Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sample-based learning and search with permanent and transient memories

We present a reinforcement learning architecture, Dyna-2, that encompasses both sample-based learning and sample-based search, and that generalises across states during both learning and search. We apply Dyna-2 to high performance Computer Go. In this domain the most successful planning methods are based on sample-based search algorithms, such as UCT, in which states are treated individually, and the most successful learning methods are based on temporal-difference learning algorithms, such as Sarsa, in which linear function approximation is used. In both cases, an estimate of the value function is formed, but in the first case it is transient, computed and then discarded after each move, whereas in the second case it is more permanent, slowly accumulating over many moves and games. The idea of Dyna-2 is for the transient planning memory and the permanent learning memory to remain separate, but for both to be based on linear function approximation and both to be updated by Sarsa. To apply Dyna-2 to 9x9 Computer Go, we use a million binary features in the function approximator, based on templates matching small fragments of the board. Using only the transient memory, Dyna-2 performed at least as well as UCT. Using both memories combined, it significantly outperformed UCT. Our program based on Dyna-2 achieved a higher rating on the Computer Go Online Server than any handcrafted or traditional search based program.
On the effect of pooling on the geometry of representations

In machine learning and neuroscience, certain computational structures and algorithms are known to yield disentangled representations without us understanding why, the most striking examples being perhaps convolutional neural networks and the ventral stream of the visual cortex in humans and primates. As for the latter, it was conjectured that representations may be disentangled by being flattened progressively and at a local scale. An attempt at a formalization of the role of invariance in learning representations was made recently, being referred to as I-theory. In this framework and using the language of differential geometry, we show that pooling over a group of transformations of the input contracts the metric and reduces its curvature, and provide quantitative bounds, in the aim of moving towards a theoretical understanding on how to disentangle representations.
Improving Users' Isolation in IaaS: Virtual Machine Placement with Security Constraints

Nowadays, virtualization is used as the sole mechanism to isolate different users on Cloud platforms. In this paper, we show that, due to improper virtualization of micro-architectural components, data leak and modification can occur on public Clouds. Furthermore, using the same vector, it is possible to induce performance interferences, i.e. noisy neighbors. Using this approach, a VM can steal resources from, and slow down, concurrent VMs. To counter this, we propose placement heuristics that take into account isolation requirements, thus allowing a user to specify the level of isolation he accepts, and with whom. We modify 3 classical heuristics to take into account these requirements. In addition, we propose 4 new heuristics that take into account the hierarchy of Cloud platforms and isolation requirements. Finally, we evaluate these heuristics and compare them with the modified classical ones. We show that our heuristics perform at least as well as the classical ones, while scaling better and being faster by a few orders of magnitude.
Parallel Document Clustering using Iterative MapReduce

Document clustering is an attractive field that interests increasingly the research community, and so giving rise to several clustering algorithms. In addition to this, document collections are expanding continuously which limits the traditional and sequential clustering methods. In this paper, we present a new parallel design of a recently appeared heuristic for unsupervised and hard clustering. The original method finds clusters by partitioning categorical large data sets according to a linear mathematical model known as the Relational Analysis. We have improved this method to handle document clustering using the MapReduce programming model iteratively. The efficiency of the proposed method is evaluated using the BBC data set provided by the BBC News website. And the experiments have proved that this method yields quality results with low computational cost.
Altered Axonal Mitochondrial Transport in the Pathogenesis of Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease from Mitofusin 2 Mutations

Mutations in the mitochondrial fusion protein mitofusin 2 (MFN2) are the most commonly identified cause of Charcot-Marie-Tooth type 2 (CMT2), a dominantly inherited disease characterized by degeneration of peripheral sensory and motor axons. However, the mechanism by which mutations in this ubiquitously expressed mitochondrial fusion protein lead to neuropathy has not yet been elucidated. To explore how MFN2 mutations lead to degeneration of peripheral axons, we expressed neuropathy-associated forms of MFN2 in cultured dorsal root ganglion neurons, cells preferentially affected in CMT2. Disease-associated MFN2 mutant proteins induced abnormal clustering of small fragmented mitochondria in both neuronal cell bodies and proximal axons. Interestingly, transport of mitochondria in axons was significantly impaired in neurons expressing disease-mutated forms of MFN2. The diminished axonal mitochondrial transport was not attributable to diminished ATP levels in the neurons, and oxidative respiration was normal in mutant MFN2-expressing cells. Additionally, mitochondrial oxidative enzyme activity was normal in muscle mitochondria from a CMT2 patient with an MFN2 mutation, further supporting that abnormal mitochondrial transport in neurons is independent from an energy production defect. This abnormal mitochondrial trafficking provides a likely explanation for the selective susceptibility of the longest peripheral axons to MFN2 mutations, in which proper localization of mitochondria is critical for axonal and synaptic function.
Title : Cortical Neural Responses to Previous Trial Outcome during Learning of a Directional Choice 1 Task 2 Abbreviated title : Neural Responses to Directional Choice Learning

Authors: Yuan Yuan 1 , Hongwei Mao 1 , Jennie Si 1,2, 3 4 Affiliation: 1. School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, 5 AZ 85287, USA. 2. Graduate Faculty of the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, 6 Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA. 3. Affiliate Faculty of the Interdisciplinary Graduate 7 Program in Neuroscience, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA. 8 9 Corresponding author 10 Jennie Si 11 School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, 12 Goldwater Center, Room 351, 650 E Tyler Mall, Arizona State University, Tempe, 13 AZ 85287, USA. 14 Email: si@asu.edu 15 Tel. : +1 480 965 6133. 16 Fax: +1 480 965 0616. 17 18 Conflict of interest: 19
Color Adaptive Quantized Patterns for Presentation Attack Detection in Ocular Biometric Systems

The challenges of presentation attacks (spoofing attacks) at sensor level is increasing for biometric systems due to the evolving method of artefact presentation. The sophisticated attacks now employ high quality printed artefacts and electronic screens to present the biometric samples which make it difficult to separate the real presentations and artefact presentations. In this work, we propose a new scheme to detect the artefacts in both NIR and visible spectrum biometric sensors for ocular biometric systems using a new set of feature descriptor. The scheme employs adaptive and quantized texture patters obtained from local microfeatures and global spatial features for different color channels in an image. Further, the texture descriptors are used to learn a spectrally regressed discriminant classifier to classify the normal ocular images against the artefact ocular images. The proposed scheme is used to perform extensive experiments on 5 publicly available ocular datasets including 2 datasets acquired in NIR domain and two datasets acquired using smartphones along with a dataset acquired using high quality camera. The experiments conducted on all the datasets have consistently indicated the robust performance against attacks by showing a classification error of 0%.
Political Determinants of Economic Reforms in the Post-Communist Transition Countries

This paper examines how political institutions and electoral outcomes have affected the economic reform process in the post-communist transition countries. Panel data estimations on annual data for 26 transition economies from 1992 to 2006 suggest that the institutional structure of the economy has been of importance, at least for the western-most transition countries. Democratisation and a relatively short exposure to communist rule have been conducive to economic reform, while the timing of elections and whether the government commands a majority in parliament appear to have been unimportant. Governments with right-wing ideology have implemented more market-economic reforms than governments with other ideologies. A high development level but also high inflation have proved conducive to reforms, while unemployment has had the opposite effect.
KEA - a Mathematical Knowledge Management System combining Web 2.0 with Semantic Web Technologies

We present a knowledge management system suggesting a combination of Web 2.0 and semantic Web technologies. With regard to the accumulation of knowledge as a consequence of the increasing amount of scientific publications, the demand for sophisticated knowledge management systems in the scientific education has increased lately. Above all, mathematical publications remain a major challenge, caused by the need for complicated analysis of natural language texts and mathematical formulas. The Web-based, mathematical knowledge management system KEA provides natural language processing techniques, and benefits from new Web technologies.
Efficient Algorithms for Highly Compressed Data: the Word Problem in Higman's Group is in P

Power circuits are data structures which support efficient algorithms for highly compressed integers. Using this new data structure it has been shown recently by Myasnikov, Ushakov and Won that the Word Problem of the one-relator Baumslag group is in P. Before that the best known upper bound was non-elementary. In the present paper we provide new results for power circuits and we give new applications in algorithmic group theory: 1. We define a modified reduction procedure on power circuits which runs in quadratic time thereby improving the known cubic time complexity. 2. We improve the complexity of the Word Problem for the Baumslag group to cubic time thereby providing the first practical algorithm for that problem. (The algorithm has been implemented and is available in the CRAG library.) 3. The main result is that the Word Problem of Higman's group is decidable in polynomial time. The situation for Higman's group is more complicated than for the Baumslag group and forced us to advance the theory of Power Circuits.
Selfdual 4-Manifolds, Projective Surfaces, and the Dunajski{West Construction ?

I present a construction of real or complex selfdual conformal 4-manifolds (of signature (2; 2) in the real case) from a natural gauge field equation on a real or complex projective surface, the gauge group being the group of diffeomorphisms of a real or complex 2-manifold. The 4-manifolds obtained are characterized by the existence of a foliation by selfdual null surfaces of a special kind. The classification by Dunajski and West of selfdual conformal 4-manifolds with a null conformal vector field is the special case in which the gauge group reduces to the group of diffeomorphisms commuting with a vector field, and I analyse the presence of compatible scalar-flat Kahler, hypercomplex and hyperkahler structures from a gauge-theoretic point of view. In an appendix, I discuss the twistor theory of projective surfaces, which is used in the body of the paper, but is also of independent interest.
Support Web Services Composition with Optimal Cost Using PPA

Currently process algebras have been effectively used for describing and reasoning web services and their composition, but they are lack of cost modeling and analyzing capability and can't support web services composition with optimal cost. This paper proposes a process algebra called PPA (Priced Process Algebra) basing on CCS (Calculus of Communicating Systems) [1]. We discuss the syntax and semantics of PPA extended with priced information and provide an algorithm to support web services composition with optimal cost.
Growth rates of stratospheric HCFC-22

The Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding onboard ENVISAT (MIPAS-E) offers the opportunity to detect and spectrally resolve many atmospheric minor constituents affecting atmospheric chemistry. In this paper, we describe an algorithm produced to retrieve HCFC–22 profiles from MIPAS-E measurements made in 2003 and present results from this scheme between 300 and 50 mb. By comparison with ATMOS (AT–3) version 3 data, we find a mean Northern Hemisphere mid-latitude (20–50° N) HCFC–22 growth rate between 1994 and 2003 of 5.4±0.7 pptv/yr in the lower stratosphere (LS) and a mean LS Southern Hemisphere growth rate (60–80° S) of 6.0±0.7 pptv/yr in the same period. We test the feasibility of using a global data set to estimate the chemical lifetime of HCFC–22 in the LS and we derive this for two regions: 20–50° N (246±38 years) and 60–80° S (274±34 years). From these data we note a global LS lifetime of 260±25 years, significantly longer than previous estimates.
Elliptic Curve based Authenticated Session Key Establishment Protocol for High Security Applications in Constrained Network Environment

The existing authenticated session key establishment protocols are either vulnerable to dictionary attack on identity privacy of a client or the methods adopted to resist this attack are found to be computationally inefficient. This paper proposes a new authenticated key establishment protocol which uses elliptic curve based DDH problem. The protocol provides identity privacy of the client in addition to the other security properties needed for a session key establishment protocol. In comparison with the existing protocols, the proposed protocol offers equivalent security with less parameters resulting in lower computational load, communication bandwidth cost, power consumption and memory requirement.
Seed methods for linear equations in lattice qcd problems with multiple right-hand sides

We consider three improvements to seed methods for Hermitian linear systems with multiple right-hand sides: only the Krylov subspace for the first s ystem is used for seeding subsequent right-hand sides, the first right-hand side is solve d past convergence, and periodic reorthogonalization is used in order to control roundoff erro rs associated with the Conjugate Gradient algorithm. The method is tested for the case of Wilson fermions near kappa critical and a considerable speed up in the convergence is observed.
Enhancing BPMN 2.0 informational perspective to support interoperability for cross-organizational business processes

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is being adopted as one of the industry standards for modeling cross-organizational business processes (CBPs). BPMN analyzes a business process as a set of interrelated activities, focusing primarily on the functional perspective of the process. However, for successful CBP modeling, an informational perspective is important. Although BPMN 2.0 supports information flow design, existing representations of data/information elements are not sufficient to support CBP modeling requirements. In this light, the paper proposes an approach for formal modeling and specification of information requirements used and generated in the CBPs. A UML View Profile is introduced to specify information requirements as views over the common reference ontology. A BPMN 2.0 extension is introduced to connect the defined views and the corresponding process activities. Ultimately, the proposed information requirements specification enables generation of the message instance and its transformation at the implementation level.
Multiphoton microscopy: applications in Urology and Andrology

Multiphoton microscopy (MPM) enables real-time imaging of various cellular processes at submicron resolution. MPM is currently being used in neuroscience, oncology, and immunology. MPM has demonstrated promising results in urology. MPM has been used in the identification of spermatogenesis, evaluation of bladder cancer, and tissue identification in prostate cancer surgery. MPM has allowed the visualization of seminiferous tubules within the testis in a rat model and identified areas of spermatogenesis. MPM could potentially improve the efficacy of testicular sperm extraction. In bladder cancer evaluation, MPM has proven to be an effective imaging tool in identifying areas suspicious for malignancy. The imaging technology could be utilized in the future to provide urologists with an immediate impression of extracted bladder tissue, or as part of a cystoscopic device to evaluate the bladder in real time. Similarly, MPM has proven to be a useful imaging technique to evaluate prostate cancer. MPM could be utilized during a prostatectomy to help differentiate prostate from cavernous nerves that are closely adherent to the prostate. MPM uses a laser and safety studies will need to be performed prior to its utilization in the clinical setting.
Homeostasis in anorexia nervosa

Brainstem and hypothalamic “orexigenic/anorexigenic” networks are thought to maintain body weight homeostasis in response to hormonal and metabolic feedback from peripheral sites. This approach has not been successful in managing over- and underweight patients. It is suggested that concept of homeostasis has been misinterpreted; rather than exerting control, the brain permits eating in proportion to the amount of physical activity necessary to obtain food. In support, animal experiments have shown that while a hypothalamic “orexigen” excites eating when food is abundant, it inhibits eating and stimulates foraging when food is in short supply. As the physical price of food approaches zero, eating and body weight increase without constraints. Conversely, in anorexia nervosa body weight is homeostatically regulated, the high level of physical activity in anorexia is displaced hoarding for food that keeps body weight constantly low. A treatment based on this point of view, providing patients with computerized mealtime support to re-establish normal eating behavior, has brought 75% of patients with eating disorders into remission, reduced the rate of relapse to 10%, and eliminated mortality.
Recognizing Contextual Polarity in Phrase-Level Sentiment Analysis

There has been a recent swell of interest in the automatic identification and extraction of opinions, emotions, and sentiments in text. Motivation for this task comes from the desire to provide tools for information analysts in government, commercial, and political domains, who want to automatically track attitudes and feelings in the news and on-line forums. How do people feel about recent events in the Middle East? Is the rhetoric from a particular opposition group intensifying? What is the range of opinions being expressed in the world press about the best course of action in Iraq? A system that could automatically identify opinions and emotions from text would be an enormous help to someone trying to answer these kinds of questions. Researchers from many subareas of Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing have been working on the automatic identification of opinions and related tasks. To date, most such work has focused on sentiment or subjectivity classification at the document or sentence level. Document classification tasks include, for example, distinguishing editorials from news articles and classifying reviews as positive or negative. A common sentence-level task is to classify sentences as subjective or objective. This paper presents a new approach to phrase-level sentiment analysis that first determines whether an expression is neutral or polar and then disambiguates the polarity of the polar expressions. With this approach, the system is able to automatically identify the contextual polarity for a large subset of sentiment expressions, achieving results that are significantly better than baseline.
Cultural Difference in Conflict Management Strategies of Children and Its Development: Comparing 3- and 5-Year-Olds Across China, Japan, and Korea

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine differences in the development of conflict management strategies, focusing on 3- and 5-year-olds, through a comparison of 3 neighboring Asian cultures, those of China (n = 114), Japan (n = 98), and Korea (n = 90). The dual concern model of conflict management was adopted to probe which strategy children would prefer to use in 2 hypothetical conflict situations. Results indicated that, first, for disagreement, 3-year-olds in the 3 countries equally preferred the dominating strategy. For competition for resources, 3-year-olds differed in their strategy preference across all cultures. Second, the observed strategy preference of 3- to 5-year-old children in this study was more or less different from that of older schoolchildren, regardless of culture. Practice or Policy: These findings suggest the significance of the context, the complexity of the phenomenon of the development of cultural differences, and the significance of cohort sampling.
Impact of Sex Steroid Ablation on Viral, Tumour and Vaccine Responses in Aged Mice

Recent evidence suggests that the decline in resistance to viral infections with age occurs predominantly as a result of a gradual loss of naïve antigen-specific T cells. As such, restoration of the naïve T cell repertoire to levels seen in young healthy adults may improve defence against infection in the aged. We have previously shown that sex steroid ablation (SSA) rejuvenates the ageing thymus and increases thymic export of naïve T cells, but it remains unclear whether T cell responses are improved. Using mouse models of clinically relevant diseases, we now demonstrate that SSA increases the number of naïve T cells able to respond to antigen, thereby enhancing effector responses in aged mice. Specifically, aged mice exhibit a delay in clearing influenza A virus, which correlates with diminished specific cytotoxic activity. This is due to a decreased magnitude of response and not an intrinsic defect in effector T cell function. Upon SSA, aged mice exhibit increased T cell responsiveness that restores efficient viral clearance. We further demonstrate that SSA decreases the incidence of an inducible tumour in aged mice and can potentially increase their responsiveness to a low-dose human papillomavirus vaccine in clearing pre-formed tumours. As thymectomy abrogates the increase in T cell numbers and responsiveness following SSA, we propose that the T cell effects of SSA are dependent on thymic reactivation and subsequent replenishment of the peripheral T cell pool with newly emigrated naïve T cells. These findings have important implications for strategies to improve protection from infection and responsiveness to vaccination in the aged.