Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TOWARDS APPLICATION RECOVERABILITY ATOP CLOUD-NATIVE STORAGE

Cloud-native applications, designed specifically for cloud environments, rely heavily on disaggregated storage services to manage their persistent state. These storage services enable applications to recover their state after failures, ensuring data durability and application availability. However, this thesis poses a critical question: can cloud-native applications consistently and correctly recover after experiencing failures? To investigate this, we have conducted preliminary research focusing on applications built on top of disaggregated file services. Our main finding reveals that storage services demonstrate various post-failure behaviors , leading to unexpected states after application failures. These unpredictable states can cause severe consequences, such as data loss and application unavailability. We have identified that subtle interactions between the application and the storage service can significantly impact an application’s recoverability. Given the importance of recoverability in cloud-native applications, we aim to bring attention to this issue and outline the steps and vision to address it. In this thesis, we delve into understanding the interactions between applications and storage services, identifying post-failure behaviors exhibited by storage services, and uncovering application vulnerabilities based on the post-failure behaviors examined. Additionally, we developed an automated tool to emulate post-failure behaviors in application persistence protocols and detect recoverability issues.
Towards a Fixed Parameter Tractability of Geometric Hitting Set Problem for Axis-Parallel Squares Intersecting a Given Straight Line

The Hitting Set Problem (HSP) is the well-known extremal problem adopting interest of researchers in the fields of statistical learning theory, combinatorial optimization, and computational geometry for decades. It is known, that the problem is NP-hard in its general case and remains intractable even in very specific geometric settings, e.g., for axis-parallel rectangles intersecting a given straight line. Recently, for the special case, where all the rectangles are unit squares, a polynomial but very time-consuming exact algorithm was proposed. We improve this algorithm to decrease its complexity bound more than 100 degrees of magnitude. Also, we extend it on the more general case and prove that the geometric HSP for axis-parallel (not necessarily unit) squares intersected by a line is polynomially solvable for any fixed range of the squares to hit. Hence, this geometric setting of the HSP belongs to the class of Fixed Parameter Tractable (FPT) problems.
Effect of Scaling and Root Planing in Conjunction with Antimicrobial Therapy on Glycated Hemoglobin Levels in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients

Background: Scaling and root planing with systemic doxycycline had an effect on blood glucose levels in type 2 diabetes patients, according to the results of a glycosylated hemoglobin assay. The trial was conducted to determine whether periodontal therapy affected blood sugar regulation as a result of this finding. Methods: A total of 60 people with type 2 diabetes (diabetes mellitus not caused by insulin deficiency) were split into three groups. Group I (control group) consists of patients who are only taking an oral anti-diabetic medication. Patients on an oral anti-diabetic drug plus scaling and root planing make up group II. Patients on an oral anti-diabetic drug, scaling, root planing, and doxycycline constitute Group III. The patients were re-evaluated for glycated hemoglobin levels and periodontal status using the clinical parameters of gingival index by Loe and Silness and clinical attachment level at baseline, 30th, 60th, and 90th day. Results: Compared with group II, the findings showed a statistically significant decrease in glycated hemoglobin values (p =0.001) and improvements in clinical attachment level (p =0.022, 0.05) and gingival index (p = 0.009.,01) in group III. In the control group (group I), no such finding was made. The average gingival index, however, increased statistically significantly (p = 0.032, 0.05). Conclusion: Various studies have been showing the benefits of non-surgical periodontal therapy as a benefit for improving the overall glycemic status of the patient. Non-surgical mechanical periodontal therapy combined with systemic administration of antimicrobials such as doxycycline enhances the metabolic status of type 2 diabetes mellitus patients better than non-surgical mechanical periodontal therapy alone.
Spatial heterogeneity in principal component analysis: a study of deprivation index on Italian provinces

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is a tool often used for the construction of composite indicators even at the local level (Pampalon et al . 2010). In general, when the statistical unit of observation is geographically distributed, the method of PCA, in its classical version, is not appropriate for the synthesis of simple indicators. In fact, using this method, some spatial effects, that characterize in a crucial way the units distributed over the territory, are neglected: spatial dependence and spatial heterogeneity. In the literature some improvements have been introduced in augmented version of PCA to consider properly spatial effects. For a spatial-augmented analysis approach that takes spatial autocorrelation into account, see Jombart et al . (2008). Conversely, if the aim is to consider the spatial heterogeneity of the phenomenon, we can use the geographically weighed principal components analysis (GWPCA) introduced by Fotheringham et al. (2002) and further improved by Harris et al . (2011, 2015). The analysis obtained through GWPCA defines eigenvalues and the corresponding eigenvectors that are different for each location, leading to the definition of local composite indicators that are, therefore, different for each spatial unit (Cartone and Postiglione, 2016). Obviously, the interpretation of this list of different indicators is not always straightforward. The objective of this article is to help the researcher in the interpretation of the phenomenon by defining a method that takes spatial heterogeneity into account. The idea is to extend the contribution introduced by Postiglione et al. (2013), with the aim of grouping clustered units of similar units through simulated annealing. In this way the number of different composite indicators is significantly reduced, with a consequent increase in the ease of understanding the phenomenon investigated. The proposed method will be implemented for the definition of a deprivation index on Italian provinces.
Is There a Risk for Semaglutide Misuse? Focus on the Food and Drug Administration’s FDA Adverse Events Reporting System (FAERS) Pharmacovigilance Dataset

Recent media reports commented about a possible issue of the misuse of antidiabetics related to molecules promoted as a weight-loss treatment in non-obese people. We evaluated here available pharmacovigilance misuse/abuse signals related to semaglutide, a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogue, in comparison to other GLP-1 receptor agonists (albiglutide, dulaglutide, exenatide, liraglutide, lixisenatide, and tirzepatide) and the phentermine–topiramate combination. To acheieve that aim, we analyzed the Food and Drug Administration’s FDA Adverse Events Reporting System (FAERS) dataset, performing a descriptive analysis of adverse event reports (AERs) and calculating related pharmacovigilance measures, including the reporting odds ratio (ROR) and the proportional reporting ratio (PRR). During January 2018–December 2022, a total of 31,542 AERs involving the selected molecules were submitted to FAERS; most involved dulaglutide (n = 11,858; 37.6%) and semaglutide (n = 8249; 26.1%). In comparing semaglutide vs. the remaining molecules, the respective PRR values of the AERs ‘drug abuse’, ‘drug withdrawal syndrome’, ‘prescription drug used without a prescription’, and ‘intentional product use issue’ were 4.05, 4.05, 3.60, and 1.80 (all < 0.01). The same comparisons of semaglutide vs. the phentermine–topiramate combination were not associated with any significant differences. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study documenting the misuse/abuse potential of semaglutide in comparison with other GLP1 analogues and the phentermine–topiramate combination. The current findings will need to be confirmed by further empirical investigations to fully understand the safety profile of those molecules.
Fortalezas de carácter en estudiantes universitarios: efecto pandémico y alteridad

Un estudio de la alteridad basado en las fortalezas de carácter (Peterson & Seligman, 2004) se realizó en una universidad pública mexicana con una muestra de estudiantes de licenciatura y posgrado de ciencias de la educación. El criterio de inclusión fue contar con una trayectoria escolar continua durante la pandemia, el muestreo fue incidental, voluntario con la invitación abierta a contestar la encuesta REEMFOCA (Belykh & Jiménez Vásquez, 2023) alcanzando una participación de 15% de la población estudiantil total de los semestres incluidos (4o, 6o y 8o semestres, N=116). Los resultados muestran un desarrollo significativo tanto de las fortalezas clasificadas como intrapersonales, como las interpersonales (clasificación de Niemiec, 2017), siendo los estudiantes de pregrado quienes reportaron mayor desarrollo de las últimas. Según una subclasificación adicional en fortalezas de cabeza y de corazón (idem), las de mayor desarrollo fueron las fortalezas de corazón en lo intrapersonal tanto en posgrado como en licenciatura, mientras que en lo interpersonal los resultados variaron según el nivel de estudios, favoreciendo ligeramente a los estudiantes de licenciatura en lo cognitivo y a los de posgrado en lo emocional. Un análisis adicional por género revela un desarrollo de fortalezas interpersonales ligeramente superior en mujeres. En total, las fortalezas intrapersonales fueron las de mayor desarrollo, aunque la diferencia no fue estadísticamente significativa. Estos resultados aportan evidencia de un aspecto relevante de continuidad escolar en pandemia: desarrollo de orientación humana interpersonal a pesar del asilamiento. Futuros estudios podrían analizar si esta tendencia fue propia de la facultad de educación o transversal entre estudiantes de trayectoria continua.
Landmark Sequence Learning from Real-World Route Navigation and the Impact of Navigation Aid Visualisation Style

Primacy and recency features of serial memory are a hallmark of typical memory functions that have been observed for a wide array of tasks. Recently, the ubiquity of this serial position effect has been supported for objects learned during navigation, with canonical serial position functions observed for sequence memory of landmarks that were encountered along a route during a highly controlled virtual navigation task. In the present study, we extended those findings to a real-world navigation task in which participants actively walked a route through a city whilst using a navigation aid featuring either realistic or abstract landmark visualisation styles. Analyses of serial position functions (i.e., absolute sequence knowledge) and sequence lags (i.e., relative sequence knowledge) yielded similar profiles to those observed in a lab based virtual navigation task from previous work and non-spatial list learning studies. There were strong primacy effects for serial position memory in both conditions; recency effects only in the realistic visualisation condition; a non-uniform distribution of item-lags peaking at lag +1; and an overall bias towards positive lags for both visualisation conditions. The findings demonstrate that benchmark serial position memory effects can be observed in uncontrolled, real-world behaviour. In a navigation context, the results support the notion that general memory mechanisms are involved in spatial learning, and that landmark sequence knowledge is a feature of spatial knowledge which is affected by navigation aids.
Precise Modeling of Coplanar Device Measurements Under Realistic Conditions up to G-Band

Coplanar devices are being used in many new applications, from next-generation (6G) wireless communication systems to autonomous driving and radar sensors. Often they are the building blocks of monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs), hybrid circuits, or printed circuit boards (PCBs). Since RF circuit design relies on the accurate characterization of circuit components, a thorough understanding of measurement and modeling techniques is essential. Especially at higher frequencies, accurate modeling becomes more challenging due to the presence of nonideal physical effects that degrade accuracy. This article explains how to accurately predict the propagation characteristics of coplanar devices under measurement conditions, taking into account typical high-frequency effects such as radiation, dispersion, surface roughness, and probe influence up to $G$ -band frequencies.
The Dirichlet problem for the biharmonic equation in a C1 domain in the plane

On resout le probleme de Dirichlet pour l'equation biharmonique Δ 2 u=0 sur un domaine C 1 simplement connexe borne Ω⊂R 2 a donnees limites dans l'espace L P 1 (∂Ω)×L P (∂Ω), p>1
Reliable determination of tissue optical properties from spatially resolved reflectance

Spatially resolved reflectance is a frequently used technique to derive optical properties and physiological parameters of tissue. We have evaluated the accuracy of this method by investigations on a set of phantoms with known optical properties derived from time-resolved measurements. The recorded profiles of spatially resolved reflectance were analyzed by a Monte Carlo model of photon transport. When we took only the shape of the measured profiles into account, we got only poor estimates of the optical properties. In particular, the absorption was strongly underestimated. The main reason for failing of this approach is that the shape of the measured profiles can be well described by many combinations of absorption and reduced scattering coefficients. The separation between scattering and absorption was strongly improved when the reflectance data were calibrated by using a reference phantom. We applied both the relative and the calibration based analysis method to reflectance data obtained from in vivo investigations on the kidney of rats. Despite the limited number of only 4 detector positions the calibration based analysis method yielded reliable estimates of the tissue optical properties.
Transform techniques and non-stationarity with an emphasis on network applications

The recent years brought a phenomenal development of Internet. It is, therefore, important to find some ways to improve the performances. The first step in this direction is the characterization and modeling of the network traffic. It has been tested that the network traffic behaves like a self-similar process, while packets interarrivals time possess the long-range dependence property. In particular, we model them by using fractional Brownian motion and fractional Gaussian noise, respectively. Note that, the former is just the cumulative sum of the latter. By using these concepts, the traffic characterization reduces to the estimation of one value: the Hurst parameter. Numerous methods exist to evaluate this parameter. Nevertheless, a few studies take account of the inherent non-stationarity present in real data. For short samples, the stationarity hypothesis might hold. But for larger samples, this is hardly the case. As an example, for network traffic, the day cycle shows non-stationarity. By not considering the non-stationarity, an inaccurate or even inappropriate estimation may result. Our objective in this thesis is to test the robustness of several techniques such as aggregated variance method, rescaled range method, and wavelets method, in presence of a set of non-stationarity trends. We study the estimators on a known signal generated using Hosking, Davies and Harte method, or wavelets-based synthesis. We
Lattice Boltzmann simulation of natural convection of ethylene glycol-alumina nanofluid in a C-shaped enclosure with MFD viscosity through a parallel computing platform and quantitative parametric assessment

There has been a strong interest to design and optimise thermally efficient heating and cooling equipment. The conventional fluids such as oil and water have limited thermal efficiency. Therefore, researchers have been seeking alternatives to the conventional fluids to improve the efficacy of heat exchanging and electronic cooling devices and nanofluid has been identified as a great option in this regard. Although nanofluid is a great alternative, certain specifications, geometries, and pertinent parameters need to be thoroughly investigated for a comprehensive understanding with the aid of robust computational technique. The aim of this study was to investigate the multiple-relaxation-time (MRT) lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) to numerically analyse the effects of magnetic field dependent (MFD) viscosity on the natural convection of ethylene glycol (C2H6O2)-alumina (Al2O3) nanofluid in a side heated two-dimensional C-shaped enclosure using graphics processing unit (GPU) by a computing unified device architecture (CUDA) C parallel computing platform. Numerical simulations were performed at multifarious Rayleigh numbers, Hartmann numbers, and the different magnetic field inclination angles to study the heat transfer and various flow patterns under magnetic field-dependent (MFD) viscosity, solutions were presented by varying volume fraction of nanoparticles, Rayleigh numbers, viscous parameters, magnetic inclination angles, and Hartman numbers on streamlines, isotherms, local and average Nusselt number and temperature. Further correlation developments were conducted through Levenberg-Marquardt data-driven algorithm to investigate the influence of all the parameters on average Nusselt numbers, entropy generation, and fluid irreversibility parameter. The findings demonstrated that as the Rayleigh numbers augmented, the average Nusselt number increased significantly due to the influence of buoyancy, whereas under the influence of Hartmann numbers, average Nusselt numbers decreased due to the dominance of magnetic field strength and Lorentz force. However, the heat transfer continued to improve if the concentration of the nanoparticles increased, thus showcasing the importance of hybrid nanofluid. In addition, the entropy generation impact across the cavity for the ethylene glycol-alumina nanofluid was greatly enhanced by a stronger buoyancy influence.
Cleidocranial Dysplasia: A Rare Case Report

Cleidocranial dysplasia (CCD) is a rare hereditary disease of unknown etiology which was previously known as cleidocranial dysostosis. It usually follows an autosomal dominant mode of transmission with no predilection of genre or ethnic group. It is caused by a mutation of RUNX2, characterized by generalized dysplasia of the bones and teeth. Affected individuals have short stature, atypical facial features, and skeletal anomalies affecting mainly the skull and clavicle. The dental manifestations are mainly delayed exfoliation of the primary teeth and delayed eruption of the permanent teeth, with multiple impacted supernumeraries, and the absence of cellular cementum. The frequency of this disorder is 1 per million individuals. Here we report a rare case of CCD in a 23 year old female patient having most of the characteristic features of this syndrome.
Articulatory compensation strategies employed by an aglossic speaker

We are employing real-time MRI to probe the speech production patterns of a speaker with congenital aglossia, a rare syndrome in which an individual is born without a tongue. The speaker being studied has only a small stump-like tongue rudiment in the region of the tongue root and a hypertrophied floor of the mouth (mylohyoid) and base of the tongue. Nevertheless, the speaker has acquired the ability to produce highly intelligible speech. One initial finding is that the speaker, in the absence of a tongue tip, produces plosive consonants that are perceptually similar to /t/ and /d/ by using a bilabial constriction with a significantly increased anteroposterior extent (relative to her /p/ or /b/ productions). Our aim is to provide an articulatory-acoustic account of this compensatory strategy via detailed analysis of her production strategies as evidenced in the real-time MRI data and via simulations using an articulatory synthesizer. We examine whether the increased anteroposterior extent of the bilabial .
A Note on Summation of Cardinalities, Belief Functions, Plausibility Functions and Commonality Functions Induced by Probability Mass Function of Discrete Probability Distribution

- For any subset of the discernment frame; the belief function and the plausibility function are lower and upper bounds for the probability function respectively. By replacing the probability function with its lower and upper bound, we get the lower bound and upper bound of statistical quantities such as mean, variance, raw and central moments, coefficient of skewness and coefficient of kurtosis, and so on. Now, it becomes important to study some results about the probability function‘s lower bound (belief function) and upper bound (plausibility function). In this paper, by using the principle of generalization, we have obtained a formula for the summation of cardinalities of all subsets of a given set with cardinality n . Also, for any subset of the discernment frame; we have obtained formulas for the summation of the belief functions, the commonality functions, and the plausibility functions when the probability mass function of an underlying discrete probability distribution is given.
Quantum Mechanical Approach to the Khintchine and Bochner Criteria for Characteristic Functions

While it is generally accepted that quantum mechanics is a probability theory, its methods differ radically from standard probability theory. We use the methods of quantum mechanics to understand some fundamental aspects of standard probability theory. We show that wave functions and operators do appear in standard probability theory. We do so by generalizing the Khintchine and Bochner criteria for a complex function to be a characteristic function. We show that quantum mechanics clarifies these criteria and suggests generalizations of them.
In vitro assays reveal inherently insecticide-tolerant termite symbionts

Introduction: Termite symbionts are well known for conferring a myriad of benefits to their hosts. Bacterial symbionts are repeatedly associated with increased fitness, nutritional supplementation, pathogen protection, and proper development across insect taxa. In addition, several recent studies link bacterial symbionts to reduced insecticide efficacy. This has important implications both in pest control management and environmental bioremediation efforts. Insects’ guts may be a valuable resource for microbes with broad application given their unique niches and metabolic diversity. Though insecticide resistance in termites is considered unlikely due to their life history, the close association of termites with a multitude of bacteria raises the question: is there potential for symbiont-mediated pesticide tolerance in termites? Methods and results: We identified a candidate that could grow in minimal medium containing formulated pesticide. This bacterial isolate was then subjected to continuous culture and subsequently demonstrated improved performance in the presence of pesticide. Isolates subjected to continuous culture were then grown at a range of concentrations from 1–10X the formulation rate. After constant exposure for several generations, isolates grew significantly better. Conclusion: Here we demonstrate that naïve insect hosts can harbor symbionts with inherent insecticide tolerance capable of rapid adaptation to increasing insecticide concentrations overtime. This has broad implications for both pest control and environmental cleanup of residual pesticides.