Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Positive Semantics of Projections in Venn-Euler Diagrams

Venn diagrams and Euler circles have long been used as a means of expressing relationships among sets using visual metaphors such as `disjointness? and `containment? of topological contours. Although the notation is effective in delivering a clear visual representation of set theoretical relationships, it does not scale well. The topology of Venn diagrams of four or more contours is so cluttered that it becomes impractical to use it to visualize set relationships. In this work, we study `projection contours? , a new means for presenting sets intersections, which is designed to reduce the clutter in such diagrams. Informally, a projected contour is a contour which describes a set of elements limited to a certain context. The challenge in introducing this notation is in producing precise and consistent semantics for the general case, including a diagram comprising several, possibly interacting projections, which might even be of the same base set. The semantics investigated here assigns a `positive? meaning to a projection, i.e. based on the list of contours with which it interacts, where contours disjoint to it do not change its semantics. This semantics is produced by a novel Gaussian-like elimination process for solving set equations. In dealing with multiple projections of the same base set, we introduce yet another extension to Venn? Euler diagrams in which the same set can be described by multiple contours. This extension is of independent interest as a powerful means for reducing the clutter in Venn? Euler diagrams.
The Incorporation of Income and Leisure in Health State Valuations When the Measure Is Silent: An Empirical Inquiry into the Sound of Silence

Objective . The objective of the present study is to evaluate whether people 1) expect income and leisure to be affected by certain health states, 2) include the effects of ill-health on income and leisure in health state valuations when the measure is silent on both, and 3) what effect this has on these valuations. Data and Methods . A convenience sample of 75 individuals from the general public rated 3 different health states on a visual analogue scale without instruction on the incorporation of income and leisure. Different subgroups were created on the basis of expecting income and leisure to be affected and the indicated incorporation of these effects. Comparative and multivariate analyses were used to analyze the data. Results . The results show that most respondents (69%) did not consider income effects, whereas 61% did consider the effects on leisure. The expected influence of health states on income and leisure differed substantially between respondents. Only the incorporation of leisure proved to be influential in health state valuations. Conclusions . Health state valuation methods that are silent and noninformative regarding leisure and income lead to interrespondent differences regarding how they expect leisure and income to be affected and regarding the inclusion of these effects. This may be especially problematic for leisure if productivity costs are captured at the cost side of the cost-effectiveness ratio.
Towards Automated Discovery of Crash-Resistant Primitives in Binary Executables

Many modern defenses rely on address space layout randomization (ASLR) to efficiently hide security-sensitive metadata in the address space. Absent implementation flaws, an attacker can only bypass such defenses by repeatedly probing the address space for mapped (security-sensitive) regions, incurring a noisy application crash on any wrong guess. Recent work shows that modern applications contain idioms that allow the construction of crash-resistant code primitives, allowing an attacker to efficiently probe the address space without causing any visible crash. In this paper, we classify different crash-resistant primitives and show that this problem is much more prominent than previously assumed. More specifically, we show that rather than relying on labor-intensive source code inspection to find a few "hidden" application-specific primitives, an attacker can find such primitives semi-automatically, on many classes of real-world programs, at the binary level. To support our claims, we develop methods to locate such primitives in real-world binaries. We successfully identified 29 new potential primitives and constructed proof-of-concept exploits for four of them.
Development and validation of a new questionnaire to assess sexual satisfaction, control, and distress associated with premature ejaculation.

INTRODUCTION No validated questionnaires to assess the subjective aspects of premature ejaculation (PE) are currently in use. Clinical trials have generally only considered time, measured by ejaculatory latency, as an indicator of efficacy, but ejaculatory control, sexual satisfaction, and distress are important aspects of PE, which impact both the patient and his partner. The objective of this study was to develop and validate a new questionnaire to measure the overall experience of PE. METHODS The questionnaire was developed using four stages: item pool development, initial psychometric analyses, patient interviews, and final psychometric analyses. RESULTS An item pool of 17 was generated and reduced to 10 items through the initial psychometric analyses. Patient interviews did not require addition of further items and resulted in only minor modifications to item wording for clarity. Final psychometric analyses of the 10-item measure confirmed a three-factor solution: sexual satisfaction, control, and distress. Reliability was good, both internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Convergent validity using intravaginal ejaculatory latency time was excellent: control domain (0.75), sexual satisfaction domain (0.60), and distress domain (0.68). Known-groups validity was very good, all domain mean scores being statistically significantly worse in men with PE compared with the men reporting no PE problems. CONCLUSION The Index of Premature Ejaculation is a reliable and valid questionnaire for the assessment of control over ejaculation, satisfaction with sex life, and distress in men with PE. This tool has the potential to add value to interpretations of improvements in ejaculation latency resulting from new treatments of PE.
Research on efficient-efficient routing protocol for WSNs based on improved artificial bee colony algorithm

Efficient and reliable routing protocol is one of the key technologies in wireless sensor networks, and it has been concerned by a lot of researchers. In light of the random selection of cluster head in low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy protocol algorithm, the residual energy of nodes, node location and node density are not considered. Through theoretical deduction and mathematical calculation, the study found that it is a NP - hard problem. A swarm intelligence algorithm was introduced into the clustering algorithm of wireless sensor network, and an efficient and reliable clustering algorithm for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) based on quantum artificial bee colony algorithm was proposed. Considering the residual energy of nodes, node location and node density, and the energy consumption of the network is balanced. Experiments show that the proposed routing protocol outperforms other work in most cases by reducing the network energy consumption for WSNs by more than 13%, which indicates the feasibility of the authors' approach for efficient and reliable routing protocol in wireless sensor networks.
Chronic exercise preserves brain function in masters athletes when compared to sedentary counterparts

Abstract Objective: Exercise is beneficial for both the body and the mind, and it has been associated with protective neurocognitive effects, such as increased levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and neurogenesis. These effects are linked to the attenuation of age-related mental decline and the preservation of mental capacities in older, physically active adults. This study evaluated whether masters athletes, a highly active population, have better cognitive function compared to age-matched non-athletes based on the Immediate Post-concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing (ImPACT) tool. Methods: Masters athletes and sedentary controls were recruited and screened for eligibility. All subjects were excluded if they had preexisting neurological diseases, psychiatric disorders, substance abuse disorders, learning disorders, and/or a history of traumatic brain injury, and in addition, control subjects were excluded if they performed >1 h/week of aerobic exercise. All participants completed a health and activity survey which includes the SF-12 and the ImPACT neurocognitive test which measures verbal and visual memory as well as reaction time. Differences between masters athletes and the control population were determined by ImPACT score composites. Results: 51 pairs of athletes and non-athletes were analyzed. Athletes had significantly higher verbal memory scores (85.9 ± 7.7 vs 79.9 ± 13.9, p = 0.01) and faster reaction times (0.71 ± 0.12 vs 0.76 ± 0.15 s, p = 0.04) on the ImPACT test. Athletes also scored significantly higher on the physical components summary score of the SF-12 (55.0 ± 3.3 vs 51.8 ± 6.7, p = 0.004). Conclusion: Masters athletes performed better on verbal memory and reaction time test, as well as on physical function as evaluated by the SF-12, compared to non-athlete controls. Chronic physical activity may preserve neurocognitive processes and increase physical health, which are protective factors for the negative effects of the aging process.
Neural Networks and Intellect: Using Model-Based Concepts

With the first few words of Neural Networks and Intellect: Using Model-Based Concepts, Leonid Perlovsky embarks on the daring task of creating a mathematical concept of “the mind. ” The content of the book actually exceeds even the most daring of expectations. A wide variety of concepts are linked together intertwining the development of artificial intelligence, evolutionary computation, and even the philosophical observations ranging from Aristotle and Plato to Kant and Gvdel. Perlovsky discusses fundamental questions with a number of engineering applications to filter them through philosophical categories (both ontological and epistemological). In such a fashion, the inner workings of the human mind, consciousness, language-mind relationships, learning, and emotions are explored mathematically in amazing details. Perlovsky even manages to discuss the concept of beauty perception in mathematical terms. Beginners will appreciate that Perlovsky starts with the basics. The first chapter contains an introduction to probability, statistics, and pattern recognition, along with the intuitive explanation of the complicated mathematical concepts. The second chapter reviews numerous mathematical approaches, algorithms, neural networks, and the fundamental mathematical ideas underlying each method. It analyzes fundamental limitations of the nearest neighbor methods and the simple neural network. Vapnik’s statistical learning theory, support vector machines, and Grossberg’s neural field theories are clearly explained. Roles of hierarchical organization and evolutionary computation are analyzed. Even experts in the field might find interesting the relationships among various algorithms and approaches. Fundamental mathematical issues include origins of combinatorial complexity (CC) of many algorithms and neural networks (operations or training) and its relationship to di-
Termination Set of Univariate Monotonic Program

As the rapid development of computer science technology, programs play an important role in our daily life. Given a loop program, whether it can finally terminate is crucial for software safety. However, its terminability is normally considered to be undecidable. In this paper, a particular type of program - univariate monotonic loop program is discussed, and by "Backward-Iteration approach", their termination sets can be derived.
Decision Enhancement Services for Small and Medium Enterprise Start-Ups in Uganda

While start-up firms create a substantial economic impact on most economies, the failure rate of start-up firms seems to remain high due to inadequate agile decision services. Deciding to start-up mining Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) is a challenging task in Uganda. Research on SME start-up support is limitedly available. Technology is envisaged to facilitate enterprise start-ups. However, there is still acknowledged deficiency in Uganda due to discrete approaches of technology, stakeholders and processes. There is lack of a generalized and systematic means to SME start-up that emphasizes communication and prioritization. Hence, this design science research aims to enhance SME start-up processes with a decision enhancement studio which consists of services for participants in an interactive environment that analyzes decision alternatives. Results from this study suggest that the start-up decision processes can be improved using technology in rural areas.
Personality, Stress and Disease: Description and Validation of a New Inventory

The construction of a new Personality-Stress Inventory is discussed, based on previous research and other types of inventory constructed on the same principles. Scores on the inventory divide people into six types, selectively prone to different types of disease. The instrument is administered twice, with six months intervening, and changes in the inventory scores are prognostic of the probability of contracting different diseases. Evidence is presented to show the validity of the questionnaire and the method used.
La pêcherie de crevettes tropicales de Guyane française. Problème des captures accessoires : estimation et implications

La flottille crevettiere qui exploite les stocks de Peneides du plateau continental de Guyane Francaise comptait en 1981 81 chalutiers, en majorite de nationalite etrangere, et avait debarque l'equivallent de 5700 tonnes de crevettes entieres pour l'annee entiere. Lors des operations de peche, d'autres organismes marins sont captures en meme temps que les crevettes par les chaluts. En majorite ce sont des poissons osseux. Trois campagnes de peche experimentale effectuees en 1981 ont permis d'estimer au moyen d'une technique d'echantillonnage stratifie, la biomasse accessible au chalut a crevettes. Il apparait que dans la zone du plateau continental exploitee par la flottille, les crevettes ne representent guere qu'entre 1/30 et 1/20 eme de la biomasse totale, en moyenne. D'autre part, les especes de la faune associee sont nombreuses et les poissons captures sont en majorite de petite taille. La part de la biomasse totale qui pourrait etre commercialisee facilement, sans necessiter de transformation, ne depasserait pas la moitie de la biomasse des crevettes. Partant de ces estimations, il a ete possible d'evaluer le volume des captures totales pour l'annee 1981 de l'ensemble de la flottille basee a Cayenne. Celui-ci representerait pret de 71000 tonnes, c'est a dire que la peche d'un kilo de crevette s'accompagnerait de celle de 11 a 12 kilos de poissons, en moyenne. Ces resultats ont conduit a s'interesser aux effets de la peche crevettiere sur les stocks de 7 especes de la faune associee, prises comme exemple. Le modele de Beverton et Holt utilise ici a montre que pour certain d'entre eux des risques de surexploitation existaient. Ces divers constatations ont conduit a une discussion axee dans deux dirrections: - la premiere consiste a envisager la valorisation de cette ressource inutilisee : les diverses possibilitees sont passees en revue et sont discuttees; en particulier les implications sur l'organisation de la pecherie sont abordees.
Axial Movement Parameter Study on Preclinical Slit-Slat SPECT

One challenge to discrete detector slit-slat SPECT is that the system's resolution and sensitivity vary significantly in the axial direction. The objective of this work was to reduce the variation by introducing axial movement and to determine the corresponding parameters, i.e. step size (D) and total length (L). We calculated the system response matrix of the slit-slat SPECT system and evaluated the system's axial-direction resolution and sensitivity as functions of axial positions in the field of view. A series of scan protocols with combined rotational and axial movements, that is, helical scans, were applied to simulated phantom studies to select the preferred L and D values. Introducing axial movement effectively improved the system's axial-direction sensitivity uniformity and reconstructed image resolution in both axial direction and in transverse plane, and it also reduced the artifacts in the transverse plane. The preferred choice of L is the cycle of the periodic pattern formed by the slat collimator's and detector crystals. As about the value of D, a smaller D value is preferred for better uniformity as well as resolution improvement but practical constraints would apply.
FACE RECOGNITION UNDER VARYING BLUR IN AN UNCONSTRAINED ENVIRONMENT

Face recognition (FR) system is one of the prominent research areas in pattern recognition and computer vision because of its major challenges. Few challenges in recognizing faces are blur, illumination, and varied expressions. Blur can be uniform and non-uniform. Most probably, blur occurs while taking photographs using cameras, mobile phones. Non-uniform blur happens in images taken using any handheld image devices. Recognizing or handling a blurred image in a face recognition system is generally hard. Most algorithms like blind deconvolution, deblurring, etc. are present and their problems have been discussed. To solve the issue of blur, Blur Robust Face recognition algorithm (BRFR) has been done. In Blur Robust Face Recognition, the Local Binary Pattern (LBP) features were extracted from the blurred test image. For each image in the set of training images, the value for optimal Transformation Spread Function (TSF) was found in order to form a transformed image. The LBP features were extracted from the transformed image. Both the LBP features of blurred test image and transformed training image were compared to find the closest match. Yale face database and JAFFE database were used for evaluation. By varying the Blur levels for the test image, the results for both the datasets were obtained.
Short-Term Wave Forecasting for Real-Time Control of Wave Energy Converters

Real-time control of wave energy converters requires knowledge of future incident wave elevation in order to approach optimal efficiency of wave energy extraction. We present an approach where the wave elevation is treated as a time series and it is predicted only from its past history. A comparison of a range of forecasting methodologies on real wave observations from two different locations shows how the relatively simple linear autoregressive model, which implicitly models the cyclical behavior of waves, can offer very accurate predictions of swell waves for up to two wave periods into the future.
The Lived Experience of Adult Survivors of Childhood Cancer

Little is known about the long-term impact of surviving childhood cancer. Most children diagnosed with cancer now survive into adulthood due to advances in medical treatment. Although the number of survivors of childhood cancer has increased, a review of the literature revealed a paucity of studies that explores survivorship of childhood cancer from the perspective of the adult survivor. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine the lived experience of 12 adults who survived childhood cancer. This research methodology allows the meaning or essences of experiences that occurred to be uncovered. Four themes emerged from these data: (1) ongoing consequences for having had cancer, (2) living with uncertainty, (3) the cancer experience is embodied into one's present sense of self, and (4) support is valued. The results of this study demonstrate that a childhood cancer experience affects the life of each survivor, which results in specific health care needs. This knowledge is important as the number of survivors increases. Knowledge of their concerns is imperative prior to providing appropriate health care.
Optimal design of aquifer cleanup systems under uncertainty using a neural network and a genetic algorithm

We present a methodology to account for the stochastic nature of hydraulic conductivity during the design of pump‐and‐treat systems for aquifer cleanup. The methodology (1) uses a genetic algorithm to find the global optimal solution and (2) incorporates a neural network to model the response surface within the genetic algorithm. We apply the methodology for a real example and different optimization scenarios. The employed optimization formulation requires few hydraulic conductivity realizations. The presented approach produces a trade‐off curve between reliability and treatment facility size.
Faster PET reconstruction with a stochastic primal-dual hybrid gradient method

Image reconstruction in positron emission tomography (PET) is computationally challenging due to Poisson noise, constraints and potentially non-smooth priors-let alone the sheer size of the problem. An algorithm that can cope well with the first three of the aforementioned challenges is the primal-dual hybrid gradient algorithm (PDHG) studied by Chambolle and Pock in 2011. However, PDHG updates all variables in parallel and is therefore computationally demanding on the large problem sizes encountered with modern PET scanners where the number of dual variables easily exceeds 100 million. In this work, we numerically study the usage of SPDHG-a stochastic extension of PDHG-but is still guaranteed to converge to a solution of the deterministic optimization problem with similar rates as PDHG. Numerical results on a clinical data set show that by introducing randomization into PDHG, similar results as the deterministic algorithm can be achieved using only around 10 % of operator evaluations. Thus, making significant progress towards the feasibility of sophisticated mathematical models in a clinical setting.
The prokaryotic enzyme DsbB may share key structural features with eukaryotic disulfide bond forming oxidoreductases

Three different classes of thiol‐oxidoreductases that facilitate the formation of protein disulfide bonds have been identified. They are the Ero1 and SOX/ALR family members in eukaryotic cells, and the DsbB family members in prokaryotic cells. These enzymes transfer oxidizing potential to the proteins PDI or DsbA, which are responsible for directly introducing disulfide bonds into substrate proteins during oxidative protein folding in eukaryotes and prokaryotes, respectively. A comparison of the recent X‐ray crystal structure of Ero1 with the previously solved structure of the SOX/ALR family member Erv2 reveals that, despite a lack of primary sequence homology between Ero1 and Erv2, the core catalytic domains of these two proteins share a remarkable structural similarity. Our search of the DsbB protein sequence for features found in the Ero1 and Erv2 structures leads us to propose that, in a fascinating example of structural convergence, the catalytic core of this integral membrane protein may resemble the soluble catalytic domain of Ero1 and Erv2. Our analysis of DsbB also identified two new groups of DsbB proteins that, based on sequence homology, may also possess a catalytic core similar in structure to the catalytic domains of Ero1 and Erv2.