Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Beyond Worst-Case Analysis in Privacy and Clustering: Exploiting Explicit and Implicit Assumptions

Abstract : This thesis is a collection of work in differential privacy and clustering. In part one, we discuss work aimed at preserving differential privacy in a social network, with respect to either the presence/absence of a single edge, or with respect to changing all edges adjacent to one node. In part two, we discuss multiple clustering problems, focusing on the k-means and k-median problems. We show how to correctly cluster an instance whose optimal k-means solution either satisfies a certain stability condition, or is resilient to small constant metric perturbations, or with cluster centers that satisfy a particular separation condition. Alternatively, this thesis can be viewed as an investigation of specific non-worst case analysis paradigms. The common theme in the results of this thesis is that they all introduce algorithms whose guarantees are meaningful only for a subset of inputs -- for inputs that satisfy certain nice properties, or assumptions. These assumptions can be roughly divided into two types, which we refer to as explicit or implicit. Explicit assumptions give a very specific and quantifiable characterization of the input (e.g., clustering instances with the distance between any pair of cluster centers larger than a specific bound). On the other hand, implicit assumptions are harder to characterize. Implicit assumptions pose a certain property that the input should satisfy, due to some compelling real-life reasoning (e.g., justifying a particular value of k for a k-means clustering instance), and often give much leeway as to the particular structure of the input. In this thesis, we exhibit multiple examples of assumptions of both kinds, in differential privacy and clustering, and give algorithms that take advantage of these assumptions. In particular, we show how tasks that are provably hard become feasible under suitable assumptions -- tasks like providing accurate answers for queries over graph while preserving privacy on the node level.
Playing the Business Angel: The Impact of Well-Known Business Angels on Venture Performance

People well known to the general public are increasingly acting as business angels (BAs) for young and innovative ventures worldwide. These BAs are less known for their venture evaluation skills and often do not have a professional reputation as investors. The signaling function of these well-known investors could therefore be less relevant for founders because of a limited quality assurance function. Nonetheless, a venture’s affiliation with a well-known BA may still positively alter the quality perceptions of various stakeholders because the BAs can put their reputation in other areas of life at risk, provide an easy-to-interpret and fluent cue to the general public, and improve the observability of the signal. Using a sample of more than 2,900 early-stage ventures that made a venture pitch during the Canadian, German, U.K., and U.S. versions of the reality TV show Dragons’ Den, we find that BAs’ degree of being known has a positive impact on target firm survival, web traffic, and sales. The impact of BAs’ general degree of being known is particularly strong if the congruency between the investors and the target ventures is high. These effects exist over and above potential selection effects, the professional reputation of the BA, and the greater financial resources of a funded venture. The empirical findings indicate that well-known BAs can have a positive effect on venture performance and that founders should consider not only the professional reputation of BAs but also the degree to which they are known to a general audience.
Vibration analyses of a portal frame under the action of a moving distributed mass using moving mass element

Four kinds of moving mass elements, 1st‐node, 2nd‐node, full and short‐range mass elements, are presented, where the 1st‐node (or 2nd‐node) mass element refers to that with mass distributed from the first node (or second node) to the arbitrary position of a two‐node beam element, the full mass element is the special case of the 1st‐node (or 2nd‐node) mass element with mass distributed over the full length of the beam element, while the short‐range mass element is the case with its location arbitrary on a beam element. If the total range of a distributed mass is denoted by R and the length of each beam element is denoted by 𝓁, then, for the case of R⩾𝓁, one may model the distributed mass on the beam using the combination of the 1st‐node, 2nd‐node and full mass elements, while for the case of R<𝓁, one may model the distributed mass using the short‐range mass element. It has been found that the effects of the vertical (ȳ) and horizontal (x̄) inertia forces, Coriolis force and centrifugal force induced by the moving distributed mass can be easily taken into the formulations by means of the last concept. To illustrate the application of the presented theory, the dynamic analysis of a pinned–pinned beam and that of a portal frame under the action of a moving uniformly distributed mass are performed by means of the finite element method and the Newmark integration method. Numerical results show that some pertinent factors, such as Coriolis force, centrifugal force, acceleration, velocity and total range of the moving distributed mass, have significant influences on the vertical (ȳ) and horizontal (x̄) response of a structure. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Hybrid Recommendation Network Model with a Synthesis of Social Matrix Factorization and Link Probability Functions

Recommender systems are becoming an integral part of routine life, as they are extensively used in daily decision-making processes such as online shopping for products or services, job references, matchmaking for marriage purposes, and many others. However, these recommender systems are lacking in producing quality recommendations owing to sparsity issues. Keeping this in mind, the present study introduces a hybrid recommendation model for recommending music artists to users which is hierarchical Bayesian in nature, known as Relational Collaborative Topic Regression with Social Matrix Factorization (RCTR–SMF). This model makes use of a lot of auxiliary domain knowledge and provides seamless integration of Social Matrix Factorization and Link Probability Functions into Collaborative Topic Regression-based recommender systems to attain better prediction accuracy. Here, the main emphasis is on examining the effectiveness of unified information related to social networking and an item-relational network structure in addition to item content and user-item interactions to make predictions for user ratings. RCTR–SMF addresses the sparsity problem by utilizing additional domain knowledge, and it can address the cold-start problem in the case that there is hardly any rating information available. Furthermore, this article exhibits the proposed model performance on a large real-world social media dataset. The proposed model provides a recall of 57% and demonstrates its superiority over other state-of-the-art recommendation algorithms.
Attenuation characteristics of high-energy radiation on As-Se-Sn chalcogenide glassy alloy

The present work is mainly interested in the use of chalcogenide glass materials as shielding materials for the highly energetic radiations as X-rays and Gamma rays and particles of high energies as neutrons. The chalcogenide glass system concerned with this study is As40-Se60-x-Snx (x = 0, 5, 10, 15, 20 at %). Numerous radiation shielding factors have been deduced by the aid of Phy-X/PSD online software. This software enabled us to achieve the linear and mass attenuation coefficients (LAC, MAC), effective atomic number Zeff, effective electron density, Neff, half-value layer, HVL, tenth value layer TVL, mean free path MEF, energy absorption and exposure buildup factors (EABF, EBF) in photon energy range extended from 0.15 to 15 MeV. The most interesting findings are that the LAC and MAC values are more suitable for shielding purposes than that of some commercial and traditional glasses. Also the results refer to that HVL, TVL, and MFP decrease with the substitution of Selenium by Tin in the tested system, this decreasing is clearer at the medium and high range of photon energies, which indicate to the improvement of shielding features by the adding of Sn to these specimens. Zeff and Neff of these glasses were in the range (33.6- 40.6) and (2.5-2.86 x 1023 electrons/g) respectively. The results also point to that EBF and EABF decrease with further raising of Snpercentage in the investigated chalcogenide system at all the values of MFP at the hole range of the photon energy, that confirm with no doubt that the samples with higher ratios of Tin have better shielding ability than those of lower ratios of Tin in the investigated system. It is also found that FNRCS of the five investigated specimens is in between 0.0886 Cm-1 and 0.0943 Cm-1 that makes them promising protective materials against neutrons, when compared with other commercial and traditional glasses.
Biohythane Production in Hydrogen-Oriented Dark Fermentation of Aerobic Granular Sludge (AGS) Pretreated with Solidified Carbon Dioxide (SCO2)

Though deemed a prospective method, the bioconversion of organic waste to biohydrogen via dark fermentation (DF) has multiple drawbacks and limitations. Technological difficulties of hydrogen fermentation may, in part, be eliminated by making DF a viable method for biohythane production. Aerobic granular sludge (AGS) is a little-known organic waste spurring a growing interest in the municipal sector; its characteristics indicate the feasibility of its use as a substrate for biohydrogen production. The major goal of the present study was to determine the effect of AGS pretreatment with solidified carbon dioxide (SCO2) on the yield of H2 (biohythane) production during anaerobic digestion (AD). It was found that an increasing dose of SCO2 caused an increase in concentrations of COD, N-NH4+, and P-PO43− in the supernatant at the SCO2/AGS volume ratios from 0 to 0.3. The AGS pretreatment at SCO2/AGS ratios within the range of 0.1–0.3 was shown to enable the production of biogas with over 8% H2 (biohythane) content. The highest yield of biohythane production, reaching 481 ± 23 cm3/gVS, was obtained at the SCO2/AGS ratio of 0.3. This variant produced 79.0 ± 6% CH4 and 8.9 ± 2% H2. The higher SCO2 doses applied caused a significant decrease in the pH value of AGS, modifying the anaerobic bacterial community to the extent that diminished anaerobic digestion performance.
Black nonreflecting silicon surfaces for solar cells

We present a wet chemical process for nanoscale texturing of Si surfaces, which results in an almost complete suppression of the reflectivity in a broad spectral range, leading to black Si surfaces. The process affects only the topmost 200–300nm of the material and is independent of the surface orientation and doping. Thus, it can be applied to various structural forms of bulk silicon (single, poly-, or multicrystalline) as well as to thin Si films (amorphous or microcrystalline). The optical properties of various black Si samples are presented and discussed in correlation with the surface morphology.
Urban Tree Canopy and Environmental Justice: Examining the Distributional Equity of Urban Tree Canopy in Guangzhou, China

Rapid urbanization has led to a series of environmental problems that are harmful to the physical and mental health of residents. Not only can increasing urban tree canopy (UTC) improve sustainable city development, but it can also effectively promote the quality of life for residents; however, the uneven spatial distribution of UTC can also bring about social justice problems. Currently, there are few studies related to the justice of UTC distribution in China. Based on this, the paper adopts object-oriented image classification technology to interpret and extract UTC data from satellite images, and it uses house price to explore the justice of the spatial distribution of UTC in the main urban area of Guangzhou from the perspective of environmental justice by ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficient, and bivariate local spatial autocorrelation. The results show that: (1) There is a significant positive correlation between UTC and house price in the main urban area of Guangzhou, and there are regional differences in the distribution of UTC, with the UTC in the “very high” house price group being significantly higher than that in other groups. (2) The spatial clustering of UTC and house price in the main urban area of Guangzhou is found to be “low-low” and “high-high”; thus, it can be concluded that the spatial distribution of UTC in the main urban area of Guangzhou is uneven. This is an environmental injustice, as the areas with low UTC are spatially clustered in old residential areas, while the areas with high UTC are spatially clustered in commercial housing estates with high house prices. The study shows that urban tree planting should not only focus on quantitative improvement but also on equitable spatial layouts to promote social equity and justice thereby improving the urban ecological environment and promoting healthy urban development.
Nonlinear force driven plasma blocks igniting solid density hydrogen boron: Laser fusion energy without radioactivity

Energy production by laser driven fusion energy is highly matured by spherical compression and ignition of deuteriumtritium (DT) fuel. An alternative scheme is the fast ignition where petawatt (PW)-picosecond (ps) laser pulses are used. A significant anomaly was measured and theoretically analyzed with very clean PW-ps laser pulses for avoiding relativistic self focusing. This permits a come-back of the side-on ignition scheme of uncompressed solid DT, which is in essential contrast to the spherical compression scheme. The conditions of side-on ignition thresholds needed exorbitantly high energy flux densities E*. These conditions are now in reach by using PW-ps laser pulses to verify side-on ignition for DT. Generalizing this to side-on igniting solid state density proton-Boron-11 (HB11) arrives at the surprising result that this is one order of magnitude more difficult than the DT fusion. This is in contrast to the well known impossibility of igniting HB11 by spherical laser compression and may offer fusion energy production with exclusion of neutron generation and nuclear radiation effects with a minimum of heat pollution in power stations and application for long mission space propulsion.
Marginal stability curve and linear growth rate for rotating Couette-Taylor flow and Rayleigh-Bénard convection

Results of high numerical accuracy are reported for the growth rate σ of axisymmetric disturbances to circular Couette flow between concentric cylinders with the inner one rotating and of two‐dimensional disturbances of the pure conduction state of a Boussinesq fluid between horizontal parallel plates heated from below. When σ is positive, the former case leads to Couette–Taylor (CT) flow and the latter to Rayleigh–Benard (RB) convection. The curve of vanishing growth rate (marginal stability curve) Tc(q) or Rc(q), where q is the wave vector of the disturbance and T and R are the Taylor and Rayleigh number, respectively, is obtained for both cases. The correlation length amplitude ξ0 is calculated by obtaining the curvature of the marginal stability curve. The amplitude σ0 of σ was determined from data with T>Tc(q) or R>Rc(q). In that range, the wave vector qm of maximum σ is also found. For the CT system, the calculations were performed systematically as a function of radius ratio η for 0.975≥η≥0.1. For .
High angular resolution K-band spectroscopy of the nucleus of NGC 1068 with PUEO-GRIF (CFHT)

We provide new high angular resolution K-band spectroscopic observations of the nucleus of NGC 1068 obtained with the new 3-D spectrograph GriF coupled to PUEO, the CFHT adaptive optics system. Results match well with the general framework of the unified model of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and bring more precise evaluation of the size and structure of the close AGN environment. The K-band emission is dominated by the thermal continuum of the compact central source (albeit resolved: FWHM 0:12 00 ) with a color temperature around 950 K (reddened sublimation temperature of the dust, corresponding to 1200 K when deredenned), interpreted as the border of a sublimation cavity within the dust torus, surrounding the central core. Coronal emission lines ((Sivi), (Sivii) and (Caviii)) are detected from a few tenths of arcseconds around this compact source and a new (Sivi) emission spot is found at 0.7 00 north of the central source. The Brackett emission features a very broad component (FWHM= 2500 km s 1 ) in the central 200 mas and we claim that it correponds to the broad line region seen through the dust. A narrower component (FWHM= 1600 km s 1 ) is seen at larger angular distance and is likely the trace of the narrow line region. Molecular hydrogen emission lines are detected beyond 0.6 00 of the central source. We interpret the lack of emission in the center as a lack of excited molecular H 2 along the line of sight, because of the putitative dust torus shading gas from UV photons. No evidence of stellar activity in a 1 00 radius around the central source can be found. We also compare these observations to the results of a numerical model of a torus harboring an active galactic nucleus. The main characteristics of the observed spectra (slope, flux) match well with the unified scheme of AGN, in the case of a dense (V= 40) obscuring torus containing silicate grains with an inclination angle of around 22 with regards to the line of sight.
Whose Preference Matters More? Couple’s Fertility Preferences and Realization in the Context of China’s Two-Child Policy

The universal two-child policy in China did not lead to a significant increase in fertility, which results in many public debates. In this study, we examine to what extent a couple’s desires for more children are associated with their behavior for having a second child, and whether there is a gender power imbalance in the realization process. Using the China Family Panel Studies data in 2014 and 2018, the findings suggest that the overall rate of having a second child is low after the policy relaxation. Compared to wives, husbands have greater power in the second-child realization, and this phenomenon is only salient in rural areas. Education, as an indicator of resources and a tool of empowerment, played a limited role in reversing the husband’s dominance in fertility outcomes in rural areas. This study sheds light on domestic power relations and fertility realization in an era right after the policy relaxation in China and calls for policies to target the issues of how to raise fertility levels without sacrificing women’s interests.
Analysis of Wild Type and Variant B Cystatin C Interactome in Retinal Pigment Epithelium Cells Reveals Variant B Interacting Mitochondrial Proteins

Cystatin C, a secreted cysteine protease inhibitor, is abundantly expressed in retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells. A mutation in the protein’s leader sequence, corresponding to formation of an alternate variant B protein, has been linked with an increased risk for both age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Variant B cystatin C displays intracellular mistrafficking with partial mitochondrial association. We hypothesized that variant B cystatin C interacts with mitochondrial proteins and impacts mitochondrial function. We sought to determine how the interactome of the disease-related variant B cystatin C differs from that of the wild-type (WT) form. For this purpose, we expressed cystatin C Halo-tag fusion constructs in RPE cells to pull down proteins interacting with either the WT or variant B form, followed by identification and quantification by mass spectrometry. We identified a total of 28 interacting proteins, of which 8 were exclusively pulled down by variant B cystatin C. These included 18 kDa translocator protein (TSPO) and cytochrome B5 type B, both of which are localized to the mitochondrial outer membrane. Variant B cystatin C expression also affected RPE mitochondrial function with increased membrane potential and susceptibility to damage-induced ROS production. The findings help us to understand how variant B cystatin C differs functionally from the WT form and provide leads to RPE processes adversely affected by the variant B genotype.
Long-range tropospheric transport of pollution aerosols into the Alaskan Arctic

Abstract Noncrustal vanadium and manganese are used as chemical tracers for pollution-derived aerosols (collected over a period of four years in the near-surface air at Barrow, Alaska), in order to investigate tropospheric long-range transport of anthropogenic pollution from midlatitudes to the Alaskan Arctic. The analysis is based upon subjectively identifying characteristic transport pathway types using daily circumpolar weather maps. The transport occurs when the midlatitudinal and Arctic atmospheric circulations manifest quasi-persistent circulation patterns. Rapid transport of aerosols, on the order of 7–10 days, is dominated by quasi-stationary anticyclones and takes place along their peripheries where pressure gradients are relatively strong. The seasonal variation in concentration of the Arctic pollution-derived aerosol is related to the seasonal variation in the occurrence and position of midlatitude blocking anticyclones, of the Arctic anticyclone and of the Asiatic anticyclone. The positions of.
Abundance analysis of late B stars ? Evidence for diffusion and against weak stellar winds

Based on high S/N spectra obtained at La Silla, Chile, and the Special Astrophysical Observatory, Russia, the abundances of He, C, O, Ne, Mg, Si, Ca, Fe, Sr, and Ba in 27 optically bright B5-B9 main-sequence stars were determined. NLTE eects were taken into account. A variety of abundance patterns is present in late B stars. Accurate surface abundances of the diusion indicators O, Mg, Ca, Sr and Ba suggest that element stratification due to diusion is common in the program stars. Models of stellar atmospheres which include meridional mixing can explain the observed anomalies. Although the program stars represent only a volume-limited sample of the solar neighbourhood this result is important for the cosmochemical evolution of the Galaxy: the surface abundances of the stars investigated do not necessarily reflect the chemical composition of the interstellar cloud they originated from. Furthermore, five program stars show narrow absorption lines in Ca II K which can be attributed to circumstellar gas. Neon serves as a trace element for the occurrence of weak stellar winds. Neon overabundances of some stars derived under the assumption of LTE suggest that such winds have been detected. In sharp contrast, the more realistic treatment of NLTE leads to solar neon abundances and thus reveals that weak stellar winds are absent in the program stars.