Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tetris : Experiments with the LP Approach to Approximate DP

We study the linear programming (LP) approach to approximate dynamic programming (DP) through experiments with the game of Tetris. Our empirical results suggest that the performance of policies generated by the approach is highly sensitive to how the problem is formulated and the discount factor. Furthermore, we find that, using a state-sampling scheme of the kind proposed in [7], the simulation time required to generate an adequate number of constraints far exceeds the time taken to solve the resulting LP. As an extension to the standard approximate LP approach, we examine a bootstrapped version wherein a sequence of LPs is solved, with the policy generated by each solution being used to sample constraints for the next LP. Our empirical results demonstrate that this bootstrapped approach can amplify performance.
Betweenness Centrality is more Parallelizable than Dense Matrix Multiplication

General infrastructure and scalable algorithms for sparse matrix multiplication enable succinct high-performance implementation of numerical methods and graph algorithms. We showcase the theoretical and practical quality of novel sparse matrix multiplication routines in Cyclops Tensor Framework (CTF) via MFBC: a Maximal Frontier Betweenness Centrality algorithm. Our sparse matrix multiplication algorithms and consequently MFBC perform asymptotically less communication than previous approaches. For graphs with $n$ vertices and average degree $k$, we show that on $p$ processors, MFBC performs a factor of $p^{1/3}$ less communication than known alternatives when $k=n/p^{2/3}$. If $p$ processors are needed to fit the problem in memory, all costs associated with the algorithm can be reduced by a factor of $s=(n/k)\sqrt{p}$ when using $sp$ processors. For multiplication of square dense matrices only $s=\sqrt{p}$ is achievable. We formulate and implement MFBC for weighted graphs, by leveraging specially-designed monoids and functions. We prove the correctness of the new formulation. CTF allows a parallelism-oblivious C++ implementation of MFBC to achieve good scalability for both extremely sparse and relatively dense graphs. The library automatically searches a space of distributed data decompositions and sparse matrix multiplication algorithms. The resulting code outperforms the well-known CombBLAS library by factors of up to 8 and shows more robust performance. Our design methodology is general and readily extensible to other graph problems.
On the vulnerability of palm vein recognition to spoofing attacks

The vulnerability of palm vein recognition to spoofing attacks is studied in this paper. A collection of spoofing palm vein images has been created from real palm vein samples. Palm vein images are printed using a commercial printer and then, presented at a contactless palm vein sensor. Experiments are carried out using an extensible framework, which allows fair and reproducible benchmarks. Results are presented comparing two automatic segmentations. Experimental results lead to a spoofing false accept rate of 65%, thus showing that palm vein biometrics is vulnerable to spoofing attacks, pointing out the importance to investigate countermeasures against this type of fraudulent actions. A study based on the number of the enrolment samples is also reported, demonstrating a relationship between the number of enrolment samples and the vulnerability of the system to spoofing.
Cloning of a β-Glucosidase Gene (BGL1) from Traditional Starter Yeast Saccharomycopsis fibuligera BMQ 908 and Expression in Pichia pastoris

β-Glucosidase is an important enzyme for production of ethanol from lignocellulose. With hydrolytic activity on cellooligosaccharides, especially cellobiose, β-glucosidase removes product inhibitory effect on cellulases and forms fermentable sugars. In this study, β-glucosidase encoding gene (BGL1) from traditional starter yeast Saccharomycosis fibuligera BMQ908 was cloned and expressed in Pichia pastoris. BGL1 of S. fibuligera BMQ 908 shared 98% nucleotide homology with the closest GenBank sequence (M22475) but identity in amino-acid sequences of catalytic domains. Recombinant plasmid pPICZαA/BGL1 containing the sequence encoding BGL1 mature protein and α-factor secretion signal was constructed and transformed into methylotrophic yeast P. pastoris by electroporation. The recombinant strain produced single extracellular protein with molecular weight of 120 kDa and cellobiase activity of 60 IU/ml. The optimum pH of the recombinant β-glucosidase was 5.0 and the optimum temperature was 50°C. Keywords—β-Glucosidase, Pichia pastoris, Saccharomycopsis fibuligera, recombinant enzyme.
Type-based Sensitivity Analysis

Function sensitivity—how much the result of a function can change with respect to linear changes in the input—is a key concept in many research areas. For instance, in differential privacy, one of the most common mechanisms for turning a (possibly privacy-leaking) query into a differentially private one involves establishing a bound on its sensitivity. We propose an automatic type-based analysis that infers the sensitivity of simple functional programs. This analysis has been implemented in the compiler for Fuzz, a language for differentially private queries. The main component of the analysis is an extension to the typechecker that generates nonlinear constraints over positive real numbers extended with infinity. A solution to the constraints provides an upper bound on program sensitivity. We use Z3 to solve these constraints and demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach by measuring our sensitivity inference analysis on several examples. 1998 ACM Subject Classification D.3. 2 Applicative (Functional) Programming, F.3. 1 Specifying and Verifying and Reasoning about Programs
On the second eigenvalue of random regular graphs

The following is an extended abstract for two papers, one written by Kahn and Szemeredi, the other written by Friedman, which have been combined at the request of the STOC committee. The introduction was written jointly, the second section by Kahn and Szemeredi, and the third by Friedman, Let G be a d-regular (i.e. each vertex has degree d) undirected graph on n nodes. It’s adjacency matrix is symmetric, and therefore has real eigenvalues Ar = d 2 x2 >_ *-. >_ X, with IX,] 5 d. Graphs for which X2 and
A Location-Based Personal Task Management Application for Indoor and Outdoor Environments

Personal task management has been essential for modern people, in order to remind them of something at a specific condition. Reminders based on the electronic calendar in cell phones are popular, but such reminders are mostly triggered by time. It is also common that some tasks are only meaningful to be performed at a specific location, so it would be useful if reminders for those tasks can be triggered only when the person to be reminded is physically near or located at that location. Therefore, in this research we implement a location-based personal task management application for Android-based smart phones and tablets. To distinguish our work from existing ones that rely solely on the GPS technology, we take advantage of the ubiquity of IEEE 802.11 WLAN (Wi-Fi) infrastructure to compliment the blind spots of GPS location sensing. Combining the two technologies make it possible for the personal task management application to be effective in both indoor and outdoor environments. Furthermore, as long as the WLAN infrastructure is available, this application can be further extended to be used in many other scenarios which comprise both indoor and outdoor environments, such as guiding in public transportation systems or tourist attractions.
Secure Transmission Against Pilot Spoofing Attack: A Two-Way Training-Based Scheme

The pilot spoofing attack is one kind of active eavesdropping activities conducted by a malicious user during the channel training phase. By transmitting the identical pilot (training) signals as those of the legal users, such an attack is able to manipulate the channel estimation outcome, which may result in a larger channel rate for the adversary but a smaller channel rate for the legitimate receiver. With the intention of detecting the pilot spoofing attack and minimizing its damages, we design a two-way training-based scheme. The effective detector exploits the intrusive component created by the adversary, followed by a secure beamforming-assisted data transmission. In addition to the solid detection performance, this scheme is also capable of obtaining the estimations of both legitimate and illegitimate channels, which allows the users to achieve secure communication in the presence of pilot spoofing attack. The detection probability is evaluated based on the derived test threshold at a given requirement on the probability of false alarming. The achievable secrecy rate is utilized to measure the security level of the data transmission. Our analysis shows that even without any pre-assumed knowledge of eavesdropper, the proposed scheme is still able to achieve the maximal secrecy rate in certain cases. Numerical results are provided to show that our scheme could achieve a high detection probability as well as secure transmission.
Androgens Upregulate Cdc25C Protein by Inhibiting Its Proteasomal and Lysosomal Degradation Pathways

Cdc25C is a cell cycle protein of the dual specificity phosphatase family essential for activating the cdk1/Cyclin B1 complex in cells entering into mitosis. Since altered cell cycle is a hallmark of human cancers, we investigated androgen regulation of Cdc25C protein in human prostate cancer (PCa) cells, including androgen-sensitive (AS) LNCaP C-33 cells and androgen-independent (AI) LNCaP C-81 as well as PC-3 cells. In the regular culture condition containing fetal bovine serum (FBS), Cdc25C protein levels were similar in these PCa cells. In a steroid-reduced condition, Cdc25C protein was greatly decreased in AS C-33 cells but not AI C-81 or PC-3 cells. In androgen-treated C-33 cells, the Cdc25C protein level was greatly elevated, following a dose- and a time-dependent manner, correlating with increased cell proliferation. This androgen effect was blocked by Casodex, an androgen receptor blocker. Nevertheless, epidermal growth factor (EGF), a growth stimulator of PCa cells, could only increase Cdc25C protein level by about 1.5-fold. Altered expression of Cdc25C in C-33 cells and PC-3 cells by cDNA and/or shRNA transfection is associated with the corresponding changes of cell growth and Cyclin B1 protein level. Actinomycin D and cycloheximide could only partially block androgen-induced Cdc25C protein level. Treatments with both proteasomal and lysosomal inhibitors resulted in elevated Cdc25C protein levels. Immunoprecipitation revealed that androgens reduced the ubiquitination of Cdc25C proteins. These results show for the first time that Cdc25C protein plays a role in regulating PCa cell growth, and androgen treatments, but not EGF, greatly increase Cdc25C protein levels in AS PCa cells, which is in part by decreasing its degradation. These results can lead to advanced PCa therapy via up-regulating the degradation pathways of Cdc25C protein.
A Patch Rectification Strategy for Multi-homography Estimation

In this work, we describe how to recover the perspective functions induced by the dominant faces of a rigid polyhedral scene captured by two cameras at different positions. The faces of any polyhedron can be dealt with as if they were planar surfaces, therefore we analyze this problem in a multi-planar scene context. We assume that the scene is populated with polyhedral objects and that a regular grid is imposed on the reference image. We describe a robust strategy that is able to merge patches that belong to the same planar surface and to impose the epipolar geometry constraints to the recovered perspective functions.
Decoupling photometry and geometry in dense variational camera calibration

We introduce a spatially dense variational approach to estimate the calibration of multiple cameras in the context of 3D reconstruction. We propose a relaxation scheme which allows to transform the original photometric error into a geometric one, thereby decoupling the problems of dense matching and camera calibration. In both quantitative and qualitative experiments, we demonstrate that the proposed decoupling scheme allows for robust and accurate estimation of camera parameters. In particular, the presented dense camera calibration formulation leads to substantial improvements both in the reconstructed 3D geometry and in the super-resolution texture estimation.
Learning-Based Characterizing and Modeling Performance Bottlenecks of Big Data Workloads

As the increasing demands of large-scale data analytics, the understanding of performance bottlenecks on big data workloads becomes critical for the optimization of distribution platforms. Existing work focused on qualitatively characterizing the behaviors and performance of workloads. However little effort has been spent on quantification of performance bottlenecks and building bottleneck models. In this paper, we define a series of bottleneck ratios to quantify bottlenecks according to resource utilizations. Then based on features parsed from original logs, a stage-level modeling approach is proposed to characterize bottlenecks of workloads. By modeling, we can estimate bottleneck ratios using original logs, without collecting resource utilizations. To generalize the models for diverse workloads, we propose a workload generator: TrainBench, which is flexible to generate workloads with multifarious behaviors at stage-level. In addition, taking hardware performance into account, three key features are extracted to improve the estimation accuracy. Our bottleneck models perform well for diverse workloads in different clusters.
Direct Adaptive Control of Multi-Input Plants with Magnitude Saturation Constraints

A direct-adaptive controller is proposed for multi-input plants with input magnitude saturation. It is proved that for a bounded region of initial states and parameter errors, bounded trajectories are ensured for an unstable plant. For open-loop stable plants, global stability is guaranteed regardless of initial conditions. The proposed controller is demonstrated in numerical simulation with an unstable second order, two input plant.
Intelligent vehicle trajectory tracking based on neural networks sliding mode control

The problem of lateral control in intelligent vehicle trajectory tracking for automated highway system is studied. The article deduced the vehicle's desired yaw rate through real time planning virtual path between the vehicle mass center and prediction aiming point which is planned according to the vehicle's kinematic model and pose error model. Based on the lateral dynamic model of vehicle, radical basis function (RBF) neural networks based sliding mode variable structure trajectory tracking controller is designed. A multi-body dynamics model of vehicle is built in ADAMS/Car. The interactive combination control dynamic simulation between Matlab/Simulink and ADAMS is realized through designing the data interface between Matlab and ADAMS. Simulations were conducted and the results show that the proposed algorithm improves the control precision of the system and improves the tracking performance of the system.
Rights, Roles, and Rural Realities: A Case Study on the Effects of Fatwa Decrees Against Women in Rural Bangladesh

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between gender, religion, and development within the context of illegal fatwas (i. e. religious edicts) affecting women in rural Bangladesh. Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in two districts in Bangladesh, this paper argues that biased fatwa decrees at the rural level against women are not simply the expression of traditional religious beliefs; social and cultural gender roles and perceptions defined through patriarchy must be taken into account. The advent of the women-centered development agenda in rural Bangladesh and the emergence of the female working-class have led to an increase in religious fundamentalism in rural communities. Fatwas thus reflect this increase as a result of friction between NGO programs seeking to provide women with new opportunities and rural male elites set on maintaining traditional power structures. This study reveals the importance of NGO-led interventions as the best justice-seeking mechanism to empower rural women in Bangladesh, and highlights the significance of engaging with various competing factors that lead to gender violence in the country.
Simulation-based Performance Comparison of TCP-Friendly Congestion Control Protocols

The main purpose of the rate-based congestion control protocols that have been developed to support the deployment of real-time multimedia applications in the Internet is to ensure that the application’s traffic share the network in a fairly and friendly manner with the dominant TCP traffic. In this work we use the network simulator ns-2 to evaluate the performance of two rate-based TCPfriendly (TF) congestion control protocols, namely Rate Adaptation Protocol (RAP) and TCPFriendly Rate Control Protocol (TFRC). We devise a simple method to characterise friendliness and use this method to compare the results to each other and study their behaviour under various network scenarios. Our main goal for these experiments is to evaluate these two protocols and determine which is the best rate-based protocol to support our future work in end-to-end quality of service (QoS) support for streaming multimedia applications. We discover that TFRC works better in most of our experiments.
Displacement of a DNA binding protein by Dda helicase

Bacteriophage T4 Dda helicase has recently been shown to be active as a monomer for unwinding of short duplex oligonucleotides and for displacing streptavidin from 3′-biotinylated oligonucleotides. However, its activity for streptavidin displacement and DNA unwinding has been shown to increase as the number of Dda molecules bound to the substrate molecule increases. A substrate was designed to address the ability of Dda to displace DNA binding proteins. A DNA binding site for the Escherichia coli trp repressor was introduced into an oligonucleotide substrate for Dda helicase containing single-stranded overhang. Here we show that a Dda monomer is insufficient to displace the E.coli trp repressor from dsDNA under single turnover conditions, although the substrate is unwound and the repressor displaced when the single-stranded overhang is long enough to accommodate two Dda molecules. The quantity of product formed increases when the substrate is able to accommodate more than two Dda molecules. These results indicate that multiple Dda molecules act to displace DNA binding proteins in a manner that correlates with the DNA unwinding activity and streptavidin displacement activity. We suggest a cooperative inchworm model to describe the activities of Dda helicase.
Homogeneous studies of transiting extrasolar planets – I. Light-curve analyses

I present a homogeneous analysis of the transit light curves of 14 well-observed transiting extrasolar planets. The light curves are modelled using jktebop, random errors are measured using Monte Carlo simulations and the effects of correlated noise are included using a residual-permutation algorithm. The importance of stellar limb darkening on the light-curve solutions and parameter uncertainties is investigated using five different limb darkening laws and including different numbers of coefficients as fitted parameters. The linear limb darkening law cannot adequately fit the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photometry of HD 209458, but the other four laws give very similar results to each other for all transit light curves. In most cases fixing the limb darkening coefficients at theoretically predicted values does not bias the results, but does cause the error estimates to be too small. The available theoretical limb darkening coefficients clearly disagree with empirical values measured from the HST light curves of HD 209458; limb darkening must be included as fitted parameters when analysing high-quality light curves. In most cases the results of my analysis agree with the values found by other authors, but the uncertainties I find can be significantly larger (by factors of up to 3). Despite these greater uncertainty estimates, the analyses of sets of independent light curves for both HD 189733 and HD 209458 lead to results which do not agree with each other. This discrepancy is worst for the ratio of the radii (6.7 sigma for HD 189733 and 3.7 sigma for HD 209458), which depends primarily on the depth of the transit. It is therefore not due to the analysis method but is present in the light curves. These underlying systematic errors cannot be detected from the reduced data alone unless at least three independent light curves are available for an individual planetary system. The surface gravities of transiting extrasolar planets are known to be correlated with their orbital periods. New surface gravity values, calculated from the light-curve results and the stellar spectroscopic orbits, show that this correlation is still present. New high-precision light curves are needed for HD 149026, OGLE-TR-10, OGLE-TR-56, OGLE-TR-132 and GJ 436, and new radial velocity curves for the XO-1, WASP-1, WASP-2 and the OGLE (Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment) planetary systems.
Accurate ab Initio Spin Densities

We present an approach for the calculation of spin density distributions for molecules that require very large active spaces for a qualitatively correct description of their electronic structure. Our approach is based on the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithm to calculate the spin density matrix elements as a basic quantity for the spatially resolved spin density distribution. The spin density matrix elements are directly determined from the second-quantized elementary operators optimized by the DMRG algorithm. As an analytic convergence criterion for the spin density distribution, we employ our recently developed sampling-reconstruction scheme [J. Chem. Phys.2011, 134, 224101] to build an accurate complete-active-space configuration-interaction (CASCI) wave function from the optimized matrix product states. The spin density matrix elements can then also be determined as an expectation value employing the reconstructed wave function expansion. Furthermore, the explicit reconstruction of a CASCI-type wave function provides insight into chemically interesting features of the molecule under study such as the distribution of α and β electrons in terms of Slater determinants, CI coefficients, and natural orbitals. The methodology is applied to an iron nitrosyl complex which we have identified as a challenging system for standard approaches [J. Chem. Theory Comput.2011, 7, 2740].