Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Perturbing numerical calculations for statistical analysis of floating-point program (in)stability

Writing reliable software is difficult. It becomes even more difficult when writing scientific software involving floating-point numbers. Computers provide numbers with limited precision; when confronted with a real whose precision exceeds that limit, they introduce approximation and error. Numerical analysts have developed sophisticated mathematical techniques for performing error and stability analysis of numerical algorithms. However, these are generally not accessible to application programmers or scientists who often do not have in-depth training in numerical analysis and who thus need more automated techniques to analyze their code. In this paper, we develop a novel, practical technique to help application programmers (or even numerical experts) obtain high-level information regarding the numerical stability and accuracy of their code. Our main insight is that by systematically altering (or perturbing) the underlying numerical calculation, we can uncover potential pitfalls in the numerical code. We propose two complementary perturbations to statistically measure numerical stability: value perturbation and expression perturbation. Value perturbation dynamically replaces the least significant bits of each floating-point value, including intermediate values, with random bits to statistically induce numerical error in the code. Expression perturbation statically changes the numerical expressions in the user program to mathematically equivalent (in the reals, likely not in floating-point numbers), but syntactically different forms. We then compare the executions of these "equivalent" forms to help discover and remedy potential instabilities. Value perturbation can overstate error, while expression perturbation is relatively conservative, so we use value perturbation to generate candidates for expression perturbation. We have implemented our technique, and evaluation results on various programs from the literature and the GNU Scientific Library (GSL) show that our technique is effective and offers a practical alternative for understanding numerical stability in scientific software.
The Roles of Love and Happiness in Divorce Decision Making

ABSTRACT Little is known about divorce decision making, the process of deciding whether to divorce when a marriage is distressed. The focus of this qualitative study was to explore the roles of love and happiness—two Western ideals that govern contemporary marital processes—in divorce decision making. Married participants (N = 30) with recent thoughts about divorce were interviewed about their conceptions of love and happiness in their decision-making processes. The resulting categories for love included: (a) importance of love, (b) change over time, and (c) marital love. The categories for happiness included: (a) fluidity of happiness and (b) balancing happiness. Implications of the findings are discussed.
RGB to YCbCr Color Conversion using VHDL approach

In this paper, we present the architecture and design of a color space conversion module. The color space converter module is used for changing the image from RGB color space to YCbCr color space. The color space conversion module was designed using VHDL and was implemented on an FPGA. This design methodology helped us to achieve faster the time to market and also the ability to reuse one physical device across multiple functions.
Formal Verification of the Security of a Free-Space Quantum Key Distribution System

The security of a free-space Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) system is analyzed by using PRISM, a probabilistic model checker. Disturbances and misalignments causing an imperfect channel are considered. The security of the system is formally demonstrated against intercept-resend and random substitution eavesdropping attacks for a particular range of transmitted photons. implemented in an experimental QKD system. We will consider the influence of possible disturbances in the free- space between Alice and Bob, and misalignments in the optics to calculate the probability of detection of the eavesdropper as a function of the number of photons transmitted (or equivalently, the length of the bit sequence generated by Alice). The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II includes some preliminaries and definitions. Section III briefly outlines the BB84 protocol, describes the actual free-space QKD system under development in our labs, and exposes the model checking methodology used to analyze its security. The calculated results are presented and discussed in section IV and, finally, conclusions are derived in section V.
Effect of β-Mannanase and α-Galactosidase Supplementation to Soybean Meal Based Diets on Growth, Feed Efficiency and Nutrient Digestibility of Rainbow Trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss (Walbaum)

A 12-week feeding trial was conducted with 87 g rainbow trout to evaluate the effects on growth performances, feed efficiency and nutrient digestibility of adding β-mannanase and α-galactosidase enzymes, solely or in combination. Seven diets were prepared by adding β-mannanase, α-galactosidase and mixed enzyme at two different levels (1 g/kg and 2 g/kg) to control diet (without enzyme) including soybean meal. Mixed enzymes (1 g/kg, 2 g/kg) were prepared by adding β-mannanase and α-galactosidase at the same doses (0.5+0.5 g/kg and 1+1 g/kg). At the end of the experiment, addition of β-mannanase, α-galactosidase and mixed enzyme to diet containing 44% soybean meal had no significant effects on growth performance and gain:feed (p>0.05). In addition, adding β-mannanase, α-galactosidase and mixed enzyme in different rations to trout diets had no affect on nutrient digestibility and body composition (p>0.05).
Transcriptional repression by MYB3R proteins regulates plant organ growth

In multicellular organisms, temporal and spatial regulation of cell proliferation is central for generating organs with defined sizes and morphologies. For establishing and maintaining the post‐mitotic quiescent state during cell differentiation, it is important to repress genes with mitotic functions. We found that three of the Arabidopsis MYB3R transcription factors synergistically maintain G2/M‐specific genes repressed in post‐mitotic cells and restrict the time window of mitotic gene expression in proliferating cells. The combined mutants of the three repressor‐type MYB3R genes displayed long roots, enlarged leaves, embryos, and seeds. Genome‐wide chromatin immunoprecipitation revealed that MYB3R3 binds to the promoters of G2/M‐specific genes and to E2F target genes. MYB3R3 associates with the repressor‐type E2F, E2FC, and the RETINOBLASTOMA RELATED proteins. In contrast, the activator MYB3R4 was in complex with E2FB in proliferating cells. With mass spectrometry and pairwise interaction assays, we identified some of the other conserved components of the multiprotein complexes, known as DREAM/dREAM in human and flies. In plants, these repressor complexes are important for periodic expression during cell cycle and to establish a post‐mitotic quiescent state determining organ size.
Automated minimization of steric clashes in protein structures

Molecular modeling of proteins including homology modeling, structure determination, and knowledge‐based protein design requires tools to evaluate and refine three‐dimensional protein structures. Steric clash is one of the artifacts prevalent in low‐resolution structures and homology models. Steric clashes arise due to the unnatural overlap of any two nonbonding atoms in a protein structure. Usually, removal of severe steric clashes in some structures is challenging since many existing refinement programs do not accept structures with severe steric clashes. Here, we present a quantitative approach of identifying steric clashes in proteins by defining clashes based on the Van der Waals repulsion energy of the clashing atoms. We also define a metric for quantitative estimation of the severity of clashes in proteins by performing statistical analysis of clashes in high‐resolution protein structures. We describe a rapid, automated, and robust protocol, Chiron, which efficiently resolves severe clashes in low‐resolution structures and homology models with minimal perturbation in the protein backbone. Benchmark studies highlight the efficiency and robustness of Chiron compared with other widely used methods. We provide Chiron as an automated web server to evaluate and resolve clashes in protein structures that can be further used for more accurate protein design. Proteins 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Understanding and measuring the sources of variation in the prioritization of regression test suites

Test case prioritization techniques let testers order their test cases so that those with higher priority, according to some criterion, are executed earlier than those with lower priority. In previous work (1999, 2000), we examined a variety of prioritization techniques to determine their ability to improve the rate of fault detection of test suites. Our studies showed that the rate of fault detection of test suites could be significantly improved by using more powerful prioritization techniques. In addition, they indicated that rate of fault detection was closely associated with the target program. We also observed a large quantity of unexplained variance, indicating that other factors must be affecting prioritization effectiveness. These observations motivate the following research questions. (1) Are there factors other than the target program and the prioritization technique that consistently affect the rate of fault detection of test suites? (2) What metrics are most representative of each factor? (3) Can the consideration of additional factors lead to more efficient prioritization techniques? To address these questions, we performed a series of experiments exploring three factors: program structure, test suite composition and change characteristics. This paper reports the results and implications of those experiments.
Folk Explanations of Behavior

People typically explain others’ behaviors by attributing them to the beliefs and motives of an unobservable mind. Although such attributional inferences are critical for understanding the social world, it is unclear whether they rely on processes distinct from those used to understand the nonsocial world. In the present study, we used functional MRI to identify brain regions associated with making attributions about social and nonsocial situations. Attributions in both domains activated a common set of brain regions, and individual differences in the domain-specific recruitment of one of these regions—the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC)—correlated with attributional accuracy in each domain. Overall, however, the DMPFC showed greater activation for attributions about social than about nonsocial situations, and this selective response to the social domain was greatest in participants who reported the highest levels of social expertise. We conclude that folk explanations of behavior are an expert use of a domain-general cognitive ability.
The Ties That Bias Specifying and Operationalizing Components of Dyadic Dependence in International Conflict *

Students of international conflict are increasingly aware of the potential problem of spatial dependence. Much of international behavior is linked spatially and temporally. Yet, many dyadic analyses of interstate interactions assume independence among units. Although there exist some technical and statistical solutions for addressing spatial dependence, directly modeling the dependence generating processes is more satisfying and intellectually informative. We consider how extra-dyadic linkages to a dispute dyad could give rise to new disputes. Alliances are designed to encourage third parties to join dyadic contests, but most existing empirical analyses consider only bilateral alliance ties as factors preventing conflict onset. Likewise, contests often extend to include new disputes involving third parties that are geographically close to, or in between disputants. We develop new data on extra-dyadic alliance ties as well as the " inbetweenness " of potential third parties' geographical location relative to conflict dyads. We show empirically that both of these linkages are strongly related to the risk of dispute onset, even while accounting for other purely dyadic factors. Our approach can be applied more broadly to address spatial dependence, and can be extended to address other spatial variables.
Towards an Efficient Contextual Perception for Humanoid Robot: A Selective Attention-based Approach

The intensive computation required for sensing environment and processing sensing information makes the burden of humanoid robot significantly large. Robots are always flooded by perceptual data. Inspired by biological systems, attention mechanism is introduced in this paper to perform an efficient perception system, which will endow humanoid robots with stronger and more efficient power to sense environment. The connotation of attention window (AW) is extended and a more general and abstract definition of AW is given. Its related four kinds of operations are also discussed. The control policies of attention are described which integrate selective perception and distractor inhibition. The distractor inhibition is used to filter large amount of unrelated information, and the consequent perception efficiency promotion is analyzed. Different attention policies are used to control and adjust the perceptual cost and efficiency. The result of experiment shows that the perceptual efficiency has got a big promotion and the effect is well
Practice Makes Perfect: An Optimization-Based Approach to Controlling Agile Motions for a Quadruped Robot

This article approaches the problem of controlling quadrupedal running and jumping motions with a parameterized, model-based, state-feedback controller. Inspired by the motor learning principles observed in nature, our method automatically fine tunes the parameters of our controller by repeatedly executing slight variations of the same motion task. This learn-through-practice process is performed in simulation to best exploit computational resources and to prevent the robot from damaging itself. To ensure that the simulation results match the behavior of the hardware platform, we introduce and validate an accurate model of the compliant actuation system. The proposed method is experimentally verified on the torque-controllable quadruped robot StarlETH by executing squat jumps and dynamic gaits, such as a running trot, pronk, and a bounding gait.
Systematic Mapping Study On Security Threats in Cloud Computing

Today, Cloud Computing is rising strongly, presenting itself to the market by its main service models, known as IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, that offer advantages in operational investments by means of on-demand costs, where consumers pay by resources used. In face of this growth, security threats also rise, compromising the Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of the services provided. Our work is a Systematic Mapping where we hope to present metrics about publications available in literature that deal with some of the seven security threats in Cloud Computing, based in the guide entitled "Top Threats to Cloud Computing" from the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA). In our research we identified the more explored threats, distributed the results between fifteen Security Domains and identified the types of solutions proposed for the threats. In face of those results, we highlight the publications that are concerned to fulfill some standard of compliance.
Testbed for Fast-Deployable Flying WiFi Network

EPFL’s Information Processing Group (IPG) and Laboratory for Intelligent Systems (LIS), in conjunction with SenseFly (a LIS spin-off) recently started a project aimed at developing a testbed to experiment with self-organized wireless networks carried by autonomous unmanned aircrafts. The idea is to use drones developed by SenseFly to carry the infrastructure of a self-organized WiFi network for easy and rapid deployment. The network can be used to connect people on the ground (e.g. rescue people in case of catastrophe) and/or to send back to a data center the information collected by sensors. The sensors might also be carried by some of the drones. The drones have a high degree of autonomy. In particular, they are capable of carrying out a missions and land without human intervention. In this talk we present the state of this ongoing project that involves many challenges, including resource management, mobility management, self-organization, and scalability. All these challenges exist for the wireless network as well as for the network of drones. We focus on the former.
Discovery of Two New Talaromyces Species from Crop Field Soil in Korea

Abstract Two new fungal species of the genus Talaromyces, Talaromyces purpurogenus and Talaromyces trachyspermus from the Trichocomaceae family, were recovered during an investigation of fungal communities in soil collected from the Gangwon-do and Jeollanam-do provinces of Korea. These two species have not been previously officially reported from Korea. In this study, detailed descriptions of internal transcribed spacer rDNA and beta-tubulin gene regions of these two fungi are presented. Morphological features of the two fungi in five agar media, potato dextrose, oatmeal, malt extract, czapek yeast extract, and yeast extract sucrose, are also reported. The species were identified on the basis of molecular and morphological analysis, and herein we present data with detailed descriptions and figures.
Modeling and performance evaluation of transmission control protocol over cognitive radio ad hoc networks

Cognitive Radio (CR) technology constitutes a new paradigm to provide additional spectrum utilization opportunities in wireless ad hoc networks. Recent research in this field has mainly focused on devising spectrum sensing and sharing algorithms, to allow an opportunistic usage of licensed portions of the spectrum by Cognitive Radio Users (CRUs). However, it is also important to consider the impact of such schemes on the higher layers of the protocol stack, in order to provide efficient end-to-end data delivery. Since TCP is the de facto transport protocol standard on Internet, it is crucial to estimate its ability in providing stable end-to-end communication over Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks (CRAHNs). The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, we propose an extension of the NS-2 simulator to support realistic simulation of CRAHNs. Our extension allows to model the activities of Primary Users (PUs), and the opportunistic spectrum management by CRUs in the licensed band. Second, we provide an accurate simulation analysis of the TCP performance over CRAHNs, by considering the impact of three factors: (i) spectrum sensing cycle, (ii) interference from PUs and (iii) channel heterogeneity. The simulation results show that the sensing interval and the PU activity play a critical role in deciding the optimal end-to-end performance, and reveals the inadequacy of classical TCP to adapt to variable spectrum conditions.
From Air Oscillations to Music and Speech: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Evidence for Fine-Tuned Neural Networks in Audition

In the auditory modality, music and speech have high informational and emotional value for human beings. However, the degree of the functional specialization of the cortical and subcortical areas in encoding music and speech sounds is not yet known. We investigated the functional specialization of the human auditory system in processing music and speech by functional magnetic resonance imaging recordings. During recordings, the subjects were presented with saxophone sounds and pseudowords /ba:ba/ with comparable acoustical content. Our data show that areas encoding music and speech sounds differ in the temporal and frontal lobes. Moreover, slight variations in sound pitch and duration activated thalamic structures differentially. However, this was the case with speech sounds only while no such effect was evidenced with music sounds. Thus, our data reveal the existence of a functional specialization of the human brain in accurately representing sound information at both cortical and subcortical areas. They indicate that not only the sound category (speech/music) but also the sound parameter (pitch/duration) can be selectively encoded.
Inlfuence of the Model Order Estimation Error inthe ESPIRIT Based High Resolution Techniques

Effects of the model order estimation error in the TLS-ESPRIT algorithm were investigated. It was found that if the model order is overestimated true signal parameters are preserved even though spurious signals of which power values are negligibly small appear, whereas if the model order is underestimated some signals degenerate to each others, resulting in the erroneous estimates. key words: the TLS-ESPRIT algorithm, model order estima-
Reconceptualising research impact: reflections on the real-world impact of research in an Australian context

ABSTRACT A focus on research impact is influencing the way research is undertaken in Australian higher education institutions. Research activities are planned, funded, conducted, assessed and reported in a way that highlights the real-world impact of research on society. The contemporary prioritisation of research impact, beyond scholarly contribution, reflects a logic model approach to understanding impact that may not adequately reflect the entwined nature of how research achieves impact within and outside academia. This article presents the results of a study conducted with researchers in a regional Australian university to explore the lived experience of research impact. The findings suggest a new definition of research impact as the process whereby research knowledge makes a difference to the knowledge beneficiary. Reconceptualising research impact as a process presents an alternative perspective for explaining how research achieves real-world impact, and helps to address the limitations of logic model approaches. A process-orientation to understanding how research achieves impact acknowledges the indirect, intangible, unexpected and endless influences of research that may be difficult to anticipate and demonstrate.
The Length of the Shortest Telomere as the Major Determinant of the Onset of Replicative Senescence

The absence of telomerase in many eukaryotes leads to the gradual shortening of telomeres, causing replicative senescence. In humans, this proliferation barrier constitutes a tumor suppressor mechanism and may be involved in cellular aging. Yet the heterogeneity of the senescence phenotype has hindered the understanding of its onset. Here we investigated the regulation of telomere length and its control of senescence heterogeneity. Because the length of the shortest telomeres can potentially regulate cell fate, we focus on their dynamics in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We developed a stochastic model of telomere dynamics built on the protein-counting model, where an increasing number of protein-bound telomeric repeats shift telomeres into a nonextendable state by telomerase. Using numerical simulations, we found that the length of the shortest telomere is well separated from the length of the others, suggesting a prominent role in triggering senescence. We evaluated this possibility using classical genetic analyses of tetrads, combined with a quantitative and sensitive assay for senescence. In contrast to mitosis of telomerase-negative cells, which produces two cells with identical senescence onset, meiosis is able to segregate a determinant of senescence onset among the telomerase-negative spores. The frequency of such segregation is in accordance with this determinant being the length of the shortest telomere. Taken together, our results substantiate the length of the shortest telomere as being the key genetic marker determining senescence onset in S. cerevisiae.