Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Data Center under your Desk - How Disruptive is Modern Hardware for DB System Design?

While we are already used to see more than 1,000 cores within a single machine, the next processing platforms for database engines will be heterogeneous with built-in GPU-style processors as well as specialized FPGAs or chips with domain-specific instruction sets. Moreover, the traditional volatile as well as the upcoming non-volatile RAM with capacities in the 100s of TBytes per machine will provide great opportunities for storage engines but also call for radical changes on the architecture of such systems. Finally, the emergence of economically affordable, high-speed/low-latency interconnects as a basis for rack-scale computing is questioning long-standing folklore algorithmic assumptions but will certainly play an important role in the big picture of building modern data management platforms. In this talk, we will try to classify and review existing approaches from a performance, robustness, as well as energy efficiency perspective and pinpoint interesting starting points for further research activities.
Preoperative Lymphedema-Related Risk Factors in Early-Stage Breast Cancer.

BACKGROUND Prolongation of survival in patients with breast cancer due to early diagnosis and modern methods of treatment has turned the attention on lymphedema, which is the most important morbidity secondary to the treatment of the disease. Determination of lymphedema and related risk factors in patients before a surgical intervention may provide protection for patients and early treatment. The aim of this study was to determine the presence of lymphedema before surgery by bioimpedance analysis in patients with breast cancer and to establish risk factors associated with lymphedema. PATIENTS AND METHODS A total of 277 patients who were diagnosed as having breast cancer, were planned to undergo a surgical intervention, and had no clinical lymphedema were included in the study. The presence of lymphedema was evaluated with clinical examination, measurement of arm circumference, and bioimpedance analysis. RESULTS Lymphedema was found in 59 (21.3%) patients with no detected differences in arm circumferences. A significant relationship was found between the presence of lymphedema and body mass index (BMI), number of positive lymph nodes, and capsule invasion of the tumor (p = 0.001, p = 0.003, p = 0.002, respectively). Multiple regression analysis revealed that BMI and the number of positive lymph nodes were independent variables (p = 0.024, p = 0.002). ROC curve analysis resulted in an increased risk of preoperative lymphedema when the number of positive lymph nodes was ≥8. Correlation analysis revealed a positive correlation between the number of positive lymph nodes and L-dex score (p = 0.001, r = 0.219). CONCLUSION Preoperative bioimpedance analysis demonstrated that ∼1/5 of the patients had subclinical lymphedema. Preoperative subclinical lymphedema is associated with obesity and the number of positive lymph nodes, and thus, treatment of the axilla in patients who are preoperatively detected to have subclinical lymphedema should be revised.
Working Capital Management Efficiency of Indian Cement Industry

Efficient management of working capital is a fundamental part of the overall corporate strategy in creating the shareholders’ value. Today the management of Working Capital is one of the most important and challenging aspect of the overall financial management. Optimization of working capital balance means minimizing the working capital requirements and realizing maximum possible revenues. Efficient WCM increases firms’ free cash flow, which in turn increases the firms’ growth opportunities and return to shareholders. Even though firms traditionally are focused on long term capital budgeting and capital structure, the recent trend is that many companies across different industries focus on WCM efficiency.The present study analyses the efficiency of the working capital management and its components i.e. inventory amount, cash and bank balances and various current liabilities. The study attempts to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of management in each segment of working capital. Since the net concept of working capital has been widely taken in the present study, management of both current assets and current liabilities are also critically reviewed in its due course. A sample list of 30 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) listed cement companies, located at different regions of India, is selected for the study. This study is mainly confined to selected Indian cement companies using CMIE Prowess 4.0 database software and the information relating to nature of company, size, age, state and region, company background, value of total assets and annual financial statements of sample companies for the period 2006 to 2015 have been obtained from the same. The help of statistical software, SPSS 21.0 version is taken for the various statistical analyses required for this study. An attempt has been made to investigate the existence of relationship between the working capital management and the profitability, average receivable period, inventory conversion period, average payment period and the cash conversion cycle which expresses the efficiency of working capital. It is found that there exists a negative relationship between profitability and number of days of accounts payables & number of days of inventory, but a positive relationship between profitability and number of days of accounts receivables. The WCM and profitability show a positive relationship (as measured by cash conversion cycle,) as against the theoretical foundation. The present analysis of the study reveals that shortening of cash conversion cycle negatively affects the profitability of the firm.
Mortality from brain tumor and other causes in a cohort of petrochemical workers.

To evaluate a suspected excess of deaths due to brain tumor (BT) among petrochemical workers, a retrospective cohort mortality study was conducted among 7,595 men ever employed at a plant in Texas City, Texas, between 1941 and 1977. Among hourly employees, overall mortality was lower than expected from U.S. national rates [standardized mortality ratio (SMR) = 79]. However, 19 BT deaths (International Classification of Diseases, seventh revision, codes 193, 223, and 237) among hourly employees were observed as against 9.6 expected (SMR = 198), and with extension of the analysis to include BT deaths occurring in 1978 and 1979, 22 deaths were observed versus 10.7 expected (SMR = 206). Fifteen years or more after being hired, 19 of these workers died from BT versus 7.2 expected (SMR = 263), and the standardized mortality ratios increased with duration of employment to 377 for hourly workers who had worked over 20 years. Although nonoccupational etiologies cannot be dismissed, these data suggest an occupational etiology for certain BT deaths in petrochemical workers.
What are the least tractable instances of max independent set?

For this note we say that a problem is computable in time sub-exponential in n if there is an effectively computable monotone increasing function g(n) with lim,,, g(n) = CQ such that the problem is computable in time O(2”‘g(n)). We establish that a maximal independent set of a graph on n vertices can be found in time sub-exponential in n iff the same holds for the class of those graphs that have maximum degree at most 3.
How Difficult is the Adaptation of POS Taggers?

Domain adaptation is a difficult problem, but also a relevant one. Unsupervised domain adaptation focuses on adapting a model from a source domain, which includes plenty of labeled data, to a target domain that provides no labeled data. This is the most compelling setting of domain adaptation, but it is also the most difficult one. We perform an experimental analysis to highlight how difficult this problem is. We show that the best available unsupervised domain adaptation system for POS tagging can be outperformed by a simple POS tagger that has access to only 250 labeled sentences from the target domain. This is not a fair comparison between these two systems, of course; but it highlights that unsupervised domain adaptation is not well solved yet. Moreover, the best available systems are not yet practical, since they are complex, difficult to implement, and do not achieve significant improvements.
Maternal health financing profile: Tanzania.

This paper attempts to identify the key financing issues and constraints for accessing maternal health services in Tanzania. Access to the services is of concern because despite high use of antenatal care the 1990s saw an appreciable decline in the number of births that take place in a health facility (currently 44 percent) and in the number of births attended by skilled health workers (36 percent). The current analysis finds that the great majority of women who access antenatal care services do not pay for the services nor do they pay for drugs and transportation related to the services. While many delivery services (and related drugs and transportation) also are free of charge a greater number of women who access the services do pay something. Costs are particularly high for caesarian-section delivery-related supplies. Evidence is mixed on the impact of user fees instituted in 1993 and especially on their impact on the use of maternal health services. Enrollment in the prepayment-oriented Community Health Fund (CHF) begun in 1996 is low and thus far available in only 23 districts; an exemption policy is inconsistently applied so many members are still charged user fees. Evidence is not yet available to evaluate the effect on access of the more recent and still limited financing efforts of national health insurance and decentralization. Given that financing barriers may play a role in preventing access to maternal health services the paper recommends that further research on user fees be undertaken to help guide health policy implementation. The findings could solidify support for the country’s national waiver and exemption policy and help determine which key maternal health-related expenses should be waived. The paper also suggests that expanding the CHF and the national health insurance program could help reduce financial barriers and promote greater equity in access to these services. The Sector Wide Approach also has potential to improve efficiency of external funding by eliminating the duplication of efforts among donors and providing a single policy for the government to implement. (authors)
Circulating miR-1225 p as a potential novel biomarker for diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction

Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play key roles in cardiac development, and the expression of miRNAs is altered in the diseased heart. The aim of this study was to explore the value of circulating microRNA-122-5p (miR122-5p) as a potential biomarker for acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Methods: Plasma samples from 50 patients with AMI and 39 healthy adults (non-AMI controls) were collected. The abundance of circulating miR-122-5p was measured using quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). The cTnI concentrations of these samples were analyzed by ELISA. Results: Our findings revealed that circulating miR-122-5p expression were increased in AMI patients at 4 h, 8 h, 12 h, and 24 h by contrast to those non-AMI controls and displayed similar trends to that of cTnI concentrations in AMI patients. Further study showed that there is a high correlation between circulating miR-122-5p and cTnI concentrations. At last, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was performed and showed that circulating miR-122-5p had considerable diagnostic accuracy for AMI with an area under curve (AUC) of 0.855. Conclusions: Our results implied that circulating miR-122-5p could be a potential biomarker for AMI.
Early phosphorylation events induced by DPIV/CD26-specific inhibitors.

Dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPIV, CD26) is known to be involved in the regulation of T lymphocyte and NK cell activation and proliferation in vitro. The molecular events of lymphocyte activation mediated by this ectopeptidase as well as their physiological ligands are only partly established. Particularly, the necessity of catalytic dipeptidase activity for the costimulatory function of this molecule has been controversial. Here we provide evidence for a direct involvement of DPIV/CD26 in early phosphorylation mechanisms which are known to be essential in the signal transduction cascade of human T lymphocytes. We have found that DPIV-specific inhibitors (Lys[Z(NO2)]-thiazolidide and -piperidide) are capable of inducing intracellular tyrosine phosphorylation in resting human T cells. On the other hand, both inhibitors decreased the PMA-induced tyrosine phosphorylation in human T cells in a dose-dependent manner. Furthermore, a linkage between CD26 and the tyrosine kinase p56(lck) was shown by inhibition of PMA-induced hyperphosphorylation of p56(lck) by means of DPIV-specific inhibitors. The data presented here suggest that the inhibition of DPIV enzymatic activity induces a inhibitory signal transmitted by tyrosine kinases which leads to a block in a PMA-induced downstream pathway. These results support the assumption that DPIV/CD26 is directly involved in early processes of T cell activation via its enzymatic activity.
A high-throughput computing environment for job shop scheduling (JSP) genetic algorithms

Genetic algorithms (GAs) have long been applied to tackling scheduling problems, particularly JSP, with varying degrees of success. However despite advances in GA theory, GAs remain a computationally expensive method of approaching scheduling problems (Wall, 1996). In particular for practical scheduling problems, such as those outlined in Madureira et al. (2001) and Noivo and Ramalhinho-Lourenco, GAs require extensive resources. We propose a grid based high-throughput computing framework that utilises spare computing capacity, which is distributed across a network, to address real scheduling problems. We use Web services as a gateway to this high-throughput computing environment.
Internal audit effectiveness: Relevant drivers of auditees satisfaction

In recent years, researchers and practitioners have widely discussed the need for internal auditors of adding more value to their companies operations, and contributing to the achievement of corporate objectives. This new perspective has focused increasing attention on issues such as performance evaluation and effectiveness of internal auditing (for instance Dittenhofer, 2001; Bou-Raad, 2000; IIA, 1999). Several parties advocated the need to assess internal auditing (IA) effectiveness, though, at present, there is not a shared framework of reference to this scope (for instance Ridley & D’Silva, 2008; Mihret & Yismaw, 2007; Van Gansberghe, 2005; KPMG, 2004; Dittenhofer, 2001; Sawyer, 1995; Barrett, 1986). Recently, Sarens (2009) have raised the question “when can we talk about an effective IA function? ” in his editorial about future perspectives of IA research. Looking at the existing literature, there are many possible answers to this question. Different authors have related IA effectiveness to different issues, focusing on IA processes, outputs and outcomes. Certain authors related IA effectiveness with the quality of IA procedures, such as the level of compliance with IIA standards or the ability to plan, execute and communicate audit findings (for instance Fadzil et al., 2005; Xiangdong, 1997; Spraakman, 1997). However, this approach suffers from a major limitation as it is based on the hypothesis that IA activity is effective if IA procedures are carried out properly, without considering the needs of the main stakeholders in each individual audit (Lampe & Sutton, 1994). This is in contrast with the current trend that stresses the relevance of value-added activities and indicates stakeholders’ satisfaction as one of the critical performance categories for IA activities (see, for instance, the Practice Advisory 1311-2). A second stream of research relates IA effectiveness to the output of IA activities (Frigo, 2002), looking for instance at the ability of IA to respond to auditees’ needs (see, for instance, Frigo, 2002; Ziegenfuss, 2000; Barrett, 1986). In this context, a recent work by Ziegenfuss (2000) has highlighted that the survey results of auditee satisfaction and the percent of recommendations that are implemented are the performance measures considered by the CAE to be most suitable to evaluate IA effectiveness.
Corticobasal degeneration and progressive supranuclear palsy share a common tau haplotype

Objective: To analyze the association of polymorphisms in the tau gene with pathologically confirmed corticobasal degeneration (CBD). Background: The authors previously described an extended tau haplotype (H1) that covers the human tau gene and is associated with the development of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). The authors now extend this analysis to CBD, a neurodegenerative condition with clinical and neuropathologic similarities to PSP. Like PSP, CBD is associated with accumulation of aggregates containing the 4-repeat isoforms of tau. Because of difficulty in diagnosis of CBD, the authors only analyzed cases with pathologically confirmed CBD. Methods: The authors collected 57 unrelated, neuropathologically confirmed cases of CBD. Tau sequencing in these cases failed to show the presence of pathogenic mutations. Polymorphisms that spanned the tau gene were analyzed in all CBD cases and controls. Results: Analyzing tau polymorphisms in CBD cases showed that the frequency of H1 and H1/H1 was significantly increased when analyzing all cases and when separating by country of origin. H1 frequency in all CBD cases was 0.921, compared with a control frequency of 0.766 (X2 = 9.1, p = 0.00255 [1df], OR 3.56 [8.43 > CI 95% > 1.53]). The H1/H1 frequency was also significantly higher at 0.842 compared with 0.596 in age-matched controls (X2 = 17.42, p = 0.00016, 2df), OR 3.61 [7.05 > CI 95% > 1.85]). Conclusions: The CBD tau association described here suggests that PSP and CBD share a similar cause, although the pathogenic mechanism behind the two diseases leads to a different clinical and pathologic phenotype.
Breakthrough Waves During Ventricular Fibrillation Depend on the Degree of Rotational Anisotropy and the Boundary Conditions: A Simulation Study

Breakthroughs in VF Depend on Rotational Anisotropy. Introduction: The left ventricle (LV) and right ventricle (RV) are characterized by specific fiber orientation known as “rotational anisotropy. ” However, it remains unclear whether the LV and RV are different with regard to the effect of rotational anisotropy on the dynamics of scroll waves during ventricular fibrillation (VF). To resolve this issue, we used a computation‐based model to study scroll wave behavior.
Factor Investing: The Rocky Road from Long Only to Long Short

This paper examines how restrictions on short positions affect the financial attractiveness of factor investing. To fill the gap between unconstrained long-short allocations and restricted long-only portfolios, we consider two in-between strategies. The first imposes that only the market can be shorted; the second is the so-called “130/30” or “active extension” trading strategy, which caps total short exposure at 30%. The takeaways from our research are twofold. First, short sales contribute significantly to the mean-variance performance of efficient factor-based portfolios. Second, the factor portfolios built originally by Fama and French (1992) with the purpose of developing asset pricing are impressively clear-sighted when it comes to portfolio management. Indeed, combining these portfolios generates mean-variance performances similar to those of optimized long-short portfolios, except for low levels of volatility.
A Delegation-Based Workflow Access Control Model

With the progress of enterprise globalization and the development of combination and differentiation in enterprise business, organizations become more dynamic, and business processes are frequently changing. As a result, workflow access control turns more complicated. To solve this problem, in view of decoupling the workflow access control model from the process model, a delegation-based workflow access control (DBWAC) model is presented. This paper proposes the concept of virtual delegator (VD) in order to manage the permissions involved in a task of a process. In DBWAC, permissions are associated with VD. VD can delegate its permissions to a user who can carry out a task that the VD is associated with. And when the user is out of task, permissions can be revocated. The elements of the DBWAC model are described and the main idea, delegation and revocation policies of the DBWAC model are discussed respectively.
Competitiveness Of Hotel Sector From The Theory Of Resources And Capabilities La Competitividad Del Sector Hotelero A Partir De La Teoria De Los Recursos Y Capacidades

This paper aims to identify key skills and resources that determine the competitiveness of hotels in the city of Morelia. It is based on the knowledge of concepts related to core competencies of the sector in Morelia, Michoacan framed the Theory of Resources and Capabilities, claims that the basis of competitive advantage focuses on the internal resources of the company. So, from enhanced contrasts with nonparametric statistical a fairly significant correlation of resources and capabilities to competitiveness was determined, using a sample of 337 hotels in the city of Morelia
HIV and viral hepatitis C coinfection in people who inject drugs: implications of new direct acting antivirals for hepatitis C virus treatment

Purpose of reviewThe recent major shift toward oral direct acting hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatments has the potential to revolutionize the global response to HCV. People who inject drugs (PWID) are a large key affected population who stand to benefit from these new medications. Recent findingsThere is a large number of new drug classes and targets with activity against HCV. Although effective for HCV treatment in monoinfection and coinfection with HIV, most direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) remain within the research pipeline, with only two having achieved regulatory approval to date. Clinical trial data are not available regarding HCV treatment for PWID with DAAs. This article reviews clinical data on HCV treatment for a number of promising compounds in HCV monoinfection and coinfection with HIV and discusses the barriers facing PWID in scale-up and roll-out of DAAs in the coming years. SummaryDAAs have the potential to revolutionize HCV treatment. There will be significant access barriers for people who inject drugs to these new medications.