Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A second-order Magnus-type integrator for quasi-linear parabolic problems

In this paper, we consider an explicit exponential method of classical order two for the time discretisation of quasi-linear parabolic problems. The numerical scheme is based on a Magnus integrator and requires the evaluation of two exponentials per step. Our convergence analysis includes parabolic partial differential equations under a Dirichlet boundary condition and provides error estimates in Sobolev spaces. In an abstract formulation the initial boundary value problem is written as an initial value problem on a Banach space X u'(t) = A(u(t))u(t), 0 < t < T, u(0) given, involving the sectorial operator A(v): D → X with domain D C X independent of v ∈ V C X. Under reasonable regularity requirements on the problem, we prove the stability of the numerical method and derive error estimates in the norm of certain intermediate spaces between X and D. Various applications and a numerical experiment illustrate the theoretical results.
NS2 based simulation framework to evaluate the performance of wireless distribution systems

In this paper, we present an extensible and modular NS2 based simulation framework to simulate Wireless Distribution Systems (WDS). A WDS is the interconnection of access points (APs) via wireless links. We point out and clarify some of the shortcomings inherent to the current implementations of the IEEE 802.11 in NS2. We describe then a new design for different IEEE 802.11 models including the WDS component. Our design includes the use of several interfaces per AP and provides a framework for the integration and the study of WDS architectures. We show that using just two interfaces per AP for the WDS nearly doubles the throughput, maintains the sequencing of delivered data frames and improves the average data frame delay.
Centroid Based Adaptive Random Testing for object oriented program

A variant of Adaptive Random Testing (ART) called Centroid Based Adaptive Random Testing (CB-ART) has been developed. It aims to improve efficiency of ART which was claimed to have better performance than Random Testing (RT) in finding first error in a program. CB-ART is applying the concept of centroid for test case selection process. The technique for generating and computing centroid from a pool of input objects is the novelty of CB-ART. The experiment results show that our approach can generate 792.38% (near 8 times) more test cases than ARTGen and 108% more test cases than RANDOOP. Although capable in producing more test cases, the effectiveness of CB-ART is equal or higher than ARTGen and RANDOOP in some cases. We claim that our technique is able to generate high quality test case with shorter generation time.
Automatic abstraction refinement of TR for PDR

Localization abstraction is a powerful technique that has long been a solution to the scalability problem of hardware model checking. However, computation resources are often inefficiently consumed during the repeated trial-and-errors between abstraction refinement engines and proof engines. To this end, many efforts have been made to combine the two independent techniques for better efficiency in recent years. In this paper, we present a novel model checking method that combines PDR (aka IC3) with a gate-level, hybrid abstraction technique to achieve further enhancement of scalability and performance for PDR. We implemented our work in ABC and evaluated it on the HWMCC13, HWMCC14 benchmark suites. The results show that our method substantially outperforms PDR as implemented in ABC and complements it on a large number of benchmark instances.
Transformation Rule Learning without Rule Templates: A Case Study in Part of Speech Tagging

Part of speech (POS) tagging is an important problem and is one of the first steps included in many tasks in natural language processing. It affects directly on the accuracy of many other problems such as Syntax Parsing, WordSense Disambiguation, and Machine Translation. Stochastic models solve this problem relatively well, but they still make mistakes. Transformation-based learning (TBL) is a solution which can be used to improve stochastic taggers by learning a set of transformation rules. However, its rule learning algorithm has the disadvantages that rule templates must be prepared by hand and only rules are instances of rule templates can be generated. In this paper, we propose a model to learn transformation rules without rule templates. This model considers the rule learning problem as a feature selection problem. Experiments on PennTree Bank showed that the proposal model reduces errors of stochastic taggers with some tags.
The NES–Crm1p export pathway is not a major mRNA export route in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Nuclear export signal (NES)‐containing proteins are recognized by the NES receptor CRM1/Crm1p (also called exportin 1/Xpo1p). In vertebrates and Schizosaccharomyces pombe, the toxin leptomycin B (LMB) inhibits CRM1‐mediated export by interacting directly with CRM1 and disrupting the trimeric Ran‐GTP–CRM1–NES export complex. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, LMB is not toxic and is apparently unable to interact with Crm1p. A second difference between the systems is that LMB has no effect on mRNA export in vertebrate systems, whereas there is evidence that S.cerevisiae Crm1p plays a role in mRNA export. Here we show that a single amino acid change converts S.cerevisiae Crm1p from being LMB insensitive to fully LMB sensitive, indicating that Crm1p is the only relevant LMB target. This new strain has no phenotype, but LMB has a rapid and potent inhibitory effect on NES‐mediated export. In situ hybridization assays show that LMB also causes nuclear accumulation of poly(A)+ RNA but with a significant delay compared with the effect on NES‐mediated export. Biochemical assays indicate little or no LMB effect on cytoplasmic protein synthesis, indicating that the NES–Crm1p pathway is not a major mRNA export route in S.cerevisiae. We conclude that Crm1p structure and function is conserved from S.cerevisiae to man.
Myth and Mobilization in Revolutionary Iran: The Use of the Friday Congregational Sermon

Based on an in-depth analysis of the Friday congregational sermon in Iran during a period of religious and political tumult, this volume examines the ideology of the Islamic Revolution. The author isolates and discusses certain critical themes in the ideology of the Revolution and how they are expressed in the sermons. Ram also analyzes the exposition of these themes through Shi'i Islamic myths, a method meant to facilitate the mass mobilization of the populace in the Revolution. He also examines the historical, political, and sociological implications of the sermons.
Goal-Oriented Local A Posteriori Error Estimators for H(div) Least-Squares Finite Element Methods

We propose a goal-oriented, local a posteriori error estimator for H(div) least-squares (LS) finite element methods. Our main interest is to develop an a posteriori error estimator for the flux approximation in a preassigned region of interest $D \subset \Omega$. The estimator is obtained from the LS functional by scaling residuals with proper weight coefficients. The weight coefficients are given in terms of local mesh size $h_T$ and a function $\omega_D$ depending on the distance to $D$. This new error estimator measures the pollution effect from the outside region of $D$ and provides a basis for local refinement in order to efficiently approximate the solution in $D$. Numerical experiments show superior performances of our goal-oriented a posteriori estimators over the standard LS functional and global error estimators.
Tree-Structured Composition of Homomorphic Encryption: How to Weaken Underlying Assumptions

Cryptographic primitives based on infinite families of progressively weaker assumptions have been proposed by Hofheinz–Kiltz and by Shacham (the n-Linear assumptions) and by Escala et al. (the Matrix Diffie–Hellman assumptions). All of these assumptions are extensions of the decisional Diffie–Hellman (DDH) assumption. In contrast, in this paper, we construct (additive) homomorphic encryption (HE) schemes based on a new infinite family of assumptions extending the decisional Composite Residuosity (DCR) assumption. This is the first result on a primitive based on an infinite family of progressively weaker assumptions not originating from the DDH assumption. Our assumptions are indexed by rooted trees, and provides a completely different structure compared to the previous extensions of the DDH assumption. Our construction of a HE scheme is generic; based on a tree structure, we recursively combine copies of building-block HE schemes associated to each leaf of the tree (e.g., the Paillier cryptosystem, for our DCR-based result mentioned above). Our construction for depth-one trees utilizes the “share-then-encrypt” multiple encryption paradigm, modified appropriately to ensure security of the resulting HE schemes. We prove several separations between the CPA security of our HE schemes based on different trees; for example, the existence of an adversary capable of breaking all schemes based on depth-one trees, does not imply an adversary against our scheme based on a depth-two tree (within a computational model analogous to the generic group model). Moreover, based on our results, we give an example which reveals a type of “non-monotonicity” for security of generic constructions of cryptographic schemes and their building-block primitives; if the building-block primitives for a scheme are replaced with other ones secure under stronger assumptions, it may happen that the resulting scheme becomes secure under a weaker assumption than the original.
The effect of urban hassles on the subjective well-being of low -income urban adolescents

This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact ecommons@luc.edu. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Throughout my life and academic journey, I have been truly blessed by the presence of wonderful people in my life. I would like to give a special thanks to just a few of the people without whom this accomplishment would not have been possible. First and foremost, I extend my sincerest gratitude to my dissertation chair and mentor, Dr. Elizabeth Vera, for her consistent guidance, patience, and support. I could not have asked for a better mentor. Her wisdom, experience, and encouragement have been invaluable throughout my graduate education, and it has been a privilege to be her student. In addition, I would like to thank the other members of my committee, Dr. To the fellow members of my cohort, thank you for supporting me throughout our graduate studies. We are a strong group of women! In particular, words cannot express how much I appreciate my classmate and dear friend, Laura Coyle. She encouraged me at times when I began to lose faith in myself, and her strength, support, and relentless humor were instrumental in my progress. I am forever indebted to my parents who provided me with support and encouragement to accomplish my goals in life, and they always taught me that I could achieve whatever I dreamed if I put my mind to it. Because of my father, I developed a love for reading at an early age, which has served me well. My mother is an absolutely iv amazing woman whose work ethic is beyond compare, and I am not entirely sure that she realizes what an inspiration she has been to me. Last but certainly not least, I am forever indebted to my husband, Jeff. He has supported me in many ways and served as a voice of reason during some of the most demanding times in my life. One of the things I appreciate most about him is how passionate he is about his beliefs, and he has always believed in me.
ITIL-based IT service support process reengineering

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library ITIL supports best practices, reengineering activities and IT service support processes. ITIL framework only provides recommendations, and companies need to utilize this framework to improve their IT service support processes and establish best practices. This study provides a methodology on how to apply the ITIL framework for evaluating the IT service support processes, its reengineering and alignment to best practices, and subsequent integration into a decision support system framework. A case study approach was used to identify a set of Key Performance Indicators KPI which were monitored by a decision support system DSS for triggering on-going reengineering of IT service support processes. This paper focuses on the implementation of the ITIL guidelines at the operational level, improvement of the service desk, and incident, problem, change, release, and configuration management. It also presents the implementation of the ITIL guidelines at the tactical level for the improvement of the service level, capacity, IT service continuity, service availability, and security management. We conclude by providing recommendations for future research.
Basic fibroblast growth factor is an extracellular matrix component required for supporting the proliferation of vascular endothelial cells and the differentiation of PC12 cells

Vascular endothelial cells (ECs) seeded sparsely on extracellular matrix (ECM) will proliferate in the absence of exogenous basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF). This ECM will also stimulate neurite outgrowth in PC12 cells in the absence of exogenous growth factors. We have previously shown that bFGF is found in subendothelial ECM (Vlodavsky, I., J. Folkman, R. Sullivan, R. Fridman, R. Ishai-Michaeli, J. Sasse, and M. Klagsburn. 1987. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 84:2292- 2296) and in basement membranes (Folkman, J., M. Klagsburn, J. Sasse, M. Wadzinski, D. Ingber, and I. Vlodavsky. 1988. Am. J. Pathol. 130:393- 400). The actual requirement of ECM-associated bFGF for the growth of ECs and differentiation of PC12 cells was shown in two ways. First, polyclonal anti-bFGF antibodies added to subendothelial ECM inhibited both EC proliferation and PC12 neurite outgrowth. Secondly, PF-HR-9 cells, which do not synthesize bFGF and which produce an ECM not permissive for EC proliferation and PC12 neurite outgrowth, were transfected with bFGF cDNA. PF-HR-9 cells transfected with bFGF, but not with the dominant selectable marker SV2-neomycin, were found to express bFGF and to produce an ECM which did support both EC proliferation and PC12 differentiation. The ECM-mediated stimulatory effects were inhibited by anti-bFGF antibodies but not by anti-nerve growth factor antibodies or nonimmune rabbit IgG. These results indicate that bFGF associated with ECM is a required ECM component for ECM-mediated cell proliferation and differentiation.
A Multi‐Method Investigation of Buyer Power and Supplier Motivation to Share Knowledge

Despite the importance of knowledge sharing between supply chain partners, supplier motivation to share remains largely unexplored. This study examines the role of buyer power in supplier motivation to share knowledge. Applying a multi‐method, sequential research design, case studies followed by a scenario‐based experiment, we find buyer expert power increases supplier motivation to share, while the use of coercive power decreases this motivation. We also find that supplier dependence has a contingent effect; when dependence is high, the effects of buyer expert power and use of coercive power on motivation are weakened. The study makes three key contributions. First, it begins to address the largely unanswered question of supplier motivation to share knowledge and, more specifically, how supplier dependence and buyer use of power impact this motivation. Second, by studying both the direct and interactive effects of power structure (dependence) and power use, the research enriches understanding of the power‐influence process. Third, by adopting a research design that combines case studies and experiments, it provides a novel example of multi‐method research in POM.
Inference of time-dependent causal influences in Networks

We address the challenge of detecting time-variant interactions in multivariate systems. Inferring Granger-causal interactions between processes promises to gain deeper insights into mechanisms underlying network phenomena, e. g. , in the neurosciences. Renormalized partial directed coherence (rPDC) has been introduced as a means to investigate Granger causality in such multivariate systems. When using rPDC a major challenge is the reliable estimation of parameters in vector autoregressive processes. For time-varying connections a time-resolved estimation of the coefficients is mandatory. We show that the State Space Model in combination with the Kalman filter is a powerful tool for estimating time-variate AR process parameters.
Effects of Exchange Rate Volatility on Exports: Evidence from India

This study empirically examines the effects of real exchange rate volatility on India's exports using time series data for the period from 1970-71 to 2011-12. This study uses a simple rolling standard deviation as a measure of exchange rate volatility and implements the Johansen cointegration technique to understand the long run relationship among the variables. This study finds that there exists one co-integrating the relationship among exports, real exchange rate volatility and World GDP. India's export volume is positively related to the World GDP. India's export volume is negatively affected by its own real exchange rate volatility. The empirical results indicate that a moderation in the exchange rate volatility can increase the export volume in case of India.
A Program for the Identification of Structural VAR-Models Caesar Lack

This paper presents a menu-driven RATS-program which allows to identify structural shocks in vector-autoregressive (VAR) models. Identification is achieved by imposing short-run or long-run restrictions (or a combination of both) on the structural form of a model. The only requirement is that the matrix of restrictions consisting of rows of the restricted matrices of short-run and long-run effects can be written as an upper triangular matrix.
Mammalian Mss51 is a Skeletal Muscle-Specific Gene Modulating Cellular Metabolism

Background: The transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) signaling pathways modulate skeletal muscle growth, regeneration, and cellular metabolism. Several recent gene expression studies have shown that inhibition of myostatin and TGF-β1 signaling consistently leads to a significant reduction in expression of Mss51, also named Zmynd17. The function of mammalian Mss51 is unknown although a putative homolog in yeast is a mitochondrial translational activator. Objective: The objective of this work was to characterize mammalian MSS51. Methods: Quantitative RT-PCR and immunoblot of subcellular fractionation were used to determine expression patterns and localization of Mss51. The CRISPR/Cas9 system was used to reduce expression of Mss51 in C2C12 myoblasts and the function of Mss51 was evaluated in assays of proliferation, differentiation and cellular metabolism. Results: Mss51 was predominantly expressed in skeletal muscle and in those muscles dominated by fast-twitch fibers. In vitro, its expression was upregulated upon differentiation of C2C12 myoblasts into myotubes. Expression of Mss51 was modulated in response to altered TGF-β family signaling. In human muscle, MSS51 localized to the mitochondria. Its genetic disruption resulted in increased levels of cellular ATP, β-oxidation, glycolysis, and oxidative phosphorylation. Conclusions: Mss51 is a novel, skeletal muscle-specific gene and a key target of myostatin and TGF-β1 signaling. Unlike myostatin, TGF-β1 and IGF-1, Mss51 does not regulate myoblast proliferation or differentiation. Rather, Mss51 appears to be one of the effectors of these growth factors on metabolic processes including fatty acid oxidation, glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation.
Toroidal optical dipole traps for atomic Bose-Einstein condensates using Laguerre-Gaussian beams

We theoretically investigate the use of red-detuned Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) laser beams of varying azimuthal mode index for producing toroidal optical dipole traps in two-dimensional atomic Bose-Einstein condensates. Higher-order LG beams provide deeper potential wells and tighter confinement for a fixed toroid radius and laser power. Numerical simulations of the loading of the toroidal trap from a variety of initial conditions is also given.
A Paxon Evaluation of P 2

P2 is a new and exciting system that permits declarative implementations of overlay networks. The recently published work cites reasonable implementations and performance for two protocols, Chord and Narada. Our work evaluates P2 through an implementation of a third protocol, the Paxos consensus protocol. P2’s declarative language Overlog, admitted a smooth and readable implementation of the Paxos preliminary protocol [1]. Even though this implementation was a correct declaration of the Paxos preliminary protocol, P2’s lack of concurrency control and well defined execution semantics provided a source difficult bugs and race conditions, and we remain uncertain as to wether or not our implementation is robust. Our initial conclusions are that Overlog is good language for implementing declarative overlays, but that P2 must provide more clear semantics and concurrency mechanisms for the system to become a widely adopted overlay network platform. To evaluate the performance of P2, we built a simulator that could replay the P2 messages for various sized Paxos consensus instances, providing a lower bound on the time to reach consensus. We compared running times and CPU % utilization for identical conversations generated by executing P2 and by running our simulator called p2replay. Our preliminary experiments showed that P2 performed linearly with respect to the number of nodes, but was significantly slower and consumed much more of the CPU than the p2replay execution. For 256 nodes, P2 performed about 10 times as slow and consumed roughly 4 times as much of the CPU.
Poster Abstract: A Reliable Wireless Nurse Call System: Overview and Pilot Results from a Summer Camp for Teenagers with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

We present the design of a reliable nurse call system based on wireless embedded devices and multi-hop protocols. Our work is motivated by the need for such system during annual summer camps for people with muscular dystrophy and the lack of suitable alternative solutions. We describe how our prototype meets the reliability and real-time requirements of such system, and report on results from a two-week deployment during a camp with 13 affected boys in July 2013.
Macro Basis Function interactions accelerated with the Inhomogeneous Plane Waves

This paper focuses on the direct computation of the interactions between the Macro Basis Functions (MBFs) defined on distinct sub-domains using their complex patterns. They are computed using a set of inhomogeneous plane waves, which can be viewed as an extension of the Fast Inhomogeneous Plane Wave Algorithm (FIPWA), using a new spectral-domain sampling. Examples of slot antennas and 3D frustum array are used to validate the proposed method.