Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient Assignment of Electric Vehicles to Charging Stations

In a large-scale integration of electric vehicles (EVs) to the transportation sector, it becomes more challenging to provide an acceptable level of service to EV users who already suffer from EV’s short range and long charging time. Because of the latter, charging facilities can be easily overloaded, leading to intolerable service delays. Achieving an acceptable level of service will require an extensive upgrade for power networks. However, it is necessary to make sure that existing charging resources are efficiently utilized before taking such expensive decision. In this paper, we provide a user-oriented EV control scheme based on the efficient assignment of EVs to charging stations. The key performance indicator is the average time spent by the user from requesting the charging service to accessing it. Our direction is thus opposing to that of the majority of EV-related studies which sacrifice user convenience for achieving utility benefits. The methodology we use depends on defining a queueing model to facilitate the management of a dynamic population of EVs, then developing an EV assignment algorithm based on the Lyapunov optimization method. Our scheme is compared to that of other two dynamic assignment schemes which are the nearest-station policy and join-the-shortest queue policy.
A note on the status of Galba occulta Jackiewicz, 1959 (Gastropoda: Hygrophila: Lymnaeidae)

agreement no 534/P-DUN/2018 of April 4th, 2018 allocated to the activities for disseminating science: Task 1: Preparation of English versions of publications (sum funded by DUN 12,000 PLN) and Task 2: Digitalisation of publications and scientific monographs to enable their open access in the Internet (sum funded by DUN 11,070 PLN). https://doi.org/10.12657/folmal.026. 029 Folia Malacol. 26(4): 231–247
Effect of feeding rice gluten meal with and without enzymes on immunity of broiler chickens

A biological experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of feeding rice gluten meal (RGM) as soybean replacement without or with different enzymes on immunity in broiler chickens for 42 days. The experiment was conducted as per 3x4 factorial completely randomized design. A total of 384 broiler chicks of same hatch with uniform weight were used. There were twelve different treatments with 4 replicates for each treatment and each replicate consisted of 8 chicks. Two levels of RGM were taken (15 and 17.5%). Protease, xylanase and multienzymes supplementation under different treatments were done. Effect of feeding different levels of RGM (0, 15 and 17.5%) without or with enzymes (xylanase, protease and multienzymes) and their interaction with enzymes did not exhibit any significant (P>0.05) difference between control and other dietary treatments on CMI and humoral immunity. Thus, it may be concluded that 15% and 17.5% RGM levels with or without enzyme supplementation had not any adverse effect on immune response in broiler chickens.
Q-Learning-Based Spectrum Access for Multimedia Transmission Over Cognitive Radio Networks

In order to meet the dramatic wireless bandwidth demands of emerging multimedia applications, cognitive radio has been proposed as one of promising solutions to improve the spectrum efficiency. This article aims at pursuing high spectrum efficiency via accessing the idle spectrum intelligently without information exchange among users. Different from infrastructure-based wireless networks, users in cognitive radio networks tend to compete with each other to access limited idle spectrum, thus leading to a dynamically heterogeneous radio environment. In this article, a Q-learning based spectrum access scheme is proposed to adaptively allocate multimedia data over multiple idle spectrum holes. Taking into consideration the rigorous delay and throughput performance requirements of multimedia applications, we integrate these two indicators into the definition of reward function in the proposed Q-learning algorithm. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme can quickly converge to a stable state in terms of throughput, power efficiency, and collision probability. Furthermore, the proposed learning rate adjustment strategy makes the performance of the spectrum access algorithm converge the quickest and only consumes 78% time to achieve the targeted collision probability, i.e., 0.1, compared with two other typical parameter adjustment strategies.
CloudRaid: Detecting Distributed Concurrency Bugs via Log Mining and Enhancement

Cloud systems suffer from distributed concurrency bugs, which often lead to data loss and service outage. This paper presents CloudRaid, a new automatical tool for finding distributed concurrency bugs efficiently and effectively. Distributed concurrency bugs are notoriously difficult to find as they are triggered by untimely interaction among nodes, i.e., unexpected message orderings. To detect concurrency bugs in cloud systems efficiently and effectively, CloudRaid analyzes and tests automatically only the message orderings that are likely to expose errors. Specifically, CloudRaid mines the logs from previous executions to uncover the message orderings that are feasible but inadequately tested. In addition, we also propose a log enhancing technique to introduce new logs automatically in the system being tested. These extra logs added improve further the effectiveness of CloudRaid without introducing any noticeable performance overhead. Our log-based approach makes it well-suited for live systems. We have applied CloudRaid to analyze six representative distributed systems: Hadoop2/Yarn, HBase, HDFS, Cassandra, Zookeeper, and Flink. CloudRaid has succeeded in testing 60 different versions of these six systems (10 versions per system) in 35 hours, uncovering 31 concurrency bugs, including nine new bugs that have never been reported before. For these nine new bugs detected, which have all been confirmed by their original developers, three are critical and have already been fixed.
Effects of exogenous glucose and sucrose on photosynthesis in triticale seedlings under salt stress

Salinization disturbs metabolic processes of plants and results in reduced growth and productivity. In our study, the Dongnong 8809 variety of triticale (×Triticosecale Wittmack) was evaluated for its physiological responses to salt stress during the seedling stage. We evaluated biomass production, relative chlorophyll content, chlorophyll fluorescence, and leaf gas-exchange parameters. Our results indicated that salt stress greatly reduced matter accumulation, SPAD value, photosynthetic capacity. However, seedlings treated with exogenous sugars showed significantly enhanced matter accumulation, SPAD value, quantum yield of PSII, electron transport rate, net photosynthetic rate, decreased stomatal limitation value, and improved photosynthetic capacity compared to seedlings treated with salt stress alone. Exogenous glucose and sucrose can alleviate the inhibitory effect of salt stress on the growth of triticale, and of the two exogenous sugars, sucrose had a stronger alleviating effect than that of glucose under salt stress.
Un modèle systémique pour l'étude de la synergie de récepteurs synaptiques

Nous montrons par le biais d'un modele systemique la presence d'une synergie entre differents recepteurs contenus dans la synapse excitatrice. Nous retiendrons ici l'exemple des 2 principaux recepteurs glutamatergiques AMPA et NMDA. La reponse dans le temps d'un recepteur a un afflux de neurotransmetteurs se traduit par une variation de la concentration intracellulaire de calcium. Or le calcium est a la source des processus qui modifient la synapse, donc a la base de l'apprentissage. Chaque type de canal possede sa propre dynamique de reponse, qui peut etre definie par sa vitesse et sa duree. Les recepteurs AMPA reagissent rapidement mais a court terme, les recepteurs NMDA reagissent lentement mais a long terme. C'est la combinaison de ces differents comportements qui entraine une variabilite importante et non lineaire de la concentration de calcium. Nos simulations confirment la synergie entre recepteurs lents et rapides, permettant ainsi a une unique structure, la synapse, d'assurer simultanement a son niveau le transport de l'information et la memorisation.
Moonlight cycles synchronize oyster behaviour

Organisms possess endogenous clock mechanisms that are synchronized to external cues and orchestrate biological rhythms. Internal timing confers the advantage of being able to anticipate environmental cycles inherent in life on Earth and to prepare accordingly. Moonlight-entrained rhythms are poorly described, being much less investigated than circadian and circannual rhythms synchronized by sunlight. Yet focus on these lunar rhythms is highly relevant to understanding temporal organization of biological processes. Here, we investigate moonlight cycle effects on valve activity behaviour of the oyster Crassostrea gigas. Our results show that oysters modulate valve behaviour according to both intensity and direction of the lunar illumination cycle. As a consequence, valve opening amplitude is significantly increased at third quarter Moons (decreasing lunar illumination) compared with first quarter Moons (increasing lunar illumination) despite identical lunar illumination, and this indicates that oyster modulation of valve behaviour by moonlight cycles is not a direct response to lunar illumination. We propose that oysters use moonlight cycles to synchronize behaviour and also other physiological and ecological aspects of this benthic mollusc bivalve.
A Bi-Objective Optimization for Integrated Berth Allocation and Quay Crane Assignment With Preventive Maintenance Activities

Growing global trade brings an increasing challenge to intelligent maritime transportation, which is an important branch of the intelligent transportation system. Developing efficient technologies to improve the performance of intelligent maritime transportation is especially important. Most existing works for integrated berth allocation and quay crane assignment assume that all the equipment is available over the time horizon, however, there exists frequently time-consuming quay crane maintenance activities in the maritime port. It is recognized that maintenance activities can impact the loading/unloading activities. In this paper, we study a new bi-objective optimization model of integrated berth allocation and quay crane assignment with preventive quay crane maintenance activities. The two objectives are minimizing the total turnaround time of vessels and the total penalty cost of quay crane maintenance earliness and tardiness. For the considered problem, an appropriate integer linear programming model is formulated, and an $\varepsilon $ -constraint-based two-phase iterative heuristic is designed based on the characteristics of our problem. Computational results on a case study and randomly generated instances show the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.
Predicting Enhanced Adherence to COVID-19 Safety and Prevention Protocols in Ghana through Self-Affirmation: A Socio-Psychological Perspective

The increasing daily rate of the COVID-19 infections in Ghana indicates that the various initiatives put in place to help curtail the spread are not being adhered to. According to self-affirmation theory, when individuals are presented with threatening health-related message they are most likely to respond in a defensive manner and in order to reduce this, one needs to self-affirm in other domains. It is therefore suggested that by integrating Ghanaian values into media messages on the safety and prevention protocols, Ghanaians are likely to accept and adhere to them.
Molecular characterization of silver resistant E. coli strains isolated from patients suffering from diarrhea

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are considered a good alternative for antibiotics due to emerging Multidrug Resistance (MDR) crisis. Resistance to AgNPs is approximately limited among Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens. Low toxicity to human cells permits its safe use as a new antimicrobial with broad spectrum. Bacterial cells are used as a factory for AgNPs synthesis supplying a powerful antimicrobial with eco-friendly way. In this study, MDR Escherichia coli strains were recovered from patients attending Minia University hospital. Biogenic synthesis of AgNPs was performed using E. coli cells. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) was used to characterize AgNPs size and shape. Antibacterial activity of AgNPs was tested against the MDR E. coli isolates. Screening for Sil and Omp genes was done using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). A total of 13 MDR E. coli bacterial culture supernatant isolates were recovered from patients under study. Biosynthesis of AgNPs was observed after addition of supernatant to AgNO3 by color change from yellow to brown. TEM characterization indicated the presence of silver nanoparticles with 15-75 nm particle size range. Eleven of MDR E. coli isolates were sensitive to biogenic AgNPs under study. SilB and SilE genes were encoded by the two AgNPs-resistant E. coli isolates which were negative for OmpF and OmpC genes, respectively demonstrating the role of Sil efflux pump genes and porin deficiency in AgNPs resistance. As indicated, the emergence of silver resistance due to the wide spread of biocides including silver has become a great challenge for the treatment of different infections. Key words: MDR Escherichia coli, SilB, SilE, silver resistance, OmpF, OmpC
Q-GADMM: Quantized Group ADMM for Communication Efficient Decentralized Machine Learning

In this article, we propose a communication-efficient decentralized machine learning (ML) algorithm, coined quantized group ADMM (Q-GADMM). To reduce the number of communication links, every worker in Q-GADMM communicates only with two neighbors, while updating its model via the group alternating direction method of multipliers (GADMM). Moreover, each worker transmits the quantized difference between its current model and its previously quantized model, thereby decreasing the communication payload size. However, due to the lack of centralized entity in decentralized ML, the spatial sparsity and payload compression may incur error propagation, hindering model training convergence. To overcome this, we develop a novel stochastic quantization method to adaptively adjust model quantization levels and their probabilities, while proving the convergence of Q-GADMM for convex objective functions. Furthermore, to demonstrate the feasibility of Q-GADMM for non-convex and stochastic problems, we propose quantized stochastic GADMM (Q-SGADMM) that incorporates deep neural network architectures and stochastic sampling. Simulation results corroborate that Q-GADMM significantly outperforms GADMM in terms of communication efficiency while achieving the same accuracy and convergence speed for a linear regression task. Similarly, for an image classification task using DNN, Q-SGADMM achieves significantly less total communication cost with identical accuracy and convergence speed compared to its counterpart without quantization, i.e., stochastic GADMM (SGADMM).
Avaliação Espacial da Qualidade da Água da Bacia Hidrográfica do Rio Araçuaí - Minas Gerais

Water quality monitoring is one of the main water resources management tools, enabling the evaluation of the effects of water bodies use on water quality parameters, in order to support environmental control actions. This study aims to evaluate the concentrations of physicochemical parameters in the watercourses of the Araçuaí-MG river basin, considering data from seven monitoring stations surveyed by IGAM-MG, from 1998 to 2018. The results of the test Kruskal-Wallis indicate that the sub-basins of the Fanado (JE014) and Setubal (JE018) rivers should be considered a priority to contain the degradation of the Araçuaí river.
Allocation of Multibit Retention Flip-Flops for Power Gated Circuits: Algorithm-Design Unified Approach

The retention flip-flop is an essential component in power gated circuits for retaining state during the sleep mode. In this article, we solve two critical limitations of the conventional approaches to the allocation of state retention storage for power gated circuits. Those are: 1) the long wakeup delay caused by the senseless use of multibit retention flip-flops (MBRFFs) and 2) the inability to optimize retention flip-flops for the flip-flops with mux-feedback loop. It should be noted that the conventional approaches have regarded the long wakeup delay as an inevitable consequence of maximizing the reduction of total storage size for state retention while they have treated the flip-flops with mux-feedback loop (called self-loop flip-flop) as nonoptimizable component, but practically, the self-loop flip-flops synthesized from hardware description language (HDL) code are not far from a small amount and thus, can in no way be negligible. More precisely, for solving: 1), we show that the use of MBRFFs with up to 2 bits, consequently, constraining the wakeup delay to no more than two clock cycles, is enough to maintain the high reduction of total retention storage and for solving 2), we devise a 2-phase retention control mechanism for a pair of flip-flops, one of which has self-loop, by which just a single retention bit can be used to restore state of the two flip-flops. We propose an independent set-based algorithm for maximally extracting the nonconflict pairs from circuits. In addition, to further reduce the power consumption in the sleep mode, we propose a new design of 2-bit MBRFF.
Accurate action potential inference from a calcium sensor protein through biophysical modeling

Multiphoton imaging of genetically encoded calcium indicators is routinely used to report activity from populations of spatially resolved neurons in vivo. However, since the relationship between fluorescence and action potentials (APs) is nonlinear and varies over neurons, quantitatively inferring AP discharge is problematic. To address this we developed a biophysical model of calcium binding kinetics for the indicator GCaMP6s that accurately describes AP-evoked fluorescence changes in vivo. The model’s physical interpretation allowed the same parameters to describe GCaMP6s binding kinetics for both in vitro binding assays and in vivo imaging. Using this model, we developed an algorithm to infer APs from fluorescence and measured its accuracy with cell-attached electrical recordings. This approach consistently inferred more accurate AP counts and times than alternative methods for firing rates from 0 to >20 Hz, while requiring less training data. These results demonstrate the utility of quantitative, biophysically grounded models for complex biological data.
Molecular Epidemiology of Carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae Isolates

Amac Karbapeneme direncli Klebsiella pneumoniae enfeksiyonlari, azalan tedavi imkanlariyla birlikte onemli bir klinik sorun haline gelmistir. Bu calismada, Istanbul’da elde edilen K. pneumoniae izolatlarindaki karbapenem direnc oranlarini ve buna sebep olan direnc genlerini incelemek amaclanmistir. Gerec ve Yontemler Bu prospektif calismaya, Temmuz 2013—Temmuz 2014 doneminde hastanemize kabul edilen hastalardan elde edilen toplam 1452 K. pneumoniae izolati dahil edilmistir. Mikroorganizmalarin tanimlanmasi ve antimikrobiyal duyarlilik testi icin VITEK-2 (bioMerieux, MarcyI’Ѐtoile, Fransa) kullanilmistir. VITEK-2 otomatize sistem ile karbapenem direnci saptanan suslarin ertapenem gradient testi ile de ertapeneme direncli oldugu bulunmustur. Karbapenem direncine sebep olan genler real time-polymerase chain reaction ile arastirilmistir. Bulgula 1452 K. pneumoniae izolatinin 45’i (%3,1) karbapeneme direncliydi. Bunlarin 32’si (%71,1) blaOXA-48-pozitif, 9’u (%20) blaNDM-pozitif, 1’i (%2,2) blaVIM-1-pozitifti. Hicbirinde blaKPC ve blaIMP-1 geni mevcut degildi. Karbapenemaz ureten K. pneumonae izolatlarinin en duyarli oldugu antimikrobiyaller amikasin ve gentamisin idi. Tartisma ve Sonuc Hastanemizde karbapenem direncine sebep olan cesitli mekanizmalar bulunmaktadir ve blaOXA-48 geninin %71,1 oraninda gorulmesi dikkat cekicidir. Bu direncin hizla yayilmasi ve enzimatik direnc genlerinin aktarimi yoluyla yonetimi zor hastane salginlarina yol acmasi mumkundur. Bu nedenle enfeksiyon kontrolunde dogru ve hizli laboratuvar tani onemlidir. Daha hizli sonuclar elde etmek icin molekuler yontemler de fenotipik yontemler gibi hastane altyapisina dahil edilmelidir.
The Impact of the Number of Trusted Members on the Perceived Credibility of the Information on Social Commerce: The Mediating Roles of Cognitive Trust and Affective Trust

With the advancement of internet technology, the transaction conducted via social commerce has become a trend. However, the credibility of social commerce is in doubt due to many fraudulent cases and scams being discovered frequently. Therefore, this study would like to evaluate the impacts of the number of trusted members, cognitive trust and affective trust on the perceived credibility on the information given on social media sites among the social commerce users in Malaysia. A total of 405 actual samples were collected and analyzed in this study. This research has contributed to the theoretical context by concluding that the number of trusted members, cognitive trust and affective trust have direct, positive, and significant effects on the perceived credibility; while the number of trusted members has direct, positive, and significant effect on both the cognitive trust and affective trust. Besides, the study also concluded two mediating hypotheses in which the cognitive trust mediates the relationship between the number of trusted members and perceived credibility as well as the affective trust mediates the relationship between the number of trusted members and perceived credibility.
Robust Predictive Current Control With Parallel Compensation Terms Against Multi-Parameter Mismatches for PMSMs

The predictive current control (PCC) method is based on nominal parameters to predict and control the current of permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSM). However, there may be mismatches between actual parameters and their nominal values due to material aging, temperature rise, or magnetic saturation. In this paper, the effects of parameter mismatches on system stability and current tracking errors are analyzed theoretically and verified. Furthermore, based on current errors, a robust PCC scheme with parallel compensation terms onto the conventional deadbeat predictive current controller is proposed. Since there is no change introduced into the original controller, the proposed robust PCC method can be easily implemented. Finally, feasibility and validity of the proposed robust PCC scheme against multi-parameter mismatches are confirmed by experiments, in addition, the experimental results show that system steady-state robustness is improved with no cost to transient performance.