Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Layered Exact-Repair Regenerating Codes via Embedded Error Correction and Block Designs

A new class of exact-repair regenerating codes is constructed by stitching together shorter erasure correction codes, where the stitching pattern can be viewed as block designs. The proposed codes have the help-by-transfer property where the helper nodes simply transfer part of the stored data directly, without performing any computation. This embedded error correction structure makes the decoding process straightforward, and in some cases the complexity is very low. We show that this construction is able to achieve performance better than space-sharing between the minimum storage regenerating codes and the minimum repair-bandwidth regenerating codes, and it is the first class of codes to achieve this performance. In fact, it is shown that the proposed construction can achieve a nontrivial point on the optimal functional-repair tradeoff, and it is asymptotically optimal at high rate, i.e., it asymptotically approaches the minimum storage and the minimum repair-bandwidth simultaneously.
A QUANTITATIVE GENETIC ANALYSIS OF OVIPOSITION PREFERENCE AND LARVAL PERFORMANCE ON TWO HOSTS IN THE BRUCHID BEETLE, CALLOSOBRUCHUS MACULATUS

The presence of positive genetic correlations between oviposition or feeding preference for hosts, and performance on those hosts, is of fundamental importance to models of host race formation, sympatric speciation, and the maintenance of genetic variation within phytophagous insect populations. In this paper, I estimate the amount of genetic variation in oviposition preference and larval performance present in two California populations of a cosmopolitan pest of stored legumes, Callosobruchus maculatus (Bruchidae: Coleoptera), and examine whether positive genetic correlations exist between preference and performance. High levels of genetic variation in both preference and performance were detected in one population (Bay Area population, h2 = 0.73 for oviposition preference), but not in another population (Davis population). A second estimate of the amount of genetic variation for oviposition preference in the Bay Area population, after three generations of laboratory rearing, supports the hypothesis that the absence of significantly nonzero heritabilities in the Davis population is probably due to the three generations of laboratory rearing prior to the start of the experiment. No positive genetic correlations were detected between preference and any performance character measured. Data are also presented on the genetic correlations between performance on azuki (Vigna angularis) and cowpea (Vigna unguiculata). Genetic correlations were found to be positive for all characters in both populations of C. maculatus (range 0.132 to 0.542).
Semantic Structural Similarity for Clustering XML Documents

The amount of XML documents is increasing rapidly. In order to analyze the information represented in XML documents efficiently, researches on XML document clustering are actively in progress. The key issue is how to devise the similarity measure between XML documents to be used for clustering. Since XML documents have hierarchical structure, it is not appropriate to cluster them by using a general document similarity measure. Previous works on similarity measure for XML document clustering have no consideration for the semantic information as they consider only the structural information. In this paper, we propose the novel similarity measure that concurrently considers both structural and semantic information of XML document. Our experiments show that the proposed method improve accuracy on the clustering from the semantic point of view, compared to the previous works.
The atypical bilingual courtroom:an exploratory study of the interactional dynamics in interpreter-mediated trials in Hong Kong

This study investigates the communication process in the atypical bilingual Hong Kong courtroom, where, unlike in most other jurisdictions, interpreting services are routinely provided for the linguistic majority instead of the linguistic minority and the interpreter usually has to work with court actors who share his/her bilingual knowledge. It sets out to explore how the unique nature of the bilingual Hong Kong courtroom impacts on interactional dynamics in communicative process in the courtroom and potentially on the administration of justice, using authentic recordings of nine criminal trials from three court levels, supplemented by a survey administered to court interpreters. It compares the participant roles of different court actors in different court settings, monolingual and bilingual, using Goffman’s (1981) participation framework and Bell’s (1984) audience design as the conceptual framework. It is found that the notion of recipientship in the atypical bilingual Hong Kong courtroom is complicated by the presence of other bilinguals, which inevitably changes the interactional dynamics and impacts on the power of court interpreter as these bilinguals take on more participant roles in the process. The findings of this study show that the power of court actors is realised in the participant role(s) they and the other co-present court actors take on or are capable of playing. The findings also indicate that a change in the participant role of a court actor has an impact on the participation status other actors, which may in turn hamper the administration of justice. It is also found that the notion of power asymmetry in the courtroom has an effect on the footings adopted by the interpreter and thus on his/her neutrality. This thesis identifies training needs and makes recommendations for best practice in the courtroom and for institutional administrative practice.
Schizophrenia spectrum disorders in later life: prevalence and distribution of age at onset and sex in a dutch catchment area.

OBJECTIVES The prevalence of schizophrenia in later life is affected by both outflow of early onset patients, due to recovery and excess mortality, and inflow of patients with a later age at onset, making it likely that characteristics of older patients differ markedly from younger patients. We assessed the prevalence of schizophrenia and spectrum disorders and their distribution according to age at onset and sex in an elderly population. DESIGN Case register study. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS All patients age 60 years and older, in contact with the Mental Health Organization in a psychiatric catchment area in Amsterdam (the Netherlands), diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or delusional disorder. MEASUREMENTS One-year prevalence estimates, including rates according to age group, age at onset, and sex. In addition, we determined the effect of using different criteria for age at onset. RESULTS The one-year prevalence of all disorders was 0.71%, subdivided in 0.55% for schizophrenia, 0.14% for schizoaffective disorder, and 0.03% for delusional disorder. The one-year prevalence of early-onset schizophrenia was 0.35%, of late-onset schizophrenia 0.14%, and of very-late-onset schizophrenia-like psychosis 0.05%. Variation of onset criterion affected the proportion of early-onset versus late-onset schizophrenia patients stronger in women than in men. Women outnumbered men markedly in the prevalence estimates for most diagnostic subgroups, including early-onset schizophrenia. CONCLUSIONS We found the prevalence of schizophrenia among older persons to be well within the range reported for younger populations. The considerable proportion with a later age at onset and the strong female preponderance are distinguishing characteristics of older patients with clinical implications.
Assessing the Stylistic Properties of Neurally Generated Text in Authorship Attribution

Recent applications of neural language models have led to an increased interest in the automatic generation of natural language. However impressive, the evaluation of neurally generated text has so far remained rather informal and anecdotal. Here, we present an attempt at the systematic assessment of one aspect of the quality of neurally generated text. We focus on a specific aspect of neural language generation: its ability to reproduce authorial writing styles. Using established models for authorship attribution, we empirically assess the stylistic qualities of neurally generated text. In comparison to conventional language models, neural models generate fuzzier text, that is relatively harder to attribute correctly. Nevertheless, our results also suggest that neurally generated text offers more valuable perspectives for the augmentation of training data.
Sigma-delta modulator with delayed feed-forward path for low-power applications

This paper proposes an architecture of 3 rd order SDM(Sigma-Delta Modulator) with delayed feedforward path in order to reduce power consumption and area. The proposed SDM improve the architecture of conventional 3 rd order SDM which consists of two integrators. In the proposed architecture, the coefficient values of the first stage are doubled by inserting the delayed feed-forward path into the second stage. Accordingly, compared with the conventional architecture, the capacitor value(CI) of first integrator is reduced by half. Thus, because the load capacitance of first integrator is the half of original value, the output current of op-amp and the capacitance of integrator in the first stage are reduced by half, respectively. Therefore, the proposed method can optimize the power and chip area. The proposed architecture in this paper is simulated under conditions which are supply voltage of 1.8V and input signal of 1Vpp/1KHz, signal bandwidth of 24KHz, sampling frequency of 2.8224MHz in the 0.18um CMOS process. The simulation results are SNR(Signal to Noise Ratio) of 88.9dB and ENOB(Effective Number of Bits) of 14-bits. The total power consumption of the proposed SDM is 180uW. Key-Words: Sigma-delta modulator, Low power, Output current, Delayed feed-forward path, Coefficient, Architecture, Op-amp
Visions of the public and private in public health genomics: the case of a nascent Australian biobank

Bio-banks have been heralded as a new frontier of bio-molecular research potentially transforming public health by providing improved techniques for predicting illnesses, as well as potentially allowing more targeted health interventions. The teams of health professionals and others that build these technical and informational resources routinely consider ethical, legal and social issues and thereby co-produce the boundaries of a number of cultural and social categories such as the public and private. Drawing upon a study of stakeholders in one genetic biobank, this paper focuses on visions for its future. Participants envisage the creation of bio-value that had both commercial benefit as well as global scientific and public health value. The bio-bank was seen as a public/private hybrid which will have simultaneous local and global impact. Whilst the potential for undue private influence was recognised, stakeholders were confident that an appropriate public/private balance could be managed.
Applying automatic heuristic-filtering to improve hyper-heuristic performance

Hyper-heuristics have emerged as an important strategy for combining the strengths of different heuristics into a single method. Although hyper-heuristics have been found to be successful in many scenarios, little attention has been paid to the subsets of heuristics that these methods manage and apply. In several cases, heuristics can interfere with each other and can be harmful for the search. Thus, obtaining information about the differences among heuristics, and how they contribute to the search process is very important. The main contribution of this paper is an automatic heuristic-filtering process that allows hyper-heuristics to exclude heuristics that do not contribute to improving the solution. Based on some previous works in feature selection, two methods are proposed that rank heuristics and sequentially select only suitable heuristics in a hyper-heuristic framework. Our experiments over a set of Constraint Satisfaction Problem instances show that a hyper-heuristic with only selected heuristics obtains significantly better results than a hyper-heuristic containing all heuristics, in terms of running times. In addition, the success rate of solving such instances is better for the hyper-heuristic with the suitable heuristics than for the hyper-heuristic without our proposed filtering process.
Simulated annealing metaheuristic for the Double Vehicle Routing Problem with Multiple Stacks

The need for supplies and products has become more and more immediate due to the increasing globalization and new international treaties. Routing Problems with Loading Constraints have become very attractive, engendering studies in operations research. The appeal lies in the complexity of these problems, which are NP-hard and NP-complete. In 2015, Iori and Riera-Ledesma formulated and proposed an exact solution for the Double Vehicle Routing Problem with Multiple Stacks (DVRPMS). The objective is to generate routes with the lowest cost possible, that gather products in a pickup region and drop them in their respective points in the delivery region, without changing the loading plan. In this paper we propose a heuristic approach based on the Simulated Annealing metaheuristic with an additional Local Search. The proposed approach was tested using instances defined in the literature and compared with all known approaches of the DVRPMS. Compared to current heuristic approaches, the SA+LS heuristic found better results in 84.6% of all instances. Analyzing the exact method, the SA+LS heuristic was 61.3% more efficient on find the optimal solution. The proposed approach was proved to be highly competitive when compared to the exact methods, outperforming the exact method in time and finding better solutions than the upper-bounds found in the literature.
Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress Is a Determinant of Retrovirus-Induced Spongiform Neurodegeneration

ABSTRACT FrCasE is a mouse retrovirus that causes a fatal noninflammatory spongiform neurodegenerative disease with pathological features strikingly similar to those induced by transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) agents. Neurovirulence is determined by the sequence of the viral envelope protein, though the specific role of this protein in disease pathogenesis is not known. In the present study, we compared host gene expression in the brain stems of mice infected with either FrCasE or the avirulent virus F43, differing from FrCasE in the sequence of the envelope gene. Four of the 12 disease-specific transcripts up-regulated during the preclinical period represent responses linked to the accumulation of unfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Among these genes was CHOP/GADD153, which is induced in response to conditions that perturb endoplasmic reticulum function. In vitro studies with NIH 3T3 cells revealed up-regulation of CHOP as well as BiP, calreticulin, and Grp58/ERp57 in cells infected with FrCasE but not with F43. Immunoblot analysis of infected NIH 3T3 cells demonstrated the accumulation of uncleaved envelope precursor protein in FrCasE- but not F43-infected cells, consistent with ER retention. These results suggest that retrovirus-induced spongiform neurodegeneration represents a protein-folding disease and thus may provide a useful tool for exploring the causal link between protein misfolding and the cytopathology that it causes.
The effects of instructional set and delay of reward on children's learning in a simultaneous discrimination task.

56 third-grade children were divided into 4 groups of 14 each and given a simultaneous discrimination task. There were 2 levels of reward, immediate and 6second delay, and 2 sets of instructions, orienting and nonorienting. The notion that goal orientation, produced by orienting instructions, serves to substantially decrease the potentially detrimental effects of delaying reward was supported.
Inverter loss management for an electrical high-speed drive system

Constant velocity high-speed drives which are typically used in pumps, compressors or fans are supposed to be operated with high efficiency whereas dynamic behavior of the controlled drive system is of secondary priority. To ensure low-loss operation, the switching frequency has to be chosen as low as acceptable to guarantee stable operation without thermal overload of the PM-synchronous machine due to increased occurring voltage and current harmonics. That is why in this contribution pulse patterns of quarter-wave symmetry which are normally optimized offline with regard to certain objectives like the elimination of low-frequency harmonics are used in combination with an optimization algorithm that evaluates and manipulates various switching instants of the used pulse pattern in order to fulfill a given objective like the minimization of switching losses or total harmonic distortion for the current operating point best. Simulation results show that a reduction of switching losses of about 30% compared to the standard sine-triangular PWM can be achieved.
Implementation and evaluation of a comprehensive, school-wide bullying prevention program in an urban/suburban middle school.

BACKGROUND This intervention study examined the prevalence of bullying in an urban/suburban middle school and the impact of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP). METHODS A quasi-experimental design consisting of a time-lagged contrast between age-equivalent groups was utilized. Baseline data collected for 158 students prior to implementation of the OBPP were compared to 112 students who received the OBPP intervention for 1 year. Multiple perspectives on bullying were collected using the Revised-Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire. Similarly, a teacher questionnaire collected data for 17 teachers on prevalence of bullying and capacity to intervene pre- and post- OBPP intervention. Descriptive and inferential statistics were generated to analyze findings. RESULTS Statistically significant findings were found for 7th grade female students who received 1 year of the OBPP on reports of prevalence of bullying (p = .022) and exclusion by peers (p = .009). In contrast, variability in statistical findings was obtained for 8th grade females and no statistical findings were found for males. Following 1 year of the OBPP, teachers reported statistically significant improvements in their capacity to identify bullying (p = .016), talk to students who bully (p = .024), and talk with students who are bullied (p = .051). Other substantial percentile changes were also noted. CONCLUSION Findings suggest a significant positive impact of the OBPP on 7th grade females and teachers. Other grade and gender findings were inconsistent with previous literature. Recommendations for further research are provided along with implications for school health prevention programming.
Women’s leadership learning: A reflexive review of representations and leadership teaching

This article contributes to understandings of the experiential nature of leadership learning by drawing attention to the role of disruption as an organizing influence on women’s leadership learning, and by generating insights for leadership teaching. Examining leadership learning as an experiential process, we present the development of a typology intended to act as a summary of literature focusing on women’s experiences of leadership learning. Informed by our experiences of developing and using the typology as a teaching aid in two leadership development interventions we progress through a cycle of critical reflections to present a reflexive analysis of the typology’s performative effect and how it brings into being representations of women’s leadership. Moving from initial observations to deeper reflections the analysis draws attention to how disrupting pervades women’s learning of leadership, thus extending our understanding of gender’s influence on organizing learning experiences. The article considers how we, as educators, might forefront disrupting as a process in leadership learning interventions by re-positioning instruments, such as the typology, to problematize and deconstruct leadership learning. We conclude by proposing a reflexive process in the classroom that takes the form of a critical dialogue to enable educators and participants to de-construct their experience.
A general mechanical model for tendon-driven continuum manipulators

Recently, continuum manipulators have drawn a lot of interest and effort from the robotic community, nevertheless control and modeling of such manipulators are still a challenging task especially because they require a continuum approach. In this paper, a general mechanical model with a geometrically exact approach for tendon-driven continuum manipulators is presented. This model can be applied to a wide range of manipulators thanks to the generality of the parameters which can be set. The approach proposed could as well be a powerful tool for developing the control strategy. The model is also capable of properly simulating the coupled tendon drive, because it takes into account the torsion of the robot arm rather than neglecting it, as it is common practice in other existing models.
A syntactic approach for identifying multi-protocol attacks

In the context of multiple security protocols running in the same environment, we propose a syntactical approach for identifying multi-protocol attacks. The proposed approach uses a canonical security protocol model, where terms that can be verified by protocol participants are denoted by canonical terms. In order to enable the identification of subtle ¿type-flaw¿ attacks, where terms can be substituted with other types of terms, we introduce a canonical identifier. The approach is validated by analyzing several security protocol pairs. The attacks discovered by our approach are also discovered by existing security protocol verification tools.
Mining Massive Fine-Grained Behavior Data to Improve Predictive Analytics

Organizations increasingly have access to massive, fine-grained data on consumer behavior. Despite the hype over "big data," and the success of predictive analytics, only a few organizations have incorporated such finegrained data in a non-aggregated manner into their predictive analytics. This paper examines the use of massive, fine-grained data on consumer behavior—specifically payments to a very large set of particular merchants—to improve predictive models for targeted marketing. The paper details how using this different sort of data can substantially improve predictive performance, even in an application for which predictive analytics has been applied for years. One of the most striking results has important implications for managers considering the value of big data. Using a real-life data set of 21 million transactions by 1.2 million customers, as well as 289 other variables describing these customers, the results show that there is no appreciable improvement from moving to big data when using traditional structured data. However, in contrast, when using fine-grained behavior data, there continues to be substantial value to increasing the data size across the entire range of the analyses. This suggests that larger firms may have substantially more valuable data assets than smaller firms, when using their transaction data for targeted marketing.
Tiantianzhu7:System Description of Semantic Textual Similarity (STS) in the SemEval-2012 (Task 6)

This paper briefly reports our submissions to the Semantic Textual Similarity (STS) task in the SemEval 2012 (Task 6). We first use knowledge-based methods to compute word semantic similarity as well as Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD). We also consider word order similarity from the structure of the sentence. Finally we sum up several aspects of similarity with different coefficients and get the sentence similarity score.