storage systems cannot continue their data services, which may result in large revenue loss or even catastrophe to enterprises. Therefore, it is critically important to build reliable storage systems to ensure data reliability. In this dissertation, we propose to employ general erasure codes to build a reliable file system, called HyFS. HyFS is a cluster system, which can aggregate distributed storage servers to provide reliable data service. On client side, HyFS is implemented as a native file system so that applications can transparently run on top of HyFS. On server side, HyFS utilizes multiple distributed storage servers to provide highly reliable data service by employing erasure codes. HyFS is able to offer high throughput for either random or sequential file access, which makes HyFS an attractive choice for primary or backup storage systems. This dissertation studies five relevant topics of HyFS. Firstly, it presents several algorithms that can perform encoding operation efficiently for XOR-based erasure codes. Secondly, it discusses an efficient decoding algorithm for RAID-6 erasure codes. This algorithm can recover various types of disk failures. Thirdly, it describes an efficient algorithm to detect and correct errors for the STAR code, which further improves a storage system's reliability. Fourthly, it describes efficient implementations for the arithmetic operations of large finite fields. This is to improve a storage system's security. Lastly and most importantly, it presents the design and implementation of HyFS and evaluates the performance of HyFS.
Une approche pour un chargement contextuel de services dans les environnements pervasifs

RESUME. L’installation des applications sur des terminaux mobiles pose le probleme de la non adequation des ressources proposees avec celles requises par les applications. Dans cet article, nous presentons AxSeL (A conteXtual Service Loader) une architecture de chargement contextuel de services. AxSeL considere des applications composees de services charges a partir de depots distants. Les services et leurs dependances sont representes sous la forme d’un graphe bidimensionnel, que nous colorions selon les contraintes des dispositifs cibles. La coloration a pour but de choisir les services a charger selon le contexte materiel du dispositif.
Matching State Estimation Scheme for Content-Based Sensor Search in the Web of Things

More recently, an increasing number of object-attached sensors are publishing their real-time state on the Internet by using state-of-the-art Web technologies, which make the sensor search service extremely important for the Web of Things (WoT). However, the existing issues that the sensor search service is facing bring huge challenges to the design of matching state estimation scheme. In this paper, an architecture of high-efficiency content-based sensor search system is depicted to provide a prototype system for sensor search. And then a matching state estimation scheme is proposed in detail, including a sensor state prediction approach to accurately estimate future sensor readings and a match estimating and verifying approach to effectively classify and verify candidate sensors, in order to enhance the performance of our search system. Simulation results show that our matching state estimation scheme dramatically reduces the communication overhead of search system and achieves excellent performance in terms of recall ratio and precision ratio.
ADAPTIVE FUZZY IDENTIFICATION FOR NONLINEAR SISO SYSTEMS

This paper investigates how SISO nonlinear systems can be adaptively identified using fuzzy systems which are independent of human knowledge. The proposed methodology uses the on-line data to build up the fuzzy system which approximate the nonlinear dynamics. After filtering the input, the nonlinear system is approximated by a set of fuzzy rules that describes the local linear systems. The Lyapunov direct method is utilized to derive the adaptive law of the proposed identification procedure. Theoretical results are simulated on a one-link robot. Results show that the proposed on-line identifier can consistently track mechanical friction and pay-load variations.
Work in Progress: A Quantitative Study of GUI versus Text-based Object-Oriented Instruction

Introductory object-oriented programming is considered difficult to teach and a number of different methodologies have been proposed, such as using graphical user interfaces (GUI's). The GUI methodology as reported in the literature is mostly evaluated using a qualitative assessment through the use of student feedback. In contrast, this paper reports on a quantitative study for this methodology so as to provide a more complete evaluation of this teaching approach. The research question for this study is as follows. Is there any difference in learning outcomes between the control group and the test group? Quantitative data was collected from the final exams of each group. The same five multiple choice questions and one open question were placed on the final exam for each group, and the results of the exam questions were statistically analyzed and compared. The results show that there was no negative result using GUI's as a basis for teaching object oriented programming
EURECOM submission to the Albayzin 2016 speaker diarization evaluation

This paper describes the speaker diarization system submitted by EURECOM for the Albayzin 2016 speaker diarization evaluation. This evaluation consists of segmenting broadcast audio documents according to different speakers and attributing those segments to the speaker who uttered them, without any prior information about the speaker identities nor their number. EURECOM system is based on the binary key speaker modelling, an efficient and compact speech and speaker representation. The proposed system does not require external training data: the test data itself is used for estimating the resources needed. The system delivered a diarization error rate (DER) of 11.93% on the development set.
High rates of the metabolic syndrome in a First Nations Community in western Canada: prevalence and determinants in adults and children.

Objectives. Increasing type 2 diabetes in Aboriginal communities across North America raisesconcerns about metabolic syndrome in these populations. Some prevalence information for AmericanIndians exists, but little has been available for Canada’s First Nations. Study Design. Wescreened 60 % of the eligible population of a single First Nation in Alberta for diabetes, prediabetes, cardiovascular risk, and metabolic syndrome. Methods. NCEP/ATP III and IDF criteria were used to identify metabolic syndrome in participantsaged ≥ 18; modified NCEP/ATP III criteria were used for participants aged < 18. Logisticregression identified factors associated with the metabolic syndrome. Results. 297 individuals were screened (176 adults, 84 children/adolescents, with complete data). 52.3 % of adults had metabolic syndrome using NCEP/ATP III criteria, and 50 % using IDFcriteria. 40.5 % of individuals aged < 18 had the condition. Waist circumference was the mostprevalent correlate. Bivariate analysis suggested that age, BMI, weight, A1c, LDL-C, ADA riskscore and activity pattern were associated with metabolic syndrome. Conclusions. Our data represent the first available for Western Cree and are consistent withprevalence reported for Aboriginal populations in Ontario and Manitoba. High rates of obesity, pre-diabetes and metabolic syndrome for participants aged < 18 raise concerns about future prevalenceof diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Sulfurifustis variabilis gen. nov., sp. nov., a sulfur oxidizer isolated from a lake, and proposal of Acidiferrobacteraceae fam. nov. and Acidiferrobacterales ord. nov.

A novel autotrophic bacterium, strain skN76T, was isolated from sediment of a lake in Japan. As sole electron donor to support chemolithoautotrophic growth, the strain oxidized thiosulfate, tetrathionate and elemental sulfur. For growth, the optimum temperature was 42–45 °C and the optimum pH was 6.8–8.2. The cells were Gram-stain-negative, catalase-positive and oxidase-positive. The strain exhibited changes in morphology depending on growth temperature. Cells grown at the optimum temperature were rod-shaped (0.9–3.0 μm long and 0.3–0.5 μm wide), whereas a filamentous form was observed when the strain was cultured at the lowest permissive growth temperatures. The G+C content of genomic DNA was 69 mol%. The major components in the fatty acid profile were C16 : 0, summed feature 3 (C16 : 1ω7c and/or C16 : 1ω6c) and summed feature 9 (iso-C17 : 1ω9c and/or 10-methyl C16 : 0). Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences indicated that the closest cultivated relative of strain skN76T was Acidiferrobacter thiooxydans m-1T, with sequence similarity of 93 %. On the basis of its phylogenetic and phenotypic properties, strain skN76T ( = DSM 100313T = NBRC 110942T) is proposed as the type strain of a novel species of a novel genus, Sulfurifustis variabilis gen. nov., sp. nov. Novel taxa, Acidiferrobacteraceae fam. nov. and Acidiferrobacterales ord. nov., are also proposed to accommodate the genera Acidiferrobacter and Sulfurifustis gen. nov.
Spatiotemporal simulation and risk analysis of dam-break flooding based on cellular automata

Chapinghe Barrier Lake was the largest among the barrier lakes formed in the aftermath of the magnitude 5.12 Wenchuan Earthquake. A rapid quantitative method for the evaluation of potential risk to lives and properties downstream was of the utmost importance for disaster management. The proposed method is based on spatiotemporal simulation using different dam-break scenarios and downstream hazard distribution analyses. This article adopts a cellular automata (CA) model to synthetically integrate multiple sets of geographic layers, including those containing the models needed for routine computation of flood hazards and those needed for vulnerability analysis of the people living downstream. A CA-based simulation and analysis method integrating hydrologic/hydraulic mechanisms is herein introduced, and relevant techniques are investigated. Our prototype experiment demonstrates that the proposed CA-based flood-hazard model can be conveniently integrated into a digital earth system and can further provide real-time simulation analyses of dam-break flood risks.
Optimized Energy Efficient Virtual Machine Placement Algorithm and Techniques for Cloud Data Centers

Cloud computing is an internet based computing technology that provide on demand computing for end users. Normally, data centers allocation for application on statically based. But today so many data centers have a problem how to reduce energy consumption? Due to increase use of cloud services and infrastructure by various cloud providers, uses of energy day by day increase that's why energy consumption increase lots. Large numbers of data centers that consume lots of energy which increase the level of co2. Hence there is need for green computing and for energy efficient management of cloud data center resources besides meeting the QoS constraints. Within a data center, maximum energy is consumed by cooling systems and ICT Infrastructure, particularly, the servers. So it is of utmost importance to optimize energy utilization in datac enter servers. In order to achieve this, we can leverage the power of virtualization which is intrinsic in Cloud Computing. Virtualization opens the doors for VM consolidation by allowing dynamic migration of virtual machines across physical machines. In this study, the problem of VM consolidation has been formulated as a mathematical optimization problem.
Determinants of Chinese demand for tourism in Malaysia

Tourism sector in Malaysia has always been one of its focal service industries not only in the past, but in the future as well in which Malaysian government has been focusing on diverting its economic activities from a resource-based to a service-based economy in its new economic model. China, a strongly emerging economy has been ranked as the third main tourist generating country for Malaysia since 2012. Hence, this study empirically identifies the macroeconomic determinants affecting the tourism demand from China to Malaysia. These determinants include real income, travel cost, exchange rate and trade openness. Particularly, real income and trade openness are evident to positively affect Chinese tourism demand while travel cost and exchange rate are found to adversely influence Chinese tourists’ decision to travel to Malaysia. Key words: International tourism, Malaysia, ARDL
Cross-network information dissemination in VANETs

In this work, we provide an overview of an innovative approach for effective cross-network information dissemination, with applications to Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs). In particular, we describe the main approach followed in an on-going bilateral Italy-Israel project (“Cross-Network Effective Traffic Alert Dissemination,” X-NETAD). The X-NETAD project leverages on the spontaneous formation of WiFi local VANETs, with direct connections between neighboring vehicles, in order to disseminate, very quickly and inexpensively, traffic alerts received from the UMTS network.
Encephalitis and mass mortality of farmed salmon smolts in an isolated sea bay in Ireland

aseptically post mortem in a manner to avoid cross-contamination by other tissues, and were coded CF129 and CF167. Each sample was washed six times in sterile saline and then homogenised in sterile saline in sterile Griffiths' tubes to give 10 per cent w/v homogenates. Each homogenate was injected by the combined intracerebral (0.02 ml) and intraperitoneal (0.1 ml) routes into weanling RIII/FaDk mice. Sample CF129 was injected into 32 mice; sample CF167 into 27 mice. Using an established protocol (Dickinson and others 1968), the mice were observed for development of clinical neurological signs; in the absence of clinical disease, surviving animals were culled 650 days after injection. Brains from all mice were immersion-fixed in 10 per cent formol saline, and embedded in paraffin wax. Sections were cut from five coronal blocks chosen to represent the whole brain (Fraser and Dickinson 1968); these were stained with haematoxylin and eosin, and examined microscopically for the presence of spongiform encephalopathy. The survival periods for the mice are shown in Table 1. No animal displayed any clinical symptoms of neurological disease; no spongiform encephalopathy or other specific pathology was detected in any brain. By comparison with bioassays for most conventional microorganisms, those for BSE and analogous agents
Can Marketing Communication Prime You to Act ‘Green’?

Abstract As popularity of eco-friendly products has increased over the past decade, brands utilize green advertising and position their products as green to appeal to the taste of environmentally conscious customers. Even though many customers are concerned about the state of environment, they are discouraged from purchasing eco-friendly products and engaging in other sustainable behaviors due to economic and social barriers. This research poses a question how marketing communication can capitalize on environmental concern to promote desired green behaviors by priming customers to think about their proenvironmental values and motivations to act green. To answer this question, we analyze over 1500 customer responses to marketing communications on social media. In this content analysis study we utilize logistic regression to discover which primers are the most effective at activating green behaviors. This research provides managerial implications helping marketing communicators employ effective primers that will generate desired customer behaviors.
Alternative classifications of Italian banks:Do different grouping rules mislead results on the risk profile of banks?

The Italian banking system is under the scrutiny of both the monitoring authority and public opinion after the bankruptcy of some important banks. Among other reasons, analysts underline the riskier attitude of specific types of banks (e.g., cooperative banks). Cooperative banks represent the largest proportion of banks under the commissioner. The label ''cooperative banks'' includes both banche popolari and credit cooperative banks, which might be similar from the ownership point of view but differ in many other aspects. As a result, the list of intermediaries facing financial distress includes local, cooperatively owned and small banks. However, the regulator intervention functions under the institutional classification, not the banks' actual behaviour. This paper tests whether banks are adequately classified through their usual institutional tags (i.e., banche di credito cooperativo, banche popolari, commercial or savings banks) or whether other features provide a better description of banks' attitude towards risks. For this reason, alternative classifications are introduced and compared. The main finding is that more than the institutional classification, the ownership and the de facto operating pattern are the aspects that characterise the risk behaviour of Italian banks.
Differences in Vascular Bed Disease Susceptibility Reflect Differences in Gene Expression Response to Atherogenic Stimuli

Atherosclerosis occurs predominantly in arteries and only rarely in veins. The goal of this study was to test whether differences in the molecular responses of venous and arterial endothelial cells (ECs) to atherosclerotic stimuli might contribute to vascular bed differences in susceptibility to atherosclerosis. We compared gene expression profiles of primary cultured ECs from human saphenous vein (SVEC) and coronary artery (CAEC) exposed to atherogenic stimuli. In addition to identifying differentially expressed genes, we applied statistical analysis of gene ontology and pathway annotation terms to identify signaling differences related to cell type and stimulus. Differential gene expression of untreated venous and arterial endothelial cells yielded 285 genes more highly expressed in untreated SVEC (P<0.005 and fold change >1.5). These genes represented various atherosclerosis-related pathways including responses to proliferation, oxidoreductase activity, antiinflammatory responses, cell growth, and hemostasis functions. Moreover, stimulation with oxidized LDL induced dramatically greater gene expression responses in CAEC compared with SVEC, relating to adhesion, proliferation, and apoptosis pathways. In contrast, interleukin 1&bgr; and tumor necrosis factor &agr; activated similar gene expression responses in both CAEC and SVEC. The differences in functional response and gene expression were further validated by an in vitro proliferation assay and in vivo immunostaining of &agr;&bgr;-crystallin protein. Our results strongly suggest that different inherent gene expression programs in arterial versus venous endothelial cells contribute to differences in atherosclerotic disease susceptibility.