Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A binary feedback scheme for congestion avoidance in computer networks

We propose a scheme for congestion avoidance in networks using a connectionless protocol at the network layer. The scheme uses a minimal amount of feedback from the network to the users, who adjust the amount of traffic allowed into the network. The routers in the network detect congestion and set a congestion-indication bit on packets flowing in the forward direction. The congestion indication is communicated back to the users through the transport-level acknowledgment. The scheme is distributed, adapts to the dynamic state of the network, converges to the optimal operating point, is quite simple to implement, and has low overhead. The scheme maintains fairness in service provided to multiple sources. This paper presents the scheme and the analysis that went into the choice of the various decision mechanisms. We also address the performance of the scheme under transient changes in the network and pathological overload conditions.
Towards evergreen architectures: on the usage of scenarios in system architecting

The system architecture of successful systems typically enjoys a long life (ten years or more). From an architecting point of view, there are two major challenges. The first challenge is to establish the "right" initial architecture that satisfies the strategic intentions, the needs and the requirements of its stakeholders and intended users. The second challenge is to nurture the architecture and keep it architecture up to date (fit and slim) with respect to the changing requirements and technologies that will occur during its lifetime. Keeping the architecture so called "evergreen" (i.e. ongoing satisfying its stakeholders needs and requirements is a very challenging architecting). The second problem is addressed in a separate paper (America et al., 2003) where we describe a method to assess and improve the ease of accommodating new requirements by system architecture once it has been established. The first problem of how to establish the initial architecture satisfying the strategic plans and intentions of its stakeholders is addressed in this presentation.
Secure Processors Part II: Intel SGX Security Analysis and MIT Sanctum Architecture

This manuscript is the second in a two part survey and analysis of the state of the art in secure processor systems, with a specific focus on remote software attestation and software isolation. The first part established the taxonomy and prerequisite concepts relevant to an examination of the state of the art in trusted remote computation: attested software isolation containers (enclaves). This second part extends Part I’s description of Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX), an available and documented enclave-capable system, with a rigorous security analysis of SGX as a system for trusted remote computation. This part documents the authors’ concerns over the shortcomings of SGX as a secure system and introduces the MIT Sanctum processor developed by the authors: a system designed to offer stronger security guarantees, lend itself better to analysis and formal verification, and offer a more straightforward and complete threat model than the Intel system, all with an equivalent programming model. This two part work advocates a principled, transparent, and wellscrutinized approach to system design, and argues that practical guarantees of privacy and integrity for remote computation are achievable at a reasonable design cost and performance overhead. V. Costan, I. Lebedev and S. Devadas. Secure Processors Part II: Intel SGX Security Analysis and MIT Sanctum Architecture. Foundations and Trends © in Electronic Design Automation, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 249–361, 2017. DOI: 10.1561/1000000052. Full text available at: http://dx.doi. org/10.1561/1000000052
Foundations of implementations for formal argumentation

We survey the current state of the art of general techniques, as well as specific software systems for solving tasks in abstract argumentation frameworks, structured argumentation frameworks, and approaches for visualizing and analysing argumentation. Furthermore, we discuss challenges and promising techniques such as parallel processing and approximation approaches. Finally, we address the issue of evaluating software systems empirically with links to the International Competition on Computational Models of Argumentation.
Improving Release and Patch Management Processes: An Empirical Case Study on Process Challenges

Implementing release management and patch management processes effectively are challenges for both IT companies and IT customer organizations. Patch management is an essential sub process of release management within overall software maintenance. The research problem in this study is what types of challenges are related to release management and patch management processes and how the common pitfalls could be avoided. Data for the case study were collected from an information technology (IT) company and an IT department of IT customer organization, which apply IT Infrastructure Library framework (ITIL). The main contribution of the paper is to describe the real-world challenges regarding the release and patch management processes and present the lessons learned with proposed improvements.
Lymphocyte differentiation in sea bass thymus : CD 4 and CD 8-a gene expression studies

Different developmental stages (from eggs to 1-year-old juveniles) of the teleost fish Dicentrarchus labrax (L.) were assayed for CD4 gene expression. RT-PCR revealed the appearance of CD4 transcripts in postlarvae from 51 days post-hatching (dph). This finding overlaps the first detection of CD8-a mRNA. Real-time PCR with specific primers quantified CD4, CD8-a and TCR-b transcripts in larvae and postlarvae (25, 51, 75 and 92 dph) and 1-year-old thymus. At 92 dph, TcR-b and CD8-a transcripts were significantly higher (P < 0.001) than in previous stages, as CD4 transcripts compared with 51 dph (P < 0.01). High levels of TCR-b and CD8-a transcripts were found in the thymus, while CD4 transcripts were lower (P < 0.05 vs. TCR-b). In situ hybridization identified CD4 mRNAs at 51 dph, localized in thymocytes of the outer and lateral zones of the thymic glands. From 75 dph on the signal was mainly detected in the outer region, drawing a cortex–medulla demarcation. Developmental expression of CD4 and CD8-a almost coincided. In each adult thymic lobe CD4þ and CD8-aþ thymocytes filled the cortex. The expression patterns of CD4 and CD8-a largely overlap, except in the medulla, where CD4þ thymocytes were isolated, while CD8-aþ ones mainly arranged in cords. These results provide new information about the thymic compartmentalization and lymphocyte differentiation pathways in a teleost, almost demonstrating that double negative thymocytes fill the cortex giving rise to further selection in the medulla. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
HERITABILITY AND GENETIC PROGRESS FOR SOME YIELD COMPONENTS IN COMMON WINTER WHEAT GENOTYPES ( TRITICUM AESTIVUM L . )

Sixteen common winter wheat genotypes grown in IPGR-Sadovo, Bulgaria during 2011-2013 were evaluated for variability, heritability and genetic progress in a randomized block design. Significant genotypic differences were observed for all traits studied indicating considerable variations among genotypes for each character. The phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) was higher than the genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV), which indicates a slight effect of environment on the expression of the characters studied. High PCV and moderate GCV were observed in traits spike length (PCV=20.40%, GCV=19.55%), number of grain per spike (PCV=23.65%, GCV=19.42%), grain weight per spike (PCV=21.60%, GCV=15.54%) and grain yield per plant (PCV=28.24%, GCV=18.12%). Heritability revealed that characters like plant height (95.26%) exhibited the highest heritability followed by spike length (91.78%) and number of grain per spike (67.40%). Genetic progress revealed that it was high for spike length, number of grain per spike, plant height, grain weight per spike and grain yield per plant, whereas low genetic progress was observed for number of productive tillers per plant and number of spikelets per spike. Characteristics like plant height, spike length and number of grain per spike showed high heritability coupled with high genetic progress. Therefore, these characters should be given top priority during selection breeding in wheat. The cluster analysis based on Euclidean dissimilarity using the Between-groups linkage method categorized the germplasm into three clusters. Genotypes 81BM039, 7450, A1BM0309, 81BM052 and 81BM003 are suitable for breeding programs aimed at improving yield in hybridization programs to develop high yielding wheat varieties.
SAAN: A Sentiment-Aware Attention Network for Sentiment Analysis

Analyzing public opinions towards products, services and social events is an important but challenging task. Despite the remarkable successes of deep neural networks in sentiment analysis, these approaches do not make full use of the prior sentiment knowledge (e.g., sentiment lexicon, negation words, intensity words). In this paper, we propose a Sentiment-Aware Attention Network (SAAN) to boost the performance of sentiment analysis, which adopts a three-step strategy to learn the sentiment-specific sentence representation. First, we employ a word-level mutual attention mechanism to model word-level correlation. Next, a phrase-level convolutional attention is designed to obtain phrase-level correlation. Finally, a sentence-level multi-head attention mechanism is proposed to capture various sentimental information from different subspaces. The experiments on Movie Review (MR) and Stanford Sentiment Treebank (SST) show that our model consistently outperform the previous methods for sentiment analysis.
Respiratory variations in electrocardiographic R-2 wave amplitude during acute hypovolemia 3 induced by inferior vena cava clamping in patients 4 undergoing liver transplantation 5 Short Title : R-wave amplitude variation during hypovolemia 6

The aim of this study was to analyze whether the respiratory variation in ECG 17 standard lead II R-wave amplitude (ΔRDII) could be used to assess intravascular volume 18 status following inferior vena cava (IVC) clamping. This clamping causes an acute decrease 19 in cardiac output during liver transplantation (LT). We retrospectively compared ΔRDII and 20 related variables before and after IVC clamping in 34 recipients. Receiver operating 21 characteristic (ROC) curve and area under the curve (AUC) analyses were used to derive a 22 cutoff value of ΔRDII for predicting pulse pressure variation (PPV). After IVC clamping, 23 cardiac output significantly decreased while ΔRDII significantly increased (P = 0.002). The 24 cutoff value of ΔRDII for predicting a PPV >13% was 16.9% (AUC: 0.685) with a sensitivity of 25 57.9% and specificity of 77.6% (95% confidence interval 0.561 – 0.793, P = 0.015). Frequency 26 analysis of ECG also significantly increased in the respiratory frequency band (P = 0.016). 27 Although significant changes in ΔRDII during vena cava clamping were found at 28 norepinephrine doses < 0.1 μg/kg/min (P = 0.014), such changes were not significant at 29 norepinephrine doses> 0.1 μg/kg/min (P = 0.093). ΔRDII could be a noninvasive dynamic 30 parameter in LT recipients presenting with hemodynamic fluctuation. Based on our data, we 31 recommended cautious interpretation of ΔRDII may be requisite according to vasopressor 32 administration status. 33
Sales Tax Compliance Model for the Jordanian Small and Medium Enterprises

Article history: Received 8 February 2018 Received in revised form 22 February 2018 Accepted 5 March 2018 Available online 8 March 2018 Despite the various fiscal measures recently undertaken by the Jordanian government to increase the domestic revenue, the reports of annual budget demonstrate that Jordan is challenged by a sharp rise in net public debt and fiscal deficit with the increase in tax non-compliance, specifically in sales tax. Therefore, the issue of sales tax non-compliance needs a serious focus in Jordan. Though several studies were conducted on income tax compliance, studies on sales tax compliance have received less attention. Various factors lead to non-compliance; however, the basic model of tax compliance itself is not sufficient to explain the phenomenon comprehensively. In order to obtain an in-depth understanding of the factors influencing sales tax compliance among the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Jordan, the authors proposed an extension to the Fischer’s model of tax compliance by incorporating patriotism and public governance as a new independent and moderating variables respectively. Prior studies on tax compliance are yet to examine the influence of patriotism on sales tax compliance. This paper also argues theoretically that the sales tax compliance is likely to be moderated by the role of public governance. This proposition could improve better understanding of sales tax compliance behavior among SMEs.
Application of Alginate Film for Soursop Fruit Preservation

Soursop is an abundant and nutritive fruit, and, currently, it has been considered a medicinal plant. It has a fragrant sweetsour white pulp and many dark seeds. There is growing demand for soursop fruit, whose sensorial qualities allow its use for fresh consumption. We conducted one research to prolong the shelf-life of soursop fresh fruit by alginate film coating on its surface. Our results showed that alginate contributed significantly different effects to weight loss, firmness, color, chlorophyl, total acidity and vitamin C content. After 30 days of preservation at 1.5% alginate, weight loss was noticed at the lowest level 2.74% compared to samples treated with 1% and 2% alginate. Moreover at 1.5% alginate, the treated soursop had discoloration in minimum. Firmness of treated fruit remained 5.59 (kg/cm) after 30 days of preservation, better than samples treated at 1% and 2% alginate. Biochemical characteristics of 1.5% treated sample showed the highest content, notably with the total soluble matter (7.39%), total organic acidity (5.07%) and vitamin C (17.16mg%). This demonstration gave us a promising aspect to extend fresh soursop shelf-life.
Comparing two factor analyses of 19th-century English This study compares the results of two factor analyses carried out on a 1-million-word collection of 19th-century texts, the CONCE corpus (A Corpus of Nineteenth-Century English, see Kytö

This study compares the results of two factor analyses carried out on a 1-million-word collection of 19th-century texts, the CONCE corpus (A Corpus of Nineteenth-Century English, see Kytö et al. 2000). The CONCE corpus is a multi-register corpus consisting of Drama, Trials, Personal letters, History, Debates, Science, and Fiction. In Biber’s multi-dimensional framework, factor analysis is utilized to uncover co-occurrence patterns among linguistic features. These patterns are grouped into dimensions to allow comparisons between registers. The first analysis used a subset of Biber’s (1988) features (as reported in Geisler 2004, see summary in Table 1 below), while the second will use features presented in Biber (2003).
Performance monitoring of parallel scientific applications

This paper introduces an infrastructure for efficiently collecting performance profiles from parallel HPC codes. Integrated Performance Monitoring (IPM) brings together multiple sources of performance metrics into a single profile that characterizes the overall performance and resource usage of the application. IPM maintains low overhead by using a unique hashing approach which allows a fixed memory footprint and minimal CPU usage. IPM is open source, relies on portable software technologies and is scalable to thousands of tasks.
The Integration of Ammonia-Water Absorption Chillers with Residential Cogeneration: A Feasibility Study

The goal of this paper was to determine the feasibility of incorporating an absorption chiller with an existing residential cogeneration unit. The reasoning behind this is two-fold. First, absorption chilling reduces the load on the electricity grid when compared with a traditional vapour compression air conditioner. Second, it makes use of the waste heat of the cogeneration unit in the summer which would otherwise be discarded into the atmosphere. This study found that it is possible to integrate an absorption chiller with an existing cogeneration unit, but the chiller designed for this study did not achieve the performance of similarly-sized chillers discussed in the literature. As a result, the already costly cogeneration unit had to be scaled in order to provide sufficient heat to the absorption chiller. This means that the initial costs associated with absorption chilling and cogeneration are far too high to make this trigeneration system economically feasible for residential use.
Time Complexity of the Incremental Pruning Algorithm for Markov Decision Networks

A new representation technique for the planning of decisions under uncertainty is presented. The technique, called Markov decision networks (mdns), solves planning tasks that cannot or can hardly be solved by any other known representation technique, such as decision trees, in‡uence diagrams, and pomdps. We show that linear mdns are pomdps. Hence, the incrementalpruning algorithm for pomdps is applicable to this subclass of mdns. It turns out that the time complexity of the algorithm is lower for mdns than for general pomdps, due to the division of the state space into state groups. An example shows the practical bene.t of our . ndings: an optimal strategy can be computed in a few seconds.
Topology and sizing optimisation of integral bus chassis with the use of a cooperative coevolutionary genetic algorithm with independent ground structures

This paper focuses on the simultaneous topology and sizing optimisation of an integral bus chassis by treating it as a discrete variable optimisation problem. The objective is to reduce the mass. The torsional stiffness, the foundational frequency and the max Von Mises stress under full-loaded bending case are constrained to be no worse than the original bus. Meanwhile, some essential functional and manufacturing requirements are considered. The challenges of solving the problem come from several reasons. First, large number of discrete variables are involved which would deteriorate the performance of the optimisation algorithm. Second, design constraints are diverse including performance constraints, manufacturing constraints, functional constraints and so on. Third, since a bus undergoes various loadings during lifetime, multiple conditions need to be handled, such as linear static analysis, eigenvalue extraction, etc. A special architecture of CCGA that is suitable for simultaneous topology and sizing optimisation is introduced to handle the problem of large number of discrete variables. Since functional and manufacturing constraints are usually difficult to be expressed in rigorous mathematical equations, actions are taken before the optimisation by appropriately defining the design spaces and grouping variables to meet these constraints. In order to define design spaces and constraints more flexibly for topology and sizing optimisation, a strategy called independent ground structures (IGS) is presented, where different ground structures are constructed for topology optimisation and sizing optimisation independently. IGS strategy is integrated into the CCGA architecture, and a method named CCGA-IGS is presented, which was implemented on the bus chassis frame. Moreover, a strategy is presented to automatically reload the uniformly distributed loads when the topology of the chassis is changed. The result shows that the proposed architecture is efficient to solve the problem. Compared with the original bus body frame, the bus body frame with the optimal chassis is 246.45 kg (8.42% of the original bus) lighter, while the torsional stiffness, the foundational frequency and the max Von Mises stress are not worse. Meanwhile, the optimal chassis satisfies the functional and manufacturing requirements considered in this paper.
For the Record : Learning Analytics and Student Engagement

Learning analytics and data mining are being used with students as an aid to engagement with their studies. Typically, these kind techniques rely upon mobile phone applications to register attendance in classes as well as tracking student electronic touchpoints within an institution. For example, the JISC-devised Study Goal App allows students to monitor their virtual learning activity, set study targets and track their engagement in relation to specific modules as well as norm-referenced indices of study patterns. While this is useful for students own private use, institutions are also using this data to monitor students with the aim of predicting those who may be at risk of failing or withdrawing from their studies. It is also the case that student engagement with different aspects a programme, such as individual units or modules, can also be analysed using this kind of data. The benefits of using learning analytics is that they offer students a way of tracking their own study habits and setting targets and goals. This is very much based on the sort of self-tracking and big data usage that is commonly associated with fitness apps, devices and regimes. However, while the ethos of self-tracking may be appropriate for personal fitness regimes, it is another matter when applied to higher education where ethical, social and educational issues are thrown into relief. The paper discusses these issues and considers the meanings, assumptions, and values that are embedded in the use of data mining as an index of student engagement.
MULTISKILLING AS A RESPONSE TO GLOBALISATION PAUL W. FOX and ROSEN W. S. YUEN

Globalisation implies that international competitive forces raise the degree of competition in the local construction industry of a country. Given that the majority of projects in Hong Kong are awarded on a competitive bid basis [the traditional procurement system], the scope for main contractors to gain a competitive edge is very narrow. Costs of materials and plant are the same or similar between competitors. The opportunity for cost reduction lies with the management of labour cost. Hence, improvement in labour productivity can provide the necessary competitive edge. Multiskilling can improve productivity and thus be an appropriate response to globalisation. This research presents the findings from survey and interviews conducted with various industry participants in order to evaluate the potential benefits, impediments, limitations, and applicability of multiskilling. Results indicate that benefits are likely to both the workers and projects. However, contrary to earlier findings, quality and safety may not improve. In Hong Kong, major impediments exist, such as worker resistance and high training costs. These can be overcome in the long term through a process of continuing improvement, and so benefit the industry image. Thus, Hong Kong does not match experience in other countries in every respect, and this knowledge may be useful to other countries.