Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Framework for a Programmer ’ s Minion EXTENDED

Programming environments should help the programmer. Today’s environments do a lot along these lines, yet more is possible. We are developing facilities within the Code Bubbles environment to proactively assist the programmer. These facilities attempt to take care of mundane tasks that the programmer otherwise would need to do, effectively acting as a programmer’s minion. This paper describes the framework provided by the environment to support these tasks and an evaluation of the effectiveness of the initial minion implementation. Keywords—automatic correction, programming environments, programming tools.
Delivering diverse delay/dropping QoS requirements in a TDMA environment

In this paper, the problem of sharing resources (slots of an up-link TDMA frame) among real-time heterogeneous variable bit rate (VBR) applications with diverse quality of service (&OS) requirements is addressed. The QoS requirements for each application is defined in terms of a maximum tolerable packet delay and dropping probability; a packet is dropped if it experiences excess delay. The region of achievable QoS vectors which is central to the call admission problem is established for policies that are work-conserving and satisfy the earliest due date (EDD) service criterion (WC-EDD policies); such policies are known to optimize the overall system performance. In addition to the determination of the region of achievable QoS vectors, this study leads also to the construction of scheduling policies which deliver any performance in the region established for WC-EDD policies. Finally, an upper bound on the region of QoS vectors that can be achieved under any policy (not limited to the WCEDD policies) is determined.
A survey of the modelling and rendering of the earth's atmosphere

One of the extensively researched fields in todays computer graphics are techniques for simulation and visualisation of various natural phenomena. This state of the art report is a survey of the methods for modelling and rendering of the cloudless Earth's atmosphere and related light effects. A physically based lighting model describing the light propagation through the atmosphere is presented. The model takes into account absorption and scattering by particles suspended in the atmosphere and can be used for computing the colour of the sky. Combining the lighting model with the various atmospheric constituents (clear dry air, aerosols, ice crystals) and their properties one can reproduce lighting effects such as rainbow, halo or colour of the sky during the sunset. We also collect the relevant informations of the physical properties of the major atmospheric constituents.
“Ant” and “Grasshopper” Life-History Strategies in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

From the evolutionary and ecological points of view, it is essential to distinguish between the genetic and environmental components of the variability of life-history traits and of their trade-offs. Among the factors affecting this variability, the resource uptake rate deserves particular attention, because it depends on both the environment and the genetic background of the individuals. In order to unravel the bases of the life-history strategies in yeast, we grew a collection of twelve strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae from different industrial and geographical origins in three culture media differing for their glucose content. Using a population dynamics model to fit the change of population size over time, we estimated the intrinsic growth rate (r), the carrying capacity (K), the mean cell size and the glucose consumption rate per cell. The life-history traits, as well as the glucose consumption rate, displayed large genetic and plastic variability and genetic-by-environment interactions. Within each medium, growth rate and carrying capacity were not correlated, but a marked trade-off between these traits was observed over the media, with high K and low r in the glucose rich medium and low K and high r in the other media. The cell size was tightly negatively correlated to carrying capacity in all conditions. The resource consumption rate appeared to be a clear-cut determinant of both the carrying capacity and the cell size in all media, since it accounted for 37% to 84% of the variation of those traits. In a given medium, the strains that consume glucose at high rate have large cell size and low carrying capacity, while the strains that consume glucose at low rate have small cell size but high carrying capacity. These two contrasted behaviors may be metaphorically defined as “ant” and “grasshopper” strategies of resource utilization. Interestingly, a strain may be “ant” in one medium and “grasshopper” in another. These life-history strategies are discussed with regards to yeast physiology, and in an evolutionary perspective.
Increase in body size is correlated to warmer winters in a passerine bird as inferred from time series data

Climate change is expected to affect natural populations in many ways. One way of getting an understanding of the effects of a changing climate is to analyze time series of natural populations. Therefore, we analyzed time series of 25 and 20 years, respectively, in two populations of the citril finch (Carduelis citrinella) to understand the background of a dramatic increase in wing length in this species over this period, ranging between 1.3 and 2.9 phenotypic standard deviations. We found that the increase in wing length is closely correlated to warmer winters and in one case to rain in relation to temperature in the summer. In order to understand the process of change, we implemented seven simulation models, ranging from two nonadaptive models (drift and sampling), and five adaptive models with selection and/or phenotypic plasticity involved and tested these models against the time series of males and females from the two population separately. The nonadaptive models were rejected in each case, but the results were mixed when it comes to the adaptive models. The difference in fit of the models was sometimes not significant indicating that the models were not different enough. In conclusion, the dramatic change in mean wing length can best be explained as an adaptive response to a changing climate.
Specialty Grand Challenge Article Grand Challenges in Atmospheric Science Challenge 1: Data Assimilation Challenge 2: Small Scale Processes in the Atmosphere Earth Science

As a subject of study, the atmospheric sciences encompass all the processes that occur in the atmosphere, together with its links with other systems, mainly the hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, bio-sphere, and outer space. As such it is an extensive discipline and the task of describing the main challenges is not an easy one, and entails a fair degree of overlap with some of the other grand challenges in the earth and environmental sciences. As a special overlapping could occur with climate sciences it is worth to remember that atmospheric processes differ from climate ones in the temporal scale, being the latter those occurring over long periods, typically higher than 30 years, but in any case long enough to produce meaningful averages. Atmospheric processes are central to configure the state of the climate but also to many of the forcings and feedbacks that determine the magnitude of climate change and its possible impacts. Additionally, there has been impressive progress of late in the atmospheric sciences in terms of the benefits provided to individuals and organizations. The flow of atmospheric " information " is of considerable importance in decisions related to health, agriculture, energy, power, and the environment. This " Grand Challenges " article focuses on the atmosphere , although the strong interaction with other parts of the earth and its environment , together with the societal implications involved, is a common theme in all the challenges described. Over the next few years, progress in the atmospheric sciences is essential if understanding of the basic processes and their modeling is to improve; this will require genuine advances in observational, conceptual , and technological approaches. For this reason the following non-exhaustive list of 12 selected challenges includes those related to observations and data assimilation, those covered within the traditional disciplines (atmospheric physics and chemistry, atmospheric dynamics and weather forecasting), those concerned with the interactions between the atmosphere and its boundaries, and those related to the atmospheric component of climate studies. The challenges in terms of data assimilation for earth observation over the next years relate to technical and general thematic aspects, as well as to the ability to take advantage of new and exciting opportunities in earth observation systems. The benefits of addressing these challenges are likely to include improvements to reanal-yses, improvements to weather forecasting , an improved observational system, and an improved foundation on which the elements of climate models can …
Predicting disability in stroke--a critical review of the literature.

Research articles on the prognosis of stroke patients were analysed to identify studies that met sound methodological principles of prognostic research as well as to identify variables capable of predicting functional outcome (ADL) after stroke. Data sources comprised a computer-aided search of published prognostic studies and references to literature used in prognostic studies. Seventy-eight studies were tested for adherence to the following key methodological criteria: reliability and validity of measurement instruments used to assess dependent and independent variables; inclusion of an inception cohort; adequate and uniform end-point of observation; control for drop-outs during period of observation; statistical testing of presumed relationship between dependent and independent variables; sufficient sample size in relation to number of determinants; control for multicollinearity; specification of patient characteristics (i.e. age, type, recurrent stroke and localization of stroke); description of interfering treatment effects during the period of observation, and cross-validation of the prediction model in a second independent group of patients. Only three studies satisfied nine out 11 criteria and ten studies eight criteria for the determination of valid prognostic research. The results of these studies indicate that the following variables are valid predictors for functional recovery after stroke: age; previous stroke; urinary continence; consciousness at onset; disorientation in time and place; severity of paralysis; sitting balance; admission ADL score; level of social support and metabolic rate of glucose outside the infarct area in hypertensive patients. This study supports the general opinion that not only are differences in objectives and heterogeneity in stroke patients responsible for the lack of accuracy in predicting functional outcome, but also the methodological flaws in published prognostic research.
Calculating the Distance Map for Binary Sampled Data

High quality rendering and physics-based modeling in volume graphics have been limited because intensity-based volumetric data do not represent surfaces well. High spatial frequencies due to abrupt intensity changes at object surfaces result in jagged or terraced surfaces in rendered images. Use of a distance-to-closest-surface function to encode object surfaces allows accurate reconstruction of objet surfaces for volumetric data. However, constructing the distance map for distance-based rendering requires a prior model of the object surface. Here we present a number of methods that can be used to estimate the distance map from a binary segmented volume, where no prior knowledge of object surfaces exists.
Validity and reliability assessment of Persian adaptionof Mannheim Dream questionnaire (MADRE)

This study aimed to adapt the MADRE to Persian and to examine the validity and reliability of the new scale. For the adaptation, the translation and back-translation method was used and after some variations a shorter version of questionnaire having 26 items was developed from the original MADRE. Validity testing involved a panel consisted of 15 psychologists to fulfill a quantitative assessment by calculating content validity ratio (CVR) and content validity index (CVI). Since the lowest acceptable quantity of CVR in the presence of 15 panelists and CVI is determined 0.49 and 0.79 respectively, all the items of developed instrument enjoyed a proper level of content validity in terms of essentiality, relevance, and clarity with an exception for one item relevance. Reliability of the instrument was assessed by a test–retest method and use of Cronbach's alpha.Persian scale demonstrated good test-retest reliability and Cronbach's alpha coefficient was achieved 0.752 for the overall scale.The findings of current investigation suggest that Persian adaption of MADRE is a valid and reliable instrument which can be tried on target populations in further studies.
Circle Detection Method Using the Intersecting Chords

A two-step circle detection method using pairs of chords is proposed. It is shown how the center of the circle is computed from two intersecting chords. First, a 2D HT method based on the idea finds the centers of the circles in the image. Then, a 1D radius histogram is used to compute the radii. The experimental results show that the proposed method detects the circles effectively.
WordRep: A Benchmark for Research on Learning Word Representations

WordRep is a benchmark collection for the research on learning distributed word representations (or word embeddings), released by Microsoft Research. In this paper, we describe the details of the WordRep collection and show how to use it in different types of machine learning research related to word embedding. Specifically, we describe how the evaluation tasks in WordRep are selected, how the data are sampled, and how the evaluation tool is built. We then compare several state-of-the-art word representations on WordRep, report their evaluation performance, and make discussions on the results. After that, we discuss new potential research topics that can be supported by WordRep, in addition to algorithm comparison. We hope that this paper can help people gain deeper understanding of WordRep, and enable more interesting research on learning distributed word representations and related topics.
The Leishmania ARL-1 and Golgi Traffic

We present here the characterisation of the Leishmania small G protein ADP-Ribosylation Factor-Like protein 1 (ARL-1). The ARL-1 gene is present in one copy per haploid genome and conserved among trypanosomatids. It encodes a protein of 20 kDa, which is equally expressed in the insect promastigote and mammalian amastigote forms of the parasite. ARL-1 localises to the Trans-Golgi Network (TGN); N-terminal myristoylation is essential for TGN localisation. In vivo expression of the LdARL-1/Q74L and LdARL-1/T51N mutants (GTP- and GDP-bound blocked forms respectively) shows that GDP/GTP cycling occurs entirely within the TGN. This is contrary to previous reports in yeast and mammals, where the mutant empty form devoid of nucleotide has been considered as the GDP-blocked form. The dominant-negative empty form mutant LdARL-1/T34N inhibits endocytosis and intracellular trafficking from the TGN to the Lysosome/Multivesicular Tubule and to the acidocalcisomes; these defects are probably related to a mislocalisation of the GRIP domain-containing vesicle tethering factors which cannot be recruited to the TGN by the cytoplasmic LdARL-1/T34N. Thus, besides the functional characterization of a new mutant and a better understanding of ARL-1 GDP/GTP cycling, this work shows that Leishmania ARL-1 is a key component of an essential pathway worth future study.
Improving the Generalization Properties of Neural Networks: an Application to Vehicle Detection

In this paper a multilayer feedforward neural network based approach for vehicle detection is proposed. The main idea is to use such network to perform both feature extraction and classification. This simplicity enables real time applications. In order to achieve such capabilities, the network is trained by a new algorithm, proposed in this paper, named minimization of inter-class interference (MCI). Such algorithm aims to create a hidden space (i.e. feature space) where the patterns have a desirable statistical distribution. Regarding the neural architecture, the linear output layer is replaced by the Mahalanobis kernel, in order to improve generalization. Experiments are performed by means of a dataset that includes two standard datasets from Caltech car rear. Finally, disturbed images are used, in order to evaluate the robustness of the neural-network based vehicle detection. The proposed method reveals low miss rate, low false alarm rate and high area under ROC curve. In Matlab environment, the algorithm spends only 3.280e-4 seconds per image. These facts encourage this research line.
Ray Tracing on Graphics Hardware

Ray tracing is one of the important elements in photo-realistic image synthesis. Since ray tracing is computationally expensive, a large body of research has been devoted to improve the performance of ray tracing. One of the recent developments on efficient ray tracing is the implementation on graphics hardware. Similar to general purpose CPUs, recent graphics hardware can perform various kinds of computations other than graphics computations. One notable difference between CPUs and graphics hardware is that graphics hardware is designed to exploit a larger degree of parallelism than CPUs. For example, graphics hardware usually processes several thousands of independent pixels (compare it to a few independent tasks on multi-core CPUs). Therefore, the key is to use algorithms that are suitable for parallelization in order to harness the power of graphics hardware. Although the parallel nature of ray tracing seems to be well suited for graphics hardware, there are several issues that need to be solved in order to implement efficient ray tracing on graphics hardware. This paper surveys several algorithms for ray tracing on graphics hardware. First, we provide an overview of ray tracing and graphics hardware. We then classify several algorithms based on their approaches. We also analyze the bottlenecks of current approaches and present possible solutions. Finally, we discuss future work to conclude the survey.
Reducing TCB complexity for security-sensitive applications: three case studies

The large size and high complexity of security-sensitive applications and systems software is a primary cause for their poor testability and high vulnerability. One approach to alleviate this problem is to extract the security-sensitive parts of application and systems software, thereby reducing the size and complexity of software that needs to be trusted. At the system software level, we use the Nizza architecture which relies on a kernelized trusted computing base (TCB) and on the reuse of legacy code using trusted wrappers to minimize the size of the TCB. At the application level, we extract the security-sensitive portions of an already existing application into an AppCore. The AppCore is executed as a trusted process in the Nizza architecture while the rest of the application executes on a virtualized, untrusted legacy operating system. In three case studies of real-world applications (e-commerce transaction client, VPN gateway and digital signatures in an e-mail client), we achieved a considerable reduction in code size and complexity. In contrast to the few hundred thousand lines of current application software code running on millions of lines of systems software code, we have AppCores with tens of thousands of lines of code running on a hundred thousand lines of systems software code. We also show the performance penalty of AppCores to be modest (a few percent) compared to current software.
MIP-Map Level Selection for Texture Mapping

Texture mapping is a fundamental feature of computer graphics image generation. In current PC-based acceleration hardware, MIP ("multum in parvo") mapping with bilinear and trilinear filtering is a commonly used filtering technique for reducing spatial aliasing artifacts. The effectiveness of this technique in reducing image aliasing at the expense of blurring is dependent upon the MIP-map level selection and the associated calculation of screen-space to texture-space pixel scaling. This paper describes an investigation of practical methods for per-pixel and per-primitive level of detail calculation. This investigation was carried out as part of the design work for a screen-space rasterization ASIC. The implementations of several algorithms of comparable visual quality are discussed, and a comparison is provided in terms of per-primitive and per-pixel computational costs.
Chapter V Combining Requirements Engineering and Agents

The concept of Agent is being used with different meanings and purposes in two separate fields of software engineering, namely Requirements Engineering and Agent-Oriented Software Engineering. After an introduction to Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE) and its evolution into Agent-Oriented Requirements Engineering (AORE), this chapter provides a review of some of the main Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) methodologies, focusing on their support for requirements modeling. Then the chapter analyzes how both approaches to Agents relate to each other, what the differences are among them, and how they could benefit from each other. Problems are identified and discussed that need to be addressed for a successful integration of both fields, and recommendations are provided to advance in this direction.
Real-Time Hand Finger Motion Capturing Using Regression Forest

This paper proposes a real-time hand finger motion capturing method using Kinect. It consists of three modules: hand region segmentation, feature points extraction, and joint angle estimation. The first module extracts the hand region from the depth image. The second module applies a pixel classifier to segment the hand region into eight characteristic sub-regions and the residual sub-region. The centroid of each characteristic sub-region is extracted as the feature point. The third module converts these feature points to the feature vector for finger joint angle estimation by using the regression forest. The estimation process has both the speed and precision advantages and it can also deal with the hand finger motion parameter of novel hand gesture. The experimental results show that our method can capture the hand finger motion parameters of global in-plane hand rotation with sufficient estimation accuracy.
Worst-case structural analysis

Direct digital manufacturing is a set of rapidly evolving technologies that provide easy ways to manufacture highly customized and unique products. The development pipeline for such products is radically different from the conventional manufacturing pipeline: 3D geometric models are designed by users often with little or no manufacturing experience, and sent directly to the printer. Structural analysis on the user side with conventional tools is often unfeasible as it requires specialized training and software. Trial-and-error, the most common approach, is time-consuming and expensive. We present a method that would identify structural problems in objects designed for 3D printing based on geometry and material properties only, without specific assumptions on loads and manual load setup. We solve a constrained optimization problem to determine the "worst" load distribution for a shape that will cause high local stress or large deformations. While in its general form this optimization has a prohibitively high computational cost, we demonstrate that an approximate method makes it possible to solve the problem rapidly for a broad range of printed models. We validate our method both computationally and experimentally and demonstrate that it has good predictive power for a number of diverse 3D printed shapes.