Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Fair Sharing Approach for Micro-Services Function Chains Placement in Ultra-Low Latency Services

The evolution of Internet services, such as drone piloting or metaverse, tends toward ultra-Low Latency (LL) requirements, thus inducing new challenges in the placement of Service Function Chains (SFCs) deployed over virtualized infrastructures. On the one hand, this challenge requires novel optimization means. In particular, decomposing monolithic Network Functions (NFs) into micro-services acts as a promising approach thanks to their mutualization and highly parallelization characteristics, which makes it possible to reduce the length of the service chains and consequently their execution latency. On the other hand, since a core feature of the Internet relies on the coexistence of several types of services, fair sharing of resources between LL SFCs and Best Effort (BE) services appears as a core question to address. In this paper, we present an optimization model, which leverages the characteristics of micro-services to place and chains different types of SFCs in a common infrastructure. We first consider the case of standalone LL SFCs to demonstrate the benefits of mutualization and parallelization. Then, we consider the more complex situation of a fair cohabitation between BE and LL SFCs. This leads us to propose and compare three variants of our initial objective function, all supporting different resource sharing strategies. By confronting our model to several realistic scenarios in terms of topology and service function chains, we demonstrate (1) to what extent it improves the overall performance of SFCs by minimising the gap between expected and actual latency, and (2) it allows LL and BE SFCs to coexist without impacting the latency of the deployed LL SFCs.
Accumulation of fine particles onto three coniferous species

ROBERT L. BUSH, JR.: Accumulation of fine particles onto three coniferous species. There is concern that airborne contaminants generated by applying sewage sludge to land for agricultural purposes may pose significant health risks to nearby residents. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) have been shown to be both a persistent class of organic chemicals in sewage sludge and to accumulate in the epicuticular wax of coniferous vegetation. Thus, local coniferous species may passively sample PBDEs and provide information related to the atmospheric dispersion of contaminants associated with land-applied sewage sludge. This work uses a controlled exposure chamber to simultaneously subject three conifer species (loblolly pine, short leaf pine and eastern red cedar) native to central North Carolina to a Rhodamine-6G aerosol, which acts as a surrogate for particle-bound PBDEs. Accumulation as a function of exposure for each species is evaluated. Findings suggest that, to normalize particle accumulation across the three species, a factor of 1.35 should be applied to cedar results reported in ng/g. Additionally, the ratio of projected area to mass is used to explain interspecies variations. This information is useful to studies that employ local vegetation as passive samplers of particle-bound contaminants such as those evaluating community exposures to land-applied sewage sludge. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is dedicated to my mother, Carol Baysinger, for giving me the opportunity to pursue my ambitions freely and for teaching me the meaning of responsibility. I truly would not be in the position I am today without her love and guidance, which she has given since I can remember. I would also like to thank my girlfriend, Nicole Vanderbosch, for her companionship and sense of humor, even in times of unintentional neglect. She has been an incredible joy in my life. I am sincerely grateful to NIEHS and NIOSH for providing financial support during my two years at UNC, and to Dr. Steve Wing and Dr. Leena Nylander-French for directing these funds. I would like to acknowledge all those in Baity Laboratory for their support and open ears, especially Maryanne Boundy for her keen review of my work and for the relaxing conversations we often shared about UNC athletics; Dr. Joe Pedit for his laboratory guidance and photographic aptitudes and Dr. David Leith for advising my work, setting an example of professionalism and sincerity, and for teaching me the importance of effective communication. Additionally, I acknowledge Dr. Mike Flynn for his membership on my …
Primary Spinal Intramedullary Lymphoma : A Case Report and Review of the Literature

Background: Primary spinal intramedullary lymphoma is a very rare lesion. It has not specific laboratory or radiologic findings. Therefore false and late diagnosis is frequent. Case Report and Literature Review: A 55 year-old lady with multifocal primary spinal intramedullary B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was reported. Review of literature yielded 45 cases with primary spinal intramedullary lymphoma and clinical and radiological characteristics of these 46 cases were evaluated. Results: Male/female ratio was 24/22. Median age of the patients was 51.5 years for all cases except a series consisting 14 cases to be reported in an article in which detailed data case by case was not given. Median age of those 14 cases was 62.5. Most of the cases were localized in the cervical and then thoracic segments. Multifocal spinal tumors were found in 12 patients. Most of the patients were admitted with rapidly progressing myelopathy symptoms and signs. Most frequently seen magnetic resonance appearance was T2 hyperintensity and dense and homogeneous contrast enhancement with spinal cord enlargement. Misdiagnosis was frequent (23 cases) and certain diagnosis could be provided with autopsy in 5 cases. Tissue sampling was performed mostly with spinal cord biopsy (27) and brain biopsy (10 cases). Most of the cases had B-cell lymphoma (26 cases). Patients were treated with various types of chemotherapy, radiotherapy or combination of them. Twenty-six cases were died during follow-up median 16.5 months (for 10 cases of the largest series consisting 14 cases) and 10 months (for other cases) after onset of symptoms and signs. Survival time was significantly different between neither cell types (B cell and other lymphomas) nor initial treatment modalities (chemotherapy, radiotherapy or combined of them). Conclusions: Primary spinal intramedullary lymphoma diagnosis is difficult, and misdiagnosis is frequent. It must be kept in mind for differential diagnosis especially in middle aged patients with rapidly progressing myelopathy findings. Prognosis is poor despite aggressive treatment.
Evaluation of the Antifungal Effect of Rhus verniciflua Stokes Extract for Oral Application Potential

Background and Objectives: This study confirms the possibility of using Rhus verniciflua Stokes (RVS) extract as a natural treatment for oral candidiasis. Materials and Methods: RVS was extracted with 70% ethanol to examine the antioxidant activity through polyphenol, flavonoid content, and DPPH (1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl). To evaluate the antifungal effect against Candida albicans (C. albicans; KCTC 7965/ATCC 10231) and evaluate the stability of RVS, a water-soluble tetrazolium salt (WST-1) assay was performed in human keratinocytes (HaCaT). Results: The findings revealed that RVS extract has fairly high antioxidant activity. The clear zones of the RVS extract against C. albicans increased in diameter due to the inhibition of fungal growth at higher concentrations. Treatment with the 1.25 mg/mL RVS extract had a more than 99% antifungal effect against C. albicans, and the 20 mg/mL RVS extract had a 100% antifungal effect. The WST-1 assay showed that the RVS extract induced low cell viability in the HaCaT cells, which inhibited their proliferation, and the RVS extract is also toxic to normal cells. Conclusions: Although the RVS extract with high antioxidant activity showed clear antifungal activity against C. albicans, it exhibited a low survival rate. Therefore, the development of a safe natural antibiotic is necessary.
DOCUMENTOS DE ECONOMIA Y FINANZAS INTERNACIONALES

This paper shows, within a Heckscher-Ohlin version of the two-sector neoclassical growth model, that land, besides having long-run effects, is also a main determinant of the speed of convergence toward the steady state when there are cross-sector capital share differences. This result stands in sharp contrast to the predictions of standard neoclassical growth frameworks, and calls for a reinterpretation of the conditional-convergence and the resource-curse findings. More specifically, the model predicts that the former finding requires the existence not only of diminishing returns but also of relatively small differences in capital shares across sectors. With respect to the latter finding, our results imply that it may be a consequence of purely transitional effects of natural riches on growth, and that it can not be interpreted as evidence that natural inputs necessarily harm long-run welfare. We produce empirical evidence on the relationship between land, income levels, and growth rates, and present data on cross-sector capital shares. We claim that most of that evidence is consistent with the predictions of the model. JEL Classification: O41, F43. ∗Postal address: Universidad de Alicante, Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico, Campus de San Vicente s/n, 03690 Alicante, Spain. We thank the European Commission through FEDER funds and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology, SEJ2004-08011ECON, and the Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, IVIE6-03I, for financial support.
Taxonomic Identification of the Arctic Strain Nocardioides Arcticus Sp. Nov. and Global Transcriptomic Analysis in Response to Hydrogen Peroxide Stress

Microorganisms living in polar regions rely on specialized mechanisms to adapt to extreme environments. The study of their stress adaptation mechanisms is a hot topic in international microbiology research. In this study, a bacterial strain (Arc9.136) isolated from Arctic marine sediments was selected to implement polyphasic taxonomic identification based on factors such as genetic characteristics, physiological and biochemical properties, and chemical composition. The results showed that strain Arc9.136 is classified to the genus Nocardioides, for which the name Nocardioides arcticus sp. nov. is proposed. The ozone hole over the Arctic leads to increased ultraviolet (UV-B) radiation, and low temperatures lead to increased dissolved content in seawater. These extreme environmental conditions result in oxidative stress, inducing a strong response in microorganisms. Based on the functional classification of significantly differentially expressed genes under 1 mM H2O2 stress, we suspect that Arc9.136 may respond to oxidative stress through the following strategies: (1) efficient utilization of various carbon sources to improve carbohydrate transport and metabolism; (2) altering ion transport and metabolism by decreasing the uptake of divalent iron (to avoid the Fenton reaction) and increasing the utilization of trivalent iron (to maintain intracellular iron homeostasis); (3) increasing the level of cell replication, DNA repair, and defense functions, repairing DNA damage caused by H2O2; (4) and changing the composition of lipids in the cell membrane and reducing the sensitivity of lipid peroxidation. This study provides insights into the stress resistance mechanisms of microorganisms in extreme environments and highlights the potential for developing low-temperature active microbial resources.
Preparation and Degradation Performance Study of P(AM/GG/PEGDA) Nanocomposite Self-Degradation Gel Plugging Material

Lost circulation is a world-class problem, and the contradiction between plugging and unplugging in reservoirs is a problem that needs to be solved urgently. The traditional LCM is not suitable for reservoirs and the complex subsequent operations. Currently, a self-degrading plugging material is proposed. In this paper, a new self-degradation plugging material, CKS-DPPG, was prepared by AM, GG, nano silica, and PEGDA. The effects of reactant concentration, pH, mineralization, etc., on the swelling and degradation performance of CKS-DPPG were investigated. The plugging capacity was tested by fracture plugging equipment, and the mechanism of self-degradation was revealed. The results show that the CKS-DPPG reached a 50% degradation rate in 54 h and complete degradation in 106 h at 80 °C and pH = 8. Low temperatures, high mineralization, and weak alkaline conditions prolong the complete degradation time of CKS-DPPG, which facilitates subsequent operations. The simulation of the 3 mm opening fracture plugging experiment showed that the pressure-bearing capacity reached 6.85 MPa and that a 0.16 MPa pressure difference could unplug after degradation. The ester bond of PEGDA is hydrolyzed under high-temperature conditions, and the spatial three-dimensional structure of CKS-DPPG becomes linear. The CKS-DPPG can effectively reduce subsequent unplugging operations and lower production costs.
Stakeholder oriented optimization of a Flood Warning System

This MSc Thesis is part of the Project “Desarrollo e Implementacion del SAT-Beni”. The project aims to minimize the adverse effects of floods in the region of Beni through the development and implementation of an Early Warning System based on modelling and hydrologic simulation and transferring these technologies to the appropriate Bolivian institutions. The specific objective of this MSc Thesis is to provide some specifications for improvements to the existing flood Early Warning System based on the interest and needs of the stakeholders involved as identified by themselves and that are feasible with the available technology. Monitoring and forecasting acquire significant relevance within the new Early Warning System that will be developed and implemented in the region of Beni. However, the development of the new flood Early Warning System does also consider as relevant the warning dissemination and communication, as well as, the emergency preparation and response. The research was carried out using data collected during Interviews with experts and inhabitants who have experience of floods in the region. A review of literature on the topic was made and discussions with Deltares staff were held to analyze the existing flood Early Warning System. Field research shows a variety of optimal lead times at which forecasts are required. Stakeholders considered to be relevant in the analysis as their different needs will impact on the design of the future warning system include: disaster management agencies, national and local governments, businesses, inhabitants local to the area studied and disadvantaged minorities. Whilst studying the existing system important lacks in the monitoring network in terms of O&M, personnel, equipment and coordination have been identified. The warning information dissemination network includes several organizations and various communication technologies which are used to warn, such as radio, TV, mobile and conventional phones, door knocking, etc. However, due to a huge number of people who do not receive any warning information, loudhailers and sirens need to be encouraged. Results of the research confirm that the effectiveness of warning messages depends on a large number of factors including accuracy, reliability, credibility, that they reach the right target recipients and that they are timely. In addition the individual and agency that disseminates the warning has a tremendous impact on the success of the message. In terms of flood responses, saving family members, household goods and livestock are the main activities carried out by ranchers and citizens. Farmers, however, frequently do not take any preventative action in order to save their crops. Risk awareness which includes the visibility of floods and prior experience has been identified as the main factor that influences the type of flood response taken and people’s perceptions of imminent danger.
Bug Localization Model in Source Code Using Ontologies

The bug location process aims to identify source code artifacts associated with reported bugs. Manual bug location is burdensome for programmers who must reproduce and analyze the bug to identify the defective artifact and perform necessary maintenance. Bug locating techniques classify and identify project-specific source code artifacts, narrowing the search space. These techniques often use machine learning methods, such as textual similarity, classification algorithms, and grouping of source code files based on bug report data. This paper proposes a bug location model that leverages semantic architectural knowledge through ontologies to infer new knowledge and retrieve information from bug reports. The model’s performance is evaluated on six relevant open-source projects in C Sharp (AutoMapper, MsBuild, EfCore, AspNetCore, MQTTnet, and NLog). Experiments utilize the evaluation metrics Top N Rank of Files (TNRF), Mean Reciprocal Rank (MRR), and Mean Average Precision (MAP). The results demonstrate the significant efficacy of the proposed model. The model contributes to relieving the manual burden on programmers and enhances bug localization accuracy and efficiency by integrating architectural semantic knowledge represented through ontologies with machine learning. The evaluation results indicate the potential of the proposed model for improving the bug-fixing process in software development.
Modality-Aware Ood Suppression Using Feature Discrepancy for Multi-Modal Emotion Recognition

While conventional multi-modal emotion recognition (MER) focuses only on model learning for modality fusion, we are interested in tuning multi-modal data fed to MER model in the testing phase. Tuning the influence of each input may cause MER performance significantly due to the nature of MER datasets consisting of heterogeneous modalities. Thus, we propose a novel approach to detect and suppress a modality that is less useful for emotion prediction based on statistical differences between modality distributions. For the MER dataset annotated with discrete or continuous emotion labels, we experimentally find that the OoD modality adversely affects the prediction. Then, we show that when the proposed suppression method is attached to the backbone techniques in an ad-hoc manner, it can achieve outstanding MER performance improvement of 21%.
Contribution à l’étude des bétons portés en température / Evolution des propriétés de transfert : Etude de l’éclatement

L’etude du comportement des betons a hautes temperatures est d’une grande importance pour determiner la stabilite et la resistance des structures en beton en situation d’incendie. Des incendies spectaculaires, ces dernieres annees, ont montre que le beton pouvait etre tres fortement sollicite. Ainsi il apparait qu’assurer un tres bon comportement du beton en temperature permet de sauver des vies et de diminuer les frais d'immobilisation et de reparation des structures endommagees. Le travail presente vise, par une etude experimentale, a apporter une meilleure comprehension des phenomenes mis en jeu lors de l’exposition aux hautes temperatures des betons a hautes performances (BHP). Il s’interesse, plus particulierement, aux transferts des fluides dans les betons (permeabilite) et a l’etude de l’instabilite thermique (phenomene d’eclatement) des betons a hautes performances. Le travail de these a ete mene sur des betons a hautes performances (80 MPa) avec 5% de fumee de silice (materiau a faible permeabilite pour ameliorer la durabilite), et differents pourcentages de fibres de polypropylene. L’utilisation des fibres de polypropylene (PP) est consideree comme une solution technique efficace pour ameliorer la tenue au feu des betons a hautes performances, notamment grâce aux phenomenes physiques apparaissant aux temperatures inferieures a 200°C. Notre travail concerne, dans un premier temps, la caracterisation de l’evolution des proprietes physiques (porosite, perte de masse), thermiques (conductivite et diffusivite) et mecaniques (resistance a la compression et en traction) ainsi que les isothermes de sorption. La deuxieme partie de ce travail concerne l’etude de l’evolution de la permeabilite en fonction de la temperature (jusqu’a 200°C), principale propriete caracterisant les transferts hydriques au sein des betons. Les parametres etudies sont : le type de beton (avec ou sans fibres de PP), deux types de fibre de geometries differentes, la nature du fluide (air ou vapeur d’eau) et la methode de mesure (en residuel et a chaud). Les resultats experimentaux montrent que les fibres generent une permeabilite plus importante au-dela de 150°C et que les valeurs obtenues en residuel ou a chaud peuvent etre lies aux modes operatoires. Enfin, dans la derniere partie une investigation sur le phenomene d’eclatement explosif en lien avec la composition du materiau est menee. Une nouvelle methode d’investigation experimentale de la sensibilite des formulations a l’instabilite thermique est proposee avec une etude sur des spheres portees en temperature. Cette methode devra etre comparee aux methodes traditionnelles d’investigation. L’analyse des resultats des essais permet de discuter sur les causes de l’instabilite thermique et de caracteriser les proprietes du beton en temperature, donnees indispensables a la modelisation.
Simulations des grandes échelles de haute précision d'écoulements turbulents autour de géométries complexes : application à un modèle de véhicule automobile

On s'interesse a la modelisation numerique par methode spectrale tridimensionnelle d'ecoulements a haut nombre de Reynolds autour de geometries complexes. Une approche de type Simulation des Grandes Echelles est rendue possible par l'utilisation d'une technique de Viscosite Spectrale Evanescente (SVV) permettant de prendre en compte les transferts d'energie vers les echelles non resolues tout en preservant la precision spectrale de l'ap-proximation. Une correction de proche paroi du modele SVV (SVV-NW) a ete developpee permettant une meilleure prise en compte des phenomenes energetiques complexes siegeant dans les couches limites. Ce traitement local est tout d'abord valide sur l'ecoulement autour du cylindre a section carree a Reynolds 21400, tres bien documente. Finalement, la methodologie SVV-LES est appliquee a l'ecoulement plus complexe autour d'un modele de vehicule simpli fie, le corps d'Ahmed, pour des Reynolds de 8322 et 768000. Les resultats obtenus permettent une tres bonne identi cation des structures tourbillonnaires presentes dans l'ecoulement. Les quantites statistiques de la turbulence, en bon accord avec les resultats experimentaux de reference, laissent esperer une utilisation plus reguliere de cette methodologie dans des con gurations d'ecoulements industriels.