Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Emfrp: a functional reactive programming language for small-scale embedded systems

In this paper, we introduce a new functional reactive programming (FRP) language Emfrp designed to support small-scale embedded systems. An Emfrp program defines a system as a fixed directed graph whose nodes correspond to the time-varying values in the system. The language equips a simple mechanism that enables each node to refer the past values of arbitrary nodes. Using this mechanism, Emfrp provides simplicity and flexibility for describing complex time-dependent reactive behaviors without space and time leaks. Our Emfrp compiler produces platform-independent ANSI-C code that can run on multiple processors including resource constrained microcontrollers. To demonstrate the capabilities of the language, we show a simple but non-trivial example application.
Human figure synthesis and animation for virtual space teleconferencing

Human figure animation is it widely researched area with many applications. This paper addresses specific issues that deal with the synthesis, animation and environmental interaction of human figures within a virtual space teleconferencing system. A layered representation of the human figure is adopted. Skeletal posture is determined from magnetic sensors on the body, using heuristics and inverse kinematics. This paper describes the use of implicit function techniques in the synthesis and animation of a polymesh geometric skin over the skeletal structure. Implicit functions perform detection and handling of collisions with an optimal worst case time complexity that is linear in the number polymesh vertices. Body deformations resulting from auto-collisions are handled elegantly and homogeneously as part of the environment. Further, implicit functions generate precise collision contact surfaces and have the capability to model the physical characteristics of muscles in systems that employ force feedback. The real time implementation within a virtual space teleconferencing system, illustrates this new approach, coupling polymesh and implicit surface based modeling and animation techniques.
Functional Copy-Number Alterations in Cancer

Understanding the molecular basis of cancer requires characterization of its genetic defects. DNA microarray technologies can provide detailed raw data about chromosomal aberrations in tumor samples. Computational analysis is needed (1) to deduce from raw array data actual amplification or deletion events for chromosomal fragments and (2) to distinguish causal chromosomal alterations from functionally neutral ones. We present a comprehensive computational approach, RAE, designed to robustly map chromosomal alterations in tumor samples and assess their functional importance in cancer. To demonstrate the methodology, we experimentally profile copy number changes in a clinically aggressive subtype of soft-tissue sarcoma, pleomorphic liposarcoma, and computationally derive a portrait of candidate oncogenic alterations and their target genes. Many affected genes are known to be involved in sarcomagenesis; others are novel, including mediators of adipocyte differentiation, and may include valuable therapeutic targets. Taken together, we present a statistically robust methodology applicable to high-resolution genomic data to assess the extent and function of copy-number alterations in cancer.
Face Recognition Using Sparse Approximated Nearest Points between Image Sets

We propose an efficient and robust solution for image set classification. A joint representation of an image set is proposed which includes the image samples of the set and their affine hull model. The model accounts for unseen appearances in the form of affine combinations of sample images. To calculate the between-set distance, we introduce the Sparse Approximated Nearest Point (SANP). SANPs are the nearest points of two image sets such that each point can be sparsely approximated by the image samples of its respective set. This novel sparse formulation enforces sparsity on the sample coefficients and jointly optimizes the nearest points as well as their sparse approximations. Unlike standard sparse coding, the data to be sparsely approximated are not fixed. A convex formulation is proposed to find the optimal SANPs between two sets and the accelerated proximal gradient method is adapted to efficiently solve this optimization. We also derive the kernel extension of the SANP and propose an algorithm for dynamically tuning the RBF kernel parameter while matching each pair of image sets. Comprehensive experiments on the UCSD/Honda, CMU MoBo, and YouTube Celebrities face datasets show that our method consistently outperforms the state of the art.
Hypervariable Region 1 Sequence Stability during Hepatitis C Virus Replication in Chimpanzees

ABSTRACT The putative envelope 2 (E2) gene of hepatitis C virus (HCV) contains a highly variable region referred to as hypervariable region 1 (HVR1). We hypothesized that this genetic variability is driven by immune selection pressure, rather than representing the accumulation of random mutations in a region with relatively little functional constraint. To test this hypothesis, we examined the E2 sequence of a human inoculum that was passaged through eight chimpanzees, which appear to have a replicative rate (opportunity for chance mutation) similar to that of humans. Acute-phase plasma samples from a human (the inoculum) and six of eight serially infected chimpanzees were studied. For each, 33 cloned cDNAs were examined by a combined heteroduplex–single-stranded conformational polymorphism assay to assess quasispecies complexity and optimize selection of clones with unique gel shift patterns (clonotypes) for sequencing. The sequence diversity of HCV was significantly lower in the chimpanzees than in the humans, and during eight serial passages there was no change in the sequence of the majority clonotype from each animal examined. Similarly, the rates of protein sequence altering (nonsynonymous) substitution were lower in the chimpanzees than in the humans. These findings demonstrate that nonsynonymous mutations indicate selection pressure rather than being an incidental result of HCV replication.
A measurement study of path capacity in 802.11b based wireless networks

The rapid deployment of wireless networks in various environments necessitates the development of new end-to-end tools that monitor and measure the properties of wireless paths well. In this paper, we implement AdHoc Probe, a recently proposed path capacity estimation tool specially designed for the multi-hop ad hoc wireless environment. We present an implementation of AdHoc Probe in Linux; discuss challenges in its deployment, and solutions to the various system issues encountered. We also evaluate the behavior/effectiveness of AdHoc Probe in various testbed setups; including an interfered setting that cannot be simulated. Experiment results validate the workings of AdHoc Probe and offer insights into how the capacity of a wireless path changes in real wireless environments. Our efforts provide a basis for realistic results that can be of assistance in activities such as capacity planning, protocol design, performance analysis, and etc.
Pathways to retirement: patterns of labor force participation and labor market exit among the pre-retirement population by race, Hispanic origin, and sex.

OBJECTIVES This study examines the pre-retirement labor force participation behavior of Black, White, and Hispanic men and women to determine how patterns of labor market exit differ among groups. METHODS We combine data from the first and second waves of the Health and Retirement Study and apply multinomial logit regression techniques to model labor force status in the first wave of the HRS and change over time. RESULTS Black, Hispanic, and female elderly persons experience more involuntary job separation in the years immediately prior to retirement, and the resulting periods of joblessness often eventuate in "retirement" or labor force withdrawal. Minority disadvantage in human capital, health, and employment characteristics accounts for a large part of racial and ethnic differences in labor force withdrawal. Nevertheless, Black men and Hispanic women experience more involuntary labor market exits than Whites with similar socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. DISCUSSION Workers most vulnerable to labor market difficulties during their youth confront formidable obstacles maintaining their desired level of labor force attachment as they approach their golden years. This has significant policy implications for the contours of gender and race/ethnic inequality among elderly persons, particularly as life expectancy and the size of the minority elderly population continue to increase.
POISED: Spotting Twitter Spam Off the Beaten Paths

Cybercriminals have found in online social networks a propitious medium to spread spam and malicious content. Existing techniques for detecting spam include predicting the trustworthiness of accounts and analyzing the content of these messages. However, advanced attackers can still successfully evade these defenses. Online social networks bring people who have personal connections or share common interests to form communities. In this paper, we first show that users within a networked community share some topics of interest. Moreover, content shared on these social network tend to propagate according to the interests of people. Dissemination paths may emerge where some communities post similar messages, based on the interests of those communities. Spam and other malicious content, on the other hand, follow different spreading patterns. In this paper, we follow this insight and present POISED, a system that leverages the differences in propagation between benign and malicious messages on social networks to identify spam and other unwanted content. We test our system on a dataset of 1.3M tweets collected from 64K users, and we show that our approach is effective in detecting malicious messages, reaching 91% precision and 93% recall. We also show that POISED's detection is more comprehensive than previous systems, by comparing it to three state-of-the-art spam detection systems that have been proposed by the research community in the past. POISED significantly outperforms each of these systems. Moreover, through simulations, we show how POISED is effective in the early detection of spam messages and how it is resilient against two well-known adversarial machine learning attacks.
Comparing two computational mechanisms for explaining functional recovery in robot-therapy of stroke survivors

In this paper we discuss two possible strategies of movement control that can be used by stroke survivors during rehabilitation robotics training. To perform a reaching task in a minimally assistive force field, subjects either can move following the trajectory provided by the assistive force or they can use an internal representation of a minimum jerk trajectory from their starting position to the target. We used the stiffness and damping values directly estimated from the experimental data to simulate the trajectories that result by taking into account both hypotheses. The comparison of the simulated results with the data collected on four hemiparetic subjects supports the hypothesis that the central nervous system (CNS) is still able to correctly plan the movement, although a normal execution is impaired.
An Analysis of the Empirical Software Engineering over the last 10 Editions of Brazilian Software Engineering Symposium

Empirical evaluations developed in the software engineering area have been widely applied as a formalism to validate and ensure the credibility of the works proposed by the researchers. Even though the adoption of empirical evaluation techniques has gained popularity in recent years, its application has been questioned both qualitatively and quantitatively. This study aims at analyzing how empirical software engineering research has evolved in the Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering (SBES) community. We performed a controlled quasi-experiment, using published papers over the last 10 years in SBES. Our experiment was divided into two phases: classification by type and quality assessment of the main empirical types. In the first phase, the sample was 201 papers; in the second one, the sample decreased to 126 papers. The results have shown failures and gaps in the application of empirical methods when assessing the quality of the Software Engineering works. We believe that we can contribute to improve how the studies were conducted and consequently help to produce more reliable results, reducing or eliminating biases: an important qualitative factor in scientific work. In addition, due to the lack of assessment supporting tools, we developed a theoretical protocol to support the assessment process and proposed improvements for papers that obtained below-expected rates.
Advancements in whisper-island detection within normally phonated audio streams

In this study, several improvements are proposed for improved whisper-island detection within normally phonated audio streams. Based on our previous study, an improved feature, which is more sensitive to vocal effort change points between whisper and neutral speech, is developed and utilized in vocal effort change point(VECP) detection and vocal effort classification. Evaluation is based on the proposed multi-error score, where the improved feature showed better performance in VECPs detection with the lowest MES of 19.08. Furthermore, a more accurate whisper-island detection was obtained using the improved algorithm. Finally, the experimental detection rate results of 95.33% reflects better whisper-island detection performance for the improved algorithm versus that of the original baseline algorithm.
SIC: a tool to detect short inverted segments in a biological sequence

The web software SIC provides a tool to search for short inverted segments (length 3-5000 bp) in a DNA sequence. The sequence is assumed to follow a Markov model. A statistic which is sensitive to inversion is presented. Searching inverted segments is done by a scanning approach after the user specifies the size of the scanning window and the order of the Markov chain. A list of the highest score segments is given with an assessment of the randomness of the result. SIC can be accessed via the URL: http://stat.genopole. cnrs.fr/SIC/.
Attacks landscape in the dark side of the web

The Dark Web is known as the part of the Internet operated by decentralized and anonymous-preserving protocols like Tor. To date, the research community has focused on understanding the size and characteristics of the Dark Web and the services and goods that are offered in its underground markets. However, little is still known about the attacks landscape in the Dark Web. For the traditional Web, it is now well understood how websites are exploited, as well as the important role played by Google Dorks and automated attack bots to form some sort of "background attack noise" to which public websites are exposed. This paper tries to understand if these basic concepts and components have a parallel in the Dark Web. In particular, by deploying a high interaction honeypot in the Tor network for a period of seven months, we conducted a measurement study of the type of attacks and of the attackers behavior that affect this still relatively unknown corner of the Web.
Pediatric Behavioral Health Screening in Primary Care

Background. Roughly 21% of youth in the United States meet criteria for a mental health diagnosis, but only one-fifth of those children obtain help. The Pediatric Behavioral Health Screen (PBHS) utilizes the Pediatric Symptom Checklist-17 (PSC-17) and functional impairment items to assess behavioral health concerns. Methods. Data were obtained from a systematic chart review for children 6 to 16 years old. Descriptive analyses and a confirmatory factor analysis were used to evaluate the clinical performance and utility of the PBHS. Results. A positive screen was endorsed for 26.7% of the sample, of whom 68% also experienced functional impairment. Clinicians appropriately administered the screen 73.5% of the time. The 3-factor model of the PSC-17 exhibited a good model fit. Conclusions. Prevalence rates of psychosocial concerns and functional impairment affirm the need for routine behavioral health screening in the pediatric primary care setting. The PBHS exhibited good psychometric performance and clinical utility.
Study of Neutron Soft Error Rate (SER) Sensitivity: Investigation of Upset Mechanisms by Comparative Simulation of FinFET and Planar MOSFET SRAMs

The assessment of the soft-error rate (SER) of semiconductor devices continues to be important, even with the adoption of FinFET devices which overcome some important limitations of planar MOSFETs. The study in this paper presents both theoretical and experimental results via advanced simulation techniques, to investigate the difference between planar and FinFET devices in terms of SER. Neutron test results from different facilities are presented, and the observed differences in sensitivity are explained through theoretical analysis. In the second half of the paper, the test results are validated through TCAD and TFIT simulations using a calibrated technology response model. The analysis shows that the reduction in sensitivity of FinFET devices is primarily due to an increase in the threshold LET and a reduction in the sensitive volume due the shape of the transistor.
THE WIDESPREAD OCCURRENCE OF WATER VAPOR IN THE CIRCUMSTELLAR ENVELOPES OF CARBON-RICH ASYMPTOTIC GIANT BRANCH STARS: FIRST RESULTS FROM A SURVEY WITH HERSCHEL/HIFI

We report the preliminary results of a survey for water vapor in a sample of eight C stars with large mid-IR continuum fluxes: V384 Per, CIT 6, V Hya, Y CVn, IRAS 15194−5115, V Cyg, S Cep, and IRC+40540. This survey, performed using the HIFI instrument on board the Herschel Space Observatory, entailed observations of the lowest transitions of both ortho- and para-water: the 556.936 GHz 110–101 and 1113.343 GHz 111–000 transitions, respectively. Water vapor was unequivocally detected in all eight of the target stars. Prior to this survey, IRC+10216 was the only carbon-rich asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star from which thermal water emissions had been discovered, in that case with the use of the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS). Our results indicate that IRC+10216 is not unusual, except insofar as its proximity to Earth leads to a large line flux that was detectable with SWAS. The water spectral line widths are typically similar to those of CO rotational lines, arguing against the vaporization of a Kuiper Belt analog being the general explanation for water vapor in carbon-rich AGB stars. There is no apparent correlation between the ratio of the integrated water line fluxes to the 6.3 μm continuum flux—a ratio which measures the water outflow rate—and the total mass-loss rate for the stars in our sample.
V-REP: A versatile and scalable robot simulation framework

From exploring planets to cleaning homes, the reach and versatility of robotics is vast. The integration of actuation, sensing and control makes robotics systems powerful, but complicates their simulation. This paper introduces a versatile, scalable, yet powerful general-purpose robot simulation framework called V-REP. The paper discusses the utility of a portable and flexible simulation framework that allows for direct incorporation of various control techniques. This renders simulations and simulation models more accessible to a general-public, by reducing the simulation model deployment complexity. It also increases productivity by offering built-in and ready-to-use functionalities, as well as a multitude of programming approaches. This allows for a multitude of applications including rapid algorithm development, system verification, rapid prototyping, and deployment for cases such as safety/remote monitoring, training and education, hardware control, and factory automation simulation.
Subset-Specific Reductions in Lung Lymphocyte Accumulation Following Intratracheal Antigen Challenge in Endothelial Selectin-Deficient Mice1 2

We previously demonstrated induction and expression of CD62E and CD62P in the lungs of mice primed and then challenged with intratracheal (i.t.) SRBC. The current study examined accumulation of endogenous lymphocytes in the lungs of endothelial E- and P-selectin-deficient (E−P−) mice after i.t. SRBC challenge. Compared with syngeneic wild-type (wt) mice, E−P− mice showed an 85–95% decrease in CD8+ T cells and B cells in the lungs at both early and late time points. In contrast, CD4+ T cell accumulation was reduced by ∼60% early, but equivalent to wt levels later. Surprisingly, many γδ T cells were found in lungs and blood of E−P− mice but were undetectable in the lungs and blood of wt mice. Absolute numbers of peripheral blood CD4, CD8, and B lymphocytes in E−P− mice equaled or exceeded the levels in wt mice, particularly after challenge. Trafficking studies using αβ T lymphoblasts confirmed that the recruitment of circulating cells after challenge was markedly reduced in E−P− mice. Furthermore, Ag priming occurred normally in both the selectin-deficient and wt mice, because primed lymphocytes from both groups transferred Ag sensitivity into naive wt mice. Lung production of mRNA for six CC and two CXC chemokines after challenge was equivalent by RT-PCR analysis in wt and E−P− mice. Therefore, reduced lung accumulation of αβ T cells and B cells in E−P− mice did not result from reduced delivery of circulating lymphocytes to the lungs, unsuccessful Ag priming, or defective pulmonary chemokine production. Selectin-dependent lymphocyte recruitment into the lungs following i.t. -SRBC challenge is subset specific and time dependent.
Evolving Landscapes for Population Games

We consider population games where the possible actions of each player are labeled by a real number that ranges over a finite interval. The adjustment dynamics of such games can be visualized as motion over a “landscape” - the surface defined by a payo or fitness function. A leading example is gradient dynamics, in which the speed with which a player changes action is proportional to the gradient (or slope) of the landscape at his current action. We show that gradient dynamics arise from individual optimizations, given the costs of changing actions. We also show that the time behavior of the action distribution in gradient dynamics is described by a class of nonlinear integro-partial dierential equations with deviating spatial arguments. We solve these equations analytically for some interesting choices of payo functions. Cases are exhibited in which the distribution of actions develops compression and rarefaction shock waves. The results of numerical simulations are presented. We characterize the limiting probability distributions of classes of population games, and find sucient conditions for convergence to pure Nash equilibrium and for convergence to distributions with full support. Applications are suggested in economics and population biology.