Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Computation in an Asymptotic Expansion Method

An asymptotic expansion scheme in finance initiated by Kunitomo and Takahashi [15] and Yoshida[68] is a widely applicable methodology for analytic approximation of the expectation of a certain functional of diffusion processes. [46], [47] and [53] provide explicit formulas of conditional expectations necessary for the asymptotic expansion up to the third order. In general, the crucial step in practical applications of the expansion is calculation of conditional expectations for a certain kind of Wiener functionals. This paper presents two methods for computing the conditional expectations that are powerful especially for high order expansions: The first one, an extension of the method introduced by the preceding papers presents a general scheme for computation of the conditional expectations and show the formulas useful for expansions up to the fourth order explicitly. The second one develops a new calculation algorithm for computing the coefficients of the expansion through solving a system of ordinary differential equations that is equivalent to computing the conditional expectations. To demonstrate their effectiveness, the paper gives numerical examples of the approximation for ƒE-SABR model up to the fifth order and a cross-currency Libor market model with a general stochastic volatility model of the spot foreign exchange rate up to the fourth order.
State-of-Practice in GUI-based System and Acceptance Testing: An Industrial Multiple-Case Study

Software testing is an essential means of evaluating software quality. System and acceptance tests aim to validate a system's conformance to its requirements on a high level of system abstraction. Therefore, they are generally performed by executing end-user scenarios through the system's graphical user interface (GUI). However, to the authors' best knowledge, there are no empirical studies that evaluate how GUI-based system and acceptance testing is performed in industrial practice. In this paper, we present a multiple-case study with the goal to investigate the state-of-practice of GUI-based system and acceptance testing at six software development companies of varying context. The main findings are that manual, GUI-based system testing is widespread and that automated GUI-based system and acceptance testing exists only on a small scale. Additionally, the study identifies core problems with GUI-based system and acceptance testing such as test tool limitations, high test costs and customer involvement in testing.
Tensor LRR based subspace clustering

Subspace clustering groups a set of samples (vectors) into clusters by approximating this set with a mixture of several linear subspaces, so that the samples in the same cluster are drawn from the same linear subspace. In majority of existing works on subspace clustering, samples are simply regarded as being independent and identically distributed, that is, arbitrarily ordering samples when necessary. However, this setting ignores sample correlations in their original spatial structure. To address this issue, we propose a tensor low-rank representation (TLRR) for subspace clustering by keeping available spatial information of data. TLRR seeks a lowest-rank representation over all the candidates while maintaining the inherent spatial structures among samples, and the affinity matrix used for spectral clustering is built from the combination of similarities along all data spatial directions. TLRR better captures the global structures of data and provides a robust subspace segmentation from corrupted data. Experimental results on both synthetic and real-world datasets show that TLRR outperforms several established state-of-the-art methods.
Organizational factors affecting Internet technology adoption

Purpose – To explore the factors that affect the implementation of Internet technologies and to what extent the size of the company, as an organizational factor, influences that process.Design/methodology/approach – According to the innovation adoption theory, it was found that Internet adoption in firms is a process with different stages where a company is in one of a number of development stages depending on some variables related to organizational factors, such as the availability of technology resources, organizational structure, and managerial capabilities. The paper identified empirically different stages in the Internet adoption process and linked them with those factors. It analyzed questionnaire‐based data from 280 companies, applying factor and clustering analysis.Findings – Four main groups of companies were found according to their stage in the adoption of Internet technologies. The paper established that, contrary to the literature suggestions, the size of the company does not have any effect.
A comparison of emotional indicators on Human Figure Drawings of children from Mexico and from the United States

Comparison of Human Figure Drawings of 276 pairs of Mexican and North American lower class children matched for age, sex, and mental maturity showed significant differences in the types of Koppitz Emotional Indicators (Els) found on the drawings. The United States children included Els, which indicate anxiety, inadequacy, poor self-concept, resentment and aggression. The Mexican children showed timidity, immaturity, and concretist types of thinking, but these and other Els found are those often found in the drawings of brain-injured children, so that it is unclear whether these traits are culturally based or produced by neurological deficits stemming from dietary deficiencies.
Remote Document Encryption - encrypting data for e-passport holders

We show how any party can encrypt data for an e-passport holder such that only with physical possession of the e-passport decryption is possible. The same is possible for electronic identity cards and driver licenses. We also indicate possible applications. Dutch passports allow for 160 bit security, theoretically giving sufficient security beyond the year 2079, exceeding current good practice of 128 bit security. We also introduce the notion of RDE Extraction PIN which effectively provides the same security as a regular PIN. Our results ironically suggest that carrying a passport when traveling abroad might violate export or import laws on strong cryptography.
DMA cache: Using on-chip storage to architecturally separate I/O data from CPU data for improving I/O performance

As technology advances both in increasing bandwidth and in reducing latency for I/O buses and devices, moving I/O data in/out memory has become critical. In this paper, we have observed the different characteristics of I/O and CPU memory reference behavior, and found the potential benefits of separating I/O data from CPU data. We propose a DMA cache technique to store I/O data in dedicated on-chip storage and present two DMA cache designs. The first design, Decoupled DMA Cache (DDC), adopts additional on-chip storage as the DMA cache to buffer I/O data. The second design, Partition-Based DMA Cache (PBDC), does not require additional on-chip storage, but can dynamically use some ways of the processor's last level cache (LLC) as the DMA cache. We have implemented and evaluated the two DMA cache designs by using an FPGA-based emulation platform and the memory reference traces of real-world applications. Experimental results show that, compared with the existing snooping-cache scheme, DDC can reduce memory access latency (in bus cycles) by 34.8% on average (up to 58.4%), while PBDC can achieve about 80% of DDC's performance improvements despite no additional on-chip storage.
Observations of [S IV] 10.5 μm and [Ne II] 12.8 μm in Two Halo Planetary Nebulae: Implications for Chemical Self-Enrichment

We have detected the [S IV] 10.5 μm and [Ne II] 12.8 μm fine-structure lines in the halo population planetary nebula (PN) DdDm 1 and set upper limits on their intensities in the halo PN H4-1. We also present new measurements of optical lines from various ions of S, Ne, O, and H for DdDm 1, based on a high-dispersion spectrum covering the spectral range 3800 Å to 1 μm. These nebulae have similar O/H abundances, (O/H) ∼ 1 × 10-4, but S/H and Ne/H are about half an order of magnitude lower in H4-1 than in DdDm 1; thus H4-1 appears to belong to a more metal-poor population. This supports previous suggestions that PNe arising from metal-poor progenitor stars can have elevated oxygen abundances due to internal nucleosynthesis and convective dredge-up. It is generally accepted that high abundances of carbon in many PNe result from self-enrichment. To the extent that oxygen can also be affected, the use of nebular O/H values to infer the overall metallicity of a parent stellar population (for example, in external galaxies) may be suspect, particularly for low metallicities.
Dynamics of the cantilever in noncontact dynamic force microscopy: The steady-state approximation and beyond

A detailed analysis of models that have been used for describing the dynamics of the cantilever in largeamplitude noncontact dynamic force microscopy is presented. For each model, attention is especially paid to the nonlinear nature of the problem and its implication for experiments. In particular, in the steady-state approximation where the equations of motion for an externally and self-driven oscillator are rigorously identical, the theory predicts the existence of unstable solutions whether the interaction force is dissipative or not. The need to go beyond the steady-state approximation by including the finite-time response of the system to a change of tip-surface separation or interaction during the scanning is also discussed.
Random or Genetic Algorithm Search for Object-Oriented Test Suite Generation?

Achieving high structural coverage is an important aim in software testing. Several search-based techniques have proved successful at automatically generating tests that achieve high coverage. However, despite the well- established arguments behind using evolutionary search algorithms (e.g., genetic algorithms) in preference to random search, it remains an open question whether the benefits can actually be observed in practice when generating unit test suites for object-oriented classes. In this paper, we report an empirical study on the effects of using a genetic algorithm (GA) to generate test suites over generating test suites incrementally with random search, by applying the EvoSuite unit test suite generator to 1,000 classes randomly selected from the SF110 corpus of open source projects. Surprisingly, the results show little difference between the coverage achieved by test suites generated with evolutionary search compared to those generated using random search. A detailed analysis reveals that the genetic algorithm covers more branches of the type where standard fitness functions provide guidance. In practice, however, we observed that the vast majority of branches in the analyzed projects provide no such guidance.
Marital Status, Career and Income as Indicators of Life Satisfaction Among Middle-aged Career Women in Hulu Langat, Selangor, Malaysia

Life satisfaction is a subjective construct that varies according to gender, education level, age, income, marital status, and other demographic factors. Life satisfaction is an important issue among middle-aged women. They face various responsibilities, roles and expectation at this age. The objective of this article is to identify the differences in life satisfaction among middle-aged Malay women from different educational level, marital status, career and income. This study applied a survey technique, which is a set of questionnaire which consisted of socio-demographic scale and life satisfaction scale (based on Life Satisfaction Index - Short Form by Barrette and Murk, 2006). Simple random sampling and purposive sampling have been used to obtain the responses. A total of 410 middle-aged career women in Hulu Langat, Selangor have participated in this study. The finding showed that life satisfactions among middle-aged women are different depending on their marital status, career and income. This was based on the result of ANOVA. Single women and widower who are working in private sector and of low-income level reported to have the lowest life satisfaction. This finding may provide input to the planning of programs to enhance the well-being and life satisfaction among middle aged career women.
Insider Threat Assessment: a Model-Based Methodology

Security is a major challenge for today's companies, especially ICT ones which manage large scale cyber-critical systems. Amongst the multitude of attacks and threats to which a system is potentially exposed, there are insider attackers i.e., users with legitimate access which abuse or misuse of their power, thus leading to unexpected security violation (e.g., acquire and disseminate sensitive information). These attacks are very difficult to detect and mitigate due to the nature of the attackers, which often are company's employees motivated by socio-economical reasons, and to the fact that attackers operate within their granted restrictions. It is a consequence that insider attackers constitute an actual threat for ICT organizations. In this paper we present our methodology, together with the application of existing supporting libraries and tools from the state-of-the-art, for insider threats assessment and mitigation. The ultimate objective is to define the motivations and the target of an insider, investigate the likeliness and severity of potential violations, and finally identify appropriate countermeasures. The methodology also includes a maintenance phase during which the assessment can be updated to reflect system changes. As case study, we apply our methodology to the crisis management system Secure! , which includes different kinds of users and consequently is potentially exposed to a large set of insider threats.
A generic construction for voting correctness at minimum cost - Application to Helios

Most voting schemes aim at providing verifiability: voters should be able to check that their ballots did contribute to the outcome (individual verifiability) and that the tallying authorities did their job properly (universal verifiability). Surprisingly, verifiability still does not answer a very simple and natural question: how can I be sure that the published result corresponds to the (sum of) intended votes of the voters? This property is called correctness by Juels, Catalano, and Jakobsson. Actually, even a prominent voting system like Helios does not achieve correctness in the case of a dishonest bulletin board, since it may add ballots. We generalize the aforementioned definition of correctness to account for a malicious bulletin board (full correctness) and we provide a generic construction that transforms a correct voting scheme into a fully correct voting scheme. This construction simply requires to send credentials to the voters, with no additional infrastructure. We further provide a simple and natural criteria that implies voting correctness, which can then be turned into full correctness due to our construction. As an application, we build a variant of Helios that is both fully correct, verifiable and private. Real-world elections often require threshold cryptosystems so that any t out of l trustees can proceed to tallying. We describe a fully distributed (with no dealer) threshold cryptosystem suitable for Helios (in particular, suitable to partial decryption). In doing so we happen to revisit the seminal multi-authority election system from Cramer, Gennaro and Schoenmakers. Altogether, we provide the first proof of privacy, verifiability and correctness for a fully distributed Helios voting scheme (and its enhanced version with credentials), together with its detailed description. This also implies, to our knowledge, the first formal proofs of privacy, verifiability and correctness for the scheme by Cramer et al. Last but not least, we provide an open source implementation of our variant of Helios.
FH3, A Domain Found in Formins, Targets the Fission Yeast Formin Fus1 to the Projection Tip During Conjugation

Formins are involved in diverse aspects of morphogenesis, and share two regions of homology: FH1 and FH2. We describe a new formin homology region, FH3. FH3 is an amino-terminal domain that differs from the Rho binding site identified in Bni1p and p140mDia. The Schizosaccharomyces pombe formin Fus1 is required for conjugation, and is localized to the projection tip in cells of mating pairs. We replaced genomic fus1 + with green fluorescent protein (GFP)- tagged versions that lacked either the FH1, FH2, or FH3 domain. Deletion of any FH domain essentially abolished mating. FH3, but neither FH1 nor FH2, was required for Fus1 localization. An FH3 domain–GFP fusion protein localized to the projection tips of mating pairs. Thus, the FH3 domain alone can direct protein localization. The FH3 domains of both Fus1 and the S. pombe cytokinesis formin Cdc12 were able to localize GFP to the spindle pole body in half of the late G2 cells in a vegetatively growing population. Expression of both FH3-GFP fusions also affected cytokinesis. Overexpression of the spindle pole body component Sad1 altered the distribution of both Sad1 and the FH3-GFP domain. Together these data suggest that proteins at multiple sites can interact with FH3 domains.
A Secure e-Health Architecture based on the Appliance of Pseudonymization

Due to the cost pressure on the health care system an increase in the need for electronic healthcare records (EHR) could be observed in the last decade, because EHRs promise massive savings by digitizing and centrally providing medical data. As highly sensitive patient information is exchanged and stored within such systems, legitimate concerns about the privacy of the stored data occur, as confidential medical data is a promising goal for attackers. These concerns and the lack of existing approaches that provide a sufficient level of security raise the need for a system that guarantees data privacy and keeps the access to health data under strict control of the patient. This paper introduces the new architecture PIPE (Pseudonymization of Information for Privacy in e- Health) that integrates primary and secondary usage of health data. It provides an innovative concept for data sharing, authorization and data recovery that allows to restore the access to the health care records if the patients’ security token is lost or stolen. The concept can be used as basis for national EHR initiatives or as an extension to EHR applications.
Cell Type–Specific Three-Dimensional Structure of Thalamocortical Circuits in a Column of Rat Vibrissal Cortex

Soma location, dendrite morphology, and synaptic innervation may represent key determinants of functional responses of individual neurons, such as sensory-evoked spiking. Here, we reconstruct the 3D circuits formed by thalamocortical afferents from the lemniscal pathway and excitatory neurons of an anatomically defined cortical column in rat vibrissal cortex. We objectively classify 9 cortical cell types and estimate the number and distribution of their somata, dendrites, and thalamocortical synapses. Somata and dendrites of most cell types intermingle, while thalamocortical connectivity depends strongly upon the cell type and the 3D soma location of the postsynaptic neuron. Correlating dendrite morphology and thalamocortical connectivity to functional responses revealed that the lemniscal afferents can account for some of the cell type- and location-specific subthreshold and spiking responses after passive whisker touch (e.g., in layer 4, but not for other cell types, e.g., in layer 5). Our data provides a quantitative 3D prediction of the cell type–specific lemniscal synaptic wiring diagram and elucidates structure–function relationships of this physiologically relevant pathway at single-cell resolution.
Importance of length and external diameter in left ventricular geometry. Normal values from the HUNT Study

Background We aimed to study left ventricular (LV) geometry assessed by length (LVWL), external diameter (LVEDD) and relative wall thickness (RWT) in relation to age, body size and gender in healthy individuals. Methods 1266 individuals underwent echocardiography in the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT3), Norway. Septum thickness (IVS), posterior wall thickness (LVPWd) and end-diastolic internal diameter (LVIDD) were measured in M-mode, and LVEDD was calculated as the sum. Myocardial wall lengths were measured in a straight line from apex to the mitral ring in apical views at end diastole and averaged to LVWL. RWT ([IVSd+LVPWd]/LVIDD) and the ratio between length and diameter (L/D) were calculated. Results Normal age-related and gender-related values are provided. Conventional measures conform to previous studies. All measures correlated with body surface area (BSA) (r 0.29–0.60), and BSA indexed values were higher in women. Wall thickness (WT) and LVEDD, but not LVIDD, were higher with higher age. LVWL and L/D were lower with increasing age, but L/D was independent of BSA and similar in women and men (1.41 vs 1.40). RWT correlated with BSA and age (r 0.17 and 0.34). Conclusions LV WT increases and LVWL decreases with higher age. Excluding length in LV mass calculations increasingly overestimates mass with ageing. L/D is a BSA independent measure of LV age-related geometry and may be useful as a body size independent measure in LV hypertrophy. RWT depends on body size and age, and a single cut-off value is not warranted.
Common and language dependent phonetic differences between read and spontaneous speech in Russian, Finnish and Dutch

This preliminary study aims to reveal both common and language-specific phonetic differences between read and spontaneous speech in three typologically unrelated languages – Russian, Finnish, and Dutch. These languages differ in prosody, sound systems, speech styles, and means for conveying intonational meaning. Spontaneous speech was recorded from 5 to 8 speakers in each language. Transliterated extracts from the spontaneous speech recordings were read aloud by the same speakers. For Dutch, comparable speech material from the labeled IFA corpus and the transcribed Spoken Dutch Corpus was used. The two types of speech in the three languages were studied comparing their F0 statistics, segment durations, and the number of some consonant elisions.
Touch-based Target Selection for Mobile Interaction Technical Report HMT-1101

Smart phone and slate based mobile devices have changed the way individuals interact with computers. Users can complete tasks efficiently “on the go” using a mobile device’s touch screen. Therefore, it is important to investigate touch interaction as it pertains to a mobile (i.e., walking) user. A user evaluation was conducted using a slate PC to present a target selection task within a map-based interface. Participants interacted with the mobile device while seated or while walking in an uncontrolled environment. Results indicated that mobile target selection error is significantly higher for the mobile user. Effective widths of targets must also be significantly larger in the mobile case and a recommended model for target width is provided. Results also indicate that finger-based interaction differs from thumb-based interaction on a mobile device.