Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Security API for Distributed Social Networks

We present a cryptographic framework to achieve access control, privacy of social relations, secrecy of resources, and anonymity of users in social networks. We illustrate our technique on a core API for social networking, which includes methods for establishing social relations and for sharing resources. The cryptographic protocols implementing these methods use pseudonyms to hide user identities, signatures on these pseudonyms to establish social relations, and zero-knowledge proofs of knowledge of such signatures to demonstrate the existence of social relations without sacrificing user anonymity. As we do not put any constraints on the underlying social network, our framework is generally applicable and, in particular, constitutes an ideal plug-in for decentralized social networks. We analyzed the security of our protocols by developing formal definitions of the aforementioned security properties and by verifying them using ProVerif, an automated theorem prover for cryptographic protocols. Finally, we built a prototypical implementation and conducted an experimental evaluation to demonstrate the efficiency and the scalability of our framework.
Complete genome sequence of Ilumatobacter coccineum YM16-304T

Ilumatobacter coccineum YM16-304T (=NBRC 103263T) is a novel marine actinobacterium isolated from a sand sample collected at a beach in Shimane Prefecture, Japan. Strain YM16-304T is the type strain of the species. Phylogenetically, strain YM16-304T is close to Ilumatobacter nonamiense YM16-303T (=NBRC 109120T), Ilumatobacter fluminis YM22-133T and some uncultured bacteria including putative marine sponge symbionts. Whole genome sequence of these species has not been reported. Here we report the complete genome sequence of strain YM16-304T. The 4,830,181 bp chromosome was predicted to encode a total of 4,291 protein-coding genes.
Exploiting Fingerprint Prefetching to Improve the Performance of Data Deduplication

Data deduplication has become an important and economic way to remove the redundant data segments, thus alleviating the pressure incurred by large amounts of data need to store. Fingerprints are used to represent and identify identical data blocks when performing data deduplication. However, the amount of fingerprints grows with the increase of data. Due to the limited memory size, the fingerprints have to be stored in disk drives. When the fingerprints are not satisfied in memory, disk I/Os will be generated to obtain the on-disk fingerprints. This results in small and random I/Os, thus significantly degrading the performance of data deduplication. This paper introduces a fingerprint prefetching algorithm by leveraging file similarity and data locality. On the one hand, we present a similar file recognition algorithm to identify the similar files that are considered to have some modifications and share a large portion of identical data blocks. On the other hand, the on-disk fingerprints are organized according to the sequence of data streams, thus maintaining the data locality to improve the cache hit ratio. The proposed prefetching algorithm will request fingerprints from disk drives and place them in memory before they are actually needed. This will significantly improve the cache hit ratio when the fingerprints are actually needed, thus enhancing the performance of data deduplication. Two real data sets that represent typical cloud storage and cloud computing scenarios are collected to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Adaptation to Income over Time: A Weak Point of Subjective Well-Being

This article holds the view that intertemporal comparisons of subjective well-being measures are only meaningful when the underlying standards of judgment are unaltered. This is a weak point of such measures. The study investigates the change in the satisfaction judgments resulting from adaptation to income over time. Adaptation is defined to be desensitization (sensitization) to the hedonic effect of income resulting from an upward (downward) adjustment of the standards. A framework is introduced that provides empirical estimates for the rate of adaptation using data from the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP).
A Proposal to Obtain a Long Quarterly Chilean GDP Series

Una importante limitacion a la hora de especificar y estimar un modelo macroeconomico que describa la economia chilena reside en utilizar variables con suficientes observaciones que permitan una estimacion econometrica fiable. Entre ellas, el PIB constituye una magnitud fundamental. Sin embargo, no existe informacion trimestral previa a 1980. En este trabajo se construye la serie trimestral del PIB chileno para el periodo 1966-1979 utilizando la metodologia de interpolacion propuesta por Casals et al. (2000). Como resultado, la nueva serie incorpora la dinamica ciclica en las series trimestrales posteriores a 1979 respetando, ademas, toda la informacion anual existente antes de dicho periodo
Forward Variable Selection for Sparse Ultra-High Dimensional Varying Coefficient Models

ABSTRACT Varying coefficient models have numerous applications in a wide scope of scientific areas. While enjoying nice interpretability, they also allow for flexibility in modeling dynamic impacts of the covariates. But, in the new era of big data, it is challenging to select the relevant variables when the dimensionality is very large. Recently, several works are focused on this important problem based on sparsity assumptions; they are subject to some limitations, however. We introduce an appealing forward selection procedure. It selects important variables sequentially according to a reduction in sum of squares criterion and it employs a Bayesian information criterion (BIC)-based stopping rule. Clearly, it is simple to implement and fast to compute, and possesses many other desirable properties from theoretical and numerical viewpoints. The BIC is a special case of the extended BIC (EBIC) when an extra tuning parameter in the latter vanishes. We establish rigorous screening consistency results when either BIC or EBIC is used as the stopping criterion. The theoretical results depend on some conditions on the eigenvalues related to the design matrices, which can be relaxed in some situations. Results of an extensive simulation study and a real data example are also presented to show the efficacy and usefulness of our procedure. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
Work Effort During and After Employment Probation: Evidence from German Personnel Data

Summary The degree of employment protection affects employment flows as well as work effort of employees. Whereas the former aspect has been analysed in many studies, the impact of employment protection on work effort has been analysed in few recent studies. Theory predicts that employment protection reduces work effort because employee shirking cannot be that easily punished by the firm, which decreases the separation probability and increases the expected utility for a shirker in efficiency wage models. Personnel records of a German company are used to assess the impact of lower employment protection during probation on worker absenteeism as a proxy for work effort. The main finding is that new white-collar workers are on average more than 50 percent less likely to be absent and have on average more than 60 percent fewer absent working days during the three months probation period compared to the nine months period afterwards. These relative effects differ only slightly between the genders and between different age and educational groups.
FAST SYNTHESIS OF LARGE PLANAR ARRAYS USING ACTIVE ELEMENT PATTERN METHOD AND FINE- GRAINED PARALLEL MICRO-GENETIC ALGORITHM

A radiation pattern synthesis technique for large planar arrays with active element pattern (AEP) method and flne-grained parallel micro-genetic algorithm (FGPMGA) is presented. Based on the AEP method, the mutual coupling between array elements can be taken into account. Analysis problems of large rectangular and triangular grid planar arrays are divided into small linear array problems. And for a multiple concentric circular ring array, we only need to obtain one-sixth of all AEPs. So computational cost is greatly reduced. Large planar arrays with low side lobe level (SLL) can be achieved via optimizing the excitation amplitudes and phases. In order to reduce the global optimization time, the FGPMGA is used. This technique is applied to design 256-element rectangular grid, 200- element triangular grid and 4-circle 60-element concentric circular ring E-shaped patch antenna arrays. The radiation patterns calculated by the AEP method show good agreements with those by using CST Microwave Studio.
Genetic Removal of Matrix Metalloproteinase 9 Rescues the Symptoms of Fragile X Syndrome in a Mouse Model

Fmr1 knock-out (ko) mice display key features of fragile X syndrome (FXS), including delayed dendritic spine maturation and FXS-associated behaviors, such as poor socialization, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and hyperactivity. Here we provide conclusive evidence that matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) is necessary to the development of FXS-associated defects in Fmr1 ko mice. Genetic disruption of Mmp-9 rescued key aspects of Fmr1 deficiency, including dendritic spine abnormalities, abnormal mGluR5-dependent LTD, as well as aberrant behaviors in open field and social novelty tests. Remarkably, MMP-9 deficiency also corrected non-neural features of Fmr1 deficiency—specifically macroorchidism—indicating that MMP-9 dysregulation contributes to FXS-associated abnormalities outside the CNS. Further, MMP-9 deficiency suppressed elevations of Akt, mammalian target of rapamycin, and eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E phosphorylation seen in Fmr1 ko mice, which are also associated with other autistic spectrum disorders. These findings establish that MMP-9 is critical to the mechanisms responsible for neural and non-neural aspects of the FXS phenotype.
RSDC ’ 08 : Tag Recommendations using Bookmark Content

A variety of factors contribute to a tag being assigned by a us er to a document that he or she bookmarked. Textual information pre sent in a URL’s title, a user’s description of a document, or a bibtex field asso ciated with a scientific publication are sources for automatically recommending ta gs relevant for a given bookmark. Lymba’s submission for the RSDC’08 Tag Recommend ation task uses document and user models derived from the textual content as sociated with URLs and publications by social bookmarking tool users. This pap er describes our natural language understanding approach for producing tag rec ommendations and provides some initial results of our internal evaluation.
Artificial Neural Networks, Adaptive and Classical Control for FTC of Linear Parameters Varying Systems

Abstract Three different schemes for Fault Tolerant Control (FTC) based on Adaptive Control in combination with Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Robust Control and Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) systems are compared. These schemes include a Model Reference Adaptive Controller (MRAC), a MRAC with an ANN and a MRAC with an H ∞ Loop Shaping Controller for 4 operating points of an LPV system (MRAC-4OP-LPV, MRAC-NN4OP-LPV and MRAC-H ∞ 4OP-LPV, respectively). In order to compare the performance of these schemes, a coupled-tank system was used as testbed in which two different types of faults (abrupt and gradual) applied in sensor and actuators in different operating points were simulated. The simulation results showed that the use of ANN in combination with an adaptive controller for LPV-based system improves the FTC scheme, delivering a robust FTC system against abrupt and gradual sensor faults. For actuator faults, the only schemes that were fault tolerant were the MRAC-H ∞ 4OP-LPV and the MRAC-4OP-LPV (i.e. the MRAC-H ∞ 4OP-LPV was fault tolerant for actuator faults varying from 0 to 0.5 of magnitude).
Learning How to Conjugate the Romanian Verb. Rules for Regular and Partially Irregular Verbs

In this paper we extend our work described in (Dinu et al., 2011) by adding more conjugational rules to the labelling system introduced there, in an attempt to capture the entire dataset of Romanian verbs extracted from (Barbu, 2007), and we employ machine learning techniques to predict a verb's correct label (which says what conjugational pattern it follows) when only the infinitive form is given.
A Memory-Based Shallow Parser for Spoken Dutch

We describe the development of a Dutch memory-based shallow parser. The availability of large treebanks for Dutch, such as the one provided by the Spoken Dutch Corpus, allows memory-based learners to be trained on examples of shallow parsing taken from the treebank, and act as a shallow parser after training. An overview is given of a modular memory-based learning approach to shallow parsing, composed of a part-of-speech tagger-chunker and two grammatical relation finders, which has originally been developed for English. This approach is applied to the syntactically annotated part of the Spoken Dutch Corpus to construct a Dutch shallow parser. From the generalisation scores of the parser we conclude that existing memory-based parsing approaches can be applied to spoken Dutch successfully, but that there is room for improvement in the tagger-chunker
AQP5 is differentially regulated in astrocytes during metabolic and traumatic injuries

Water movement plays vital roles in both physiological and pathological conditions in the brain. Astrocytes are responsible for regulating this water movement and are the major contributors to brain edema in pathological conditions. Aquaporins (AQPs) in astrocytes play critical roles in the regulation of water movement in the brain. AQP1, 3, 4, 5, 8, and 9 have been reported in the brain. Compared with AQP1, 4, and 9, AQP3, 5, and 8 are less studied. Among the lesser known AQPs, AQP5, which has multiple functions identified outside the central nervous system, is also indicated to be involved in hypoxia injury in astrocytes. In our study, AQP5 expression could be detected both in primary cultures of astrocytes and neurons, and AQP5 expression in astrocytes was confirmed in 1‐ to 4‐week old primary cultures of astrocytes. AQP5 was localized on the cytoplasmic membrane and in the cytoplasm of astrocytes. AQP5 expression was downregulated during ischemia treatment and upregulated after scratch‐wound injury, which was also confirmed in a middle cerebral artery occlusion model and a stab‐wound injury model in vivo. The AQP5 increased after scratch injury was polarized to the migrating processes and cytoplasmic membrane of astrocytes in the leading edge of the scratch‐wound, and AQP5 over‐expression facilitated astrocyte process elongation after scratch injury. Taken together, these results indicate that AQP5 might be an important water channel in astrocytes that is differentially expressed during various brain injuries. GLIA 2013;61:1748–1765
Solid texturing of complex surfaces

Texturing is an effective method of simulating surface detail at relatively low cost. Traditionally, texture functions have been defined on the two-dimensional surface coordinate systems of individual surface patches. This paper introduces the notion of "solid texturing". Solid texturing uses texture functions defined throughout a region of three-dimensional space. Many nonhomogeneous materials, including wood and stone, may be more realistically rendered using solid texture functions. In addition, solid texturing can easily be applied to complex surface which are difficult to texture using two-dimensional texture functions. The paper gives examples of solid texture functions based on Fourier synthesis, stochastic texture models, projections of two-dimensional textures, and combinations of other solid textures.
Volatility analysis and forecasting models of crude oil prices: a review

Accurate forecasting of crude oil prices plays a significant role for supporting policy and decision making at economy and firm levels. The successive developments in econometric and artificial intelligence models provide opportunities to analyse crude oil market in depth and improve the accuracy of oil price forecasting. Past years have seen an increasing number of studies on the volatility analysis and forecasting of crude oil prices by different techniques such as econometric and artificial intelligence models. This paper aims to present a systematic review of existing tools used to model the volatility of crude oil prices. It is found that the integration of time series models with artificial intelligence models has received increasing attention in oil price forecasting owing to its satisfactory prediction performance. Also, feature extraction of oil price series with appropriate multivariate statistical analysis techniques plays an important role in improving the prediction performance.
Genotypic diversity and grazer identity interactively influence seagrass and grazer biomass

Despite experimental evidence for effects of primary producer diversity and consumer species diversity on population and community processes, little is known about how diversity at these multiple trophic levels may interact. We conducted a mesocosm experiment to examine the indepen- dent and interactive effects of seagrass Zostera marina genotypic diversity and grazer species diver- sity on seagrass, epiphyte, and grazer responses. There were no interactions between seagrass geno- typic diversity and grazer species diversity, per se; however, the effects of seagrass genotypic diversity on both seagrass and grazer biomass depended on grazer species identity. In particular, sea- grass biomass was higher in polyculture than in monoculture, but only when the sea hare Phyl- laplysia taylori was the only grazer present. This enhanced growth was due to complementarity among genotypes in the presence of P. taylori. Seagrass genotypic diversity effects on grazer biomass and fecundity were small and/or idiosyncratic, yet grazer species composition had a large impact on grazer reproductive effort. Only grazer species identity, and not seagrass genotypic diversity or grazer species diversity, affected epiphyte biomass, consistent with other findings of the importance of species identity. Our results confirm the effects of seagrass genetic diversity on the plant itself as well as the grazer species that utilize it for both food and habitat. Furthermore, they emphasize the importance of grazers for controlling epiphyte and seagrass biomass.
The Circadian Clock in Murine Chondrocytes Regulates Genes Controlling Key Aspects of Cartilage Homeostasis

ObjectiveTo characterize the circadian clock in murine cartilage tissue and identify tissue-specific clock target genes, and to investigate whether the circadian clock changes during aging or during cartilage degeneration using an experimental mouse model of osteoarthritis (OA). MethodsCartilage explants were obtained from aged and young adult mice after transduction with the circadian clock fusion protein reporter PER2::luc, and real-time bioluminescence recordings were used to characterize the properties of the clock. Time-series microarrays were performed on mouse cartilage tissue to identify genes expressed in a circadian manner. Rhythmic genes were confirmed by quantitative reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction using mouse tissue, primary chondrocytes, and a human chondrocyte cell line. Experimental OA was induced in mice by destabilization of the medial meniscus (DMM), and articular cartilage samples were microdissected and subjected to microarray analysis. ResultsMouse cartilage tissue and a human chondrocyte cell line were found to contain intrinsic molecular circadian clocks. The cartilage clock could be reset by temperature signals, while the circadian period was temperature compensated. PER2::luc bioluminescence demonstrated that circadian oscillations were significantly lower in amplitude in cartilage from aged mice. Time-series microarray analyses of the mouse tissue identified the first circadian transcriptome in cartilage, revealing that 615 genes (∼3.9% of the expressed genes) displayed a circadian pattern of expression. This included genes involved in cartilage homeostasis and survival, as well as genes with potential importance in the pathogenesis of OA. Several clock genes were disrupted in the early stages of cartilage degeneration in the DMM mouse model of OA. ConclusionThese results reveal an autonomous circadian clock in chondrocytes that can be implicated in key aspects of cartilage biology and pathology. Consequently, circadian disruption (e.g., during aging) may compromise tissue homeostasis and increase susceptibility to joint damage or disease.
Expected answer type construction using analogical reasoning in a question answering task

In a question answering system (QAS), question analysis component has an important task to determine the expected answer type (EAT) of a given question. Many QAS's rely their question analysis performance on manually developed patterns, such as in Open Ephyra (OE), one of a state of the art freely available QAS. Recently, there are a number of studies which investigated the influence of statistical relational framework to learn question-answer pairs in particular component of a QAS. In this study, we propose an approach that utilizes the intensity of statistical learning of question-answer pairs as a means to develop EAT patterns. In a question analysis experiment setting by using factoid testing questions from QA@CLEF 2008, our result outperforms the accuracy of manually constructed patterns of OE, with 84.17% against 81.67%.
Objective view synthesis quality assessment

View synthesis brings geometric distortions which are not handled efficiently by existing image quality assessment metrics. Despite the widespread of 3-D technology and notably 3D television (3DTV) and free-viewpoints television (FTV), the field of view synthesis quality assessment has not yet been widely investigated and new quality metrics are required. In this study, we propose a new full-reference objective quality assessment metric: the View Synthesis Quality Assessment (VSQA) metric. Our method is dedicated to artifacts detection in synthesized view-points and aims to handle areas where disparity estimation may fail: thin objects, object borders, transparency, variations of illumination or color differences between left and right views, periodic objects. The key feature of the proposed method is the use of three visibility maps which characterize complexity in terms of textures, diversity of gradient orientations and presence of high contrast. Moreover, the VSQA metric can be defined as an extension of any existing 2D image quality assessment metric. Experimental tests have shown the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Funding a New Bridge in Rural Vietnam: A field experiment on conditional cooperation and default contributions

The ability to provide public goods is essential for economic and social development, yet there is very limited empirical evidence regarding contributions to a real local public good in developing countries. This paper analyzes a field experiment where 200 households in rural Vietnam could make real contributions to an archetypical public good, a bridge. In particular, we study the role of two kinds of social influence: i) conditional cooperation, i.e., that people may be more willing to cooperate if others do, and ii) the effects of the default alternative, i.e., that people are influenced by the default alternative presented to them in the choice situation. We find significant and substantial effects of both kinds of influence. For example, by either giving the subjects the additional information that one of the most common contributions by others is 100,000 dong (a relatively low contribution) or introducing a zero-contribution default alternative, the average contribution decreases by about 20% compared to the baseline case.