Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of lithographic process variation effects in InGaAsP annular Bragg resonator lasers

Optical microresonators based on an annular geometry of radial Bragg reflectors have been designed and fabricated by electron-beam lithography, reactive ion etching, and an epitaxial transfer process. Unlike conventional ring resonators that are based on total internal reflection of light, the annular structure described here is designed to support optical modes with very small azimuthal propagation coefficient and correspondingly large free spectral range. The effect of lithographic process variation upon device performance is studied. Laser emission wavelength and threshold optical pump power are found to vary between similar devices given different electron doses during electron-beam lithography. As the resonance wavelength and quality factor of these resonators are very sensitive to environmental changes, these resonators make ideal active light sources that can be integrated into large arrays for gas and liquid sensing applications and are easily interrogated.
Identity-based registry for secure interdomain routing

The current Internet has no secure way to validate the correctness of the routing information. We suggest a mechanism that supports secure validation of routing information in the interdomain routing protocol of the Internet. Our mechanism focuses on alleviating obstacles which previously prevent the complete and correct construction of the Internet routing information. In particular, we propose an identity-based Registry with Authorized and Verifiable Search (RAVS) so that routing information can be constructed securely. We construct an efficient RAVS scheme and prove its securities in the random oracle model. By our scheme, the routing information can be securely stored and tested without revealing contents of both the registry and the search query. Furthermore, our registry is verifiable and its correctness is guaranteed. Only the legal autonomous system (AS) can construct the valid registry and the single compromised AS can be detected. Our experiment shows that our RAVS scheme can be implemented efficiently and the incurred overhead, in terms of time and space, is acceptable in practice.
Reply to: "Property-Based Software Engineering Measurement''

L.C. Briand, S. Morasca and V.R. Basili (ibid., vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 68-85, Jan. 1996) introduced a measurement-theoretic approach to software measurement and criticized (among others) the work of the author, but they misinterpreted his work. The author does not require additive software (complexity) measures as Briand, Morasca and Basili state. The author uses the concept of the extensive structure in order to show the empirical properties behind software measures. Briand, Morasca and Basili use the concept of meaningfulness in order to describe scales and that certain scale levels are not excluded by the Weyuker properties. However, they do not consider that scales and scale types are different things.
Targeting the AtCWIN1 Gene to Explore the Role of Invertases in Sucrose Transport in Roots and during Botrytis cinerea Infection

Cell wall invertases (CWIN) cleave sucrose into glucose and fructose in the apoplast. CWINs are key regulators of carbon partitioning and source/sink relationships during growth, development and under biotic stresses. In this report, we monitored the expression/activity of Arabidopsis cell wall invertases in organs behaving as source, sink, or subjected to a source/sink transition after infection with the necrotrophic fungus Botrytis cinerea. We showed that organs with different source/sink status displayed differential CWIN activities, depending on carbohydrate needs or availabilities in the surrounding environment, through a transcriptional and posttranslational regulation. Loss-of-function mutation of the Arabidopsis cell wall invertase 1 gene, AtCWIN1, showed that the corresponding protein was the main contributor to the apoplastic sucrose cleaving activity in both leaves and roots. The CWIN-deficient mutant cwin1-1 exhibited a reduced capacity to actively take up external sucrose in roots, indicating that this process is mainly dependent on the sucrolytic activity of AtCWIN1. Using T-DNA and CRISPR/Cas9 mutants impaired in hexose transport, we demonstrated that external sucrose is actively absorbed in the form of hexoses by a sugar/H+ symport system involving the coordinated activity of AtCWIN1 with several Sugar Transporter Proteins (STP) of the plasma membrane, i.e., STP1 and STP13. Part of external sucrose was imported without apoplastic cleavage into cwin1-1 seedling roots, highlighting an alternative AtCWIN1-independent pathway for the assimilation of external sucrose. Accordingly, we showed that several genes encoding sucrose transporters of the plasma membrane were expressed. We also detected transcript accumulation of vacuolar invertase (VIN)-encoding genes and high VIN activities. Upon infection, AtCWIN1 was responsible for all the Botrytis-induced apoplastic invertase activity. We detected a transcriptional activation of several AtSUC and AtVIN genes accompanied with an enhanced vacuolar invertase activity, suggesting that the AtCWIN1-independent pathway is efficient upon infection. In absence of AtCWIN1, we postulate that intracellular sucrose hydrolysis is sufficient to provide intracellular hexoses to maintain sugar homeostasis in host cells and to fuel plant defenses. Finally, we demonstrated that Botrytis cinerea possesses its own functional sucrolytic machinery and hexose uptake system, and does not rely on the host apoplastic invertases.
A Comparative Case Study on the Impact of Test-Driven Development on Program Design and Test Coverage

Test-driven development (TDD) is a programming technique in which the tests are written prior to the source code. It is proposed that TDD is one of the most fundamental practices enabling the development of software in an agile and iterative manner. Both the literature and practice suggest that TDD practice yields several benefits. Essentially, it is claimed that TDD leads to an improved software design, which has a dramatic impact on the maintainability and further development of the system. The impact of TDD on program design has seldom come under the researchers' focus. This paper reports the results from a comparative case study of three software development projects where the effect of TDD on program design was measured using object-oriented metrics. The results show that the effect of TDD on program design was not as evident as expected, but the test coverage was significantly superior to iterative test-last development.
Software Engineering View of a Large-Scale System Failure and the Following Lawsuit

In 2005, a system trouble occurred in the Tokyo Stock Exchange Order System, which caused a loss of more than 40 billion yen to Mizuho Securities and Mizuho filed a lawsuit demanding compensation for the loss to the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE). The judgment was pronounced in December 2009, ordering TSE to pay Mizuho Securities about 10 billion yen in compensation for the loss. Mizuho Securities found the judgment unacceptable and appealed to the Tokyo High Court. The judgment of the appellate court was issued in July 2013, basically upholding the initial verdict. From the software engineering point of view, the most important incident during the appellate court was partial disclosure of the source code of the system. We report the incident from the viewpoint of software engineering, making use of the partially disclosed source code. We discuss various issues, focusing on the role of SE searchers and engineers.
Co-development of task models through robot-human interaction

Recently there is an increasing demand for service robots which help humans in home and office environments. Such a robot has to deal with a much wider range of tasks and environments than usual industrial ones, and it is very difficult for a manufacturer to give the robot all pieces of necessary knowledge in advance. This paper, therefore, proposes an interactive teaching method using task models. A task model describes what pieces of knowledge are necessary to achieve a task. The robot examines the task model, determines missing pieces of knowledge, and actively asks the instructor to teach them. This makes the teaching easier because the instructor does not have to think what and when to teach by himself. A task model, completed through interaction, is used for the robot to realize the corresponding task. We have developed a prototype of the task model-based teaching system and successfully applied it to teaching a service robot several tasks.
The Kirby torus trick for surfaces

This is an expository paper giving a proof of the existence and uniqueness of smooth structures (hence also PL structures) on topological surfaces. Most published proofs rely on the topological Schoenflies theorem, but here we use instead the Kirby torus trick. This has the advantage of reducing the point-set topology in the proof to practically nothing, replacing it by a few basic facts about smooth surfaces. Uniqueness of smooth structures is proved in the strong form that every homeomorphism between smooth surfaces is isotopic to a diffeomorphism.
Interactive modeling and editing of free-form surfaces from curve networks

Free-form surface design is one of essential tasks in virtual reality systems. In the past decades, curve network has been widely used as a sparse abstract representation for free-form surfaces. It is intuitive for designers to edit curve networks directly by drag-and-drop operation on an abitrary point, because the designers pay more attention on the lower-dimensional curves rather than the surface itself. In this paper, we present a general framework for editing a free-form surface by manipulating points on its curve network. This approach is very efficient and easy-to-use by working on a network of curves. A wide range of examples are shown which demonstrate the performance and practicability.
Improved Target Detection in Polarimetric SAR Images by Use of Mellin Kind Statistics

We present a modified version of the polarimetric whitening filter (PWF) for target detection in single-look complex images captured by polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR). The modified version enables the derivation of the sampling distribution of the PWF under several product model distributions for the polarimetric scattering vector. Specificly, a constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detector is obtained under the K-distribution and the Gdistribution. The PWF sampling distribution as well as efficient estimators for shape parameters characterising the radar texture are derived by use of newly proposed Mellin kind statistics for single-look complex PolSAR data.
Collusion in Procurement Auctions: Structural Estimation of Bidders Costs

In this paper, the aim is to analyse the existence of collusion in asymmetric asphalt-procurement auctions. Firms that behave competitively should have private costs that are independent, conditional on available …rm- and auction-speci…c information. The hypothesis of conditional independence can be tested and if it is rejected, a possible explanation is collusion. Using a constrained strategy equilibrium concept in solving for equilibrium bid strategies and …rms’ private costs makes it possible to test the hypothesis of conditional independence while at the same time controlling for …rms’strategic considerations. The analysis is based on bid data from procurement auctions carried out in Sweden during the 1990’s. The …ndings are that the hypothesis of conditional independence can be rejected for about half the …rm-pairs that are tested. Given that the model is correctly speci…ed, this suggests that collusive behaviour is plausible in the investigated market.
Who is looking at me? The cone of gaze widens in social phobia

Gaze direction is an important cue that regulates social interactions and facilitates joint attention. Although humans are very accurate in determining gaze directions in general, they have a surprisingly liberal criterion for the presence of mutual gaze. Using an established psychophysical task that required observers to adjust the eyes of a virtual head to the margins of the area of mutual gaze, we examined whether the resulting cone of gaze is altered in people with social phobia. It turned out that during presence of a second virtual person, the gaze cone's width was specifically enlarged in patients with social phobia as compared to healthy controls. The size of this effect was correlated with the severity of social anxiety. As this effect was found for merely virtual lookers, it seems to be a fundamental mechanism rather than a specific effect related to the fear of being observed and evaluated by others.
Hyperbolic systems with non-computable basins of attraction

In this paper we show that there is an analytic and computable dynamical system with a hyperbolic sink s such that the basin of attraction of s is not computable. As a consequence, the problem of determining basins of attraction for analytic hyperbolic systems is not, in general, algorithmically solvable. 1 Summary of the paper Dynamical systems are fascinating mathematical objects. They can be defined with simple rules and yet their “time-evolution” can be highly complex and difficult to describe analytically. A particular challenge is the problem of characterizing basins of attraction. In recent years, as fast computers have become available, much effort has been devoted to developing algorithms for estimating basins of attraction of various attractors. It therefore becomes useful to know whether or not these sets can actually be generated by computers. It is well known that for hyperbolic rational functions, there are (polynomialtime) algorithms for computing basins of attraction and their complements (Julia sets) with arbitrary precision [Bea91]; in other words, basins of attraction and Julia sets of hyperbolic rational functions are (polynomial-time) computable. However, the question of computability remains open for (analytic) nonrational systems. In this paper we show that: Main Theorem. There is an analytic and computable dynamical system with a hyperbolic sink s such that the basin of attraction of s is not computable (technically more precise results are given in Theorem 5 and Corollary 7 below). Thus our result implies that no algorithmic characterization exists, in general, for a given basin of attraction.
Optimizing Forward Error Correction Codes for COFDM With Reduced PAPR

Coded orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (COFDM) is a popular modulation technique for wireless communication that guarantees reliable transmission of data over noisy wireless channels. However, a major disadvantage in implementing it is its resulting high peak to average power ratio (PAPR). Including forward error correction (FEC) in the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system enables the avoidance of transmission errors. Nevertheless, the selected code may impact the value of PAPR. The objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of FEC on the PAPR for the COFDM system based on the autocorrelation of the signal, before the inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) block in the COFDM system, the evaluation of the complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of PAPR, and the bit error rate (BER). The autocorrelation of the COFDM system is calculated based on a Markov chain model. From the results, we can reach a conclusion on the characteristics we need to consider in order to choose the codes relating to the PAPR performance in the COFDM system.
Evolving robocup keepaway players through task decomposition

In some complex control tasks, learning a direct mapping from an agent’s sensors to its actuators is very difficult. For such tasks, decomposing the problem into more manageable components can make learning feasible. In this paper, we provide a task decomposition, in the form of a decision tree, for one such task. We investigate two different methods of learning the resulting subtasks. The first approach, layered learning, trains each component sequentially in its own training environment, aggressively constraining the search. The second approach, coevolution, learns all the subtasks simultaneously from the same experiences and puts few restrictions on the learning algorithm. We empirically compare these two training methodologies using neuro-evolution, a machine learning algorithm that evolves neural networks. Our experiments, conducted in the domain of simulated robotic soccer keepaway, indicate that neuro-evolution can learn effective behaviors and that the less constrained coevolutionary approach outperforms the sequential approach. These results provide new evidence of the power of coevolution and suggest that solution spaces should not be over-constrained when supplementing the learning of complex tasks with human knowledge. Track Category: Coevolution
Updating Knowledge in Feedback-Based Multi-classifier Systems

In pattern recognition tasks it is frequent that new (labeled) data became available as the specific application scenario evolves. When a multi expert system (ME) is adopted, the collective behavior of classifiers can be used to select the most profitable samples in order to update the knowledge base. More specifically a misclassified sample, for a particular classifier, is used to update that classifier only if that sample produces a misclassification by the ensemble of classifiers. This approach is compared to situation in which the entire new dataset is used for learning as well as the case in which specific samples are selected by the individual classifier. Successful results have been obtained by considering the CEDAR (handwritten digit) database, moreover it is also shown how they depend by the specific combination decision schema, as well as by data distribution.
Imaging Through Scattering by Guy Satat

In this thesis we demonstrate novel methods to overcome optical scattering in order to resolve information about hidden scenes, in particular for biomedical applications. Imaging through scattering media has long been a challenge, as scattering corrupts scenes in a non-invertible way. The use of near-visible optical spectrum for biomedical purposes has many advantages, such as optical contrast, optical resolution and nonionizing radiation. Particularly, it has important applications in biomedical imaging, such as sub-dermal imaging for diagnostics, screening and monitoring conditions. We demonstrate methods to overcome and use scattering in order to recover scene parameters. In particular we demonstrate a method for locating and classifying fluorescent markers hidden behind turbid layers using ultrafast time-resolved measurements with a sparse-based optimization framework. This novel method has applications in remote sensing and in-vivo fluorescence lifetime imaging. Another method is demonstrated to resolve blood flow speed within skin tissue. This method is based on a computational photography technique and coherent illumination. This method can be applied in diagnosis and monitoring of burns, wounds, prostheses and cosmetics. A particularly important application of this technology is analysis of diabetic ulcers, which is the main cause for non-traumatic amputations in India. The suggested prototype is suitable for assisting clinicians in assessing the wound healing process. The methods developed in this thesis using ultrafast time-resolved measurements, sparsity-based optimization and computational photography can spur research and applications in biomedical imaging, skin conditions diagnosis and more general modalities of imaging through scattering media. Thesis Supervisor: Ramesh Raskar Title: Associate Professor
Navigating the College Years: Developmental Trajectories and Gender Differences in Psychological Functioning, Cognitive-Affective Strategies, and Social Well-Being

College presents unique opportunities and stressors that challenge psychosocial adjustment. This 4-year longitudinal study examines multiple aspects of adjustment in 5,532 college students from immediately pre-college across each of 4 academic years. Student adjustment generally worsens across the first 2 years in the domains of psychological functioning (decreased self-esteem; increased depression, anxiety, and stress), cognitive-affective strategies (decreased active emotional coping, increased avoidant emotional coping), and social adjustment (decreased social support from friends). The latter 2 years generally witness improvement, though only recovering to pre-college levels in self-esteem and active emotional coping for women, and just the latter for men. Women experience worse initial psychological functioning (more distress and lower self-esteem), though their self-esteem recovers by the end of college. Men exhibit worse friend support and active emotional coping, and a pattern of worsening avoidant emotional coping throughout college. Current findings highlight the first 2 years as an extended transition period when prevention programs may be especially needed.
Communicative routines in distributed cognitive systems : the integration of epistemic diversity

Since the importance of multifunctional teams is recognized there is an ongoing discussion how diverse knowledge of the functional specialists should be integrated. The theoretical proposals for integration convey theories of pure coordination to theories that propose transspecialists who can ‘dock’ into the diverse (specialist) knowledges. In this paper, none of these two proposals is considered a viable way. Instead, I start with the assumption that a multifunctional team is to be considered a distributed cognitive system that should develop into a script-like organization. Knowing each other and integrating knowledge is considered as speech act where language use also has a social signalling function. From here, I propose communication patterns that expand the validity of the locally shared (mutual) knowledge. Communication patterns are basic functions – a type of grammar in order to support the integration of diverse knowledge from local acceptance to a larger network.
Homology modeling of the three-dimensional structure of bovine serum albumin

The three-dimensional structure of bovine serum albumin (BSA) was obtained successfully with the homology modeling method. The reasonable results were presented: In the nine conservative areas, the desired Root-mean-square (Rms) value (0.0001) was obtained; 17 disulfides were added into the BSA successfully; In the loops construction, the score of loops was higher than 85 with composer module evaluation, except the first and third loop; The approximately 98.19 % of the residues of BSA model are either in the most accepted or in the additionally accepted regions, according to the ramachandran plot.
Nonlinear directed acyclic structure learning with weakly additive noise models

The recently proposed additive noise model has advantages over previous directed structure learning approaches since it (i) does not assume linearity or Gaussianity and (ii) can discover a unique DAG rather than its Markov equivalence class. However, for certain distributions, e.g. linear Gaussians, the additive noise model is invertible and thus not useful for structure learning, and it was originally proposed for the two variable case with a multivariate extension which requires enumerating all possible DAGs. We introduce weakly additive noise models, which extends this framework to cases where the additive noise model is invertible and when additive noise is not present. We then provide an algorithm that learns an equivalence class for such models from data, by combining a PC style search using recent advances in kernel measures of conditional dependence with local searches for additive noise models in substructures of the Markov equivalence class. This results in a more computationally efficient approach that is useful for arbitrary distributions even when additive noise models are invertible.