Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GedankenNet: Self-supervised learning of hologram reconstruction using physics consistency

The past decade has witnessed transformative applications of deep learning in various computational imaging, sensing and microscopy tasks. Due to the supervised learning schemes employed, most of these methods depend on large-scale, diverse, and labeled training data. The acquisition and preparation of such training image datasets are often laborious and costly, also leading to biased estimation and limited generalization to new types of samples. Here, we report a self-supervised learning model, termed GedankenNet, that eliminates the need for labeled or experimental training data, and demonstrate its effectiveness and superior generalization on hologram reconstruction tasks. Without prior knowledge about the sample types to be imaged, the self-supervised learning model was trained using a physics-consistency loss and artificial random images that are synthetically generated without any experiments or resemblance to real-world samples. After its self-supervised training, GedankenNet successfully generalized to experimental holograms of various unseen biological samples, reconstructing the phase and amplitude images of different types of objects using experimentally acquired test holograms. Without access to experimental data or the knowledge of real samples of interest or their spatial features, GedankenNet’s self-supervised learning achieved complex-valued image reconstructions that are consistent with the Maxwell’s equations, meaning that its output inference and object solutions accurately represent the wave propagation in free-space. This self-supervised learning of image reconstruction tasks opens up new opportunities for various inverse problems in holography, microscopy and computational imaging fields.
Lowest low fertility in an urban context: when migration plays a key role

In countries with so-called "lowest-low" fertility, the lowest fertility levels are seen in the cities. The main reasons for this development is the difference in the cost of living expenses, combined with income constraints in cities, as compared to these same aspects in rural areas. If we focus our attention on the center of an urban area, migration needs to be taken into account, since it can contribute to particularly low yield fertility. In this paper we use the Turin Longitudinal Study, which has data on all people who have ever been residents in Turin (Italy) during the period 1971-2001. We study the interdependencies between fertility and out-migration choices for a selected group, from the 1956 birth-cohort. In order to fully understand fertility, we need to consider how fertility acts on out-migration choices. Our findings underline the important role of economic resources and life cycle events in such a context which seem to guide both fertility and migration behaviors. Moreover, while having a child significantly hampers long-distance migration, it also has a lower impact on short-distant moves.
A novel methodology for measuring the tensile strength of expansive clays

Several experimental techniques (viz., triaxial tests, direct tensile tests or suction measurements) have been developed and employed by earlier researchers to measure the tensile strength of fine-grained soils. However, these studies yield results that are soil specific and dependent on the methodology adopted. Apart from this, due to the bulk form of the sample, the sample heterogeneity (i.e., both in terms of the density and the moisture content) influences test results to a great extent. Under this situation, and in the absence of guidelines regarding sample thickness, determination of the tensile strength of expansive clays by employing their thin samples (1 mm to 5 mm) appears to be an excellent alternative. With this in view, efforts were made to determine the tensile strength of expansive clays by resorting to techniques that deal with measurement of (a) the deflection undergone by a silicon wafer, due to air-drying of a thin film of these clays, with the help of a laser beam and (b) the suction by employing a dewpoint potentiameter, WP4. Results obtained from these techniques were critically evaluated vis-à-vis those obtained from triaxial tests and empirical relationships reported in the literature. It has been observed that there is a unique relationship between the results of the thin and thick samples and hence thin samples of expansive clays can be employed for determining their tensile strength. This shows the usefulness of the proposed techniques for measuring the tensile strength of expansive soils.
Automated Abstractions for Contract Validation

Pre/postcondition-based specifications are commonplace in a variety of software engineering activities that range from requirements through to design and implementation. The fragmented nature of these specifications can hinder validation as it is difficult to understand if the specifications for the various operations fit together well. In this paper, we propose a novel technique for automatically constructing abstractions in the form of behavior models from pre/postcondition-based specifications. Abstraction techniques have been used successfully for addressing the complexity of formal artifacts in software engineering; however, the focus has been, up to now, on abstractions for verification. Our aim is abstraction for validation and hence, different and novel trade-offs between precision and tractability are required. More specifically, in this paper, we define and study enabledness-preserving abstractions, that is, models in which concrete states are grouped according to the set of operations that they enable. The abstraction results in a finite model that is intuitive to validate and which facilitates tracing back to the specification for debugging. The paper also reports on the application of the approach to two industrial strength protocol specifications in which concerns were identified.
THE INSTABILITY OF EN-ECHELON CRACKS AND ITS PRECURSORS

En-echelon cracks can be divided into two types: left lateral shear and left step or right lateral shear and right step (LL), and left lateral shear and right step or right lateral shear and left step (LR). The conditions of interaction and stability of two en-echelon cracks are analyzed by using the linear elastic finite element method and theory of fracture mechanics. Then, the fracturing process and precursors of the main fracture in the staggered region of en-echelon cracks are studied by a series of rock experiments. It is found that the geometrical factors of en-echelon cracks influence the interaction and instability of faults and precursors of the main rupture.
The mechanics of an Italian silt: an example of ‘transitional’ behaviour

By controlling the particle size distribution of an Italian silt, the influence of grading on its behaviour was investigated. As the clay content was reduced, the behaviour changed from a typical clay mode to a transitional form between that of clays and sands that had previously been seen only for gap-graded soils, emphasising that this type of behaviour is possibly much more extensive than previously thought. The work has highlighted several features of transitional behaviour, and in particular that unique normal compression and critical state lines do not exist, that Rendulic's principle does not apply, and that drained and undrained tests do not reach unique ultimate states.
Enabling Programming Thinking in Large Language Models Toward Code Generation

—Large Language Models (LLMs) ( e.g., ChatGPT) have shown impressive performance in code generation. A large-scale study [1] released that writing programs requires programming thinking, i.e., analyzing and implementing requirements in programming logic ( e.g., sequence, branch, loop). Existing studies use LLMs to generate programs from requirements directly and do not explicitly introduce the programming thinking. This paper explores how to unlock the programming thinking of LLMs in code generation and proposes an approach named T I P . Our idea is to decompose code generation into two steps and progressively lead LLMs to analyze&implement requirements in programming logic. Speciﬁcally, T I P ﬁrst generates a code sketch, which provides a high-level solving process using programming logic but omits implementation details ( e.g., APIs). Then, T I P implements the sketch into a program using speciﬁc programming languages. We conduct extensive experiments on three public benchmarks ( i.e., HumanEval, MBPP, and MBCPP). (1) T I P outperforms the state-of-the-art baseline - ChatGPT by up to 17.5% in Pass@1, 11.02% in Pass@3, and 9.84% in Pass@5. (2) Human evaluation shows that T I P outperforms ChatGPT in three aspects ( i.e., correctness, code quality, and maintainability). (3) T I P is effective for different LLMs. (4) We explore multiple choices ( e.g., chain-of-thought) for the code sketch and validate the superiority of our design. (5) We discuss the complementarity between T I P and post-processing approaches ( e.g., CodeT).
A institucionalização da pós-graduação no Brasil: o primeiro decênio da Capes (1951-1961)

This paper has the objective of analyzing the first decade of the National Campaign for the Improvement of High Level Personnel (CAPES) that covers the period between the years 1951 and 1960. It places the CAPES institution within the apparatus of the federal government in a historic context marked by the nationalist-development model. The path to acheiving this objective has as essential elements the utilization of reports, letters, presidential messages and legal documents articulated through strategies and tactics by individuals-collectives that have built an institutional network that led CAPES to take on a central role in the elaboration of public education policies within Ministry of Education. This centrality had as its result the attempt to build a national system of graduate study that constitutes a legacy to be studied now.
Aircraft used as a sensor for atmospheric behaviour determination. Practical case: pressure estimation using automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast

Knowledge of the characteristics of the atmosphere will benefit future air traffic management systems, particularly the so-called ‘four-dimensional trajectory management’. Trajectory prediction should incorporate variables such as air pressure (p), wind velocity (w) and temperature (T), as well as clouds/visibility, gusts/microbursts and the concentration of particles or other elements that can affect aircraft travel through the atmosphere. Today’s commercial aircraft normally carry equipment that contains automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast system which broadcast usable information that can be used for different purposes. This article explores the characteristics of the information supplied by automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast, not for surveillance purposes, but for the provision of valuable atmospheric information that could support four-dimensional trajectory management. It also provides information on the strengths and weaknesses of automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast for supporting atmospheric status estimation and on the main differences between the regulatory framework and the information that is currently available from aircraft. Based on data obtained from an automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast receiver, the study investigates the possibility to determine the actual atmospheric pressure at different points and then uses a mathematical model to estimate the atmospheric pressure at any desired altitude at any time. It goes on further to assess the accuracy of the international standard atmosphere model based on the recorded data. During the data processing it was realised that not all of the data transmitted from the aircraft referred to the same reference surface, that is either the mean sea level or the height above ellipsoid were used. This ambiguity in the reference surface complicated the data processing, especially when the geoid ondulation value was close to the deviation value of the data.
A decade of cloud‐to‐ground lightning in Canada: 1999–2008. Part 1: Flash density and occurrence

Abstract Flash density and occurrence features for more than 23.5 million cloud‐to‐ground (CG) lightning flashes detected by the Canadian Lightning Detection Network (CLDN) from 1999 to 2008 are analyzed on 20 × 20 km equal area squares over Canada. This study was done to update an analysis performed in 2002 with just three years of data. Flashes were detected throughout the year, and distinct geographic differences in flash density and lightning occurrence were observed. The shape and locations of large scale patterns of lightning occurrence remained almost the same, although some details were different. Flash density maxima occurred at the same locations as found previously: the Swan Hills and Foothills of Alberta, southeastern Saskatchewan, southwestern Manitoba and southwestern Ontario. A region of greater lightning occurrence but relatively low flash density south of Nova Scotia occurred at the same location as reported previously. New areas of higher flash density occurred along the US border with northwestern Ontario and southern Quebec. These appear to be northward extensions of higher flash density seen in the previous study. The greatest average CG flash density was 2.8 flash km−2 y−1 in southwestern Ontario, where the greatest single‐year flash density (10.3 flash km−2 y−1) also occurred. Prominent flash density minima occurred east of the Continental Divide in Alberta and over the Niagara Escarpment in southern Ontario. Lightning activity is seen to be highly influenced by the length of the season, proximity to cold water bodies and elevation. The diurnal heating and cooling cycle exerted the main control over lightning occurrence over most land areas; however, storm translation and transient dynamic features complicated the time pattern of lightning production. A large portion of the southern Prairie Provinces experienced more than 50% of flashes between 22:30 and 10:30 local solar time. The duration of lightning over a 20 × 20 km square at most locations in Canada is 5–10 h y−1, although the duration exceeded 15 h y−1 over extreme southwestern Ontario. Lightning occurred on 15–30 days each year, on average, over most of the interior of the country. The greatest number of days with lightning in a single year was 47 in the Alberta foothills and 50 in southwestern Ontario. Beginning and ending dates of the lightning season show that the season length decreases from north to south; however, there are considerable east‐west differences between regions. The season is nearly year‐round in the Pacific coastal region, southern Nova Scotia, southern Newfoundland and offshore.
Age and origin of coeval TTG, I- and S-type granites in the Famatinian belt of NW Argentina

Three granitoid types are recognised in the Famatinian magmatic belt of NW Argentina, based on lithology and new geochemical data: (a) a minor trondhjemite–tonalite–granodiorite (TTG) group, (b) a metaluminous I-type gabbro-monzogranite suite, and (c) S-type granites. The latter occur as small cordieritic intrusions associated with 1-type granodiorites and as abundant cordierite-bearing facies in large batholithic masses. Twelve new SHRIMP U-Pb zircon ages establish the contemporaneity of all three types in Early Ordovician times (mainly 470-490 Ma ago). Sr- and Nd-isotopic data suggest that, apart from some TTG plutons of asthenospheric origin, the remaining magmas were derived from a Proterozoic crust-lithospheric mantle section. Trace element modelling suggests that the TTG originated by variable melting of a depleted gabbroid source at 10-12kbar, and the I-type tonalite-granodiorite suite by melting of a more enriched lithospheric source at c. 5 kbar. The voluminous intermediate and acidic I-types involved hybridisation with lower and middle crustal melts. The highly peraluminous S-type granites have isotopic and inherited zircon patterns similar to those of Cambrian supracrustal metasedimentary rocks deposited in the Pampean cycle, and were derived from them by local anatexis. Other major components of the S-type batholiths involved melting of deep crust and mixing with the I-type magmas, leading to an isotopic and geochemical continuum.
Perceived technology clusters and ownership of related technologies: The case of consumer electronics

We contribute to the understanding of how technologies may be perceived to be part of technology clusters. The value added of the paper is both at a theoretical and an empirical level. We add to the theoretical understanding of technology clusters by distinguishing between clus- ters in perceptions and clusters in ownership, and by proposing a mechanism to explain the existence of clus- ters. Our empirical analysis combines qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate clusters of consumer electronics for a sample of Dutch consumers.We ﬁnd that perceived clusters in consumer electronics are mostly determined by functional linkages, and that perceived technology clusters are good predictors of ownership clusters, but only for less widely diffused products.
A 0.4V 430nA quiescent current NMOS digital LDO with NAND-based analog-assisted loop in 28nm CMOS

Ultra-low-power fully-integrated voltage regulators with fast load-transient performance are highly attractive for low-power systems-on-a-chip (SoCs). In such systems, the digital units working in the subthreshold region are more sensitive to supply variations. The digital low-dropout regulator (DLDO) is more suitable for low-supply-voltage operation, as compared to an analog LDO regulator. But, traditional DLDOs are either slow or power hungry, and need a large output capacitor (consumes area) to survive a fast load transient. When a higher clock frequency is used for faster response, both the current efficiency and the loop stability are degraded [1]. An analog-assisted (AA) loop was used in [2] to provide a high-pass loop in parallel with the slow digital loop for fast response. However, a large coupling capacitor (100pF) was still needed, trading off area with power and speed. An NMOS power stage as a source follower is sometimes used in replica LDOs and cascaded LDOs [3] for its intrinsic response to load transient; the NMOS source follower naturally provides more output current when VOUT drops. To improve upon the power-speed-area tradeoffs, this paper presents a DLDO using NMOS power switches, and employs a NAND-gate-based high-pass analog path (NAP) to assist the slow low-power digital loop. With these two techniques, nearly two orders of better FoM is achieved relative to the state-of-the-art.
Bladed Quartz and Its Relationship to Gold Mineralization in the Hishikari Low-Sulfidation Epithermal Gold Deposit, Japan

Bladed quartz frequently is observed in low-sulfidation, epithermal gold deposits. Bladed calcite also has been documented in boiling zones of some active epithermal systems, and boiling in these systems has been directly linked to gold mineralization. In the Hishikari low-sulfidation epithermal gold deposit, the distribution and texture of fluid inclusions within bladed quartz reveal a similar relationship to gold precipitation. The formation of bladed quartz at Hishikari involves several stages: (1) deposition of bladed calcite; (2) precipitation of fine-grained adularia and quartz on the surface of calcite blades; (3) dissolution of calcite blades, leaving cavities in the interstices between aggregates of adularia and quartz; and (4) infilling of the cavities by later quartz (i.e., pseudomorphs of the original bladed calcite). Bladed quartz is present largely in the deeper part of the vein system, beneath the high-grade gold ore zone at Hishikari. This distribution may be explained by the fact that the original bladed calcite formed at depth in the system, where boiling and loss of CO 2 initially caused the precipitation of the calcite, and quartz formed as pseudomorphs of the original calcite blades.
Geochemical Mechanisms of Biomineralization from Analysis of Deep-Sea and Laboratory Cultured Corals

The ocean is a major component of global heat transport and represents a large exchangeable reservoir of CO_2. The importance of these effects on climate can be quantified with records of ocean temperature, chemistry and dynamics spanning past climate change. One approach to reconstruct past ocean conditions relies on the chemical composition of CaCO_3 skeletons from coral. Despite the utility of these geochemical proxies, several lines of evidence suggest that biomineralization, the process corals use to build their skeletons, also influences composition, complicating the interpretation of past records. Coral grown under constant environmental conditions, either collected from the deep-sea or cultured in the laboratory, are used to quantify and spatially map the effects of biomineralization on skeletal composition. In modern deep-sea coral, Mg/Ca increases with decreasing Sr/Ca in most the skeleton, consistent with closed-system (Rayleigh) precipitation. Results also show composition strongly follows skeletal architecture. Centers of calcification (COCs) are small regions of disorganized crystals thought to be the initial stage of skeletal extension. Unlike the rest of the skeleton, Mg/Ca ratios vary more than two fold within the COCs while Sr/Ca is near constant. Our data provide new constraints on a number of possible mechanisms for this effect. In a complementary set of experiments the nanoSIMS, a new instrument capable of accurate sub-micron compositional analysis, is applied to adult cultured surface coral (1) mapping the pattern of metal ion incorporation in new growth and showing that the calcifying fluid is likely in direct exchange with seawater; and (2) testing the sensitivity of Me/Ca ratios to aragonite saturation (Omega). Despite a large range of Omegas and calcification rates, the average Sr/Ca of nanoSIMS spot measurements in cultured coral are within 1.2% (2 sigma std. dev. of the 5 means). These data suggest that temperature is a more significant control on Sr/Ca than aragonite saturation between Omega = 2.5--5. Within the framework of a closed-system (Rayleigh) model for biomineralization the results constrain explanations for the sensitivity of coral calcification rates to ocean acidification, improving our understanding of how anthropogenic CO_2 will impact coral reefs.
Asymmetric Momentum: A Rethinking of Gradient Descent

Through theoretical and experimental validation, unlike all existing adaptive methods like Adam which penalize frequently-changing parameters and are only applicable to sparse gradients, we propose the simplest SGD enhanced method, Loss-Controlled Asymmetric Momentum(LCAM). By averaging the loss, we divide training process into different loss phases and using different momentum. It not only can accelerates slow-changing parameters for sparse gradients, similar to adaptive optimizers, but also can choose to accelerates frequently-changing parameters for non-sparse gradients, thus being adaptable to all types of datasets. We reinterpret the machine learning training process through the concepts of weight coupling and weight traction, and experimentally validate that weights have directional specificity, which are correlated with the specificity of the dataset. Thus interestingly, we observe that in non-sparse gradients, frequently-changing parameters should actually be accelerated, which is completely opposite to traditional adaptive perspectives. Compared to traditional SGD with momentum, this algorithm separates the weights without additional computational costs. It is noteworthy that this method relies on the network's ability to extract complex features. We primarily use Wide Residual Networks for our research, employing the classic datasets Cifar10 and Cifar100 to test the ability for feature separation and conclude phenomena that are much more important than just accuracy rates. Finally, compared to classic SGD tuning methods, while using WRN on these two datasets and with nearly half the training epochs, we achieve equal or better test accuracy.