Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Large-Scale Convex Optimization for Dense Wireless Cooperative Networks

Convex optimization is a powerful tool for resource allocation and signal processing in wireless networks. As the network density is expected to drastically increase in order to accommodate the exponentially growing mobile data traffic, performance optimization problems are entering a new era characterized by a high dimension and/or a large number of constraints, which poses significant design and computational challenges. In this paper, we present a novel two-stage approach to solve large-scale convex optimization problems for dense wireless cooperative networks, which can effectively detect infeasibility and enjoy modeling flexibility. In the proposed approach, the original large-scale convex problem is transformed into a standard cone programming form in the first stage via matrix stuffing, which only needs to copy the problem parameters such as channel state information (CSI) and quality-of-service (QoS) requirements to the prestored structure of the standard form. The capability of yielding infeasibility certificates and enabling parallel computing is achieved by solving the homogeneous self-dual embedding of the primal-dual pair of the standard form. In the solving stage, the operator splitting method, namely, the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), is adopted to solve the large-scale homogeneous self-dual embedding. Compared with second-order methods, ADMM can solve large-scale problems in parallel with modest accuracy within a reasonable amount of time. Simulation results will demonstrate the speedup, scalability, and reliability of the proposed framework compared with the state-of-the-art modeling frameworks and solvers.
On Microscopic Thermodynamic Mechanisms of Damage Evolution Laws

Most existing phenomenological damage evolution laws can be covered by phenomenological equations or linear irreversible thermodynamics. In this paper, general microscopic thermodynamic mechanisms leading to nonlinear phenomenological equations are explored within the framework of ‘normality structures’ by Rice (Rice, J.R. (1971). Inelastic Constitutive Relations for Solids: An Internal Variable Theory and its Application to Metal Plasticity, Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 19: 433-455, Rice, J.R. (1975). Continuum Mechanics and Thermodynamics of Plasticity in Relation to Microscale Deformation Mechanisms, In: Argon, A.S. (ed.), Constitutive Equations in Plasticity, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 23-79. ) at the level of microstructural rearrangements. Rice’s kinetic rate laws of local internal variables, with each rate being stress dependent only via its conjugate thermodynamic force, are cornerstones of the normality structure. It is revealed in this paper that nonlinear phenomenological equations and Onsager reciprocal relations emerge naturally from the normality structures if each rate is a homogeneous function of degree q in its conjugate force. Furthermore, the nonlinear phenomenological coefficient matrix is identical to the Hessian matrix of the flow potential function in conjugate forces scaled by q. Finally, as an application and demonstration, some fundamental issues on damage evolution laws for microcracked solids have been addressed based on the revealed remarkable properties. It is shown that the deduced flow potential functions of microcracked solids can be expressed in the forms of well-established Hill (Hill, R. (1950). The Mathematical Theory of Plasticity, Clarendon Press, Oxford. ) anisotropic yield function and Karafillis and Boyce (Karafillis, A.P. and Boyce, D.B. (1993). A General Anisotropic Yield Criterion Using Bounds and a Transformation Weighting Tensor, Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 46: 85-113. ) isotropic yield surface.
On the Use of Line Co-change for Identifying Crosscutting Concern Code

Crosscutting concerns are software system features whose implementation is spread across many modules as tangled and scattered code. Identifying such code helps developers to change the concern and/or re-factor it to an aspect. This paper evaluates the suitability of line co-change as a technique for the identification of crosscutting concerns. A line co-change aim at identifying source code lines that have been changed together in a commit transaction performed using a versioning system such as CVS. Promising results have been obtained by evaluating the approach to identify four crosscutting concerns present in an open-source system, JHotDraw. The paper also shows that line co-change can be effectively complemented with clone detection to improve the performance achieved by the separate approaches
Rationalizing Medical Work: Decision-support Techniques and Medical Practices

Making a medical diagnosis and precribing treatment is a complex intellectual task. What makes medical diagnosis and treatment difficult is the volume of factual knowledge that could potentially go into a decision, the inherent uncertainty of medical observations, our limited understanding of the cellular and molecular operations of the human body, and the cultural shadings surrounding human health and disease. These phenomena explain some of the problems facing health care, which include (a) tremendous variation in medical practices across regions, communities, and individual physicians and (b) growing documentation of errors of omission and commission in medical practice. Variations in practice have been well-documented by Wennberg and colleagues at Dartmouth Medical School, who published the Atlas of Health Cure (American Hospital Association, 1995). This publication documents, for example, that a person in Boston, Massachusetts, is twice as likely to receive coronary artery bypass surgery for the same level of symptoms as someone in Portland, Oregon, though half as likely to receive surgery for an equivalent amount of back pain. These differences in practice cannot be explained by severity of illness or other known factors. Errors of omission and commission are also well documented. The former is exemplified by showing the lack of adherence to scientifically validated treaments in such common diseases as diabetes (Weiner er al., 1995) and myocardial infarction (Antman et al., 1992). Errors of commission are demonstrated by the numerous studies that document excessive prescription of antibiotics by primary care physicians (Bernstein et al., 1982). Many solutions have been advocated for these problems, a number of which rely on methods of formalizing medical decision making. Most of these techniques involve the use of computer tools. The development of these tools began nearly three decades ago. Some have been written up in medical journals. Certainly the general public has a fascination with the notion of technological wonders that diagnose disease and dispense advice. But the reality is that the impact of these systems in clinical care has been negligible. Few physicians use them in the care of patients and, as the author of this book notes, there is little data to support their use. If medical care is prone to inconsistencies and errors, and computer programs can be written to formalize medical thinking, why have these tools failed to have an impact? This is the topic of this fascinating new book by Marc Berg, a physician and Ph.D. sociologist who …
Game-Play Breakdowns and Breakthroughs: Exploring the Relationship Between Action, Understanding, and Involvement

Game developers have to ensure their games are appealing to, and playable by, a range of people. However, although there has been interest in the game-play experience, we know little about how learning relates to player involvement. This is despite challenge being an integral part of game-play, providing players with potential opportunities to learn. This article reports on a multiple case-study approach that explored how learning and involvement come together in practice. Participants consisted of a mix of gamers and casual players. Data included interviews, multiple observations of game-play, postplay cued interviews, and diary entries. A set of theoretical claims representing suggested relationships between involvement and learning were developed on the basis of previous literature; these were then assessed through a critical examination of the data set. The resulting theory is presented as 14 refined claims that relate to micro and macro involvement; breakdowns and breakthroughs in action, understanding, and involvement; progress; and agency, meaning and compelling game-play. The claims emphasize how players experience learning via breakthroughs in understanding, where involvement is increased when the player feels responsible for progress. Supporting the relationship between learning and involvement is important for ensuring the success of commercial and educational games.
Preparation of a clean Ge(001) surface using oxygen plasma cleaning

The authors demonstrate a method to obtain a clean and smooth Ge (001) surface using oxygen plasma cleaning without sputtering or Ge regrowth. The preparation of the germanium surface consists of four cycles of ex situ wet etching using hydrochloric acid as the etchant and H2O2 as the oxidant. Subsequently, the sample is outgassed and exposed to an oxygen plasma for 30 min followed by thermal desorption of the newly formed oxide layer. Reflection high-energy electron diffraction shows a clear 2 × 1 reconstruction of the germanium surface. In situ x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements confirm that the cleaned surface is free of carbon contamination and that no GeO2 remains. Angle-resolved photoemission spectra of the cleaned Ge show the peak associated with the Ge surface state indicating a very clean surface. Atomic force microscope images further indicate a smooth germanium surface with a mean surface roughness of approximately 3 A after plasma cleaning.
Anonymous authentication : For privacy and security

This paper presents NEC'S activities on anonymous authentication. Anonymous authentication is a means of authorizing a user without identification. The technology serves as a breakthrough to enhance the privacy of the user and yet preserve the security of the system. A well-known example of such an authentication scheme is called the 'group signature scheme,' where a user can be authorized as a group member without identifying the name of the member. We propose a new group signature schemes that solve the member revocation problem and the centralized authority problem. We further propose a new notion of k-times anonymous authentication, whereby unlike the group signature scheme; no authority can identify a user who has accessed less than k-times.
ICCAD-2012 CAD contest in fuzzy pattern matching for physical verification and benchmark suite

With the widespread adoption of design for manufacturing techniques and design and process co-optimization as well as the increase in the complexity of the processes to manufacture integrated circuits there is pressing need in finding quickly to calibrate yet accurate and high performing methods to identify layout topologies which may cause yield loss. While full-based simulations provide the most accurate prediction possible their runtime prohibits an adoption at all levels of the design flow. Alternative traditional rule checking including pattern matching techniques are fast but have a limited application in finding locations that were not part the training set. Several approaches to improve the accuracy of the prediction to reduce the number of miss structures and false detections have been proposed, but none have yielded and acceptable tradeoff between accuracy and runtime. This contest is aimed to provide a suite of layouts which highlight the challenges of this application: Widely different classes, limited amount of data and low prediction rates.
Graph-based privacy-preserving data publication

We propose a graph-based framework for privacy preserving data publication, which is a systematic abstraction of existing anonymity approaches and privacy criteria. Graph is explored for dataset representation, background knowledge specification, anonymity operation design, as well as attack inferring analysis. The framework is designed to accommodate various datasets including social networks, relational tables, temporal and spatial sequences, and even possible unknown data models. The privacy and utility measurements of the anonymity datasets are also quantified in terms of graph features. Our experiments show that the framework is capable of facilitating privacy protection by different anonymity approaches for various datasets with desirable performance.
Complete visual metrology using relative affine structure

We propose a framework for retrieving metric information for repeated objects from single perspective image. Relative affine structure, which is an invariant, is directly proportional to the Euclidean distance of a three dimensional point from a reference plane. The proposed method is based on this fundamental concept. The first object undergoes 4 × 4 transformation and results in a repeated object. We represent this transformation in terms of three relative affine structures along X, Y and Z axes. Additionally, we propose the possible extension of this framework for motion analysis - structure from motion and motion segmentation.
The RTT distribution of TCP flows on the Internet and its impact on TCP based flow control

It is well known that the performance of a TCP flow is affected by its round-trip time (RTT), i.e., the elapsed time between the instant a packet is released by the source to the instant the corresponding ack is received by the source. The distribution of RTTs can dramatically affect not only the data rates realized by individual flows sharing a link but also the utilization of Internet links. In this paper we present a comprehensive study of the RTT distribution for TCP traffic in the Internet. Because access to measurement points is so limited, one typically has access to a node that may be neither the source nor the destination of most of the TCP flows passing through it. Thus, our primary challenge is to infer the RTT distribution by looking at traffic in only one direction (either source-to-destination or destination-to-source, but not always both since the ack (reverse) path may differ from the data (forward) path). We present three different methods of estimating RTT and show that all three methods provide a consistent description of the RTT distribution. Further, we use this data to validate the use of fluid models that have grown pervasive in TCP analysis. Finally we make a study of burstiness of TCP flows.
On variations of the suspension-based multiprocessor priority ceiling syncronization protocol

In this paper we propose and evaluate suspension-based variations of the Multiprocessor Priority Ceiling Protocol (MPCP). The variations are compared with existing protocols for the same system model, which is partitioned and static priority scheduling. We present variations of the MPCP that improve in some cases the system schedulability. Some variations are actually simplifications that favor the implementation in real systems.
Effects of orange juice and hesperetin on serum paraoxonase activity and lipid profile in hyperuricemic rats.

INTRODUCTION Hypouricemic, antioxidant and xanthine oxidase inhibitory effects of orange juice and hesperetin have been already indicated. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of orange juice and hesperetin on paraoxonase and arylesterase activity and lipid profile of hyperuricemic rats. METHODS Forty eight male Wistar rats were divided into 8 equal groups of healthy control, healthy+orange juice, healthy+hesperetin, healthy+allopurinol, hyperuricemic control, hyperuricemic+orange juice, hyperurice-mic+hesperetin and hyperuricemic+allopurinol. Hyperuricemia was induced using potassi-um oxonate (250 mg/kg ip). The treatments were carried out by daily gavage of 5 ml/kg orange juice, 5 mg/kg hesperetin and 5 mg/kg allopurinol for 2 weeks. Paraoxonase activi-ty in serum was measured spectrophotometrically using paraoxon and phenylacetate as substrates. Serum lipids levels were determined using enzymatic colorimetric methods. RESULTS Hyperuricemia-induced reduction of paraoxonase and arylesterase activity was restored after treatment with orange juice and hesperetin (p<0.05). The effect of both treatments on lipid profile was marginal and only orange juice could significantly increase the levels of HDL-C. CONCLUSION Supplementation of orange juice and hesperetin could restore paraoxonase and arylesterase activity in hyperuricemic rats. Orange juice could also partially improve the lipid profile. These effects could have major implications with respect to the prevention of cardiovascular disease in hyperuricemic patients. However, more studies are needed in future investigations.
Energy-Storage-Based Low-Frequency Oscillation Damping Control Using Particle Swarm Optimization and Heuristic Dynamic Programming

Low-frequency oscillation is one of the main barriers limiting power transmission between two connected power systems. Although power system stabilizers (PSSs) have been proved to be effective in damping inner-area oscillation, inter-area oscillation still remains a critical challenge in today's power systems. Since the low-frequency oscillation between two connected power systems is active power oscillation, power modulation through energy storage devices (ESDs) can be an efficient and effective way to maintain such power system stability. In this paper, we investigate the integration of a new goal representation heuristic dynamic programming (GrHDP) algorithm to adaptively control ESD to damp inter-area oscillation. A particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based power oscillation damper (POD) has also been proposed for comparison. Various simulation studies with residue-based POD controller design, the proposed PSO optimized controller design, and the GrHDP-based controller design over a four-machine-two-area benchmark power system with energy storage device have been conducted. Simulation results have demonstrated the efficiency and effectiveness of the GrHDP-based approach for inter-area oscillation damping in a wide range of system operating conditions.
Analysis and Speed Ripple Mitigation of a Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation-Based Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor with a Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm

A method is proposed for reducing speed ripple of permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) controlled by space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM). A flux graph and mathematics are used to analyze the speed ripple characteristics of the PMSM. Analysis indicates that the 6P (P refers to pole pairs of the PMSM) time harmonic of rotor mechanical speed is the main harmonic component in the SVPWM control PMSM system. To reduce PMSM speed ripple, harmonics are superposed on a SVPWM reference signal. A particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is proposed to determine the optimal phase and multiplier coefficient of the superposed harmonics. The results of a Fourier decomposition and an optimized simulation model verified the accuracy of the analysis as well as the effectiveness of the speed ripple reduction methods, respectively.
Modeling security requirements through ownership, permission and delegation

Security requirements engineering is emerging as a branch of software engineering, spurred by the realization that security must be dealt with early on during the requirements phase. Methodologies in this field are challenging, as they must take into account subtle notions such as trust (or lack thereof), delegation, and permission; they must also model entire organizations and not only systems-to-be. In our previous work we introduced Secure Tropos, a formal framework for modeling and analyzing security requirements. Secure Tropos is founded on three main notions: ownership, trust, and delegation. In this paper, we refine Secure Tropos introducing the notions of at-least delegation and trust of execution; also, at-most delegation and trust of permission. We also propose monitoring as a security design pattern intended to overcome the problem of lack of trust between actors. The paper presents a semantic for these notions, and describes an implemented formal reasoning tool based on Datalog.
Bragg reflectors and 2D photonic crystals in the THz region

We designed the Bragg reflectors and 2-D photonic crystals using the R-Soft BandSOLVE software. Following our initial designs, we fabricated the Bragg reflectors and 2-D photonic crystals on Si wafers by using two techniques, i.e. drilling holes using a UV laser and deep reactive ion etching. We then characterized the fabricated structures by measuring both the reflection and transmission spectra using the widely-tunable monochromatic THz source developed by us as well as FTIR. We analyzed and compared our results based on these two different techniques. We also investigated the dependence of the bandgaps on the fluctuation of the diameters of the air holes using the R-Soft software.
WxBS: Wide Baseline Stereo Generalizations

We have presented a new problem -- the wide multiple baseline stereo (WxBS) -- which considers matching of images that simultaneously differ in more than one image acquisition factor such as viewpoint, illumination, sensor type or where object appearance changes significantly, e.g. over time. A new dataset with the ground truth for evaluation of matching algorithms has been introduced and will be made public. We have extensively tested a large set of popular and recent detectors and descriptors and show than the combination of RootSIFT and HalfRootSIFT as descriptors with MSER and Hessian-Affine detectors works best for many different nuisance factors. We show that simple adaptive thresholding improves Hessian-Affine, DoG, MSER (and possibly other) detectors and allows to use them on infrared and low contrast images. A novel matching algorithm for addressing the WxBS problem has been introduced. We have shown experimentally that the WxBS-M matcher dominantes the state-of-the-art methods both on both the new and existing datasets.
Protograph-Based Quasi-Cyclic LDPC Coding for Ultrahigh Density Magnetic Recording Channels

In this paper, protograph-based quasi-cyclic (QC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes are proposed for the efficient structure coding of LDPC codes in 2-D intersymbol interference (ISI) ultrahigh density magnetic recording channels, such as bit-patterned magnetic recording and 2-D magnetic recording, where a reduced-complexity 2-D detector based on the iterative row-column soft detection feedback with Gaussian approximation is employed instead of the full 2-D Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv detector. The proposed protograph-based codes, whose base matrices are constructed according to the degree sequences for 2-D-ISI channels, have a low-complexity QC encoder structure with a readily parallelizable protograph decoder structure. Simulation results show that the proposed protograph-based QC-LDPC codes outperform the random LDPC codes optimized for additive white Gaussian noise channels. Furthermore, the performance of the QC codes is similar to that exhibited by ISI-optimized random LDPC codes designed for 2-D-ISI channels, while retaining the implementational benefits.