Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptation of Service Protocols Using Process Algebra and On-the-Fly Reduction Techniques

Reuse and composition are increasingly advocated and put into practice in modern software engineering. However, the software entities that are to be reused to build an application, e.g., services, have seldom been developed to integrate and to cope with the application requirements. As a consequence, they present mismatch, which directly hampers their reusability and the possibility of composing them. Software Adaptation has become a hot topic as a nonintrusive solution to work mismatch out using corrective pieces named adaptors. However, adaptation is a complex issue, especially when behavioral interfaces, or conversations, are taken into account. In this paper, we present state-of-the-art techniques to generate adaptors given the description of reused entities' conversations and an abstract specification of the way mismatch can be solved. We use a process algebra to encode the adaptation problem, and propose on-the-fly exploration and reduction techniques to compute adaptor protocols. Our approach follows the model-driven engineering paradigm, applied to service-oriented computing as a representative field of composition-based software engineering. We take service description languages as inputs of the adaptation process and we implement adaptors as centralized service compositions, i.e., orchestrations. Our approach is completely tool supported.
A role for Cajal bodies in the final steps of U2 snRNP biogenesis

The biogenesis of Sm-type small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNPs) involves the export of newly transcribed small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs) to the cytoplasm, assembly with seven common proteins and modification at the 5′ and 3′ termini. Binding of snRNP-specific proteins and snRNA modification complete the maturation process. This is thought to occur after reimport of the core snRNPs into the nucleus. The heterotrimeric splicing factor SF3a converts a pre-mature 15S U2 snRNP into the functional 17S particle. To analyze cellular aspects of this process, we studied domains in SF3a60 and SF3a66 that are required for their localization to nuclear speckles. Regions in SF3a60 and SF3a66 that mediate the binding to SF3a120 are necessary for nuclear import of the proteins, suggesting that the SF3a heterotrimer forms in the cytoplasm. SF3a60 and SF3a66 deleted for zinc finger domains required for the incorporation of SF3a into the U2 snRNP are nuclear, indicating that the 17S U2 snRNP is assembled in the nucleus. However, these proteins show an aberrant nuclear distribution. Endogenous SF3a subunits colocalize with U2 snRNP in nuclear speckles, but cannot be detected in Cajal bodies, unlike core U2 snRNP components. By contrast, SF3a60 and SF3a66 lacking the zinc finger domains accumulate in Cajal bodies and are diffusely distributed in the cytoplasm, suggesting a function for Cajal bodies in the final maturation of the U2 snRNP.
SIMULTANEOUS MULTI-WAVELENGTH OBSERVATIONS OF MAGNETIC ACTIVITY IN ULTRACOOL DWARFS. III. X-RAY, RADIO, AND Hα ACTIVITY TRENDS IN M AND L DWARFS

As part of our on-going investigation into the magnetic field properties of ultracool dwarfs, we present simultaneous radio, X-ray, and Hα observations of three M9.5-L2.5 dwarfs (BRI 0021-0214, LSR 060230.4+391059, and 2MASS J052338.2−140302). We do not detect X-ray or radio emission from any of the three sources, despite previous detections of radio emission from BRI 0021 and 2M0523−14. Steady and variable Hα emission are detected from 2M0523−14 and BRI 0021, respectively, while no Hα emission is detected from LSR 0602+39. Overall, our survey of nine M8–L5 dwarfs doubles the number of ultracool dwarfs observed in X-rays, and triples the number of L dwarfs, providing in addition the deepest limits to date, log(LX/Lbol) ≲ −5. With this larger sample we find the first clear evidence for a substantial reduction in X-ray activity, by about two orders of magnitude, from mid-M to mid-L dwarfs. We find that the decline in Hα roughly follows LHα/Lbol ∝ 10−0.4×(SP-6) for SP ⩾ 6, where SP = 0 for spectral type M0. In the radio band, however, the luminosity remains relatively unchanged from M0 to L4, leading to a substantial increase in Lrad/Lbol. Our survey also provides the first comprehensive set of simultaneous radio/X-ray/Hα observations of ultracool dwarfs, and reveals a clear breakdown of the radio/X-ray correlation beyond spectral type M7, evolving smoothly from Lν,rad/LX ≈ 10−15.5 to ∼10−11.5 Hz−1 over the narrow spectral-type range M7–M9. This breakdown reflects the substantial reduction in X-ray activity beyond M7, but its physical origin remains unclear since, as evidenced by the uniform radio emission, there is no drop in the field dissipation and particle acceleration efficiency. Based on the results of our survey, we conclude that a further investigation of magnetic activity in ultracool dwarfs will benefit from a two-pronged approach: multi-rotation observations of nearby known active sources and a snapshot survey of a large sample within ∼50 pc to uncover rare flaring objects.
The effect of school resources on test scores in England

We analyze the effect of school expenditure on children's test scores at age 16 by means of an education production model. By using unique register data of English pupils, we exploit the availability of test scores across time, subjects and siblings to control for various sources of input omission and measurement error bias. We overcome one of the main criticisms against the value-added model by proposing a novel method to control for the endogeneity of the lagged test. We find evidence of a positive but small effect of per pupil expenditure on test scores.
Ecology of Subglacial Lake Vostok (Antarctica), Based on Metagenomic/Metatranscriptomic Analyses of Accretion Ice

Lake Vostok is the largest of the nearly 400 subglacial Antarctic lakes and has been continuously buried by glacial ice for 15 million years. Extreme cold, heat (from possible hydrothermal activity), pressure (from the overriding glacier) and dissolved oxygen (delivered by melting meteoric ice), in addition to limited nutrients and complete darkness, combine to produce one of the most extreme environments on Earth. Metagenomic/metatranscriptomic analyses of ice that accreted over a shallow embayment and over the southern main lake basin indicate the presence of thousands of species of organisms (94% Bacteria, 6% Eukarya, and two Archaea). The predominant bacterial sequences were closest to those from species of Firmicutes, Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria, while the predominant eukaryotic sequences were most similar to those from species of ascomycetous and basidiomycetous Fungi. Based on the sequence data, the lake appears to contain a mixture of autotrophs and heterotrophs capable of performing nitrogen fixation, nitrogen cycling, carbon fixation and nutrient recycling. Sequences closest to those of psychrophiles and thermophiles indicate a cold lake with possible hydrothermal activity. Sequences most similar to those from marine and aquatic species suggest the presence of marine and freshwater regions.
Iterative, MT-based Sentence Alignment of Parallel Texts

Recent research has shown that MT-based sentence alignment is a robust approach for noisy parallel texts. However, using Machine Translation for sentence alignment causes a chicken-and-egg problem: to train a corpus-based MT system, we need sentence-aligned data, and MT-based sentence alignment depends on an MT system. We describe a bootstrapping approach to sentence alignment that resolves this circular dependency by computing an initial alignment with length-based methods. Our evaluation shows that iterative MT-based sentence alignment significantly outperforms widespread alignment approaches on our evaluation set, without requiring any linguistic resources other than the to-be-aligned bitext.
Sarcomatoid (Spindle Cell) Carcinoma of Tongue: A Report of Two Cases

Sarcomatoid Carcinoma (SC) is an unusual and aggressive variant of squamous cell carcinoma, which frequently recurs and metastasizes; for this reason, the right diagnosis is very important. It is considered to be a biphasic tumor made up of cells from squamous and spindle cells carcinoma with a sarcomatous aspect, but of epithelial origin. The diagnosis often represents a clinical-pathological challenge where the study with immunohistochemical technique (IHC) is key to the histopathological diagnosis. The reported cases related to oral mucosa are limited. In this work we present two SC cases where the use of IHC allowed us to achieve a conclusive diagnosis.
Modeling The Population of File-Sharing Peer-to-Peer Networks With Branching Processes

In this paper we develop a simple but effective mathematical model to capture the file population dynamics of file-sharing peer-to-peer systems. Our modeling framework is based on the theory of branching processes. We describe analytically the behavior of the proposed model. The precise characterization of the necessary and sufficient conditions of population extinction or explosion is given based on the system parameters. We also present the expected ratio of active, passive and dead peers for the long-term regime. We validate and demonstrate our results in several simulation studies. Based on our results we propose a number of engineering guidelines to the design and control of file-sharing P2P systems.
MatrixFlow: Temporal Network Visual Analytics to Track Symptom Evolution during Disease Progression

OBJECTIVE To develop a visual analytic system to help medical professionals improve disease diagnosis by providing insights for understanding disease progression. METHODS We develop MatrixFlow, a visual analytic system that takes clinical event sequences of patients as input, constructs time-evolving networks and visualizes them as a temporal flow of matrices. MatrixFlow provides several interactive features for analysis: 1) one can sort the events based on the similarity in order to accentuate underlying cluster patterns among those events; 2) one can compare co-occurrence events over time and across cohorts through additional line graph visualization. RESULTS MatrixFlow is applied to visualize heart failure (HF) symptom events extracted from a large cohort of HF cases and controls (n=50,625), which allows medical experts to reach insights involving temporal patterns and clusters of interest, and compare cohorts in novel ways that may lead to improved disease diagnoses. CONCLUSIONS MatrixFlow is an interactive visual analytic system that allows users to quickly discover patterns in clinical event sequences. By unearthing the patterns hidden within and displaying them to medical experts, users become empowered to make decisions influenced by historical patterns.
A Longitudinal Study on Mathematics Teaching Efficacy: Which Factors (Un)Support the Development?.

Background:The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine prospective teachers’ mathematics teaching efficacy belief during their enrollment in teacher education program and at the end of their first year of teaching. In addition, the factor that enhance or inhibit participants’ efficacy belief and how these factors affect their mathematics teaching efficacy when they become inservice teacher were investigatedMaterial and methods:Mixed research design was used in which data were collected through longitudinal survey and electronic interviewsResults:Findings revealed that prospective teachers’ mathematics teaching efficacy beliefs increase during their enrollment in teacher education program but decrease during their first year of teaching. In addition classroom management, communicating with student, communicating with parents, mathematical knowledge for teaching, material usage, and textbook usage are the factors that enhance or inhibit teachers’ efficacy beliefs during their first year of teaching.Conclusions:The findings of this study give valuable information to teacher educators about the trends and development of efficacy beliefs over years and needs in teacher education programs in preparing beginning teacher to the profession
Dynamic Virtual Address Range Adjustment for Intra-Level Privilege Separation on ARM

Privilege separation has long been considered as a fundamental principle in software design to mitigate the potential damage of a security attack. Much effort has been given to develop various privilege separation schemes where a monolithic OS or hypervisor is divided into two privilege domains where one domain is logically more privileged than the other even if both run at an identical processor privilege level. We say that privilege separation is intra-level if it is implemented for software of a certain privilege level without any involvement or assistance of more privileged software. In general, realizing intra-level privilege separation mandates developers to rely on certain security features of the underlying hardware. So far, such development efforts however have been much less focused on ARM architectures than on the Intel x86 family mainly because the architectural provision of ARM security features was relatively insufficient. Unlike on x86, as a result, there exists no full intra-level scheme that can be universally applied to any privilege level on ARM. However, as malware and attacks increase against virtually every level of privileged software including an OS, a hypervisor and even the highest privileged software armored by TrustZone, we have been motivated to develop a technique, named as Hilps, to realize true intra-level privilege separation in all these levels of privileged software on ARM. Pivotal to the success of Hilps is the support from a new hardware feature of ARM’s latest 64-bit architecture, called TxSZ, which we manipulate to elastically adjust the accessible virtual address range for a program. In our experiments, we have applied Hilps to retrofit the core software mechanisms for privilege separation into existing system software and evaluated the performance of the resulting system. According to the experimental results, the system incurs on average just less than 1 % overhead; hence, we conclude that Hilps is quite promising for practical use in real deployments.
A FURTHER STEP TOWARDS A GRAZ CYCLE POWER PLANT FOR CO2 CAPTURE

Introduction of closed cycle gas turbines with their capability of retaining combustion generated CO2 can offer a valuable contribution to the Kyoto goal and to future power generation. Therefore research and development work at Graz University of Technology since the nineties has led to the Graz Cycle, a zero emission power cycle of highest efficiency. It burns fossil fuels with pure oxygen which enables the costeffective separation of the combustion CO2 by condensation. The efforts for the oxygen supply in an air separation plant are partly compensated by cycle efficiencies far higher than for modern combined cycle plants. At the ASME IGTI conference 2004 in Vienna a high steam content S-Graz Cycle power plant was presented showing efficiencies for syngas firing up to 70 % and a net efficiency of 57 % considering oxygen supply and CO2 compression. A first economic analysis gave CO2 mitigation costs of about 10 $/ton CO2 avoided. These favourable data induced the Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil ASA to order a techno-economic evaluation study of the Graz Cycle. In order to allow a benchmarking of the Graz Cycle and a comparison with other CO2 capture concepts, the assumptions of component efficiency and losses are modified to values agreed with Statoil. In this work the new assumptions made and the resulting power cycle for natural gas firing, which is the most likely fuel of a first demonstration plant, are presented. Further modifications of the cycle scheme are discussed and their potential is analyzed. Finally, an economic analysis of the Graz Cycle power plant is performed showing low CO2 mitigation costs in the range of 20 $/ton CO2 avoided, but also the strong dependence of the economics on the investment costs.
Regularized estimation in sparse high-dimensional time series models

Many scientific and economic problems involve the analysis of high-dimensional time series datasets. However, theoretical studies in high-dimensional statistics to date rely primarily on the assumption of independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) samples. In this work, we focus on stable Gaussian processes and investigate the theoretical properties of $\ell _1$-regularized estimates in two important statistical problems in the context of high-dimensional time series: (a) stochastic regression with serially correlated errors and (b) transition matrix estimation in vector autoregressive (VAR) models. We derive nonasymptotic upper bounds on the estimation errors of the regularized estimates and establish that consistent estimation under high-dimensional scaling is possible via $\ell_1$-regularization for a large class of stable processes under sparsity constraints. A key technical contribution of the work is to introduce a measure of stability for stationary processes using their spectral properties that provides insight into the effect of dependence on the accuracy of the regularized estimates. With this proposed stability measure, we establish some useful deviation bounds for dependent data, which can be used to study several important regularized estimates in a time series setting.
Coastal eutrophication and harmful algal blooms: Importance of atmospheric deposition and groundwater as “new” nitrogen and other nutrient sources

Nitrogen‐limited estuaries, shallow coastal waters, and continental shelf waters cover only 15% of the world’s ocean area, but account for nearly half the global oceanic primary production. This disproportionality is partly attributed to accelerating and geographically expanding anthropogenic N loading and eutrophication. Among accelerating N inputs, atmospheric deposition (AD) (as wet‐ and dryfall) and groundwater (GW) discharge are of considerable and growing importance. AD contributes from 300 to >1,000 mg N m−2 yr−1 to coastal waters as the biologically available forms NOx−, NH3/NH4+, and dissolved organic N. GW‐N inputs have not been extensively characterized and quantified but in certain regions may be comparable to AD. AD and GW can jointly account from 20 to >50% of total exogenous, or “new,” N loading and may uniquely mediate coastal eutrophication by bypassing estuarine filters of terrigenous N inputs. Direct AD and offshore GW inputs may impact harmful algal bloom dynamics of coastal and pelagic waters downwind of emissions and downstream of discharges. Example include North American Atlantic coastal waters, the Baltic and North Seas, the western Mediterranean, and the Yellow Sea. Impacts include enhanced N availability and alteration of stoichiometric ratios of nutrients (N, P, Si). Trace metal enrichment (e.g. Fe) in AD and GW may interact synergistically with N to stimulate coastal production. Growing urban, industrial, and agricultural AD and GW inputs to coastal and offshore waters may be linked to a purported expansion of harmful algal blooms.
Analysis of electrical and optical characteristics of InP/InGaAs avalanche photodiodes in linear regime by a new simulation environment

The linear characteristics of the InP/InGaAs avalanche detectors are modeled and numerically analyzed by developing a new TCAD-based simulation environment. Temperature dependency of the impact ionization coefficients in InP are fitted for 200 K to 300 K temperature range. Adjustment of the model parameters for the simulations of the dark current sources in InP and InGaAs materials is performed in the same temperature range. Optical constants of the InGaAs material used in the layer stack are fitted to account for the absorption in the material for a range of wavelengths between 0.9 and 1.7 μm. Dark current and I-V characteristics under illumination are simulated and analyzed. Impact of the operating temperature on responsivity, breakdown voltage and dark current are analyzed. Excess noise factor is also calculated. Process simulations of Zn diffusion into InP are included in the TCAD simulator and the impact of the real diffusion profiles on the diode characteristics are assessed. The dark current for the structure with diffused Zn p+ region decreases by a factor of 1.7 compared to the structure with box-like constant concentration p+ region extracted at operating temperature of 200 K at 90% of Vbr.
Perceptually Bistable Three-Dimensional Figures Evoke High Choice Probabilities in Cortical Area MT

The role of the primate middle temporal area (MT) in depth perception was examined by considering the trial-to-trial correlations between neuronal activity and reported depth sensations. A set of moving random dots portrayed a cylinder rotating about its principal axis. In this structure-from-motion stimulus, the direction of rotation is ambiguous and the resulting percept undergoes spontaneous fluctuations. The stimulus can be rendered unambiguous by the addition of binocular disparities. We trained monkeys to report the direction of rotation in a set of these stimuli, one of which had zero disparity. Many disparity-selective neurons in area MT are selective for the direction of rotation defined by disparity. Across repeated presentations of the ambiguous (zero-disparity) stimulus, there was a correlation between neuronal firing and the reported direction of rotation, as found by Bradley et al. (1998). Quantification of this effect using choice probabilities (Britten et al., 1996) allowed us to demonstrate that the correlation cannot be explained by eye movements, behavioral biases, or attention to spatial location. MT neurons therefore appear to be involved in the perceptual decision process. The mean choice probability (0.67) was substantially larger than that reported for MT neurons in a direction discrimination task (Britten et al., 1996). This implies that MT neurons make a different contribution to the two tasks. For the depth task, either the pool of neurons used is smaller or the correlation between neurons in the pool is larger.
Optimism and Pessimism in Games

This article considers the impact of ambiguity in strategic situations. It extends the existing literature on games with ambiguity‐averse players by allowing for optimistic responses to ambiguity. We use the CEU model of ambiguity with a class of capacities introduced by Jaffrray and Philippe (Mathematics of Operations Research 22 (1997), 165–85), which allows us to distinguish ambiguity from ambiguity‐attitude, and propose a new solution concept, equilibrium under ambiguity (EUA), for players who may be characterized by ambiguity‐preference. Applying EUA, we study comparative statics of changes in ambiguity‐attitude in games with strategic complements. This extends work in Eichberger and Kelsey (Journal of Economic Theory 106 (2002), 436–66) on the effects of increasing ambiguity if players are ambiguity averse.