413 research outputs found

    Kad Hari Raya

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    Kad ucapan hari raya yang diutuskan kepada Profesor Diraja Ungku Abdul Aziz daripada warga Hoon Thai Sdn. Bhd Tai Lin Lin, Lisa, P. C. Chow, P. A. Kok, John Loke, Jimmy Dion

    Overview of the 2019 open-source IR replicability challenge (OSIRRC 2019)

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    The Open-Source IR Replicability Challenge (OSIRRC 2019), organized as a workshop at SIGIR 2019, aims to improve the replicability of ad hoc retrieval experiments in information retrieval by gathering a community of researchers to jointly develop a common Docker specification and build Docker images that encapsulate a diversity of systems and retrieval models. We articulate the goals of this workshop and describe the "jig" that encodes the Docker specification. In total, 13 teams from around the world submitted 17 images, most of which were designed to produce retrieval runs for the TREC 2004 Robust Track test collection. This exercise demonstrates the feasibility of orchestrating large, community-based replication experiments with Docker technology. We envision OSIRRC becoming an ongoing community-wide effort to ensure experimental replicability and sustained progress on standard test collections.Web Information System

    Dockerizing indri for OSIRRC 2019

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    The Lemur Project was set up in 2000 by the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval at UMass Amherst. It is one of the longest lasting open-source projects in the information retrieval (IR) research community. Among the released tools is Indri, a popular search engine that was designed for language-modeling based approaches to IR. For OSIRRC 2019 we dockerized Indri and added support for the Robust04, Core18 and GOV2 test collections.Web Information System

    Biodegradation of tetracyanonickelate (TCN) by Klebsiella oxytoca

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    The cyanide-degrading bacterium Klebsiella oxytoca SYSU-011 was isolated from the waste water of a metal-plating plant. In this study, we found out that K. oxytoca was capable of utilizing tetracyanonickelate {K2[Ni(CN)4]}(TCN) as its sole nitrogen source. This organism could degrade TCN both aerobically (D.O.\uef\ubc100\uef\ubc) and anaerobically (D.O.\uef\ubc0\uef\ubc).The addition of ammonia (5 mM) in the growth medium would inhibit TCN-degrading. The TCN-degrading by-product, a greenish precipitate, was found in the spent medium and was identified as nickel cyanide [Ni(CN)2] by FT-IR spectroscopic studies. Ammonia was demonstrated as a product of the TCN-degrading process by K. oxytoca resting cells. The addition of glucose could greatly enhance the TCN-degradation. Nitrogenase was found to be the cyanide degrading enzyme in this organism. The activity of nitrogenase was inhibited by ammonia but could be induced by the addition of TCN or KCN

    Study of the effect of different coagulants on treatment efficiency of organic matters in raw water

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    This study studied the removal of organic compounds in raw water in water treatment plant B .The removal of organic compounds were by using coagulants and oxidants in jar test which was conducted with rapid mixing for 3 minutes, slow mixing for 20 minutes and measuring water quality of suspended water when tests were finished after 10 minutes. Empty flushing was caused unstable turbidity in raw water during the high turbidity periods. We used the oxidant (sodium hypochlorite) and two coagulants (PAC and FeCl3) in all tests. Results showed the concentration of organic compounds (TOC and AOC) decreased with coagulation, sedimentation, filtration and disinfection. The removal of NH3-N was ranging from 67.1% to 97.9%, and the removal rate of TOC was between 7.8% and 44.2%. The treatment efficiency of NH3-N was high obviously than TOC. Assimilable Organic Carbon (AOC) showed the amount of the bio-available organic matter in treated water. The sterilization of P17 and NOx strains were planted into the water samples to observe the amounts of bacteria and the conversion of concentration of biomass in water. In the water treatment plant B, the AOC-P17 was the highest percentage of AOC. Removal of AOC-P17 was found between 37.5% and 61.6%, it is showed the operation of water treatment was successful in reduction of organic compounds in raw water

    Abnormal Glucose Tolerance in Transfusion-Dependent Beta- Thalassemic Patients

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    OBJECTIVE- To study the prevalence of and risk factors for abnormal glucose tolerance in transfusion-dependent beta- thalassemic patients. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS- A total of 89 transfusion-dependent beta- thalassemic patients were interviewed. Diabetes was previously diagnosed in 14 of them . In the remaining 75 patients, 68 participated in an oral glucose tolerance test. Potential risk factors were identified using the independent t test, X2 test, and Fisher 's exact test. Logistic regression analysis was used to select the independent risk factors that best predicted abnormal glucose tolerance. A two-tailed P value of <0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. RESULTS- The prevalence of impaired glucose tolerance was 8.5% (7 of 82) and that of diabetes was 19. 5% (16 of 82). Presentation with diabetic ketoacidosis was 31.1% (5 of 16) . The risk factors for abnormal glucose tolerance found in transfusion- dependent beta-thalassemic patients were serum ferritin concentration and hepatitis C infection. CONCLUSIONS- The interaction of iron overload and hepatitis C infection worsened the prognosis of thalassemic patients. Aggressive iron-chelation therapy as well as prevention and treatment of hepatitis C infection should be mandatory in managing glucose homeostasis in transfusion-dependent beta- thalassemic patients in Taiwan

    Interconnection networks for parallel and distributed computing

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    Parallel computers are generally either shared-memory machines or distributed- memory machines. There are currently technological limitations on shared-memory architectures and so parallel computers utilizing a large number of processors tend tube distributed-memory machines. We are concerned solely with distributed-memory multiprocessors. In such machines, the dominant factor inhibiting faster global computations is inter-processor communication. Communication is dependent upon the topology of the interconnection network, the routing mechanism, the flow control policy, and the method of switching. We are concerned with issues relating to the topology of the interconnection network. The choice of how we connect processors in a distributed-memory multiprocessor is a fundamental design decision. There are numerous, often conflicting, considerations to bear in mind. However, there does not exist an interconnection network that is optimal on all counts and trade-offs have to be made. A multitude of interconnection networks have been proposed with each of these networks having some good (topological) properties and some not so good. Existing noteworthy networks include trees, fat-trees, meshes, cube-connected cycles, butterflies, Möbius cubes, hypercubes, augmented cubes, k-ary n-cubes, twisted cubes, n-star graphs, (n, k)-star graphs, alternating group graphs, de Bruijn networks, and bubble-sort graphs, to name but a few. We will mainly focus on k-ary n-cubes and (n, k)-star graphs in this thesis. Meanwhile, we propose a new interconnection network called augmented k-ary n- cubes. The following results are given in the thesis.1. Let k ≥ 4 be even and let n ≥ 2. Consider a faulty k-ary n-cube Q(^k_n) in which the number of node faults f(_n) and the number of link faults f(_e) are such that f(_n) + f(_e) ≤ 2n - 2. We prove that given any two healthy nodes s and e of Q(^k_n), there is a path from s to e of length at least k(^n) - 2f(_n) - 1 (resp. k(^n) - 2f(_n) - 2) if the nodes s and e have different (resp. the same) parities (the parity of a node Q(^k_n) in is the sum modulo 2 of the elements in the n-tuple over 0, 1, ∙∙∙ , k - 1 representing the node). Our result is optimal in the sense that there are pairs of nodes and fault configurations for which these bounds cannot be improved, and it answers questions recently posed by Yang, Tan and Hsu, and by Fu. Furthermore, we extend known results, obtained by Kim and Park, for the case when n = 2.2. We give precise solutions to problems posed by Wang, An, Pan, Wang and Qu and by Hsieh, Lin and Huang. In particular, we show that Q(^k_n) is bi-panconnected and edge-bipancyclic, when k ≥ 3 and n ≥ 2, and we also show that when k is odd, Q(^k_n) is m-panconnected, for m = (^n(k - 1) + 2k - 6’ / ‘_2), and (k -1) pancyclic (these bounds are optimal). We introduce a path-shortening technique, called progressive shortening, and strengthen existing results, showing that when paths are formed using progressive shortening then these paths can be efficiently constructed and used to solve a problem relating to the distributed simulation of linear arrays and cycles in a parallel machine whose interconnection network is Q(^k_n) even in the presence of a faulty processor.3. We define an interconnection network AQ(^k_n) which we call the augmented k-ary n-cube by extending a k-ary n-cube in a manner analogous to the existing extension of an n-dimensional hypercube to an n-dimensional augmented cube. We prove that the augmented k-ary n-cube Q(^k_n) has a number of attractive properties (in the context of parallel computing). For example, we show that the augmented k-ary n-cube Q(^k_n) - is a Cayley graph (and so is vertex-symmetric); has connectivity 4n - 2, and is such that we can build a set of 4n - 2 mutually disjoint paths joining any two distinct vertices so that the path of maximal length has length at most max{{n- l)k- (n-2), k + 7}; has diameter [(^k) / (_3)] + [(^k - 1) /( _3)], when n = 2; and has diameter at most (^k) / (_4) (n+ 1), for n ≥ 3 and k even, and at most [(^k)/ (_4) (n + 1) + (^n) / (_4), for n ^, for n ≥ 3 and k odd.4. We present an algorithm which given a source node and a set of n - 1 target nodes in the (n, k)-star graph S(_n,k) where all nodes are distinct, builds a collection of n - 1 node-disjoint paths, one from each target node to the source. The collection of paths output from the algorithm is such that each path has length at most 6k - 7, and the algorithm has time complexity O(k(^3)n(^4))

    Assessing the Carrying Capacity of the Kaoping River

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    The Kaoping River basin is the largest and the most intensively used river basin in Taiwan. It is 171-km long, drains a catchment of more than 3,250 km2. Based on the current water quality analysis, the Kaoping River is heavily polluted. Concern about the deteriorating condition of the river led the Government of Taiwan to amend the relevance legislations and strengthen the enforcement of the discharge regulations to effectively manage the river and control the pollution. Investigation results demonstrate that both point and non-point source pollutants are now the causes of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), nutrients, and pathogens in the river. The main water pollution sources are livestock wastewater from hog farms, municipal wastewater, industrial wastewater, non-point source (NPS) pollutants from agricultural areas, and leachate from riverbank landfills. The current daily BOD, NH3-N, and TP loadings to Kaoping River are 74,700, 39,400, and 5,100 kg, respectively. However, the calculated BOD, NH3-N, and TP carrying capacities are 27,700, 4,200, and 600 kg per day. To protect public health and improve the river water quality, the comprehensive management and construction strategy is proposed. The proposed strategy includes the following measures to meet the calculated river carrying capacity: (1) hog ban in the entire Kaoping River basin, (2) sewer system construction to achieve 30% of connection in the basin within 10 years, (3) removal of 10 riverbank landfills, and (4) enforcement of the industrial wastewater discharge standards. After the implementation of the proposed measures, the water quality should be significantly improved and the BOD and nutrient loadings can be reduced to below the calculated carrying capacities
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