Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Bilinear Programming Approach for Multiagent Planning

Multiagent planning and coordination problems are common and known to be computationally hard. We show that a wide range of two-agent problems can be formulated as bilinear programs. We present a successive approximation algorithm that significantly outperforms the coverage set algorithm, which is the state-of-the-art method for this class of multiagent problems. Because the algorithm is formulated for bilinear programs, it is more general and simpler to implement. The new algorithm can be terminated at any time and-unlike the coverage set algorithm-it facilitates the derivation of a useful online performance bound. It is also much more efficient, on average reducing the computation time of the optimal solution by about four orders of magnitude. Finally, we introduce an automatic dimensionality reduction method that improves the effectiveness of the algorithm, extending its applicability to new domains and providing a new way to analyze a subclass of bilinear programs.
Reduced Striatal Responses to Reward Prediction Errors in Older Compared with Younger Adults

We examined whether older adults differ from younger adults in how they learn from rewarding and aversive outcomes. Human participants were asked to either learn to choose actions that lead to monetary reward or learn to avoid actions that lead to monetary losses. To examine age differences in the neurophysiological mechanisms of learning, we applied a combination of computational modeling and fMRI. Behavioral results showed age-related impairments in learning from reward but not in learning from monetary losses. Consistent with these results, we observed age-related reductions in BOLD activity during learning from reward in the ventromedial PFC. Furthermore, the model-based fMRI analysis revealed a reduced responsivity of the ventral striatum to reward prediction errors during learning in older than younger adults. This age-related reduction in striatal sensitivity to reward prediction errors may result from a decline in phasic dopaminergic learning signals in the elderly.
The Gender Gap in Second Language Acquisition: Gender Differences in the Acquisition of Dutch among Immigrants from 88 Countries with 49 Mother Tongues

Gender differences were analyzed across countries of origin and continents, and across mother tongues and language families, using a large-scale database, containing information on 27,119 adult learners of Dutch as a second language. Female learners consistently outperformed male learners in speaking and writing proficiency in Dutch as a second language. This gender gap remained remarkably robust and constant when other learner characteristics were taken into account, such as education, age of arrival, length of residence and hours studying Dutch. For reading and listening skills in Dutch, no gender gap was found. In addition, we found a general gender by education effect for all four language skills in Dutch for speaking, writing, reading, and listening. Female language learners turned out to profit more from higher educational training than male learners do in adult second language acquisition. These findings do not seem to match nurture-oriented explanatory frameworks based for instance on a human capital approach or gender-specific acculturation processes. Rather, they seem to corroborate a nature-based, gene-environment correlational framework in which language proficiency being a genetically-influenced ability interacting with environmental factors such as motivation, orientation, education, and learner strategies that still mediate between endowment and acquiring language proficiency at an adult stage.
High Density Lipoprotein Particle Size Distribution in Cord Blood

ABSTRACT. Cord blood from 73 full term healthy newborns and blood from adults were analysed for the protein content of high density lipoprotein subclasses separated by gradient gel electrophoresis. Cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations of very low (VLDL), low (LDL) and high (HDL) density lipoproteins were also analysed and newborns had lower concentrations of cholesterol and triglycerides in VLDL, LDL and HDL (p < 0.001) than adults. The HDL3c subclass, comprising the smallest particles of the HDL particle spectrum, was the major component for newborns and the minor one for adults and was the only lipoprotein fraction with a higher concentration in cord than in adult blood. No sex differences were present for any of the lipoprotein levels of the newborns. Serum cholesterol concentrations were positively correlated to HDL2br= 0.49, p < 0.001) and HD2a levels (0.42, p < 0.001), correlations confined to the cholesterol contents of HDL (r= 0.72 and r= 0.67 respectively, both p < 0.001). Serum triglycerides were inversely correlated to HD2b and HD2a, levels in male newborns only (r= 0.38 and r= 0.34 respectively, both p < 0.05). Irrespective of sex, gestational age and birthweight the newborns had 2 typical HDL subclass distributions, characterized by high or low levels of HDL2b and HDL2a. The newborns with high HDL2b and HDL2a levels also had low VLDL lipid levels and high HDL cholesterol concentrations.
Agricultural Risk Analysis in the Fars Province of Iran: A Risk-Programming Approach

Mathematical programming methods are widely used for modelling farmers' decision-making and for economic analysis in agriculture. In this study, a MOTAD risk-programming model is applied to study the effects of risk on cropping pattern and farmers' income in Ramjerd and Sarpaniran districts near Marvdasht in the Fars Province of Iran. Primary data from 194 farmers randomly selected from 31 villages are used in this study. The results indicate that variability of crops gross margins or outcomes has a significant effect on cropping pattern but it varies over different farmers and regions with various conditions. Moreover, it was found that farm plans with more number of crops have a lower return but high degree of certainty. Based on this research, farmers' risk attitudes and expectations and using more sophisticated methods for generating time series data with dependency are some important issues which should be considered in the future studies.
A preganglionic autonomic nucleus in the dorsal gray commissure of the lumbar spinal cord of the rat

The distribution in the spinal cord of the rat of preganglionic neurons sending fibers into the hypogastric nerve was determined with the retrograde transport of horseradish peroxidase (HRP). Labeled cells were present in the intermediate gray matter of spinal segments L1‐L2. The majority (81%) of HRP‐filled cells formed a continuous column along the midline in the dorsal gray commissure. This cell column was termed the dorsal commissural nucleus (DCN). The remainder of HRP‐labeled cells were present bilaterally in the middle and lateral regions of the intermediate gray; the majority of the latter cells were located along the lateral border of the intermediate gray.
The Effect of Sputtering Target Density on the Crystal and Electronic Structure of Epitaxial BaTiO3 Thin Films

Barium titanate (BaTiO3) is a promising material for silicon-integrated photonics due to its large electro-optical coefficients, low loss, high refractive index, and fast response speed. Several deposition methods have been employed to synthesize BaTiO3 films. Magnetron sputtering is one of these methods, which offers specific advantages for growing large-scale films. However, there is a scarcity of studies investigating the effect of sputtering target density on the quality of BaTiO3 films. Therefore, this study aims to uncover the effect of sputtering targets on the crystal and electronic structures of epitaxial BaTiO3 thin films. Two BaTiO3 ceramic targets were sintered at different densities by altering the sintering temperatures. The crystal structure and chemical composition of the targets were then characterized using X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. Subsequently, BaTiO3 epitaxial films were grown by magnetron sputtering using these two targets. The crystal and electronic structures of the BaTiO3 films were analyzed using high-resolution X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoemission spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, and spectroscopic ellipsometry. Notably, the BaTiO3 films grown with high-density targets show superior quality but contain oxygen vacancies, whereas those films synthesized with low-density targets display high surface roughness. These findings provide insights into the effect of sputtering target density on the crystal and electronic structures of epitaxial BaTiO3 thin films.
NLRP3-Inflammasome Activating DAMPs Stimulate an Inflammatory Response in Glia in the Absence of Priming Which Contributes to Brain Inflammation after Injury

Inflammation in the absence of infection (sterile inflammation) contributes to acute injury and chronic disease. Cerebral ischemia is a devastating condition in which the primary injury is caused by reduced blood supply and is therefore sterile. The cytokine interleukin-1β (IL-1β) is a key contributor to ischemic brain injury and central inflammatory responses. The release of IL-1β is regulated by the protease caspase-1, and its activating complex, the inflammasome. Of the known inflammasomes the best characterized, and one that is perceived to sense sterile injury is formed by a pattern recognition receptor called NOD-like receptor pyrin domain containing three (NLRP3). A key feature of NLRP3-inflammasome dependent responses in vitro in macrophages is the requirement of an initial priming stimulus by a pathogen (PAMP), or damage associated molecular pattern (DAMP) respectively. We sought to determine the inflammatory responses of NLRP3-activating DAMPs on brain derived mixed glial cells in the absence of an initial priming stimulus in vitro. In cultured mouse mixed glia the DAMPs ATP, monosodium urate, and calcium pyrophosphate dehydrate crystals had no effect on the expression of IL-1α or IL-1β and induced release only when the cells were primed with a PAMP. In the absence of priming, these DAMPs did however induce inflammation via the production of IL-6 and CXCL1, and the release of the lysosomal protease cathepsin B. Furthermore, the acute phase protein serum amyloid A (SAA) acted as a priming stimulus on glial cells resulting in levels of IL-1 expression comparable to those induced by the PAMP lipopolysaccharide. In vivo, after cerebral ischemia, IL-1 production contributed to increased IL-6 and CXCL1 since these cytokines were profoundly reduced in the ischemic hemispheres from IL-1α/β double KO mice, although injury-induced cytokine responses were not abolished. Thus, DAMPs augment brain inflammation by directly stimulating production of glial derived inflammatory mediators. This is markedly enhanced by DAMP-induced IL-1-release-dependent responses that require a sterile endogenous priming stimulus such as SAA.
Proceedings of Fast '03: 2nd Usenix Conference on File and Storage Technologies 2nd Usenix Conference on File and Storage Technologies Arc: a Self-tuning, Low Overhead Replacement Cache

— We consider the problem of cache management in a demand paging scenario with uniform page sizes. We propose a new cache management policy, namely, Adaptive Replacement Cache (ARC), that has several advantages. In response to evolving and changing access patterns, ARC dynamically, adaptively, and continually balances between the recency and frequency components in an online and self-tuning fashion. The policy ARC uses a learning rule to adaptively and continually revise its assumptions about the workload. The policy ARC is empirically universal, that is, it empirically performs as well as a certain fixed replacement policy– even when the latter uses the best workload-specific tuning parameter that was selected in an offline fashion. Consequently , ARC works uniformly well across varied workloads and cache sizes without any need for workload specific a priori knowledge or tuning. Various policies such as LRU-2, 2Q, LRFU, and LIRS require user-defined parameters, and, unfortunately, no single choice works uniformly well across different workloads and cache sizes. The policy ARC is simple-to-implement and, like LRU, has constant complexity per request. In comparison, policies LRU-2 and LRFU both require logarithmic time complexity in the cache size. The policy ARC is scan-resistant: it allows one-time sequential requests to pass through without polluting the cache. On ¢ £ real-life traces drawn from numerous domains, ARC leads to substantial performance gains over LRU for a wide range of cache sizes. For example, for a SPC1 like synthetic benchmark, at 4GB cache, LRU delivers a hit ratio of ¥ ¦ ¨ ¥ while ARC achieves a hit ratio of ¢ .
High-Throughput Sequencing Analyses of XX Genital Ridges Lacking FOXL2 Reveal DMRT1 Up-Regulation Before SOX9 Expression During the Sex-Reversal Process in Goats1

ABSTRACT FOXL2 loss of function in goats leads to the early transdifferentiation of ovaries into testes, then to the full sex reversal of XX homozygous mutants. By contrast, Foxl2 loss of function in mice induces an arrest of follicle formation after birth, followed by complete female sterility. In order to understand the molecular role of FOXL2 during ovarian differentiation in the goat species, putative FOXL2 target genes were determined at the earliest stage of gonadal sex-specific differentiation by comparing the mRNA profiles of XX gonads expressing the FOXL2 protein or not. Of these 163 deregulated genes, around two-thirds corresponded to testicular genes that were up-regulated when FOXL2 was absent, and only 19 represented female-associated genes, down-regulated in the absence of FOXL2. FOXL2 should therefore be viewed as an antitestis gene rather than as a female-promoting gene. In particular, the key testis-determining gene DMRT1 was found to be up-regulated ahead of SOX9, thus suggesting in goats that SOX9 primary up-regulation may require DMRT1. Overall, our results equated to FOXL2 being an antitestis gene, allowing us to propose an alternative model for the sex-determination process in goats that differs slightly from that demonstrated in mice.
Planktonic foraminiferids, biostratigraphy and the diachronous nature of the lowermost Danian Cerithium Limestone at Stevns Klint, Denmark.

New material comprising more than four thousand specimens of planktonic foraminifers from the lowermost Danian Cerithium Limestone at Stevns Klint, Denmark, reveal significant lateral biostratigraphic differences along the 14 km long cliff. The Cerithium Limestone at Rødvig (Korsnæb) in the southern part of Stevns Klint is dominated by foraminiferal assemblages indicative of the Parvularugoglobigerina eugubina Zone (Pα). This pattern changes laterally towards the north, where the P. eugubina Zone becomes gradually thinner. At the northernmost locality investigated, Holtug quarry, the Cerithium Limestone unit is characterised solely by assemblages of the succeeding Parasubbotina pseudobulloides Subzone (P1a). This indicates that the Cerithium Limestone is diachronous and becomes gradually younger from the southern part of Stevns Klint towards the northern part. The data indicate that a hiatus including all of the P. eugubina Zone is present at the Fish Clay – Cerithium Limestone transition in the northern part of the cliff, whereas such a hiatus cannot be demonstrated in the southern part.
Coefﬁcients and Fekete–Szegö Functional Estimations of Bi-Univalent Subclasses Based on Gegenbauer Polynomials

: Subclasses of analytic and bi-univalent functions have been extensively improved and utilized for estimating the Taylor–Maclaurin coefﬁcients and the Fekete–Szegö functional. In this paper, we consider a certain subclass of normalized analytic and bi-univalent functions. These functions have inverses that possess a bi-univalent analytic continuation to an open unit disk and are associated with orthogonal polynomials; namely, Gegenbauer polynomials that satisfy subordination conditions on the open unit disk. We use this subclass to derive new approximations for the second and third Taylor–Maclaurin coefﬁcients and the Fekete–Szegö functional. Furthermore, we discuss several new results that arise when we specialize the parameters used in our fundamental ﬁndings.
Secure Combinatorial Optimization Simulating DFS Tree-Based Variable Elimination

In general, Constraint Optimization Problems (COP) are NP-hard. Using variable elimination techniques [5, 13] COPs can be solved with computation that is exponential only in the induced-width of the constraint graph (given some order on the nodes), i.e. smaller than n. Orders on nodes allowing for some parallelism are offered by Depth First Search (DFS) trees of the constraint graph [3, 13]. Any arithmetic circuit can be compiled into a general secure multi-party computation where no participant learns anything except for the result [1, 8]. We show in [25] that a secure combinatorial problem solver must necessarily pick the result randomly among optimal solutions, to be really secure. We recently developed SMC [19], the first programming language that translates [1]’s theory into practice. SMC also supports constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs), but additional techniques were revealed needed to offer acceptably efficient support for COPs. In [24] we proposed arithmetic circuits for solving COPs but which are exponential in the number of variables, n, for any constraint graph. Here we show how to construct an arithmetic circuit with the complexity properties of DFS-based variable elimination, and that finds a random optimal solution for any COP. For forest constraint graphs, this leads to a linear cost secure solver. Developing an arithmetic circuit performing the operations of the dynamic programming step in variable elimiSignificant input was received from Benjamin Pflanz. nation proves to be quite straightforward and similar to previous work. We encountered a more interesting scientific challenge in choosing a secure scheme for the equivalent of the decoding step. The decoding step consists of traversing the dynamic programming data structures backward to detect the assignments that generate the winning alternative. What seems to be the straightforward arithmetic circuit translation reveals results before the end of the computation, compromising security. We show how to develop an arithmetic circuit comprising all processing until the end of the computation.
The Continuance of Online Social Networks: How to Keep People Using Facebook?

The ability to retain and lock members in competitive situations is an important concern of online social network sites. In this study, we proposed a research model to investigate the factors influencing users' continuance intention to use Facebook based on the expectation disconfirmation theory and the motivations of using Facebook. We examined the role of satisfaction in affecting users' continuance intention to use Facebook and the effects of four kinds of disconfirmations as the antecedents of satisfaction. An online survey was conducted and data from 125 respondents were analyzed using PLS. The results showed that satisfaction was important in determining users' continuance intention to use Facebook. Positive disconfirmations of maintaining offline contacts, entertainment and information seeking had significant impacts on users' satisfaction with Facebook. Implications for both researchers and practitioners are discussed.
Observing Branching Structure through Probabilistic Contexts

Probabilistic automata (PAs) constitute a general framework for modeling and analyzing discrete event systems that exhibit both nondeterministic and probabilistic behavior, such as distributed algorithms and network protocols. The behavior of PAs is commonly defined using schedulers (also called adversaries or strategies), which resolve all nondeterministic choices based on past history. From the resulting purely probabilistic structures, trace distributions can be extracted, whose intent is to capture the observable behavior of a PA. However, when PAs are composed via an (asynchronous) parallel composition operator, a global scheduler may establish strong correlations between the behavior of system components and, for example, resolve nondeterministic choices in one PA based on the outcome of probabilistic choices in the other. It is well known that, as a result of this, the (linear-time) trace distribution precongruence is not compositional for PAs. In his 1995 Ph.D. thesis, Segala has shown that the (branching-time) probabilistic simulation preorder is compositional for PAs. In this paper, we establish that the simulation preorder is, in fact, the coarsest refinement of the trace distribution preorder that is compositional. We prove our characterization result by providing (1) a context of a given PA ${\cal A}$, called the tester, which may announce the state of ${\cal A}$ to the outside world, and (2) a specific global scheduler, called the observer, which ensures that the state information that is announced is actually correct. Now when another PA ${\cal B}$ is composed with the tester, it may generate the same external behavior as the observer only when it is able to simulate ${\cal A}$ in the sense that whenever ${\cal A}$ goes to some state $s$, ${\cal B}$ can go to a corresponding state $u$, from which it may generate the same external behavior. Our result shows that probabilistic contexts together with global schedulers are able to exhibit the branching structure of PAs.