Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Status Update Problem : Optimal Strategies for Pseudo-Deterministic Systems

We investigate First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) systems receiving update packets from a general integer number of sources. We calculate precisely when these sources should be sending update packets, relative to the rate at which the system can deterministically process update packets, to keep the average age of information, ∆, minimal. We devise strategies specifically for a single source, so that the server is never idle, so that the server has some idle time after every update packet, and so that the strategy is optimal in general. Finally, we discuss the case in which the server processes packets as a random process.
Belief in a just God (and a just society): A system justification perspective on religious ideology.

Theoretical approaches that treat religiosity as an evolutionary byproduct of cognitive mechanisms to detect agency may help to explain the prevalence of superstitious thinking, but they say little about the social-motivational (or ideological) functions of religious beliefs or the specific contents of religious doctrines. To address these omissions, we develop the thesis that religion provides an ideological justification for the existing social order, so that prevailing institutions and arrangements are perceived as legitimate and just and therefore worth obeying and preserving. We summarize empirical evidence revealing that: (a) religiosity is associated with the same set of epistemic, existential, and relational needs that motivate system justification; (b) religiosity is associated with the endorsement of the belief in a just world, Protestant Work Ethic, fair market ideology, opposition to equality, right-wing authoritarianism, political conservatism, and other system-justifying belief systems; and (c) religious ideology tends to serve the palliative function of making people happier or more satisfied with the way things are. Although most major religious texts and movements contain progressive as well as conservative elements, belief in God is more often than not system-justifying in terms of its motivational antecedents, manifestations, and consequences.
Social Resources and Community Resilience in the Wake of Superstorm Sandy

Recovery efforts after natural disasters typically focus on physical infrastructure. In general less attention is paid to the social infrastructure that might impact the capacity of the community to rebuild. We examine perceptions of preparedness and recovery (markers of resilience at the community level) in the wake of Superstorm Sandy with a novel data set that includes a multi-mode survey of twelve neighborhoods severely affected by the storm. With these data, we suggest that social resources are associated with beliefs about neighborhood resilience. People who live in communities with higher social cohesion (coefficient = .73, p <.001), informal social control (coefficient = .53, p <.001), and social exchange (coefficient = .69, p <.001) are more likely to believe their neighborhoods are well prepared for a disaster. Likewise, people living in communities with higher social cohesion (coefficient = .35, p <.01), informal social control (coefficient = .27, p <.05), and social exchange (coefficient = .42, p <.001) are more likely to be confident their neighborhoods will recover quickly from a disaster. However, the effects of social resources on beliefs about resilience vary based on neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) and the impact of the storm. Informal social control and social exchange lead to a greater increase in confidence in recovery in low, as compared to high, SES neighborhoods. Social resources tend to have more impact on perceptions of recovery in communities less affected by the storm. In sum, these findings suggest the potential value of various forms of social intervention to better equip communities to respond when disaster strikes.
Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli Carrying Supplementary Virulence Genes Are an Important Cause of Moderate to Severe Diarrhoeal Disease in Mexico

Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli (DEC) cause acute and persistent diarrhoea worldwide, but little is known about their epidemiology in Mexico. We determined the prevalence of bacterial enteropathogens in 831 children with acute diarrhoea over a four-year period in Yucatan, Mexico. Six DEC supplementary virulence genes (SVG), mainly associated with enteroaggregative E. coli (EAEC), were sought in 3100 E. coli isolates. DEC was the most common bacterial enteropathogen (28%), surpassing Salmonella (12%) and Shigella (9%). Predominant DEC groups were diffusely adherent E. coli (DAEC) (35%), EAEC (24%), and enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) (19%). Among children with DEC infections, 14% had severe illness mainly caused by EPEC (26%) and DAEC (18%); 30% had moderate diarrhoea mainly caused by DAEC (36%), mixed DEC infections (33%) and EAEC (32%). DAEC was most prevalent during spring, while ETEC, EAEC and EPEC predominated in summer. EAEC was more frequent in children 6–24 months old than in those younger than 6 months of age (P = 0.008, OR = 4.2, 95% CI, 1.3–13.9). The presence of SVG dispersin, (aatA), dispersin-translocator (aatA), enteroaggregative heat-stable toxin 1 (astA), plasmid encoded toxin (pet), cytolethal distending toxin (cdt) was higher in DEC than non-DEC strains, (36% vs 26%, P <0.0001, OR = 1.5, 95% CI, 1.3–1.8). 98% of EAEC-infected children harboured strains with SVG; 85% carried the aap-aatA gene combination, and 33% of these also carried astA. 28% of both EPEC and ETEC, and 6% of DAEC patients had strains with SVG. 54% of EPEC patients carried pet-positive strains alone or in combination with astA; only this DEC group harboured cdt-positive isolates. All ETEC patients carried astA- or astA-aap-positive strains. astA and aap were the most common SVG in DAEC (3% and 2%) and non-DEC strains (21% and 13%). DEC carrying SVG are an important cause of moderate to severe bacterial diarrhoea in Mexican children.
Cognate Identification using Machine Translation

In this paper we describe an approach to automatic cognate identification in monolingual texts using machine translation. This system was used as our entry in the 2015 ALTA shared task, achieving an F1score of 63% on the test set. Our proposed approach takes an input text in a source language and uses statistical machine translation to create a word-aligned parallel text in the target language. A robust measure of string distance, the JaroWinkler distance in this case, is then applied to the pairs of aligned words to detect potential cognates. Further extensions to improve the method are also discussed.
Application of TRA in u-health system focusing on moderating effect of health privacy information

The purpose of this study is to analyze the moderating effect of health privacy information on the relationships between the factors that affect the behavioral intention of the usage of u-health system. Therefore, as a research hypothesis in TRA (Theory of Reasoned Action), self-efficacy and perceived usefulness will have a positive effect on the behavioral intention of the u-health system, and in the path, that health privacy information factor have a moderating effect on each path. This study used the PLS-SEM methodology to verify the proposed research model. As a result of the analysis, this study showed that the moderating effect of health privacy information in the model affects to some extent by the increase of R2 explanatory power. However, it was found that it was more consistent with the role of the independent variable rather than the moderating influence on the perceived usefulness.
Error-tolerant processors: Formal specification and verification

There has been significant recent research in reliable architectures. This is in response to the perceived hardware failure threats faced by late- and post-CMOS devices, e.g., energized particle hits, increasing variability of device parameters and aging-related failures. This body of research proposes specific micro-architecture mechanisms to defend against these threats. Each proposed mechanism makes some assumptions about the underlying fault model and addresses some set of errors. Of particular interest are error-tolerant processors which do not guarantee that the processor will execute each instruction strictly as per the ISA, but rather provide a best-effort response to these faults. These processors are suited for application classes which are error-tolerant, e.g. media processing, and thus provide useful output even without strictly implementing their ISA. What is left unsaid is the minimum guarantees that they must provide to result in useful computation. This paper addresses this question. It makes the following contributions (i) It provides a minimum set of properties that such processors must satisfy, e.g., progress and non-accumulating errors, and states these formally using temporal logic for a model of the processor. This model captures not just the error-free function, but also the faults and the error response mechanisms. (ii) We have developed such full-system models for two case studies of recently proposed fault-tolerant processors, YMM [16] and ERSA [5]. (iii) Further, we present the result of model checking these properties for both case-studies and show that they do not fully satisfy these properties.
Grape Extracts Inhibit Multiple Events in the Cell Biology of Cholera Intoxication

Vibrio cholerae produces cholera toxin (CT), an AB5 protein toxin that is primarily responsible for the profuse watery diarrhea of cholera. CT is secreted into the extracellular milieu, but the toxin attacks its Gsα target within the cytosol of a host cell. Thus, CT must cross a cellular membrane barrier in order to function. This event only occurs after the toxin travels by retrograde vesicular transport from the cell surface to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). The catalytic A1 polypeptide then dissociates from the rest of the toxin and assumes an unfolded conformation that facilitates its transfer to the cytosol by a process involving the quality control system of ER-associated degradation. Productive intoxication is blocked by alterations to the vesicular transport of CT and/or the ER-to-cytosol translocation of CTA1. Various plant compounds have been reported to inhibit the cytopathic activity of CT, so in this work we evaluated the potential anti-CT properties of grape extract. Two grape extracts currently sold as nutritional supplements inhibited CT and Escherichia coli heat-labile toxin activity against cultured cells and intestinal loops. CT intoxication was blocked even when the extracts were added an hour after the initial toxin exposure. A specific subset of host-toxin interactions involving both the catalytic CTA1 subunit and the cell-binding CTB pentamer were affected. The extracts blocked toxin binding to the cell surface, prevented unfolding of the isolated CTA1 subunit, inhibited CTA1 translocation to the cytosol, and disrupted the catalytic activity of CTA1. Grape extract could thus potentially serve as a novel therapeutic to prevent or possibly treat cholera.
Attractiveness-based community detection for large social networks

This study mainly focuses on the community structure analysis of micro-blog user networks. With deep analysis on the micro-blog user network, we proposed the concept of user's core degree and user's attractiveness according to the characteristics of the micro-blog users, and then based on these concepts we propose two algorithms. An algorithm is designed to make some breakthrough on the time complexity of Internet community detection algorithm, another is the corresponding overlapping community detection algorithm. The research is for large social networks, and the another advantage is that the method does not require to specify the number of clusters. We test our algorithms under the real user data of Sina micro-blog, and the results verify the effectiveness and reliability of our algorithms.
Leveraging Six Sigma Disciplines to Reduce Scrap in Indian Foundry SMEs

The study focuses on scrap reduction in foundries and tries to find out the reasons of low productivity index among Indian subcontinent. It briefly discusses some facts and figures about foundry scenario in world and in the India. The Indian foundry industry is the fourth largest in the world. There are more than 70,000 foundries in India and most foundries (nearly 95%) fall under small and medium scale category. For global competitiveness, Indian industries need overall operational and service excellence and are extensively engaged in Quality Circles, TQM and ISO Certifications. However, these methods have failed to deliver required performance over the last decade or so. The average growth rate of productivity for Indian SMEs has been 4.95% in comparison to 7.31% for China, 9.45% for Singapore and 8.65% for Pakistan. It seems a comprehensive quality approach like ‘Six Sigma’ is not fully explored among Indian industries. This paper tends to shatter the various phobias of SMEs in context of Six Sigma concepts and its implementation by validating the compatibility of it by performing a case study in an Indian environment itself. In present case, overall sigma level has been raised by 0.24 by reducing the scrap of a non-ferrous piston foundry from 22% to 10% after successfully implementing the DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyse-Improve-Control) methodology of Six Sigma.
Comparison of single patch and patch antenna array for a microwave life detection system

For the rescue operation during natural calamities to be done efficiently, there must be a life detector that can provide reliable determination of a live person's presence in a place of search. Microwave sensors could bring some specific advantages for the detection of living victims. Primarily, microwaves are sensitive to small movements which are distinctive signs of life, independently of a possible loss of consciousness. It is at this juncture that microwave life detectors gain their significance. The antenna system is an integral part of microwave life rescuing system. The compactness and portability of a microwave life detection system depend largely on the miniaturization the antenna used which could be realised using micro strip patch antenna. The efficiency of the existing microwave life detection system can be raised by increasing the transmitted power and implementing appropriate digital signal processing techniques. Rapid developments in wireless communication go in parallel with advancements in compactness and efficiency of antennas. This work proposes the design of a single element microstrip patch antenna and a 1×4 microstrip patch antenna array for a microwave life detection system at 1.150 GHz. Also the directivity of the simulated patch and 1×4 patch antenna array are compared. The simulations are done in AWRDE Microwave office.
The use of alternative reasons in probabilistic judgment

This dissertation investigates people’s ability to search for and use alternative reasons while making probabilistic judgments, with the goals of devising and testing (1) a new actively open-minded thinking (AOT) measure that assesses thinking behavior by looking at people’s ability to generate alternative reasons/ contradicting evidence, and (2) a short online module to train people in actively open-minded thinking. In Chapter 1 we assessed individual differences in actively open-minded thinking on probabilistic judgment tasks by using both belief and behavioral measures. In the first three studies subjects made probabilistic judgments in three-choice almanac questions, while in the fourth study subjects made point and confidence interval estimates for numerical almanac questions. Compared to the low scoring subjects, subjects who score high on the new behavioral AOT measure were more likely to have more accurate probability judgments when they did not know the correct answer to the question. Higher scores on the behavioral actively open-minded thinking measure were also associated with lower overconfidence. In Chapter 2 we tested the effectiveness of making subjects consider alternative reasons and a one-hour long online training module in AOT. Studies 4 and 5 tested whether making subjects consider alternative reasons would improve their accuracy and decrease their overconfidence. In Study 4 we observed that this intervention was successful in increasing the number of alternative reasons and subjects’ accuracy when subjects did not know the correct answer. There was also a slight decrease in overconfidence as a result of this intervention. Study 5, which used point estimate questions, did not show any benefits of the intervention in accuracy or overconfidence. Studies 6 and 7 tested the effectiveness of new online AOT training modules we designed for adults. The training module in Study 6 did not show any improvement in subjects’ accuracy, but the training condition in Study 7 increased subjects’ accuracy scores when subjects did not know the correct answer. We observed some effect of the training on subjects’ overconfidence such that going through the training decreased subjects’ unwarranted confidence. Chapter 3 discusses the relation between the behavioral and belief measures of AOT, their effects on accuracy and overconfidence. We specifically argue that while the belief measure of AOT assesses general AOT tendencies, the behavioral measure of AOT assesses task specific AOT behavior. The results show that considering alternative reasons increases subjects’ accuracy by lowering their overconfidence. We finally discuss our results from training adult population in AOT and suggest potential testing scenarios for our training module. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Psychology First Advisor Jonathan Baron This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn. edu/edissertations/2321
High Utility Data Generation Using DataXplod

Despite the persistent need for appropriate volume of high utility data across all TCS projects, there was no economical, efficient, flexible, person-independent and reusable methodology for data generation and supporting tool available to satisfy this need. In this paper, we propose a novel, flexible methodology called Xplod for generation of any volume of high utility data that can exploit the production data, if available, and has low expectations when it comes to inputting metadata/data-semantics related information. We also describe our data generation tool DataXplod that implements this methodology in economical, efficient, and reusable manner, eliminating the need to have a highly skilled human resource, allowing high utility data generation on-demand even at off-shore, thus giving TCS project teams/clients substantial cost, quality and productivity improvements.
Sidescan sonar image de-noising algorithm in multi-wavelet domain

Sidescan sonar image is widely used in seafloor mapping, geological survey, probing seafloor barrier and so on. For the complexity of underwater environment, the sonar is polluted by noise more seriously than that in optical image. So it is necessary to remove noise of sonar image. By transforming the noisy sonar image into multi-wavelet domain, at the same time using the knowledge of partial differential equations, and considering fractal dimension of every subband, a sonar image de-noising algorithm based on multi-wavelet threshold is proposed in the paper. The result of the experiment shows that the effect of the algorithm is better than that of scalar wavelets, and the original information is kept after de-noising using the algorithm.
Large spin relaxation rates in trapped submerged-shell atoms

Spin relaxation due to atom\char21{}atom collisions is measured for magnetically trapped erbium and thulium atoms at a temperature near 500 mK. The rate constants for Er\char21{}Er and Tm\char21{}Tm collisions are $3.0\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}10}$ and $1.1\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}10}$ cm${}^{3}$ ${\mathrm{s}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$, respectively, $2\char21{}3$ orders of magnitude larger than those observed for highly magnetic $S$-state atoms. This is strong evidence for an additional, dominant, spin relaxation mechanism, electronic interaction anisotropy, in collisions between these ``submerged-shell,'' $L\ensuremath{\ne}0$ atoms. These large spin relaxation rates imply that evaporative cooling of these atoms in a magnetic trap will be highly inefficient.
Protocol for a within-trial economic evaluation of a psychoeducational intervention tailored to people at high risk of developing a second or subsequent melanoma

Introduction Psychological support programmes are not currently funded for people with a history of melanoma. A major barrier to the implementation of effective psychological interventions in routine clinical care is a lack of cost-effectiveness data. This paper describes the planned economic evaluation alongside a randomised controlled trial of a psychoeducational intervention for people with a history of melanoma who are at high risk of developing new primary disease. Method and analysis The economic evaluation is a within-trial analysis to evaluate the incremental costs and health outcomes of a psychoeducational intervention compared to usual care from the perspective of the Australian healthcare system. Cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analyses will be conducted, providing estimates of the cost to reduce fear of melanoma recurrence and the cost per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) gained. Fear of melanoma recurrence will be measured using the Fear of Cancer Recurrence Inventory and preference-based quality of life measured using the Assessment of Quality of Life—8 Dimensions (AQoL-8D) instrument. The AQoL-8D will provide utilities for estimation of QALYs in the cost-utility analysis. Unit costs of health services and medicines will be taken from the Medicare Benefits Schedule and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme national databases. Health outcomes, and health service and medication use will be collected at baseline, 6 and 12 months follow-up. The within-trial analysis will be conducted at 12 months, consistent with the end point of the trial. Ethics and dissemination Approval to conduct the study was granted by the Sydney Local Health District (RPAH zone) Ethics Review Committee (X13-0065 and HREC/13/RPAH/86), the Department of Health and Ageing Human Research Ethics Committee (21/2013), the University of Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee (2013/595), and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Ethics Committee (EO 2013/4/58). Trial registration number ACTRN12613000304730; Pre-results.
INCREASE IN ACCURACY OF PASSIVE AUTO FOCUSING BY A NEW SHARPNESS FUNCTION

Passive auto-focusing is a key feature in digital cameras and smart-phones which uses the image sharpness function to capture focused images without any user intervention. A focused image is obtained by adjusting the distance between the lens and the image sensor using the sharpness of captured image. This paper introduces a sharpness function for achieving passive auto-focusing in digital cameras and smart-phones. It is shown that this sharpness function produces a peak when the image is in-focus and drops when the image goes out-of-focus and the amount of drop is proportional to the degree of defocus. A comparison is made between this introduced sharpness function and the commonly used sharpness functions in terms of focusing accuracy and focusing speed. A new sharpness function is presented that has a comparable accuracy to existing function while requiring fewer number of focusing iterations leading to faster focusing.