Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In Search of a Scalable Raft-based Replication Architecture

Providing a consistent replicated log across different servers, the Raft consensus protocol greatly facilitates the design of fault-tolerant services. However, due to the protocol following the principle of a single strong leader, such architectures in general do not scale with the number of cores and/or network cards available on each server. To address this problem, we present the Niagara replication architecture, which makes it possible to build scalable systems while still relying on Raft for consensus. In particular, we show how Niagara parallelizes the process of appending new log entries across multiple Raft instances and discuss Niagara's support for read operations with different consistency requirements.
A global workplace

The globalization is the period of economic transformation according to the business competition. A number of multinational companies from industrial countries have to move their productions to a new emerging country which has a lower-labor cost, a strategic location, as well as an access to production material. Sweden is one of those countries that decide to re-locate their business center in other countries. The capital of Swedish companies has been distributed especially in Asian countries. Thailand is one of destinations that Swedish companies prefer to put the capital because of its labor cost, human quality, and strategic location. The objective of this thesis is to present the consequence of multinational companies from Sweden in Thailand as the main purpose. The economic relationship and cultural harmonization between these two countries will be discussed. This study is a qualitative research which requires qualitative methods to analyze data. Qualitative interviewing, case study and second data analysis has been the main approaches for data collection. The result of the study brings the conclusion that the capital movement from Sweden to Thailand during the globalization brings the positive development to both sides. Sweden gains more business revenue both in Thailand and Asian region, while Thailand gains wealth and sustainable development from the Swedish investment. Keyword: Globalization, multinational companies, economic relationship, social and economic development, cultural harmonization
L´ostéomyélite aiguë à Staphylocoque aureus résistant à la méthicilline d´origine communautaire chez l´enfant: à propos de 15 cas

La prise en charge de l´ostéomyélite aiguë devient plus délicate depuis l´émergence du Staphylocoque aureus résistant à la méthicilline d´origine communautaire. Nous avons recueilli les cas d´ostéomyélite aiguë dues à ce germe sur une période de 21 ans (Janvier 1995-Décembre 2016) et nous avons essayé d´analyser les particularités de cette entité pathologique. Notre série comporte 15 enfants, d´âge moyen 9 ans. Le membre inférieur était atteint dans tous les cas. Une notion de traumatisme local a été signalée dans 8 cas et une porte d´entrée cutanée a été trouvée dans 4 cas. Le mode de début était aigu dans 12 cas avec un tableau de pseudo-paralysie du membre atteint. Une staphylococcie pulmonaire avec des signes septico-pyohémiques ont été notés dans un cas. L´hémoculture était positive dans 8 cas. La recherche par PCR de la leucocidine de Panton et Valentine était pratiquée dans 1 cas avec un résultat positif. Tous ces patients ont eu un débridement chirurgical et une antibiothérapie empirique secondairement adaptée. L´évolution était bonne dans 8 cas et mauvaise dans les autres cas avec passage à la chronicité dans 6 cas et un cas de décès. Une fracture pathologique a été signalée dans 3 cas. La survenue d´une ostéomyélite à Staphylocoque aureus résistant à la méthicilline d´origine communautaire est péjorative. Connaitre ces infections en se basant sur des arguments cliniques et paracliniques est un enjeu important pour une prise en charge thérapeutique spécifique et rapide.
Effect of grain size on differential desorption of volatile species and on non-ideal MHD diffusivity

We developed a chemical network for modeling the chemistry and non-ideal MHD effects from the collapsing dense molecular clouds to protostellar disks. First, we re-formulated the cosmic-ray desorption rate by considering the variations of desorption rate over the grain size distribution. We find that the differential desorption of volatile species is amplified by the grains larger than 0.1 $\mu$m, because larger grains are heated to a lower temperature by cosmic-rays and hence more sensitive to the variations in binding energies. As a result, atomic nitrogen N is $\sim$2 orders of magnitude more abundant than CO; N$_2$H$^+$ also becomes a few times more abundant than HCO$^+$ due to the increased gas-phase N$_2$. However, the changes in ionization fraction due to freeze-out and desorption only have minor effects on the non-ideal MHD diffusivities. Our chemical network confirms that the very small grains (VSGs: below a few 100 $A$) weakens the efficiency of both ambipolar diffusion and Hall effect. In collapsing dense cores, a maximum ambipolar diffusion is achieved when truncating the MRN size distribution at 0.1 $\mu$m, and for a maximum Hall effect, the truncation occurs at 0.04 $\mu$m. We conclude that the grain size distribution is crucial to the differential depletion between CO and N$_2$ related molecules, as well as to the non-ideal MHD diffusivities in dense cores.
TESTING OF ROTATIONAL EXERCISE EQUIPMENT TO IMPROVE THE VESTIBULAR SYSTEM

The primary purpose of this study was to test the effect of training using the rotational exercise equipment developed in this study on the improvement of the vestibular system. In order to test the rotational exercise equipment developed in this study, 15 ordinary college students had trainings for 8 weeks and their nystagmus intensity was analyzed. The findings showed that the rotational training using the rotational exercise equipment affected vestibular balance, as it significantly decreased the slow phase velocity (SPV) immediately after rotational stimulation and reduced the recovery time of nystagmus to normal.
Protection in Tourism : Where We Are and Where We Should Be Heading For . In :

The link between information privacy concerns and privacy beh aviours has been a focus of extensive investigation in various disciplines. However, little attention has been devoted to t his issue in the tourism literature. Spurred by technological development and shaped by tourismrelated environments, emerging privacy issues call for comprehensive ye t context-specific studies to ensure tourists are making beneficial privacy choices. This pap er first presents a comprehensive review of stateof-the-art research on privacy concerns and behaviours. Then, it suggests a list of overarching research priorities, merging social and technica l aspects of privacy protection approaches as they apply to tourism . The priorities include research to measure tourists’ privacy concerns, explore specific biases in tourists’ privacy decisions, experiment with privacy nudges, and explore how to integrate priva cy nudges in system design. Thus, this paper contributes to guiding the direction of future research on privacy protection in tourism.
The use of continuity in modeling semantic phenomena

Why should we use continuous models in semantics ? At first glance, this question seems simple : we have to use continuous models if and only if semantic phenomena are continuous. But this last statement is wrong for at least two reasons. First, continuity or discreteness are not properties of phenomena, they are characterizations of theories upon phenomena. Second, one can use discrete models to represent continuous concepts, and the other way round. In this paper, we adress the two following questions : (1) What kinds of linguistic theories concerning semantic phenomena need concepts related to continuity ? (2) What kinds of mathematical and computer tools can deal with these concepts ?
State dependent Hamiltonian delay equations and Neumann one-forms

In this note we study critical points of a variation of the action functional of classical mechanics, where the Hamiltonian term is retarded. Following a more than hundert and fifty year old paper by Carl Neumann we as well introduce Taylor approximations to this functional in terms of the fine structure constant. We see how in first order in the fine structure constant this functionals are related to time dependent perturbations of the symplectic form. This observation allows us to prove Arnold type conjectures in first order in the fine structure constant.
Versatile Electronic Devices Based on WSe2/SnSe2 Vertical van der Waals Heterostructure.

Van der Waals heterostructures formed by stacking of various two-dimensional materials are promising in electronic applications. However, the performances of most reported electronic devices based on van der Waals heterostructures are far away from existing (Si, Ge and III-V bulk material based) technologies'. Here we report high performance heterostructure devices based on vertically stacked tungsten diselenide and tin diselenide. Due to the unique band alignment and the atomic thickness of the material, both charge carrier transport and energy barrier can be effectively modulated by the applied electrical field. As a result, the heterostructure devices show superb characteristics, with a high current on/off ratio of ~3 x 108, an average subthreshold slope of 126 mV/decade over five decades of current change due to band to band tunneling, an ultra-high rectification ratio of ~3 x 108 and a current density of more than 104 A/cm2. Further, a small signal half wave rectifier circuit based on majority carrier transport dominated diode is successfully demonstrated, showing great potential in future high speed electronic applications.
Fourier Phase Retrieval With Extended Support Estimation via Deep Neural Network

We consider the problem of sparse phase retrieval from Fourier transform magnitudes to recover the <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$</tex-math></inline-formula>-sparse signal vector and its support <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {T}$</tex-math></inline-formula>. We exploit extended support estimate <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {E}$</tex-math></inline-formula> with size larger than <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$</tex-math></inline-formula> satisfying <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {E} \supseteq \mathcal {T}$</tex-math></inline-formula> and obtained by a trained deep neural network (DNN). To make the DNN learnable, it provides <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {E}$</tex-math></inline-formula> as the union of equivalent solutions of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {T}$</tex-math></inline-formula> by utilizing modulo Fourier invariances. Set <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {E}$</tex-math></inline-formula> can be estimated with short running time via the DNN, and support <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {T}$</tex-math></inline-formula> can be determined from the DNN output rather than from the full index set by applying hard thresholding to <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {E}$</tex-math></inline-formula>. Thus, the DNN-based extended support estimation improves the reconstruction performance of the signal with a low complexity burden dependent on <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$</tex-math></inline-formula>. Numerical results verify that the proposed scheme has a superior performance with lower complexity compared to local search-based greedy sparse phase retrieval and a state-of-the-art variant of the Fienup method.
Recent Results from Milagro and Prospects for HAWC

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory is a new experiment for observing 50 GeV to 100 TeV photons from high energy gamma ray sources. The experiment is under construction at Sierra Negra, Mexico and will be comprised of 300 large water tanks instrumenting an area of 150 x 150 meters. HAWC is the next generation of the Milagro experiment which measured multi-TeV emission from the Galactic plane resolving sources and measuring diffuse emission. HAWC will feature approximately 15 times the sensitivity of the Milagro experiment and will be used to measure and constrain particle acceleration in the Galaxy.
Lung Cancer Detection using CT SCAN Images

Detection of pulmonary nodules has a crucial effect on the diagnosis of lung cancer, but the detection is a nontrivial task, not only because the appearance of pulmonary nodules varies in a wide range, but also because nodule densities have low contrast against adjacent vessel segments and other lung tissues. Computed tomography (CT) has been shown as the most popular imaging modality for nodule detection, because it has the ability to provide reliable image textures for the detection of small nodules. The development of lung nodule CADe systems using CT imaging modality has made good progress over the past decade. Generally, such CADe systems consist of three stages: 1) image pre-processing, 2) initial nodule candidates (INCs) identification, and 3) false positive (FP) reduction of the INCs with preservation of the true positives (TPs). In the pre-processing stage, the system aims to largely reduce the search space to the lungs, where a segmentation of the lungs from the entire chest volume is usually required. Because of the high image contrast between lung fields and the surrounding body tissue, image intensity-based simple thresholding is effective, and is currently the most commonly used technique for lung segmentation. This paper proposes an adaptive solution to mitigate the difficulty of thresholding-based method in lung segmentation. Sufficient detection power for nodule candidates is inevitably accompanied by many (obvious) FPs. A rule-based filtering operation is often employed to cheaply and drastically reduce the number of obvious FPs, so that their influence on the computationally more expensive learning process can be eliminated. In general, FP reduction using machine learning has been extensively studied in the literature. Compared with unsupervised learning that aims to find hidden structures in unlabelled data, supervised learning, which aims to infer a function from labelled training data, is more frequently used to design a CADe system. Compared with the existing approaches, the morphology based lung cancer detection can be an alternative with either comparable detection performance and less computational cost, or comparable cost and better detection performance.
Energy Spectrum of the Electrons in Graphene

In this bachelor thesis we investigate the energy spectrum of the quasi-free electrons in graphene. This is done in two ways; by diagonalizing the Hamiltonian of the Hubbard model, but also by deriving an effective low-energy field theory. If only low-energy excitations are considered, one can see that these electrons obey a linear dispersion relation. At the end of this thesis, when we calculate the energy of the electrons in an external magnetic field, we find that the magnetic field quantizes the energy values.
Design and evaluation of a wasp-inspired steerable needle

Flexible steerable needles can follow complex curved paths inside the human body. In a previous work, we developed a multiple-part steerable needle prototype with a diameter of 1.2 mm, inspired by the ovipositor of parasitoid wasps. The needle consisted of seven nickel-titanium longitudinally aligned wires held together at the tip by a cylindrical ring with seven holes. The steerability of the needle was evaluated in a gelatin phantom and was found to be lower than that of other steerable needles in the literature. One possible cause of this limited steerability is that during motion the wires tend to separate from each other (i.e., bifurcate). Our aim here was to reduce bifurcation in order to increase the steering curvature of the needle, while keeping the diameter around 1.5 mm, and thus compatible with needles used in medical practice. To achieve that, we changed the shape of the ring from cylindrical to conical. We evaluated the steering performance in gelatin, using the conical ring in two configurations: (1) with the apex of the cone towards the needle tip, so that the wires converge, thus expected to reduce bifurcation, (2) with the apex of the cone placed towards the needle base, so that the wires diverge, thus expected to magnify bifurcation. Results showed that the diverging ring generated larger steering curvatures. We can conclude that reducing the bifurcation of the wires is not enough for increasing the steering curvature and that inducing this same phenomenon instead could actually lead to higher curvatures.
Tube support plate clogging up of French PWR steam generators

Between 2004 and 2006, three primary-to-secondary leaks occurred at the Cruas NPP: unit 1 in February 2004 and unit 4 in November 2005 and February 2006. The three leaks were all the result of a circumferential crack in the tube at the location where the tube passes through the uppermost tube support plate (TSP #8). In addition to crack causes, this paper describes the main results of the safety assessment carried out by IRSN, such as the increase in stresses on TSPs during transients, the risk of water level oscillations and the water mass reduction. 1 ANOMALIES OBSERVED Continuous monitoring of primary-to-secondary leaks led to three shutdowns at the Cruas NPP: unit 1 in February 2004 and unit 4 in November 2005 and February 2006. Analyses carried out by EDF, further to the last two events, resulted in them being attributed to high cycle fatigue of steam generator tubes due to flow-induced vibration. The results of in situ examination initiated by the Cruas NPP operator showed that the flow holes of the uppermost Tube Support Plates (TSPs) were partially or completely blocked by corrosion products. This phenomenon is referred to in this paper as TSP “clogging-up” and it was considered potentially generic for EDF NPP fleet. For the Cruas leakages, it was established that the association of TSP clogging-up and the specificity of the Cruas steam generator (central area in the tube bundle where no tubes are installed) were responsible for a significant increase in the velocity of the secondary fluid in the tube bundle central area. The high velocity of the fluid in this region increases the risk of fluidelastic instability for the tubes. Based on this preliminary analysis, EDF has implemented preventive measures (stabilizing and plugging of tubes in the central area of the tube bundle deemed sensitive to high cycle fatigue risk). Pic. # 1: Location of the TSP and presentation of quadrifoil openings Tubes support plate TSP #8 TSP #7 TSP #6 TSP #5 TSP #4 TSP #3 TSP #2 TSP #1 Tube bundle Tubes Quadrifoil opening Anti-vibration bar
A Study on Future Substitutes of Leather

As we all are aware of that Leather is an ancient, durable material and most demanded because of its beauty and how it continues to look better and better after years of use. Leather is manufactured through derived skin of dead animals, most often made from cow hide. The process used to tan the skins, is treated with chemicals, many of them pollute land, water and air and can be harmful to workers. knowing this, should be choose to use an alternative or substitute for leather. For this we can go through leather history, its present manufacturing techniques, innovations in leather and what can be best possible substitute for leather in future in this particular research.
Assessment of Serosurveys for H 5 N 1

Background. It has been suggested that the true case-fatality rate of human H5N1 influenza infection is appreciably less than the figure of approximately 60% that is based on official World Health Organization (WHO)– confirmed case reports because asymptomatic cases may have been missed. A number of seroepidemiologic studies have been conducted in an attempt to identify such missed cases. Methods. We conducted a comprehensive literature review of all English-language H5N1 human serology surveys with detailed attention to laboratory methodology used (including whether investigators used criteria set by the WHO to define positive cases), laboratory controls used, and the clades/genotypes involved. Results. Twenty-nine studies were included in the analysis. Few reported using unexposed control groups and one-third did not apply WHO criteria. Of studies that used WHO criteria, only 4 found any seropositive results to clades/genotypes of H5N1 that are currently circulating. No studies reported seropositive results to the clade 2/genotype Z viruses that have spread throughout Eurasia and Africa. Conclusions. This review suggests that the frequency of positive H5 serology results is likely to be low; therefore, it is essential that future studies adhere to WHO criteria and include unexposed controls in their laboratory assays to limit the likelihood of false-positive results.
The cosmological constant problem or how the quantum vacuum drives the slow accelerating expansion of the Universe

I argue that a solution to the cosmological constant problem is to assume that the expectation value of the quantum vacuum stress-energy tensor is proportional to the metric tensor with a negative energy density and positive pressure. This assumption is confirmed by an explicit calculation of the vacuum expectation for the free electromagnetic and Dirac fields of quantum electrodynamics. As a consequence the metric of the universe might correspond to a FLRW with accelerating expansion only after averaging over large scales, but at small scales it gives rise to an extremely rapid fluctuation between expansion and contraction in every small region, with different phases in different points. The vacuum stress-energy tensor has fluctuations that lead to short periods of expansion. A calculation with plausible approximations leads to an estimate of the accelerating expansion that fits in the observed value.
DETERMINANTS OF GREEK FDI OUTFLOWS IN THE BALKAN REGION THE CASE OF GREEK ENTREPRENEURS IN BULGARIA

Greece and Bulgaria have had trade relations for centuries, mainly because of their geographic proximity, cultural closeness, similar Balkan business mentality, and common religious beliefs. The people of Bulgaria have always admired Greek traders. That the two countries were historically related in the Byzantine and Ottoman empires brought them even closer. The communist regime and the cold war between Eastern Europe and Western countries deactivated relations, but after the fall of communism, trade recovered significantly, and the two countries are currently on very good terms. There are many more reasons why Greek small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and large firms are so economically active and welcome in Bulgaria, as well as in other southeast European countries (SEECs) such as Albania, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Serbia and Montenegro, and Romania. Greece is a member of the European Union and the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).