Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protected Qubit Based on a Superconducting Current Mirror

We propose a qubit implementation based on exciton condensation in capacitively coupled Josephson junction chains. The qubit is protected in the sense that all unwanted terms in its effective Hamiltonian are exponentially suppressed as the chain length increases. We also describe an implementation of a universal set of quantum gates. Most gates also offer exponential error suppression. The only gate that is not intrinsically fault-tolerant needs to be realized with ∼ 50% precision, provided the other gates are exact. Physical implementation of a quantum computer presents a great challenge because quantum systems are susceptible to decoherence and because interactions between them cannot be controlled precisely. There has been impressive demonstrations of qubits using various kinds of systems, including Josephson junctions [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], yet building a full-scale computer remains a remote goal. In principle, scalability can be achieved by correcting errors at the logical level [7], but only if the physical error rate is sufficiently small. As an alternative solution, it was suggested that topologically ordered quantum systems are physical analogues of quantum error-correcting codes, and fault-tolerant quantum computation can be performed by braiding anyons [8]. More recently, Doucot and Vidal [9], and Ioffe and Feigelman [10] found simpler examples of physical systems with error-correcting properties. The key element of their proposals, which we refer to as 0-π qubit, is a two-terminal circuit built of Josephson junctions. Its energy has two equal minima when the superconducting phase difference between the terminals, θ = φ 1 − φ 2 is equal to 0 or π. The quantum states associated with the minima, |0 and |1 can form quantum superpositions. It is essential that that the energy difference between the two minima is exponentially small in the system size, even in the presence of various perturbations, hence the quantum superposition will remain unchanged for a long time. Implementations of some quantum gates were also proposed. In this paper, we discuss a different design of a 0-π qubit. It is based on the current mirror effect in capacitively coupled chains of Josephson junctions, see Fig. 1. An analogue of this effect in normal-metal junctions is due to correlated electron-hole tunneling [11], whereas in superconducting chains the tunneling objects are Cooper pairs. Positive and negative Cooper 1
Project management and leadership education facilitated as projects

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to share the experiences and reflections of delivering postgraduate project management (PM) education by structuring the courses as projects with milestones and incorporating the “language of projects” into the course lexicon. Design/methodology/approach – An action research approach was taken to use learner reflections to assess the effectiveness of interactive learning environment and project management language to stimulate richer learning experiences. Findings – Participating students apply the principles of learning to their own practice as they learn to incorporate theories and reflect on their impact for their projects, within their own contexts. They report this to be an effective approach as it reinforces their learning and highlights practical outcomes. Success of this approach is attributed to integrating principles from a wide range of interdependent disciplines including action learning, leadership, project management, reflective practice, sense-making, .
Issues and Dependencies on Affect Data Models For Assessment of Disorders- A Survey

Analysis of free-form data has always been a challenge. In that, data depicting affects in hidden form and/or in various modes complicates the task of mining to identify and analyze relevant affects from the input. Affect analysis is required in various applications such as mood identification, evaluation of learning disorders, product reviews, and blog/forum opinion analysis. This paper focuses on identification of affect parameters and related issues in design of cognitive systems for diagnosis and evaluation of psychological disorders. The paper presents a survey on the various uni- and multi-modal affect analysis systems designed for similar applications.
Discovering suffixes: A Case Study for Marathi Language

Suffix stripping is a pre-processing step required in a number of natural language processing applications. Stemmer is a tool used to perform this step. This paper presents and evaluates a rule-based and an unsupervised Marathi stemmer. The rule-based stemmer uses a set of manually extracted suffix stripping rules whereas the unsupervised approach learns suffixes automatically from a set of words extracted from raw Marathi text. The performance of both the stemmers has been compared on a test dataset consisting of 1500 manually stemmed word.
Semi-supervised ensemble DNN acoustic model training

It is very important to exploit abundant unlabeled speech for improving the acoustic model training in automatic speech recognition (ASR). Semi-supervised training methods incorporate unlabeled data in addition to labeled data to enhance the model training, but it encounters the error-prone label problem. The ensemble training scheme trains a set of models and combines them to make the model more general and robust, but it has not been applied to the unlabeled data. In this work, we propose an effective semi-supervised training of deep neural network (DNN) acoustic models by incorporating the diversity among the ensemble of models. The resultant model improved the performance in the lecture transcription task. Moreover, the proposed method has also shown a potential for DNN adaptation.
QoE Inference Without Application Control

Network quality-of-service (QoS) does not always directly translate to users' quality-of-experience (QoE), e.g., changes in a video streaming app's frame rate in reaction to changes in packet loss rate depend on various factors such as the adaptation strategy used by the app and the app's use of forward error correction (FEC) codes. Therefore, knowledge of user QoE is desirable in several scenarios that have traditionally operated on QoS information. Examples include traffic management by ISPs and resource allocation by the operating system (OS). However, today, entities such as ISPs and OSes that implement these optimizations typically do not have a convenient way of obtaining input from applications on user QoE. To address this problem, we propose offline generation of per-application models mapping application-independent QoS metrics to corresponding application-specific QoE metrics, thereby enabling entities (such as ISPs and OSes) that can observe a user's network traffic to infer the user's QoE, in the absence of direct input. In this paper, we describe how such models can be generated and present our results from two popular video applications with significantly different QoE metrics. We also showcase the use of these models for ISPs to perform QoE-aware traffic management and for the OS to offer an efficient QoE diagnosis service.
Time-Kill Kinetics of Streptococcus pneumoniae with Reduced Susceptibility to Telithromycin

Background: Telithromycin is a new ketolide increasingly used in Europe and the United States. Only very few telithromycin-resistant isolates have been described to date. Methods: The anti-pneumococcal activity of telithromycin was determined against four clinical isolates of Streptococcus pneumoniae with reduced susceptibility to telithromycin by time-kill methodology. Results: All four telithromycin non-susceptible strains had the constitutive macrolide-lincosamide-streptogramin B phenotype and the ermB genotype. Pneumococcal strains had telithromycin minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) ranging between 2 and 8 µg/ml. Mulitlocus sequence typing and serotyping showed three isolates to harbour the identical serotype (serotype 14) and sequence type (sequence type 143) indicating a genetic relatedness of strains. Telithromycin was only bactericidal against the isolates with telithromycin resistance, with 4–8 times the MIC after 24 h. Conclusion: The killing by telithromycin of S. pneumoniae isolates having an ermB resistance determinant and a telithromycin MIC of ≧2 µg/ml is slow. Achievable concentrations in serum, alveolar macrophages and epithelial lining fluid are below the concentrations which are necessary for bactericidal killing of highly telithromycin-resistant strains.
Modern Welfare And ‘Good Old’ Philanthropy

Abstract This article identifies a number of parallels between nineteenth-century philanthropy and contemporary social work that have so far received little attention in the ongoing debate on the relation between philanthropy and modern welfare. While adopting a critical perspective on social philanthropy, it does not take a definitive stance on the question of whether philanthropy cements marginality or constitutes a progressive agent for social change. Philanthropy's role in social policy can hardly be generalized across time and space; instead, its strategic functions must be examined in specific societies and at specific historical junctures. For this purpose the question of the relationship between philanthropy and modern welfare is re-formulated using Foucault's concept of ‘dispositive’. A series of decisive inventions that emerged from nineteenth-century poor relief are identified. Most importantly, the philanthropists gave twentieth-century social policy a recipient who is not a subject of formal rights, but possesses a series of social duties and responsibilities.
THEORY OF MIND IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM: IS THERE A NEED FOR BETTER TESTS OF WHAT THEY KNOW?

Theory of Mind in Children With Autism: Is There a Need for Better Tests of What They Know? by Alex Karen Proto This research looked at the ability of children with autism to understand theory of mind. This is the ability to attribute mental states (e.g. believing, thinking, knowing etc.) to oneself and to others. The main aim of the study was to provide evidence, contrary to a large body of previous research, that individuals with autism can exhibit a theory of mind, when the standard tests used in the past are simplified for this population. A further aim of the study was to show that language ability is significant in terms of theory of mind task performance. It was hypothesised, because of the nature of the theory of mind tasks, that matching participants in terms of their understanding of grammar, rather than single word understanding (as in past research), would be more appropriate. Three groups took part in the study; autistic, learning disabled and normally developing children. The learning disabled and normally developing participants were selected to match the subjects with autism, in terms of receptive verbal age, on either the British Picture Vocabulary Scale (BPVS) or the Test for Reception of Grammar (TROG) or both. All the participants were given two first order theory of mind tasks; the standard 'Sally-Anne' task, which has been used in past research, and a simplified cartoon version of this task designed by the author. These first order tasks test the ability to consider another person' s thoughts about an objective event. Those participants who passed one of the first order tasks were then given three second order theory of mind tasks. These test the abi lity to consider another person ' s thoughts about a third person' s thoughts regarding an objective event. The second order tasks consisted of the standard ' Ice-Cream Man task ' (used in past research), Sullivan, Zaitchik and Tager-Fiusberg' s ( 1994) simplified ' Puppy task ' and a simplified cartoon version of the task designed by the author. A significant difference in performance was found between the three participant groups (matched on the BPVS) on the standard first order task, but not on the simplified first order task. A significant difference in performance was found between the participant groups on the standard Ice-Cream Man task and the Puppy task, when matched on the BPVS, but not when matched on the TROG. In addition no significant difference in performance was found between the autistic and learning disabled participants on any of the theory of mind tasks. These fmdings are discussed in relation to other explanations of autism such as the salient object hypothesis and executive function.
Upregulation of proteasome activity in muscle RING finger 1‐null mice following denervation

Deletion of muscle RING finger 1 (MuRF1), an E3 ubiquitin ligase, leads to sparing of muscle mass following denervation. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that muscle sparing in mice with a deletion of MuRF1 is due to the selective inhibition of the ubiquitin proteasome system. Activities of the 20S and 26S proteasomes, calpain and cathepsin L, were measured in the triceps surae muscles of wild‐type (WT) and MuRF1‐knockout (KO) mice at 3 and 14 d following denervation. In addition, fractional protein synthesis rates and differential gene expression were measured in WT and KO muscle. The major finding was that 20S and 26S proteasome activities were significantly elevated (1.5‐ to 2.5‐fold) after 14 d of denervation in both WT and KO mice relative to control, but interestingly, the activities of both the 20S and 26S proteasome were significantly higher in KO than WT mice. Further, mRNA expression of MAFbx was elevated after 14 d of denervation in KO, but not WT, mice. These data challenge the conventional dogma that MuRF1 is controlling the degradation of only contractile proteins and suggest a role for MuRF1 in the global control of the ubiquitin proteasome system and protein turnover. —Gomes, A. V. , Waddell, D. S. , Siu, R. , Stein, M. , Dewey, S. , Furlow, J. D. , Bodine, S. C. Upregulation of proteasome activity in muscle RING finger 1‐null mice following denervation. FASEB J. 26, 2986–2999 (2012). www.fasebj. org
Which Biomarker is the Best for Predicting Mortality in Incident Peritoneal Dialysis Patients: NT-ProBNP, Cardiac TnT, or hsCRP?

AbstractAlthough numerous previous studies have explored various biomarkers for their ability to predict mortality in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients, these studies have been limited by retrospective analyses, mostly prevalent dialysis patients, and the measurement of only 1 or 2 biomarkers. This prospective study was aimed to evaluate the association between 3 biomarkers and mortality in incident 335 ESRD patients starting continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) in Korea. According to the baseline NT-proBNP, cTnT, and hsCRP levels, the patients were stratified into tertiles, and cardiovascular (CV) and all-cause mortalities were compared. Additionally, time-dependent ROC curves were constructed, and the net reclassification index (NRI) and integrated discrimination improvement (IDI) of the models with various biomarkers were calculated. We found the upper tertile of NT-proBNP was significantly associated with increased risk of both CV and all-cause mortalities. However, the upper tertile of hsCRP was significantly related only to the high risk of all-cause mortality even after adjustment for age, sex, and white blood cell counts. Moreover, NT-proBNP had the highest predictive power for CV mortality, whereas hsCRP was the best prognostic marker for all-cause mortality among these biomarkers. In conclusions, NT-proBNP is a more significant prognostic factor for CV mortality than cTnT and hsCRP, whereas hsCRP is a more significant predictor than NT-proBNP and cTnT for all-cause mortality in incident peritoneal dialysis patients.
On the Performance of Dense Wireless Networks: No Linear Scaling in Practice

We consider the hierarchical cooperation architecture of Ozgur, Leveque and Tse, which is supposed to yield almost linear scaling of the capacity of a dense wireless network with the number of users n. Exploiting recent results on the optimality of “treating interference as noise” in Gaussian interference channels, we are able to optimize the achievable average per-link rate and not just its scaling law. Our optimized hierarchical cooperation architecture significantly outperforms the originally proposed scheme, which is yet good enough to achieve the claimed scaling law. On the negative side, we show that even for very large n, the rate scaling is far from linear, and the optimal number of stages t is between 2 and 3, instead of t→∞ as required for almost linear scaling. Combining our results and the fact that, beyond a certain user density, the network capacity is fundamentally limited by Maxwell laws, as shown by Franceschetti, Migliore and Minero, we argue that there is indeed no intermediate regime of linear scaling for dense networks in practice. On the positive side, we show that our optimized hierarchical cooperation scheme outperforms the classical multi-hop routing for a moderately large network size, having a larger and larger gain as network size increases. Thus, hierarchical cooperation with proper optimization is a very promising technique for ad-hoc wireless networks although it does not achieve linear rate scaling for practical network sizes.
Highly adaptive liquid simulations on tetrahedral meshes

We introduce a new method for efficiently simulating liquid with extreme amounts of spatial adaptivity. Our method combines several key components to drastically speed up the simulation of large-scale fluid phenomena: We leverage an alternative Eulerian tetrahedral mesh discretization to significantly reduce the complexity of the pressure solve while increasing the robustness with respect to element quality and removing the possibility of locking. Next, we enable subtle free-surface phenomena by deriving novel second-order boundary conditions consistent with our discretization. We couple this discretization with a spatially adaptive Fluid-Implicit Particle (FLIP) method, enabling efficient, robust, minimally-dissipative simulations that can undergo sharp changes in spatial resolution while minimizing artifacts. Along the way, we provide a new method for generating a smooth and detailed surface from a set of particles with variable sizes. Finally, we explore several new sizing functions for determining spatially adaptive simulation resolutions, and we show how to couple them to our simulator. We combine each of these elements to produce a simulation algorithm that is capable of creating animations at high maximum resolutions while avoiding common pitfalls like inaccurate boundary conditions and inefficient computation.
Relacionamento em bancos comerciais: a adaptação de escalas

Frente a crescente concorrencia global, o marketing de relacionamento, baseado na manutencao de clientes lucrativos, tem sido uma alternativa para diversos segmentos. Especificamente, o marketing de relacionamento mostra-se adequado ao setor de servicos, ja que ha possibilidade maior de interacao direta com os clientes. Por esse motivo e tambem pela inerente troca de informacoes com os clientes, varias instituicoes bancarias tem usado estrategias de relacionamento. Pretendeu-se, neste artigo, adaptar as escalas propostas por Morgan e Hunt (1994) para o contexto bancario brasileiro. A avaliacao da confiabilidade simples e composta mostrou que o instrumento desenvolvido e adequado, podendo ser utilizado em pesquisas futuras.
Associations of Circulating Lymphocyte Subpopulations with Type 2 Diabetes: Cross-Sectional Results from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA)

Objective Distinct lymphocyte subpopulations have been implicated in the regulation of glucose homeostasis and obesity-associated inflammation in mouse models of insulin resistance. Information on the relationships of lymphocyte subpopulations with type 2 diabetes remain limited in human population-based cohort studies. Methods Circulating levels of innate (γδ T, natural killer (NK)) and adaptive immune (CD4+ naive, CD4+ memory, Th1, and Th2) lymphocyte subpopulations were measured by flow cytometry in the peripheral blood of 929 free-living participants of the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). Cross-sectional relationships of lymphocyte subpopulations with type 2 diabetes (n = 154) and fasting glucose and insulin concentrations were evaluated by generalized linear models. Results Each standard deviation (SD) higher CD4+ memory cells was associated with a 21% higher odds of type 2 diabetes (95% CI: 1–47%) and each SD higher naive cells was associated with a 22% lower odds (95% CI: 4–36%) (adjusted for age, gender, race/ethnicity, and BMI). Among participants not using diabetes medication, higher memory and lower naive CD4+ cells were associated with higher fasting glucose concentrations (p<0.05, adjusted for age, sex, and race/ethnicity). There were no associations of γδ T, NK, Th1, or Th2 cells with type 2 diabetes, glucose, or insulin. Conclusions A higher degree of chronic adaptive immune activation, reflected by higher memory and lower naive CD4+ cells, was positively associated with type 2 diabetes. These results are consistent with a role of chronic immune activation and exhaustion augmenting chronic inflammatory diseases, and support the importance of prospective studies evaluating adaptive immune activation and type 2 diabetes.
Territorial origin of olive oil: representing georeferenced maps of olive oils by NMR profiling

ABSTRACT Proton NMR profiling is nowadays a consolidated technique for the identification of geographical origin of food samples. The common approach consists in correlating NMR spectra of food samples to their territorial origin by multivariate classification statistical algorithms. In the present work, we illustrate an alternative perspective to exploit territorial information, contained in the NMR spectra, which is based on the implementation of a geographic information system (GIS). Nuclear magnetic resonance spectra are used to build a GIS map permitting the identification of territorial regions having strong similarities in the chemical content of the produced food (terroir units). These terroir units can, in turn, be used as input for labeling samples to be analyzed by traditional classification methods. In this work, we describe the methods and the algorithms that permit to produce GIS maps from NMR profiles and apply the described method to the analysis of the geographical distribution of olive oils in an Italian region. In particular, we analyzed by 1H NMR up to 98 georeferenced olive oil samples produced in the Abruzzo Italian region. By using the first principal component of the NMR variables selected according to the Moran test, we produced a GIS map, in which we identified two regions incidentally corresponding to the provinces of Teramo and Pescara. We then labeled the samples according to the province of provenience and built an LDA model that provides a classification ability up to 99% . A comparison between the variables selected in the geostatistics and classification steps is finally performed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
OpenFlow Switching: Data Plane Performance

OpenFlow is an open standard that can be implemented in Ethernet switches, routers and wireless access points (AP). In the OpenFlow framework, packet forwarding (data plane) and routing decisions (control plane) run on different devices. OpenFlow switches are in charge of packet forwarding, whereas a controller set up switch forwarding table on a per-flow basis, to enable flow isolation and resource slicing. We focus on the data path and analyze the OpenFlow implementation in Linux based PCs. We compare OpenFlow switching, layer-2 Ethernet switching and layer-3 IP routing performance. Forwarding throughput and packet latency in underloaded and overloaded conditions are analyzed, with different traffic patterns. System scalability is analyzed using different forwarding table sizes, and fairness in resource distribution is measured.