Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Note on Black-Box Separations for Indistinguishability Obfuscation

Mahmoody et al. (TCC 2016-A) showed that basing indistinguishability obfuscation (IO) on a wide range of primitives in a black-box way is as hard as basing public-key cryptography on one-way functions. The list included any primitive P that could be realized relative to random trapdoor permutation or degree-O(1) graded encoding oracle models in a secure way against computationally unbounded polynomial-query attackers. In this work, relying on the recent result of Brakerski, Brzuska, and Fleischhacker (ePrint 2016/226) in which they ruled out statistically secure approximately correct IO, we show that there is no fully black-box constructions of IO from any of the primitives listed above, assuming the existence of one-way functions and NP 6⊆ coAM. At a technical level, we provide an alternative lemma to the Borel-Cantelli lemma that is useful for deriving black-box separations. In particular, using this lemma we show that attacks in idealized models that succeed with only a constant advantage over the trivial bound are indeed sufficient for deriving fully black-box separations from primitives that exist in such idealized models unconditionally.
A Case of Cerebral Vasculitis Associated with Ulcerative Colitis

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic, debilitating condition characterized by inflammation of the colonic mucosa. It is regarded as a systemic inflammatory disorder that can affect a number of organ systems. Central nervous system disease associated with UC is a rare sequela of inflammatory bowel disease, occurring in less than 5% of cases. These manifestations include arterial and venous thrombosis, leukoencephalitis, seizures, and vasculitis. We present a case of a 61-year-old female with a two-year history of well-controlled ulcerative colitis, who developed altered mental status and weakness. On brain imaging, she was found to have cerebral lesions which were biopsied. Histopathology subsequently revealed coagulative necrosis and inflammation characteristic of vasculitis. Rheumatology serologies were negative, and the patient was started on steroids that dramatically improved her neurological function, with no residual deficits, and led to resolution of the brain lesions.
Parental Influences on Postsecondary Decision-Making: Evidence from a Text Messaging Experiment

A growing body of research points to the importance of increasing parental engagement in their children’s education. Yet, little research has investigated whether prompting parents to be more involved in the college process leads to improved student outcomes. We investigate, through a large-scale experiment, whether providing both students and their parents with personalized information about tasks students need to complete in order to enroll in college leads to improved college enrollment outcomes relative to providing information to students only. We utilize text messaging as a vehicle for providing information and one-on-one college advising to students and parents. Across treatment arms, the text outreach increased on-time college enrollment by a statistically significant 3.1 percentage points. We do not find compelling evidence that texting both parents and students increased the efficacy of the outreach relative to just texting students. We discuss this result in the context of the broader parental engagement literature.
Issuer Quality and Corporate Bond Returns

Changes in the pricing of credit risk disproportionately affect the debt financing costs faced by low credit quality firms. As a result, time-series variation in the average quality of debt issuers may be useful for forecasting excess corporate bond returns. We show that when issuance comes disproportionately from lower quality borrowers, future excess returns on high yield and investment grade bonds are low and often significantly negative. The degree of predictability is large in both economic and statistical terms, with univariate R2 statistics as high as 30% at a 3-year horizon. The results are difficult to reconcile with integrated-markets models in which the rationally determined price of risk fluctuates in a countercyclical fashion. The results can be partially explained by models in which shocks to intermediary capital or agency problems drive variation in required returns. Finally, we consider models in which investor over-extrapolation plays a role and find some evidence in favor of these models.
Morphological Processing as We Know It: An Analytical Review of Morphological Effects in Visual Word Identification

The last 40 years have witnessed a growing interest in the mechanisms underlying the visual identification of complex words. A large amount of experimental data has been amassed, but although a growing number of studies are proposing explicit theoretical models for their data, no comprehensive theory has gained substantial agreement among scholars in the field. We believe that this is due, at least in part, to the presence of several controversial pieces of evidence in the literature and, consequently, to the lack of a well-defined set of experimental facts that any theory should be able to explain. With this review, we aim to delineate the state of the art in the research on the visual identification of complex words. By reviewing major empirical evidences in a number of different paradigms such as lexical decision, word naming, and masked and unmasked priming, we were able to identify a series of effects that we judge as reliable or that were consistently replicated in different experiments, along with some more controversial data, which we have tried to resolve and explain. We concentrated on behavioral and electrophysiological studies on inflected, derived, and compound words, so as to span over all types of complex words. The outcome of this work is an analytical summary of well-established facts on the most relevant morphological issues, such as regularity, morpheme position coding, family size, semantic transparency, morpheme frequency, suffix allomorphy, and productivity, morphological entropy, and morpho-orthographic parsing. In discussing this set of benchmark effects, we have drawn some methodological considerations on why contrasting evidence might have emerged, and have tried to delineate a target list for the construction of a new all-inclusive model of the visual identification of morphologically complex words.
Sex Differences in Thermogenesis Structure Behavior and Contact within Huddles of Infant Mice

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is a thermogenic effector abundant in most mammalian infants. For multiparous species such as rats and mice, the interscapular BAT deposit provides both an emergency “thermal blanket” and a target for nestmates seeking warmth, thereby increasing the cohesiveness of huddling groups. Sex differences in BAT regulation and thermogenesis have been documented in a number of species, including mice (Mus musculus)–with females generally exhibiting relative upregulation of BAT. It is nonetheless unknown whether this difference affects the behavioral dynamics occurring within huddles of infant rodents. We investigated sex differences in BAT thermogenesis and its relation to contact while huddling in eight-day-old C57BL/6 mouse pups using infrared thermography, scoring of contact, and causal modeling of the relation between interscapular temperature relative to other pups in the huddle (TIS rel) and contacts while huddling. We found that females were warmer than their male siblings during cold challenge, under conditions both in which pups were isolated and in which pups could actively huddle in groups of six (3 male, 3 female). This difference garnered females significantly more contacts from other pups than males during cold-induced huddling. Granger analyses revealed a significant negative feedback relationship between contacts with males and TIS rel for females, and positive feedback between contacts with females and TIS rel for males, indicating that male pups drained heat from female siblings while huddling. Significant sex assortment nonetheless occurred, such that females made more contacts with other females than expected by chance, apparently outcompeting males for access to each other. These results provide further evidence of enhanced BAT thermogenesis in female mice. Slight differences in BAT can significantly structure the behavioral dynamics occurring in huddles, resulting in differences in the quantity and quality of contacts obtained by the individuals therein, creating sex differences in behavioral interactions beginning in early infancy.
Serum Protein KNG1, APOC3, and PON1 as Potential Biomarkers for Yin-Deficiency-Heat Syndrome

Yin-deficiency-heat (YDH) syndrome is a concept in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for describing subhealth status. However, there are few efficient diagnostic methods available for confirming YDH syndrome. To explore the novel method for diagnosing YDH syndrome, we applied iTRAQ to observe the serum protein profiles in YDH syndrome rats and confirmed protein levels by ELISA. A total of 92 differentially expressed proteins (63 upregulated proteins and 29 downregulated proteins), which were mainly involved in complement and coagulation cascades and glucose metabolism pathway, were identified by the proteomic experiments. Kininogen 1 (KNG1) was significantly increased (p < 0.0001), while apolipoprotein C-III (APOC3, p < 0.005) and paraoxonase 1 (PON1, p < 0.001) were significantly decreased in the serum of YDH syndrome rats. The combination of KNG1, APOC3, and PON1 constituted a diagnostic model with 100.0% sensitivity and 85.0% specificity. The results indicated that KNG1, APOC3, and PON1 may act as potential biomarkers for diagnosing YDH syndrome. KNG1 may regulate cytokines and chemokines release in YDH syndrome, and the low levels of PON1 and APOC3 may increase oxidative stress and lipolysis in YDH syndrome, respectively. Our work provides a novel method for YDH syndrome diagnosis and also provides valuable experimental basis to understand the molecular mechanism of YDH syndrome.
Rethinking assessment in a digital age: opportunities, challenges and risks

While it is frequently argued that assessment sits at the heart of the learning process, in practice assessment often remains narrowly focused on qualifications and reporting achievements, driven by institutional and societal aspirations and tensions such as accountability and economic well being. Yet, the need for assessment to account for the knowledge, skills, dispositions and attitudes necessary to equip young people for a changing and increasingly digital world is also increasingly acknowledged. Based on our recent research review, this article critically examines the role of technology enhanced assessment (or TEA). We argue that while technology offers many potentially creative opportunities for innovation and for rethinking assessment purposes, there are also numerous risks and challenges. In particular we highlight ethical concerns over social exclusion and new forms of digital dividedness and the increasing risks associated with big data and the rise of learning analytics. Finally, we note that much research and innovation happens in silos, where policy, research and practice on assessment, technology enhanced assessment and ethical and political concerns are not linked up. We conclude that there needs to be a much more wide-ranging, critical and nuanced discussion in educational and policy circles so that debates about the potential of technology can be linked to improving assessment in the light of the range of social and political challenges that such progress presents. We end with some critical questions for policy, practice and research communities, which we offer as a starting point for future thinking and ways forward.
Bipolar pulsed discharge in the Gas-liquid-solid mixture and its application for water treatment

Bipolar pulsed discharge in the Gas-liquid-solid mixture was studied using a packed bed plasma reactor with gas bubbling. Effect of different packings on the treatment performance was investigated. Light emission and the active species formed during the discharge process were measured. Experimental results proved that bipolar pulsed discharge in the packed bed reactor with gas bubbling had a good performance on dye water decolorization. Color removal rate increased with the applied voltage. Packings had great influence on the color removal of the wastewater. Emission spectrum of the bipolar pulsed discharge in water-air mixture had a wider range and higher intensity. In addition, the concentration of the active species generated in the bipolar pulsed discharge system was proved to be higher than other studies.
More archetypal usage scenarios for software search engines

The increasing availability of software in all kinds of repositories has renewed interest in software retrieval and software reuse. Not only has there been significant progress in developing various types of tools for searching for reusable artifacts, but also the integration of these tools into development environments has matured considerably. Yet, relatively little is known on why and how developers use these features and whether there are applications of the technology that go beyond classic reuse. Since we believe it is important for our fledgling community to understand how developers can benefit from software search systems, we present an initial collection of archetypal usage scenarios for them. These are derived from a survey of existing literature along with novel ideas from ongoing experiments with a state of the art software search engine.
Physical violence against children,a survey in 560 kindergarten children's parents/guardians

【Objective】 To understand the prevalence of physical violence against children by kindergarten children's parents/guardians;to explore the associations between relevant factors and physical violence by parents/guardians. 【Method】 Anonymous self-administered questionnaires were used to investigate parents' or guardians' physical violence against children in 2 kindergartens in a county of Hunan province. 【Results】 Of 560 parents/guardians,77.7% reported they had maltreated their children physically during the past 3 months before the survey,and about one-fifth of maltreatment was severe violence.Boys were more likely to experience physical violence by their parents/guardians,and the rates of physical violence were significantly higher among female parents/guardians,housewives/unemployed/retired parents/guardians,and parents/guardians with low level of education or with the experience of childhood physical maltreatment. 【Conclusion】 Physical violence against children of kindergarten by their parents/guardians is prevalent,and it is urgent to promote community-based activities about physical violence prevention among the parents/guardians.
Perspectives in Animal Phylogeny and Evolution

Preface 1. Reading the history of life 2. Animal phylogenetics 3. Metazoans enter the stage 4. Deep branches of the metazoan tree 5. The entangled phylogeny of the Bilateria 6. A gallery of major bilaterian clades 7. The life cycle and its evolution 8. The evolution of animal body architecture 9. The overall picture References Index
Pieces of the puzzle: ancient substructure in the Galactic disc

We search for signatures of past accretion events in the Milky Way in the recently published catalogue by Nordstrom et al., containing accurate spatial and kinematic information as well as metallicities for 13 240 nearby stars. To optimize our strategy, we use numerical simulations and characterize the properties of the debris from disrupted satellites. We find that stars with a common progenitor should show distinct correlations between their orbital parameters; in particular, between the apocentre (A) and pericentre (P), as well as their z-angular momentum (L-z). In the APL space, such stars are expected to cluster around regions of roughly constant eccentricity. The APL space for the Nordstrom catalogue exhibits a wealth of substructure, much of which can be linked to dynamical perturbations induced by spiral arms and the Galactic bar. However, our analysis also reveals a statistically significant excess of stars on orbits of common ( moderate) eccentricity, analogous to the pattern expected for merger debris. Besides being dynamically peculiar, the 274 stars in these substructures have very distinct metallicity and age distributions, providing further evidence of their extragalactic provenance. It is possible to identify three coherent groups among these stars, that, in all likelihood, correspond to the remains of disrupted satellites. The most metal-rich group ([Fe/H] >= -0.45 dex) has 120 stars distributed into two stellar populations of similar to 8 Gyr (33 per cent) and similar to 12 Gyr (67 per cent) of age. The second group with similar to -0.6 dex has 86 stars and shows evidence of three populations of 8 Gyr ( 15 per cent), 12 Gyr (36 per cent) and 16 Gyr (49 per cent) of age. Finally, the third group has 68 stars, with typical metallicity around -0.8 dex and a single age of similar to 14 Gyr. The identification of substantial amounts of debris in the Galactic disc whose origin can be traced back to more than one satellite galaxy, provides evidence of the hierarchical formation of the Milky Way. (Less)
Genetic diversity and population structure of Tasmanian devils, the largest marsupial carnivore

Genetic diversity and population structure were investigated across the core range of Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus laniarius; Dasyuridae), a wide‐ranging marsupial carnivore restricted to the island of Tasmania. Heterozygosity (0.386–0.467) and allelic diversity (2.7–3.3) were low in all subpopulations and allelic size ranges were small and almost continuous, consistent with a founder effect. Island effects and repeated periods of low population density may also have contributed to the low variation. Within continuous habitat, gene flow appears extensive up to 50 km (high assignment rates to source or close neighbour populations; nonsignificant values of pairwise FST), in agreement with movement data. At larger scales (150–250 km), gene flow is reduced (significant pairwise FST) but there is no evidence for isolation by distance. The most substantial genetic structuring was observed for comparisons spanning unsuitable habitat, implying limited dispersal of devils between the well‐connected, eastern populations and a smaller northwestern population. The genetic distinctiveness of the northwestern population was reflected in all analyses: unique alleles; multivariate analyses of gene frequency (multidimensional scaling, minimum spanning tree, nearest neighbour); high self‐assignment (95%); two distinct populations for Tasmania were detected in isolation by distance and in Bayesian model‐based clustering analyses. Marsupial carnivores appear to have stronger population subdivisions than their placental counterparts.
Perceptual load modulates conscious

Subjective visual experience depends not only on the spatial arrangement of the environment, but also on the temporal pattern of stimulation. For example, flickering and steady light presented in the same location evoke a very different perceptual experience due to their different temporal patterns. Here, we examined whether the availability of processing resources affected the temporal resolution of conscious flicker perceptionVthe ability to distinguish rapid changes in light intensity, detecting visual temporal patterns. Participants detected flicker in a fixated LED that flickered at or around the individually adjusted critical flicker fusion (CFF) threshold while searching for a target letter presented in the periphery either on its own (low perceptual load) or among other letters (high load). Physically identical flickering stimuli were more likely to be perceived as “fused” under high (compared to low) load in the peripheral letter search. Furthermore, psychophysical measures showed a reduction in flicker detection sensitivity under high perceptual load. These results could not be due to criterion or stimulus prioritization differences or to differential likelihood of forgetting the correct response under different load conditions. These findings demonstrate that perceptual load influences conscious perception of temporal patterns.
Antecedents of success in IS offshoring projects - Proposal for an empirical research study

The paper presents a research model and a measurement instrument for a research-in-progress study on the antecedents of success in IS offshoring projects. In this empirical-confirmatory study, we intend to analyse the impact of the constructs “offshoring expertise”, “trust in offshore service provider”, “project suitability”, “knowledge transfer”, and “liaison quality” on offshore project success. Constructs and indicators are derived from an extensive literature review. We plan to formulate a structural equation model and to test it using partial least squares (PLS) as an analysis technique. Our research model addresses the paucity of research that quantitatively examines offshoring success.
Does Trait Masculinity Relate to Expressing Toughness? The Effects of Masculinity Threat and Self-Affirmation in College Men

Men have higher morbidity and mortality rates than women across the life span. One potential explanation for this gap is greater pressure for men to express their masculine toughness. Situations that threaten masculinity often result in compensatory behaviors (e.g., binge drinking) geared toward proving toughness. The present research tested the hypothesis that threats to masculinity would lead men to behave in ways that express toughness to a greater extent if they were highly masculine, as measured by the Bem Sex-Role Inventory. Further, we anticipated that self-affirmation would ameliorate the compensatory responding exhibited by higher masculine men under threat. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 experimental cells in a 2 (Masculine Identity Threat: yes, no) × 2 (Self-Affirmation: yes, no) between-subjects factorial design. Results indicated that men expressed masculine toughness to a greater extent when facing a masculinity threat than when under no threat. Further, higher masculinity amplified the effect of threat in expressing toughness. Results also showed that the opportunity to self-affirm reduced expression of toughness among higher masculine men facing a masculinity threat. Theoretical contributions, implications, and future directions for this line of research are discussed.
Vulnerability to Depression: From Brain Neuroplasticity to Identification of Biomarkers

A stressful event increases the risk of developing depression later in life, but the possible predisposing factors remain unknown. Our study aims to characterize latent vulnerability traits underlying the development of depressive disorders in adult animals. Four weeks after a priming stressful event, serum corticosterone concentration returned to control values in all animals, whereas the other biological parameters returned to basal level in only 58% of animals (called nonvulnerable). In contrast, 42% of animals displayed persistent decreased serum and hippocampus BDNF concentrations, reduced hippocampal volume and neurogenesis, CA3 dendritic retraction and decrease in spine density, as well as amygdala neuron hypertrophy, constituting latent vulnerability traits to depression. In this group, called vulnerable, a subsequent mild stress evoked a rise of serum corticosterone levels and a “depressive” phenotype, in contrast to nonvulnerable animals. Intracerebroventricular administration of 7,8-dihydroxyflavone, a selective TrkB receptor agonist, dampened the development of the “depressive” phenotype. Our results thus characterize the presence of latent vulnerability traits that underlie the emergence of depression and identify the association of low BDNF with normal corticosterone serum concentrations as a predictive biomarker of vulnerability to depression.