Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PINT: Parallel INTerval-Based Race Detector

A race detector for task-parallel code typically consists of two main components - a reachability analysis component that checks whether two instructions are logically in parallel and an access history component that keeps track of memory locations accessed by previous instructions. Race detectors from prior work typically utilize a hashmap to maintain the access history, which provides asymptotically optimal overhead per operation but can incur significant overhead in practice, since the detector needs to insert into and query the hashmap for every memory access. An exception is STINT by Xu et al., which race detects task-parallel code by coalescing memory accesses into intervals, or continuous memory locations accessed within a sequence of instructions without any parallel construct. STINT utilizes a treap to manage access history that allows for insertions and queries of non-overlapping intervals. While a treap incurs higher asymptotic overhead per operation, this strategy works well in practice as the race detector performs operation on the access history with much lower frequency compared to the strategy that utilizes a hashmap. STINT only executes task-parallel code sequentially, however, due to the unique design of their treap that ensures no overlapping intervals exist in the tree. Parallelizing STINT efficiently is non-trivial, as it would require a concurrent treap that ensures no overlapping interval, which is challenging to design and likely incurs high synchronization overhead. This work proposes PINT, a race detector that, like STINT, race detects task-parallel code at the interval granularity and utilizes the same treap design to maintain access history. PINT executes the computation in parallel, however, while keeping the parallelization / synchronization overhead low. A key insight is that, PINT separates out operations needed for race detection into the core part (e.g., reachability maintenance) and the access history part. Doing so allows PINT to parallelize the core part efficiently and perform the access history part asynchronously, thereby incurring low overhead.
The Assessment of Internal Indicators on The Balanced Scorecard Measures of Sustainability

Background: Performance evaluation has become an essential tool for managers in the banking sector, which is undergoing frequent and rapid changes. It allows banks to maintain a high level of returns and reach their targets while staying competitive. In this context, sustainable performance management has emerged as essential for the banking sector. Indeed, the sustainable management of performance, while increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of organizations, also ensures sustainable measurement based on balanced scorecard practices. Purpose: This study aims to examine the assessment of internal indicators on the balanced scorecard of sustainability in the banking system in North Cyprus, which is one of the sustainable performance evaluation methods. Moreover, it aims to evaluate and reveal the effects of innovation performance, organizational culture, intrapreneurship, and the efficiency and effectiveness of the accounting information system on overall business performance in terms of the performance scorecard to achieve sustainable balanced scorecard systems. Design/Methodology/Approach: This study (BSC), which focuses on the banking industry in North Cyprus, was motivated by the recent and limited usage of a balanced scorecard. The questionnaire was used to gather data from 350 employees and managers of 21 banks in North Cyprus. Analyses of the collected data were conducted using structural equation modeling (SEM, AMOS 25). Findings: The findings of the research established that organizational culture, intrapreneurship, and accounting information system effectiveness have positive effects on a balanced scorecard and its sub-dimensions. Innovation performance does not affect the balanced scorecard and its sub-dimensions. Originality/Value: In identifying the advantages and contributions in BSC introduction and implementation, the study contributes to the current state of knowledge, enabling organizations which intend to use this tool to adopt it and develop it. This study takes organizations’ culture, innovation and intrapreneurship performance, and development on accounting and information systems into consideration in relation to the implementation process of BSC.
Blockchain-Enabled Immunization System: A Novel Idea to Leverage Reliability and Traceability

Blockchain technology is one of the emerging technologies of the decade. Immutability, reliability, and distributed ledger are the main features of the blockchain, making this technology very popular in the short time from its advent. The use of blockchain technology is not only restricted to the financial sector, but the healthcare sector is also focusing its attention on a blockchain. Immunization Programs can be assisted by blockchain technology to achieve reliability, security, and traceability. In this paper, we describe the blockchain-based reliable approach for the Immunization Program using the Hyperledger Fabric platform to provide a practical solution to the challenges of the current system. The system will maintain a real-time view of the vaccination record and provide a single integrated view of localized and diverse records. This united form of the data help the doctors for better diagnosis in case of disease, and specialists to make better strategic plans for Immunization.
A Comparative Study of Silver Microflakes in Digitally Printable Liquid Metal Embedded Elastomer Inks for Stretchable Electronics

Printed soft conductive materials for stretchable electronics should have low electrical resistivity, high strain limit, and stable electrical properties when stretched. Previously, it has been shown that a bi‐phasic ink composed of silver (Ag) microflakes, eutectic gallium−indium (EGaIn) alloy, and styrene isoprene (SIS) block copolymer is a promising formulation for printed soft electronics and has the potential to satisfy the necessary criteria. In this study, further improvements to the ink formulation are explored, with a focus on how the choice of Ag microflakes affects the electrical and electromechanical properties of the composite. By using specific Ag microflakes, AgInGa‐SIS inks that have conductivity as high as 6.38 × 105 S m−1 and a strain limit of over 1000%, with low electromechanical coupling can be synthesized. More broadly, when comparing the composite with different silver flakes, there is a 176% relative difference in conductivity, >600% difference in strain limit, and 277% relative difference in electromechanical coupling. To demonstrate the applicability of these inks for various use cases such as wearable bioelectronics, interconnects are printed for connecting electronic breakout boards with microcontrollers that provide a stable electrical connection when stretched, and the interconnects and electrodes of a wearable electrocardiography system that monitors the heart pulses in real‐time.
A Scalable Ensemble Approach to Forecast the Electricity Consumption of Households

Long-term individual household forecasting is useful in various applications, e.g., to determine customers’ advance payments. However, the literature on this type of forecasting is limited; existing methods either focus on short-term predictions for individual households, or long-term prediction at an aggregated level (e.g., neighborhood). To fill this gap, we present a method that predicts the monthly consumption of individual households over the next year, given only a few months of consumption data during the current year. Utility companies can exploit this method to predict the consumption of any customer for the next year even with incomplete data. The method consists of three steps: clustering the data using ${k}$ -means, prediction using an ensemble of forecasts based on the historical median distribution among similar households, and smoothing the predictions to remove weather-dependent patterns. The method is highly accurate as it finished third in the IEEE-CIS competition (and ranks first when leveraging insights from another team), focused on forecasting long-term household consumption with incomplete data. It is also very scalable thanks to its low computational complexity and weak data requirements: the method only requires a few months of historical data and no household-specific or weather information.
Identification and verification of immune-related gene prognostic signature based on ssGSEA for breast cancer

Introduction Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer in women worldwide and has a high mortality rate. The fact that the tumor microenvironment affects clinical outcomes of all types of cancers underlines the involvement of various immune-related genes (IRGs). Therefore, this study aimed to establish an IRGs-based signature for the prognosis of BC patients. Material and methods In this study, 12 immune cell infiltrating degrees in 1,102 BC cases from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database were assessed, and RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) data of these samples were analyzed by single-sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA). Based on the results, high, low, and middle immune infiltrating clusters were constructed. A total of 138 overlapped differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in the high and low infiltrating clusters, as well as in normal and BC samples. Univariate Cox regression and LASSO analyses were also performed. Furthermore, GSEA suggested some highly enriched pathways in the different immune infiltrating clusters, leading to a better understanding of potential mechanisms of immune infiltration in BC. Results Finally, 19 immune-related genes were identified that could be utilized as a potential prognostic biomarker for BC. Kaplan-Meier plot and ROC curve, univariate as well as multivariate Cox analyses were carried out, which suggested that the 19-IRG-based signature is a significant prognosis factor independent of clinical features. Based on the analysis of protein-protein interactions (PPI), the three hub genes were identified. Conclusions These results provide a new method to predict the prognosis and survival of BC based on the three genes’ features.
GPUramfs: Um sistema de arquivos em espaço de usuário para armazenamento volátil em GPU

GPUs are increasingly present in personal computers. Most of thetime they are idle. Using the memory resources of these devicescan free up space in the host’s RAM, allowing the operating systemto use it efficiently. This work presents the initial implementationof GPUramfs, a volatile file system that uses the GPU as a storagedevice. The system exhibited good performance even in comparisonto EXT4 using NVMe high throughput disks.
The Clinical Application of Combined Ultrasound, Mammography, and Tumor Markers in Screening Breast Cancer among High-Risk Women

In order to explore the clinical application value of color Doppler ultrasound (CDUS), mammography (MAM), and serum tumor marker carbohydrate antigen 153 (CA153) in screening breast cancer (BC) for high-risk women, a total of 38,241 women were surveyed by epidemiological questionnaire on BC high-risk factors. A total of 10,821 cases were screened, accounting for 28.30%. They were randomly divided into US, MAM, and CA153 and combined examination group which has no significant difference in high-risk factors. Breast cancer in high-risk population was screened by CDUS, MAM, and CA153 and combined examination. CA153 was detected by electroluminescence method. The positive detection rate of BC was 360.41/100,000 (39/10,821). The overall difference in the positive detection rate of BC among 10,821 cases in all age groups was statistically significant. The sensitivity and negative predictive value of combined examination were significantly improved compared with each single examination. Combined examination for BC screening can significantly improve the sensitivity of BC early diagnosis and reduce the missed diagnosis rate.
Investigating the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic product attributes with customer satisfaction: implications for food products

PurposeThis research aims to investigate intrinsic and extrinsic product attributes as well as the relationship between these features and customer satisfaction by confirming the moderating role of competitive intensity.Design/methodology/approachThe study is conceptual and exploratory in nature, drawing on current literature and real-time experience with conceptual framework development. The information was gathered by the face-to-face survey conducted with a sample of products, specialists and customers of the Iranian food industry. A total of 19 Kalleh products and 17 industry experts were selected to identify intrinsic and extrinsic product attributes as well as competition intensity for every product. For investigating the relationship between product attributes and customer satisfaction, 342 customers' viewpoints were received and analyzed.FindingsThe results show that the nature of competition moderates the effects of interaction between product attributes and customer satisfaction. The major findings of this research include (1) when competitive intensity is low, appropriate focus on intrinsic attributes can create better customer satisfaction; (2) When a competitive level is low, better focus on appropriate external attributes can lead to customer satisfaction; and (3) When competitive intensity is high, offering proper external attributes would lead to customer satisfaction if intrinsic attributes are already offered with high quality; (4) When competitive intensity is high and a firm is focusing more on intrinsic attributes, the lack of proper intrinsic attributes can negatively affect repurchase intentions.Originality/valueThe findings of this study can be used as a reference for food companies developing new products in various competitive environments and making the decision whether to focus on intrinsic or extrinsic attributes.
Leaf Economic and Hydraulic Traits Signal Disparate Climate Adaptation Patterns in Two Co-Occurring Woodland Eucalypts

With climate change impacting trees worldwide, enhancing adaptation capacity has become an important goal of provenance translocation strategies for forestry, ecological renovation, and biodiversity conservation. Given that not every species can be studied in detail, it is important to understand the extent to which climate adaptation patterns can be generalised across species, in terms of the selective agents and traits involved. We here compare patterns of genetic-based population (co)variation in leaf economic and hydraulic traits, climate–trait associations, and genomic differentiation of two widespread tree species (Eucalyptus pauciflora and E. ovata). We studied 2-year-old trees growing in a common-garden trial established with progeny from populations of both species, pair-sampled from 22 localities across their overlapping native distribution in Tasmania, Australia. Despite originating from the same climatic gradients, the species differed in their levels of population variance and trait covariance, patterns of population variation within each species were uncorrelated, and the species had different climate–trait associations. Further, the pattern of genomic differentiation among populations was uncorrelated between species, and population differentiation in leaf traits was mostly uncorrelated with genomic differentiation. We discuss hypotheses to explain this decoupling of patterns and propose that the choice of seed provenances for climate-based plantings needs to account for multiple dimensions of climate change unless species-specific information is available.
Cobot as the Part of Multi-agent Model of a Manufacturing System

In recent years an upward trend has been observed regarding the use of robots in the industry. It is caused, among other things, by introduction of assumptions that causes minimization of employee’s participation in the manufacturing process. Such approach allows improving quality, to optimize manufacturing costs, to increase productivity and at the same time introduce full supervision over the manufacturing process. However, there are still processes that are performed faster, and more efficiently by a worker, without the need for special training. In such cases, the implementation of the robot is not economically justified. However, it is possible to install a cobot that acts as an assistant in relation to the activities performed by the employee. In the industrial environment, cobots operate on the boundary between digitally control led systems and the domain of factory workers. This paper will discuss the problems relate to the use of agent approach in order to model the cobot as a part of multiagent model of a manufacturing system. An important issue is the interaction and communication with the worker and its consequences for the entire system. It is also necessary to take into account the information provided by HMI systems and signals coming from the appropriate sensors.
Preliminary design of GMTNIRS electronics

GMTNIRS (Giant Magellan Telescope Near-Infrared Spectrograph) is a high resolution (R = 65,000 – 80,000) wide-band near-infrared spectrograph, one of the first-generation instruments of the Giant Magellan Telescope. We present the preliminary design of the electronics system including temperature control, power distribution, vacuum pressure monitoring, moving mechanism, and packaging. Design for infrared detector subsystems for science bands (J, H, K, L, and M) and a slit-view camera is planned. The electronics system makes use of EtherCAT as fieldbus standard according to the requirement of the GMT.
Graduating during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Digital Media Practices and Learning Spaces among Pupils Taking Their School-Leaving Exams

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly changed educational and qualification experiences among young people. When the pandemic spread in 2020, schools worldwide were required to switch to remote learning. Through a qualitative multi-method, partly mobile, in-situ research approach, we accompanied pupils in the final year of their secondary education as they prepared for and finalized their school-leaving exams to investigate the following questions: What did pupils’ socio-material-technological learning spaces look like during this period? How did they adapt their digital media practices to cope with learning remotely? How did their situatedness in these learning spaces influence their learning experiences? Building on existing research in the field of digital and children’s geographies as well as learning spaces, through a combined content and narrative analysis, this article situates pupils’ learning spaces and experiences of graduating during the pandemic in the context of family relations, socio-material home spaces, polymediated learning environments and the accessibility of outdoor spaces. We debate the wide spectrum of media practices—ranging from indulgence in digital media, to balanced media use, to attempting to withdraw from using digital media—used by pupils to navigate through inextricably entangled socio-material-technological spaces during the pandemic. The further digitization of education prompted by the pandemic must be used in ways that empower pupils to engage in responsible and active use of digital media, thus allowing them to become mature and resilient digital participants in society.
Error analysis of a Stokes imaging polarimeter based on liquid crystal variable retarders

In many astrophysical processes, the complete characterization of the polarization properties of radiation gives important information about the source or the interaction between radiation and matter. Stokes imaging polarimeters based on liquid crystal variable retarders (LCVRs) are widely used to determine the polarization state of radiation. But these devices have errors due to the nature of the liquid crystals that induce an inhomogeneous retardance over the complete aperture, and their fast-axis position depends on the applied voltage. We present the analysis of the impact of variations in the retardance and orientation of the LCVRs, in the optimization of a Stokes imaging polarimeter. An optimized Stokes polarimeter based on two LCVRs, was simulated. First considering individual errors in the retardance and orientation, then one million cases were simulated adding random errors in both LCVRs. The condition number was calculated to analyze the effect in the optimization of the polarimeter. Also, a Stokes imaging polarimeter was calibrated, to verify experimentally the effect of these errors in a real polarimeter. For the calibration the instrument matrix and condition number were calculated individually in every pixel of the image. The results show that these errors lead to polarimetric measurements different from the ideal and to a poorly optimized polarimeter, demonstrating that a condition number optimization of the instrument matrix and a calibration are not sufficient to guarantee accurate polarimetric measurements.
Establishment of a Rat Model of Liver Venous Deprivation: Simultaneous Portal and Hepatic Vein Ligation

Background and Aims The aim was to establish a liver venous deprivation (LVD) model in rats, compare hepatic hypertrophy between LVD and associated liver partition and portal vein ligation for staged hepatectomy (ALPPS), and explore the underlying mechanisms. Methods The LVD or extended-LVD (e-LVD) group received portal vein ligation (PVL) combined with hepatic vein ligation (HVL). The ALPPS or e-ALPPS group received PVL plus parenchyma ligation. Liver regeneration was assessed by measuring the liver weight and performing pathological analysis. Liver functions and the sphingosine kinase 1 (SPHK1)/sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P)/sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor 1 (S1PR1) pathway were also investigated. Results All future liver remnants (FLRs) in the ALPPS, e-ALPPS, LVD, and e-LVD groups exhibited significant hypertrophy compared with the control group. The LVD and e-LVD procedures induced similar liver hypertrophy than that in the corresponding ALPPS groups. Furthermore, the LVD and e-LVD methods led to obvious cytolysis in the venous-deprived lobes as well as a noticeable increase in serum transaminase levels, while no necrosis was observed in the ALPPS and e-ALPPS groups. SPHK1/S1P/S1PR1 pathway were distinctly activated after operation, especially in congestive/ischemic livers. Conclusions We describe the first rat model of LVD and e-LVD with simultaneously associated HVL and PVL. Compared with the ALPPS technique, the LVD or e-LVD procedure had a comparable overall effect on the hypertrophy response and a stronger effect on liver function. The SPHK1/S1P/S1PR1 pathway was involved in the LVD- or ALPPS-induced liver remodeling.
Peeling Back the Layers of Lymph Gland Structure and Regulation

During the past 60 years, the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has proven to be an excellent model to study the regulation of hematopoiesis. This is not only due to the evolutionarily conserved signalling pathways and transcription factors contributing to blood cell fate, but also to convergent evolution that led to functional similarities in distinct species. An example of convergence is the compartmentalization of blood cells, which ensures the quiescence of hematopoietic stem cells and allows for the rapid reaction of the immune system upon challenges. The lymph gland, a widely studied hematopoietic organ of the Drosophila larva, represents a microenvironment with similar features and functions to classical hematopoietic stem cell niches of vertebrates. Lymph gland studies were effectively supported by the unparalleled toolkit developed in Drosophila, which enabled the high-resolution investigation of the cellular composition and regulatory interaction networks of the lymph gland. In this review, we summarize how our understanding of lymph gland structure and hematopoietic cell-to-cell communication evolved during the past decades and compare their analogous features to those of the vertebrate hematopoietic stem cell niche.