Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient Methods for Model Performance Inference

A key challenge in neural architecture search (NAS) is quickly inferring the predictive performance of a broad spectrum of neural networks to discover statistically accurate and computationally efficient ones. We refer to this task as model performance inference (MPI). The current practice for efficient MPI is gradient-based methods that leverage the gradients of a network at initialization to infer its performance. However, existing gradient-based methods rely only on heuristic metrics and lack the necessary theoretical foundations to consolidate their designs. We propose GradSign, an accurate, simple, and flexible metric for model performance inference with theoretical insights. A key idea behind GradSign is a quantity Ψ to analyze the sample-wise optimization landscape of different networks. Theoretically, we show that Ψ is an upper bound for both the training and true population losses of a neural network under reasonable assumptions. However, it is computationally prohibitive to directly calculate Ψ for modern neural networks. To address this challenge, we design GradSign, an accurate and simple approximation of Ψ using the gradients of a network evaluated at a random initialization state. Evaluation on seven NAS benchmarks across three training datasets shows that GradSign generalizes well to real-world neural networks and consistently outperforms state-of-the-art gradient-based methods for MPI evaluated by Spearman’s ρ and Kendall’s Tau. Additionally, we have integrated GradSign into four existing NAS algorithms and show that the GradSign-assisted NAS algorithms outperform their vanilla counterparts by improving the accuracies of best-discovered networks by up to 0.3%, 1.1%, and 1.0% on three real-world tasks. Code is available at https://github.com/cmu-catalyst/GradSign
Love Thy Neighbor: Combining Two Neighboring Low-Resource Languages for Translation

Low-resource languages sometimes take on similar morphological and syntactic characteristics due to their geographic nearness and shared history. Two low-resource neighboring languages found in Peru, Quechua and Ashaninka, can be considered, at ﬁrst glance, two languages that are morphologically similar. In order to translate the two languages, various approaches have been taken. For Quechua, neural machine transfer-learning has been used along with byte-pair encoding. For Ashaninka, the language of the two with fewer resources, a ﬁnite-state transducer is used to transform Ashaninka texts and its dialects for machine translation use. We evaluate and compare two approaches by attempting to use newly-formed Ashaninka corpora for neural machine translation. Our experiments show that combining the two neighboring languages, while similar in morphology, word sharing, and geographical location, improves Ashaninka– Spanish translation but degrades Quechua–Spanish translations.
Upskilling Educators for Pandemic Teaching: Using Video Technology in Higher Education

The popularization of technology in the higher education environment has raised awareness about the importance of educators’ technological knowledge for teaching and learning. The Technological Pedagogy Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework explains the set of knowledge that educators need to be equipped with for enhanced pedagogies. This will help them to adapt to the expectations of their digital native students. From a training needs analysis conducted in a higher education institution in Malaysia, a two-day training was conducted for the instit ution’s lecturers to cultivate their use of video technology based on the TPACK framework. The training facilitators evaluated the lecturers’ performance, and the results of the evaluation were presented in this study. Results show that the training successfully closed the identified training gap, and enhanced the lecturers’ capabilit ies in using video technology for teaching and learning purposes across various disciplines.
Absence of orbital rotation in superconducting CeCu2Ge2

We address the recently proposed orbital transition scenario in heavy fermion compounds exhibiting two superconducting domes. Our method of choice is nonresonant inelastic x-ray scattering (NIXS) which probes charge densities and can be modeled quantitatively. Our NIXS results of CeCu2Ge2, a model system of this class of materials, are well described by considering the same sequence of orbitals at all temperatures, thus putting into question whether orbital transitions are related to the formation of the second superconducting dome. The discrepancy between experimental findings and prediction could be due to the lack of accuracy in the theoretical description of the 4f states.
POTENTIAL OF PPAR-ALPHA AGONIST IN ATTENUATED CARDIOPROTECTIVE EFFECTS OF ISCHEMIC POSTCONDITIONING IN DIABETIC RAT HEART

Background: It has been accounted for that infarct size reduction and cardioprotective effects of Ischemic Postconditioning (IPOC) have been abrogated in few pathological conditions including diabetes. Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor-Alpha (PPAR-Alpha) agonist is known to have cardio protective effect. Therefore, the current examination researched the possible role of PPAR-Alpha Agonist in Attenuated Cardio protective Effects of Ischemic Post conditioning in Diabetic Rat Heart. Materials and Methods: Alloxan Monohydrate (150/mg/kg/ i.p ) single dose were injected to rat produced diabetes. Isolated Langendorff’s perfused normal and diabetic rat hearts were subjected to global ischemia for 30 min followed by reperfusion for 120 min. Coronary effluent was scrutinize for Lactatedehydogenase (LDH) and Creatine Kinase (CK) release to evaluate the extent of cardiac injury. The evaluation of oxidative stress in heart by measuring TBARS that is Thiobarbituric Acid Reactive Substances, superoxide dismutase (SOD) generation and diminish form of glutathione. Result: In the current investigation, Ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) oxidative stress induced by increasing TBARS, superoxide anion generation and the low form of glutathione in normal and diabetic rat heart. Moreover, I/R induced myocardial injury, was evaluated in terms of increase in, LDH and CK release in coronary effluent, and reduction in coronary flow rate in normal and diabetic rat heart. The diabetic rat heart showed enhanced I/R induced myocardial injury with high extent of oxidative stress as compared with normal rat heart subjected to I/R Six episodes of IPOC afforded cardio protection against I/R induced myocardial injury in normal rat heart as assessed in terms of improvement of coronary flow rate and decrease of LDH, CK and oxidative stress. On other hand, IPOC mediated myocardial protection against I/R injury was nullified in diabetic rat heart. Fenofibrate (5µM), a selective agonist of PPAR alpha, its administration markedly restored the Cardio protective potential of IPOC in diabetic rat heart. Conclusion: The current investigation believes that, the high degree of oxidative stress produced in diabetic rat heart during reperfusion and resulting inactivation of PPAR alpha receptor might be responsible for termination the Cardio protective potential of IPOC against I/R induced myocardial injury.
Evidence of Sediment Sterility and Benthic Quality as Deleterious Consequences after the 2019 Oil Spill in Northeastern Brazil

- The worst environmental oil spill disaster ever recorded in any tropical coastal region globally happened in 2019; severely affecting one of Brazil most famous northeast tourist area South Pirangi Reef area in the state of Rio Grande do Norte (RN). The oil, a complex chemical mixture of hydrocarbon including heavy metals spilled on beaches, in estuaries, and reefs has spread between 50 cm and 1 m deep, occasionally sinking to the benthos. Death of oiled animals and Habitat destruction are acute and long-term consequences on ecological systems that rely on the now impacted environment for survival. Pirangi Reef which was subjected to the oil spill in October 2019, was previously studied in 2013 and 2014 with no spotting of oil patches in the 55 sediment or water samples at that time. After the oil spill, 25 new sites in the reef areas, sandy sediments and macroalgae substratum were sampled to compare temporal data after the disastrous event. Our findings show that more than 95% of the unconsolidated sediment samples, including some corals, had some evidence of oil in 2019 opposed to no evidence at all in 2013 and 2014. Data on benthic foraminiferal fauna show loss of 26 species including symbiotic species. Abstract- The worst environmental oil spill disaster ever recorded in any tropical coastal region globally happened in 2019; severely affecting one of Brazil most famous northeast tourist area South Pirangi Reef area in the state of Rio Grande do Norte (RN). The oil, a complex chemical mixture of hydrocarbon including heavy metals spilled on beaches, in estuaries, and reefs has spread between 50 cm and 1 m deep, occasionally sinking to the benthos. Death of oiled animals and Habitat destruction are acute and long-term consequences on ecological systems that rely on the now impacted environment for survival. Pirangi Reef which was subjected to the oil spill in October 2019, was previously studied in 2013 and 2014 with no spotting of oil patches in the 55 sediment or water samples at that time. After the oil spill, 25 new sites in the reef areas, sandy sediments and macroalgae substratum were sampled to compare temporal data after the disastrous event. Our findings show that more than 95% of the unconsolidated sediment samples, including some corals, had some evidence of oil in 2019 opposed to no evidence at all in 2013 and 2014. Data on benthic foraminiferal fauna show loss of 26 species including symbiotic species. We observe that 44 foraminiferal species were found in 2013 and 2014, and in 2019 after the oil spill, only 20 species survived the effects of the accident, which includes loss of habitat and dissolution by the resulting acidic sediment contaminants. In addition, we observe that 59% of all species did not tolerate the new environment and have disappeared, whereas 50% of the symbiotic species were also extinct. This decrease in number among benthic species after the oil spill (2019) shows that the scope of contamination is much farther beyond what was previously assumed.
International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE)

Received Jan 12, 2021 Revised Jun 9, 2022 Accepted Jul 4, 2022 Hand geometry has been a biometric trait that has attracted attention from several researchers. This stems from the fact that it is less intrusive and could be captured without contact with the acquisition device. Its application ranges from forensic examination to basic authentication use. However, restrictions in hand placement have proven to be one of its challenges. Users are either instructed to keep their fingers separate or closed during capture. Hence, this paper presents an approach to hand geometry using finger measurements that considers both closed and separate fingers. The system starts by cropping out the finger section of the hand and then resizing the cropped fingers. 20 distances were extracted from each finger in both separate and closed finger images. A comparison was made between Manhattan distance and Euclidean distance for features extraction. The support vector machine (SVM) was used for classification. The result showed a better result for Euclidean distance with a false acceptance ratio (FAR) of 0.6 and a false rejection ratio (FRR) of 1.2.
The Interaction of Context Constraints and Predictive Validity during Sentence Reading

Words are not processed in isolation, instead they are commonly embedded in phrases and sentences. The sentential context influences the perception and processing of a word. However, how this is achieved by brain processes and whether predictive mechanisms underlie this process remains a debated topic. To this end we employed an experimental paradigm in which we orthogonalized sentence context constraints and predictive validity, which was defined as the ratio of congruent to incongruent sentence endings within the experiment. While recording electroencephalography, participants read sentences with three levels of sentential context constraints (high, medium and low). Participants were also separated into two groups, which differed in their ratio of valid congruent to incongruent target words that could be predicted from the sentential context. For both groups we investigated modulations of alpha power before, and N400 amplitude modulations after target word onset. The results reveal that the N400 amplitude gradually decreases with higher context constraints. Contrary, alpha power is non-monotonically influenced, displaying the strongest decrease for high context constraints over frontal electrode sites, while alpha power between medium and low context constraints does not differ. This indicates that both neural correlates are influenced by the degree of context constraint but are not affected by changes in predictive validity. The results therefore suggest that both N400 and alpha power are not unequivocally linked to the predictability of a target word based on larger contextual information.
Nonlinear PDEs in ergodic control, Mean Field Games and prescribed curvature problems

This thesis is concerned with nonlinear elliptic PDEs and system of PDEs arising in various problems of stochastic control, differential games, specifically Mean Field Games, and differential geometry. It is divided in three parts. The first part is focused on stochastic ergodic control problems where both the state and the control space is R^d. The interest is in giving conditions on the fixed drift, the cost function and the Lagrangian function that are sufficient for synthesizing an optimal control of feedback type. In order to obtain such conditions, an approach that combines the Lyapunov method and the approximation of the problem on bounded sets with reflection of the diffusions at the boundary is proposed. A general framework is developed first, and then particular cases are considered, which show how Lyapunov functions can be constructed from the solutions of the approximating problems. The second part is devoted to the study of Mean Field Games, a recent theory which aims at modeling and analyzing complex decision processes involving a very large number of indistinguishable rational agents. The attention is given to existence results for the multi- population MFG system of PDEs with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions, that are obtained combining elliptic a-priori estimates and fixed point arguments. A model of segregation between human populations, inspired by ideas of T. Schelling is then proposed. The model, that fits into the theoretical framework developed in the thesis, is analyzed from the qualitative point of view using numerical finite-difference techniques. The phenomenon of segregation between the population densities arises in the numerical experiments on the particular mean field game model, assuming mild ethnocentric attitude of people as in the original model of Schelling. In the last part of the thesis some results on existence and uniqueness of solutions for the prescribed k-th principal curvature equation are presented. The Dirichlet problem for such a family of degenerate elliptic fully nonlinear partial differential equations is solved using the theory of Viscosity solutions, by implementing a version of the Perron method which involves semiconvex subsolutions; the restriction to this class of functions is sufficient for proving a Lipschitz estimate on the elliptic operator with respect to the gradient entry which is also required for obtaining the comparison principle. Existence and uniqueness are stated under general assumptions, and examples of data which satisfy the general hypotheses are provided.
Numerical Simulations on the Redistribution of Atmospheric Trace Chemicals Through Cloud Processes

Cloudwater not only dissolves atmospheric aerosols and trace-gases but also provides an alternate medium in which chemical transformations may proceed at rates many orders of magnitude greater than similar gas-phase reactions. The composition of cloudwater, in turn, affects the rates and equilibria of the aqueous-phase chemical reactions and ultimately controls the spectral composition of rain. A detailed microphysical model is used to study the distribution of solute among the various condensate forms throughout a representative cloud. The emphasis of this work is to analyze the effect of various microphysical processes on the variation of solute concentration among drops of different sizes as well among drops within a given size category. It is found that, for drops formed in the same air parcel, the solute concentration varies with drop size due to differential nucleation and condensation growth paths that are related to the initial size distribution of condensation nuclei. For drops of similar size, however, variations of solute content arise primarily through hydrodynamic interactions between drops. The distribution of solute is further perplexed because drops of different origin and growth history may coexist in the same air parcel following differential sedimentation or by mixing processes. Such results provide valuable insights into the mechanisms of precipitation scavenging and a basis for interpreting field data.
Convective response to a transient increase in dayside

Measurements with five of the northern hemisphere Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) radars have yielded a detailed temporal and spatial view of the evolution of a dayside convection enhancement, which we associate with a transient increase in dayside reconnection. The convection enhancement was located in and immediately poleward of the ionospheric footprint of the cusp. During the enhancement, both the cusp and the region of enhanced flow shifted equatorward by ∼2°. As the flow enhancement diminished, the cusp footprint moved poleward to its original position. The entire event had a duration of ∼18 min and was associated with a transient 29 kV increase in the cross polar cap potential. We estimate that ∼3.2 x 10 7 Wb of magnetic flux was opened at the dayside magnetopause during the most active 12 min of this event. The length of the reconnection line on the dayside magnetopause is estimated to have reached 19,000 km. The characteristics of the dayside ionospheric response are very similar to those predicted by Cowley and Lockwood [1992] in their expanding and contracting polar cap model. These are the first observations that have provided an extended spatial and temporal view of the responses of dayside convection and the cusp to a transient reconnection event.
Pinceaux de droites et automorphismes des surfaces affines.

Dans plusieurs articles, Danilov, Gizatullin et Popov, ont otudie la structure du groupe des automorphismes d'une surface affine rationelle; Pexemple de base etant le plan affine, traite auparavant par Jung, Nagata et Safarevic. Dans [5] il est montre que les surfaces affines qui peuvent etre complotees par l'adjonction d'un bord lineaire (zig-zag) ont beaucoup d'automorphismes; en fait le groupe des automorphismes a une orbite dont le complementaire est fini.
A GENERALIZATION OF CLASSICAL ACTION OF HAMILTONIAN DIFFEOMORPHISMS TO HAMILTONIAN HOMEOMORPHISMS ON FIXED POINTS

We define boundedness properties on the contractible fixed points set of the time-one map of an identity isotopy on an oriented closed surface with genus g � 1. In symplectic geometry, a classical object is the notion of action function, defined on the set of contractible fixed points of the time-one map of a Hamiltonian isotopy. We give a dynamical interpretation of this function that permits us to generalize it in the case of a homeomorphism isotopic to identity that preserves a Borel finite measure of rotation vector zero, provided that a boundedness condition is satisfied. We give some properties of the generalized action.
Initial-boundary value problems for linear diffusion equation with multiple time-fractional derivatives

In this paper, we discuss initial-boundary value problems for linear diffusion equation with multiple time-fractional derivatives. By means of the Mittag-Leffler function and the eigenfunction expansion, we reduce the problem to an integral equation for a solution, and we apply the fixed-point theorem to prove the unique existence and the H\"older regularity of solution. For the case of the homogeneous equation, the solution can be analytically extended to a sector $\{z\in\mathbb{C};z\neq0,|\arg z|<\frac{\pi}{2}\}$. In the case where all the coefficients of the time-fractional derivatives are positive constants, by the Laplace transform and the analyticity, we can prove that if a function satisfies the fractional diffusion equation and the homogeneous Neumann boundary condition on arbitrary subboundary as well as the homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition on the whole boundary, then it vanishes identically.
Magnetization Dynamics Including Thermal Fluctuations: Basic Phenomenology, Fast Remagnetization Processes and Transitions Over High‐energy Barriers

This chapter is devoted to general problems arising as a result of numerical simulations of dynamical remagnetization properties taking into account thermal fluctuations. After a short introduction to the dissipation treatment in micromagnetics, we proceed with the detailed analysis of difficulties emerging when thermal fluctuations are included in the micromagnetic equation of motion, converting this deterministic differential equation into a stochastic one. Special attention is paid to thermal noise correlations, which can appear as a consequence of the discretization of a continuous micromagnetic problem. We conclude with a brief review of numerical methods developed for the study of the transitions over high-energy barriers, that is, in the situation where standard Langevin dynamics fails due to prohibitively large computational times. Keywords: micromagnetic simulations; dissipation; Gilbert damping; Langevin dynamics; stochastic calculus; thermal noise; energy barriers; fluctuation-dissipation theorem; discretization effects
Freestanding SiGe/Si/Cr and SiGe/Si/SixNy/Cr microtubes

We report on hybrid microtubes and rings fabricated from rolled-up strained metal–semiconductor SiGe/Si/Cr and metal–insulator–semiconductor SiGe/Si/SixNy/Cr films. For making suspended microtubes, a method of directional rolling of the patterned films by anisotropic underetching of silicon substrate was introduced. It is shown quantitatively that Cr and SixNy layers are highly strained, the tensile stress being sufficient to cause the rolling-up of the hybrid films into microtubes of preset diameter. The proposed controllable and reproducible technology is promising for fabricating cylindrical-shaped microcapacitors, induction coils, transistors, and building blocks of microelectromechanical devices.