Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
dsmDB: Clustering in-memory Database Management Systems

Database management systems used in practice inherit their design from the early work of the database community. At the time, systems had limited memory and processing resources, and architectures were mainly centralized. Databases are often the “bottleneck” of performance-critical systems because of their heavy use of stable storage and mechanisms that allow concurrent transactions to be correctly executed. In this thesis we investigate the dsmDB approach for clustering in-memory databases. The dsmDB is designed for distributing database computation and storage over a cluster of machines. Performance is enhanced by emphasizing in-memory computation and minimizing disk use. This is achieved by using an optimistic concurrency control mechanism on top of an in-memory storage layer that guarantees only weak consistency. By combining the two components we achieve both high performance and strong consistency. The resulting architecture is also flexible enough to allow recovery of the state of crashed nodes from the state of the alive nodes, and incremental expansion by adding more nodes at runtime.
Indicadores ambientais aplicados ao turismo: um estudo na comunidade de Barra Grande, Cajueiro da Praia (PI)

A comunidade de Barra Grande, destino turístico localizado no município de Cajueiro da Praia, Piauí, na Área de Proteção Ambiental (APA) do Delta do Parnaíba foi objeto de investigação deste estudo. Para tanto, estabeleceu-se como objetivo identificar impactos ambientais da falta de saneamento básico em Barra Grande, considerando indicadores de sustentabilidade ambiental referentes a captação da água, tratamento de dejetos e a coleta e destinação do lixo local. A metodologia adotada constou de pesquisa bibliográfica, documental e de campo, em que o levantamento dos dados qualitativos foi realizado por meio da aplicação de entrevistas semiestruturadas com três atores da gestão pública. Constatou-se que a realidade dos serviços de saneamento básico é bastante precária e que esta potencializa impactos ambientais que influenciam diretamente no desequilíbrio do sistema ambiental. Por fim, espera-se que os dados possam contribuir para o planejamento turístico, além de construir elementos para novas abordagens de pesquisa sobre a viabilidade e adesão de segmentos turísticos sustentáveis no contexto do estado do Piauí ou de outras regiões do Brasil.
Constructing topic-based Twitter lists

Constructing Topic-based Twitter Lists P.F. de Villiers Computer Science Division, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Private Bag X1, Matieland 7602, South Africa. Thesis: M.Sc. Computer Science March 2013 The amount of information that users of social networks consume on a daily basis is steadily increasing. The resulting information overload is usually associated with a loss of control over the management of information sources, leaving users feeling overwhelmed. To address this problem, social networks have introduced tools with which users can organise the people in their networks. However, these tools do not integrate any automated processing. Twitter has lists that can be used to organise people in the network into topic-based groups. This feature is a powerful organisation tool that has two main obstacles to widespread user adoption: the initial setup time and continual curation. In this thesis, we investigate the problem of constructing topic-based Twitter lists. We identify two subproblems, an unsupervised and supervised task, that need to be considered when tackling this problem. These subproblems correspond to a clustering and classification approach that we evaluate on Twitter data sets. The clustering approach is evaluated using multiple representation techniques, similarity measures and clustering algorithms. We show that it is ii Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za
Análise da associação dos marcadores cagT, LEC e oipA funcional e não funcional do Helicobacter pylori em afecções gástricas

O Helicobacter pylori e uma bacteria que coloniza a mucosa gastrica de seres humanos. A infeccao cronica causada por este patogeno esta fortemente associada a um risco aumentado de doencas gastricas diferentes, variando de gastrite cronica e ulcera peptica para dois tipos de câncer gastrico, adenocarcinoma e linfoma do tecido linfoide associado a mucosa. O objetivo do presente estudo foi avaliar a associacao dos marcadores cagT, LEC e oipA funcional e nao funcional em pacientes portadores das afeccoes gastrite, ulcera e câncer gastrico.Foi realizada a genotipagem das cepas por meio da tecnica de PCR. Foram avaliados 181 pacientes, atendidos no Hospital Universitario Walter Cantidio, sendo 87(48,1%) homens, 94(51,9%) mulheres, com idade variando de 18-90 anos, com media de 53 + 17,8 anos, com diagnostico positivo para a infeccao por H. pylori. Destes, 48 portadores de câncer gastrico, 69 pacientes com ‘ulcera peptica e 64 com gastrite. A prevalencia dos genotipos estudados foi: 145/181 (80,1%) cagT, 83/181 (45,9%) LEC, 81/181 (44,7%) oipA, e oipA“on”34/81 (41,9%). No grupo dos pacientes com câncer gastrico observou-se que o genotipo mais frequente foi o cagT 43/48 (89,6%), seguido do gene oipA “on” 10/18 (55,6%) e LEC 17/48 (35,4%). No grupo dos pacientes com ulcera peptica o genotipo mais frequente foi o cagT 62/69 (89,8%), seguido do gene LEC; 34/69 (49,3%) e oipA”on” 13/31 (41,9%). No grupo dos pacientes com gastrite o genotipo mais frequente foi cagT 40/64 (62,5%), seguido do gene LEC 32/64 (50,0%) e oipA “on” 11/32 (34,4%). Nao houve associacao significativa dos genotipos do H. pylori com genero, nem com faixa etaria dos pacientes. O estudo genetico dos marcadores de H. pylori e sua relacao com as afeccoes gastricas e fundamental para se estabelecer o perfil de virulencia das cepas e assim elucidar os variaveis desfechos clinicos envolvidos com essa infeccao.
The role of horizontal gene transfer in mycobacterial pathogenesis

Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) are important human and animal pathogens, respectively. Previous studies indicate that these two host-adapted pathogenic species have emerged from closely-related environmental strains that rarely cause disease. Through comparative genomic studies, our research group has observed a common, biphasic pattern of evolution that independently gave rise to these pathogenic species, characterized by gene acquisition via horizontal gene transfer (HGT), followed by gene deletion. As HGT is an important mechanism for bacteria to integrate novel genetic material into their genomes, yet was considered until recently to not occur in mycobacteria, we are particularly interested in its evolutionary significance in this genus. Our hypothesis is that the acquisition of virulence factors via HGT contributed to the emergence of these two professional pathogens. In this thesis, I aim to identify and characterize genomic differences between these two host-adapted mycobacterial pathogens and their genetically-closest environmental counterparts, using both a genome-wide discovery approach and targeted investigation of a candidate locus identified through genomic studies. In the example of MAP, use of transposon (Tn) mutagenesis mediated genome-wide screen showed MAP-specific genes are under-represented in genes required for growth in vitro, but over-represented for in vivo survival. One of the MAP-specific genes, MAP3776c, is required for full fitness in vivo. MAP3776c belongs to a 5-gene MAP-specific genomic island, LSPP15 (MAP3776-2c) that we experimentally showed codes for an iron acquisition system. As MAP has long been recognized as a siderophore auxotroph, our genomic analysis reveals that the acquisition of LSPP15 provides MAP with an alternative machinery for MAP to acquire metals such as iron in vivo. Applying this paradigm to the study of M. tuberculosis, we showed that many currently-accepted virulence factors of this organism are shared with M. kansasii, an environmental mycobacterium incapable of human-to-human transmission. This observation prompted us to pursue functional characterization of a M. tuberculosis-specific gene pair, akin to our MAP LSPP15 study. The introduction of the M. tuberculosis genes, Rv3377c-78c, into M. kansasii, resulted in the production in M. kansasii of tuberculosinol-adenosine, providing proof-of-principle that one can model in the laboratory discrete steps in the emergence of M. tuberculosis from an environmental ancestor. Overall these findings provide independent lines of evidence that HGT events have contributed to the parallel emergence of these important pathogenic mycobacteria. This work is expected to stimulate further investigations that characterize the unique virulence attributes that define pathogenic mycobacteria of medical and veterinary relevance. %%%%Mycobacterium tuberculosis et Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) sont, respectivement, des agents pathogenes humains et animaux…
Association rule descriptive language

Mining association rules in large databases is one of the most interesting data mining techniques in database communities. The number of association rules in a large database highly depends on rule’s support and confidence, and there might exist hundreds of rules in a very large database. The presentation of large number of rules in a very nice and noticeable way becomes highly challenging. In recent years researchers have developed several tools to visualize association rules. However, a large number of the tools cannot handle more than dozens of association rules. Furthermore, none of them can effectively manage association rules with multiple antecedents. Till now a uniform descriptive presentation technique has not been set up yet. We studied existing descriptive techniques in the context of visualization and introduced a graph-based technique as Unified Descriptive Language for Association Rules. The proposed technique can be used to extract the discovered rules of a very large database very conveniently and efficiently.
The relation between dye-filling and ivermectin resistance in «Caenorhabditis elegans»

Parasites are a global issue across the globe. In the Canadian livestock industry, resistance to commonly used drugs leads to significant losses in productivity and profit. The study of anthelminthics such as ivermectin is thus beneficial to finding new ways to protect mammals from these parasites and to increase farming income. We are interested in genes that confer both ivermectin resistance and a dye-filling defective phenotype, called dyf genes, when mutated. Dyf genes are of interest because they have been shown to be associated with ivermectin resistance in the model nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and in parasites such as Haemunchus contortus, however the mechanisms of resistance remain unclear. In this project, we investigate three mechanisms by which the dyf genes might confer ivermectin resistance: either by altering drug entry, communication within the nervous system, and/or stress response pathways. Our results suggest that drug entry plays an important role in ivermectin resistance, although it is unclear whether importance lies in dye-filling neurons or neurons with direct connections to glutamate-gated chloride channels. Additionally, the subset of P-glycoprotein efflux pump genes pgp-1, pgp-2, pgp-3, pgp-9, and mrp-1 is essential in maintaining ivermectin resistance in the dyf-7 mutant. %%%%La resistance des parasites aux medicaments dans l'industrie d'elevage est un probleme important pour les fermiers puisque cela cause d'enormes deficits en profit et en productivite chaque annee. Par consequent, il est important d'etudier les antihelminthes comme l'ivermectine pour mieux comprendre la methode de resistance et de trouver des solutions pour proteger l'industrie d'elevage. On est interesse a un groupe de genes qui cause la resistance a l'ivermectine et qui empeche l'absorption de colorant, dont les genes dyf. On examine dyf-7 parce que qu'elle a deja ete montre de conferer la resistance a l'ivermectine hors de l'environment des laboratoires, et par consequent dyf-3 parce qu'elle confere un niveau de resistance similaire a dyf-7 et elle peut etre exprimer dans les neurones sensoriels individuellement. Dans ce projet, on enquete le mecanisme dont les genes dyf confere la resistance a l'ivermectine soit par : modifiant la maniere que la drogue entre l'animal, eliminant ou modifiant la communication entre des differents neurones, ou en eliminant ou modifiant des reponses au stress. Nos resultats suggerent que l'entrent d'ivermectine par les neurones sensoriels est imperatif pour conferer la resistance a la drogue. De plus, la mutation collective des genes de pompe d'efflux de p-glycoproteines pgp-1, pgp-2, pgp-3, pgp-9, et mrp-1 est essentielle pour maintenir la resistance dans les animaux avec la mutation en dyf-7.
Mobile intelligent tutoring system: moving intelligent tutoring systems off the desktop

The prominence of computers in the 21st Century has caused educators to reexamine the needs of today's K–12 students. The proposed 21st Century Skills center on the use of technology and thus millions of students are unable fully to master these skills due to their minimal access to technology. The Digital Divide, a correlation between an individual's access to technology and their socio-economic status, is poised to prevent large segments of society from advancing and thriving in this technology based economy. One proposed solution to this lack of computing resources lay in the transformation of mobile devices, like cell phones, from single-purpose communication tools to multipurpose computing resources. The smaller scale of mobile devices mandates the design of mobile learning applications be more than miniature desktop learning applications. Whether the applications are based on existing desktop applications or presenting new paradigms of learning activities there are human-computer-interaction and education concerns to address. This thesis describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a complete mobile intelligent tutoring system (ITS). The research questions investigated address the design and evaluation of the implemented system. To answer first question, “How might the design of an ITS be adapted for delivery on a mobile device? ” a set of general mobile ITS guidelines is described. To answer the second question, “Can a mobile ITS provide learning gains greater than traditional instructional activities? ” data was gathered from a controlled study to compare the performance of students using the mobile ITS with those who did not. These data reveal that students using the mobile ITS achieved gains greater than students receiving standard instruction. The third question, “What teaching strategy best supports a mobile ITS? ”, is answered through data gathered from the comparison of two teaching strategies, long and short. These data suggest that the long strategy, in which students are required to calculate the final answer to the problem, best facilitates student performance gains. This thesis lays the foundation for future research that explores the delivery of intelligent tutoring systems off the desktop as well as for research in methods of transforming desktop learning applications for mobile devices.
Temperature profile optimization for silicon-polymer electrothermal microgripper

This paper presents design and simulation on optimizing a sensing microgripper structure based on silicon-polymer electrothermal actuators and piezoresistive force-sensing cantilever beams. The simulation is to utilize the structure and organize heaters for lower temperature at gripper's jaw, while not affecting the displacement. By reducing the heat diffusion into the base and the redistribution of heat sources for silicon combs of the actuator, the temperature profile of this microgripper has been improved considerably. The result is 63% reduction of operating temperature (from a maximum of 200 °C was reduced to 74 °C) and power consumption is also reduced by 50%.
Space-efficient extraction algorithms

A description is given of how the authors limited the space complexity of a layout to circuit extractor by: a combination of the scanline technique with the corner stitching technique; a region-based extraction algorithm; a judicious choice of netlist format; and a union-find data structure also supporting deletions of elements. The efficiency of the new algorithms and the resulting extractor is confirmed by experimental data. These results are important, since in practice the size of the largest design that can be handled is often hard-limited by available memory. >
Comparisons between QST and FST—how wrong have we been?

The comparison between quantitative genetic divergence (QST) and neutral genetic divergence (FST) among populations has become the standard test for historical signatures of selection on quantitative traits. However, when the mutation rate of neutral markers is relatively high in comparison with gene flow, estimates of FST will decrease, resulting in upwardly biased comparisons of QST vs. FST. Reviewing empirical studies, the difference between QST and FST is positively related to marker heterozygosity. After refuting alternative explanations for this pattern, we conclude that marker mutation rate indeed has had a biasing effect on published QST–FST comparisons. Hence, it is no longer clear that populations have commonly diverged in response to divergent selection. We present and discuss potential solutions to this bias. Comparing QST with recent indices of neutral divergence that statistically correct for marker heterozygosity (Hedrick’s G′st and Jost’s D) is not advised, because these indices are not theoretically equivalent to QST. One valid solution is to estimate FST from neutral markers with mutation rates comparable to those of the loci underlying quantitative traits (e.g. SNPs). QST can also be compared to ΦST (PhiST) of amova, as long as the genetic distance among allelic variants used to estimate ΦST reflects evolutionary history: in that case, neutral divergence is independent of mutation rate. In contrast to their common usage in comparisons of QST and FST, microsatellites typically have high mutation rates and do not evolve according to a simple evolutionary model, so are best avoided in QST–FST comparisons.
U N I V E R S I T Y OF

cursory search was made --but with negative results-- for a long-lived meson, 0.1 sec) using a single large . Cerenkov counter gated on after the Bevatron beam passed through a plunged target. The analysis of K-particle tracks found in emulsion that had been exposed to secondary particles from a target bombarded by 4.8-Bev protons is summarized in the· following abstract: Analysis of K+
Acacia dealbata invasion in Chile: Surprises from climatic niche and species distribution models

Abstract Aim Tree invasions are a threat to biodiversity conservation, and although it is hard to predict the future spread of invasive tree species, there are tools available which could allow some estimations. The magnitude of spatial spread (a proxy of invasiveness) can be predicted from species climatic requirement (climatic niche) and can be represented by species distribution models (SDMs). We aimed to assess whether Acacia dealbata conserves its niche in the new environment of south‐central Chile, and also, to estimate the invasive stage of the species. Location South‐central area of Chile, between the O'Higgins (34°0″0′S) and Aysen Regions (47°0″0′S). Methods We used a combination of global, native, and regional data to improve the estimation of the potential distribution of A. dealbata, which has been considered one of the most invasive species of the genus, being registered in at least 34 countries in all the Continents. Results Our results show that A. dealbata does not conserve its niche in the study area, invading areas with climatic conditions different from those of the native range. It is also not at equilibrium with the environment. According to the global versus regional SDM comparisons, populations present in south‐central Chile present different invasion stages. There are some stable populations, but there are other populations colonizing new areas, occupying unsuitable habitats and some of them are adapting to new climatic conditions. Climatic factors, such as precipitation seasonality, could be acting behind the expansion to new environments, and biotic factors or dispersal limitations could be preventing the species to colonize suitable areas. Main conclusions The invasion process of A. dealbata is far from stabilizing, and management options should focus on prevention, avoiding, for example, the introduction of the species to Patagonia where the species has not spread yet. More research is needed to complement our results and enhance the development of effective management strategies.
Postural Control of a Monoaxial Bicycle

本研究は, 一つの軸の両端に二輪をもち, その軸で上部構造体を支える形式の同軸二輪車の姿勢制御とその応用に関するものである. この二輪車を倒立振子と車輪によってモデル化し, フィードバック制御系を設計した. 倒立振子に対する制御モーメント, すなわち復元トルクは車輪を制御することによって発生する. 制御の遅れ時間を考慮し, Routh-Hurwitzの安定条件により比例ゲインを求めた. これらの結果を用いて実験を行い, 同軸二輪車の姿勢制御に成功した. さらに, 姿勢制御の結果を利用したゲイン変化法とサーボ指令法の二方法により, 二輪車のサーボ制御を実現した.
Offspring sex ratio shifts of the solitary parasitoid wasp, Trichopria drosophilae (Hymenoptera: Diapriidae), under local mate competition

Localmate competition (LMC) models predict a female-biased offspring sex ratio when a single foundress oviposits alone in a patch and an increasing proportion of sons with increasing foundress number. We tested whether the solitary pupal parasitoid, Trichopria drosophilae (Hymenoptera: Diapriidae), adjusted offspring sex ratio with foundress number when parasitizing Drosophila melanogaster pupae. Mean number of female offspring was higher than that of males, with a male proportion of 26 ± 16% when only one foundress oviposited. However, male proportion reached 58 ± 26%, 48 ± 22%, and 51 ± 19% in three-, five and seven-foundress cohorts. That the male proportion of offspring increased with foundress number is consistent with LMC models.
Embracing curiosity eliminates the exploration-exploitation dilemma

Balancing exploration with exploitation is seen as a mathematically intractable dilemma that all animals face. In this paper, we provide an alternative view of this classic problem that does not depend on exploring to optimize for reward. We argue that the goal of exploration should be pure curiosity, or learning for learning’s sake. Through theory and simulations we prove that explore-exploit problems based on this can be solved by a simple rule that yields optimal solutions: when information is more valuable than rewards, be curious, otherwise seek rewards. We show that this rule performs well and robustly under naturalistic constraints. We suggest three criteria can be used to distinguish our approach from other theories.