Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Extracting and verifying coordination models from source code

Current software development relies increasingly on non-trivial coordination logic for combining autonomous services often running on different platforms. As a rule, however, in typical non-trivial software systems, such a coordination layer is strongly weaved within the application at source code level. Therefore, its precise identification becomes a major methodological (and technical) problem which cannot be overestimated along any program understanding or refactoring process. Open access to source code, as granted in OSS certification, provides an opportunity for the development of methods and technologies to extract, from source code, the relevant coordination information. This paper is a step in this direction, combining a number of program analysis techniques to automatically recover coordination information from legacy code. Such information is then expressed as a model in Orc, a general purpose orchestration language.
St Reading Cross-genre Feature Comparisons for Spoken Sentence Segmentation 5

17 Automatic sentence segmentation of spoken language is an important precursor to downstream natural language processing. Previous studies combine lexical and prosodic fea-19 tures, but can impose significant computational challenges because of the large size of feature sets. Little is understood about which features most benefit performance, partic-21 ularly for speech data from different speaking styles. We compare sentence segmentation for speech from broadcast news versus natural multi-party meetings, using identical 23 lexical and prosodic feature sets across genres. Results based on boosting and forward selection for this task show that (1) features sets can be reduced with little or no loss in 25 performance, and (2) the contribution of different feature types differs significantly by genre. We conclude that more efficient approaches to sentence segmentation and similar 27 tasks can be achieved, especially if genre differences are taken into account.
The Relation between Incentives to Avoid Debt Covenant Default and Insider Trading

We use a sample of firms that experience technical default to investigate whether an observable managerial action, managers? trading, is useful in (1) determining the existence of pre-default earnings management, and (2) in assessing whether specific contract modifications in renegotiated debt agreements are costly. We find income-increasing accruals and unexpected accruals in the year preceding the year of default of magnitudes sufficient to forestall default. We show, however, that the significant income-increasing accruals and unexpected accruals occur only in firms in which managers engage in abnormal insider selling. Our evidence suggests that by managing earnings to delay the onset of default, managers sell their equity-contingent wealth at higher prices. Finally, our evidence implies that renegotiated debt provisions? such as additional covenants and restricted borrowing? are costly for firms with greater investment opportunities prior to default.
Effective permittivity of mixtures: numerical validation by the FDTD method

The present paper reports the results of an extensive numerical analysis of electromagnetic fields in random dielectric materials. The effective permittivity of a two-dimensional (2-D) dielectric mixture is calculated by FDTD simulations of such a sample in a TEM waveguide. Various theoretical bounds are tested in light of the numerical simulations. The results show how the effective permittivity of a mixture with random inclusion positionings is distributed. All possible permittivity values lie between Wiener limits, and according to FDTD simulations the values are almost always between Hashin-Shtrikman limits. Calculated permittivity distribution is also compared with theoretical mixture models. No model seems to be able to predict the simulated behavior over the whole range of volume fraction.
Does Reflexiveness Explain Macroeconomic Forecast Failure ?

Empirical evaluations of macroeconomic forecasts confirm the common suspicion that macroeconomic forecasting faces tight limits. Can the forecasts’ failure be explained by their reflexiveness? An argument from Oskar Morgenstern against the possibility of economic forecasting seems to do so. Having reconstructed his argument, I will present two lines of attack against it. One of them consists in the proposal by Grunberg & Modigliani to construct selffulfilling forecasts. The other one is based on the rational expectations hypothesis. However, it is shown that both of these counter argumentations either fail or give rise to new explanations of forecast failure. Thus, whether the critiques are appropriate or not, forecast failure can be explained with reference to expectations and reflexiveness.
Active Antenna Tracking System with Directional Antennas for Enhancing Wireless Communication Capabilities of a Networked Robotic System

This paper presents a networked robotic system design capable of enhancing wireless communication capabilities (communication range and bandwidth). The core of the system is active antenna tracking with directional antennas. The proposed system is decentralized and consists mainly of a mobile robot system and a command center system. Each system is equipped with off‐the‐shelf network devices such as antennas, access points (AP), and network switches. For directional antennas to be beneficial to our system, we propose a weighted centroid algorithm (WCA) to provide active antenna tracking and direction‐of‐arrival (DOA) estimation. This system can be used in GPS‐denied environments as our system does not require the aid of additional sensors to provide location information. Through extensive field experiments in different environments, including a fire training center and with various antenna selections, such as omni‐to‐omni, omni‐to‐directional, and directional‐to‐directional antennas, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed system. We expect that our system can be applied in a variety of rescue, surveillance, and emergency scenarios where high bandwidth and long‐distance communications are needed.
Routing Questions in Twitter: An Effective Way to Qualify Peer Helpers

Essentially social query consists in sharing a question on a social network and waiting for responses. The usual strategy of sharing a public question is inefficient because it does not ensure an answer, either quality or agility. We assume that directing the question to a specific user is the best way to get a right and quick answer. However, choosing this person could be a hard task and by choosing a wrong one we could receive an incorrect answer or the person might just ignore the question. In this paper, we proposed, implemented and evaluated a model based on a multi-criteria approach to find the most suitable user to receive a question on Twitter. We rank expert candidates using the Weight Product Model. One of the main differentials of our model is the use of multi-criteria and that it was built for a social network context. In the evaluation, using as metrics the Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain and the Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient, our technique achieved promising results in predicting the usefulness of real responders answer.
Stochastic circuit reliability analysis

Stochastic circuit reliability analysis, as decribed in this work, matches the statistical attributes of underlying device fabrics and transistor aging to the spatial and temporal reliability of an entire circuit. For the first time, spatial and temporal stochastic and deterministic reliability effects are handled toghether in an efficient framework. The paper first introduces an equivalent transistor SPICE model, comprising the currently most important aging effects (i.e NBTI, hot carriers and soft breakdown). A simulation framework then uses this SPICE model to minimize the number of circuit factors and to build a circuit model. The latter allows for example very fast circuit yield analysis. Using experimental design techniques the proposed method is very efficient and also proves to be very flexible. The simulation technique is demonstrated on an example 6-bit current-steering DAC, where the creation of soft breakdown spots can result in circuit failure due to increasing time-dependent transistor mismatch.
Effects of high-intensity resistance training on circulating levels of irisin in healthy adults: A randomized controlled trial

Background: Existing research suggests that irisin increases in response to exercise in humans. However, results are controversial and a majority of the studies lack a control group. The present study aimed to analyze the effects of both one-bout, and three-week intense resistance training on physical fitness (body composition and strength) and serum irisin levels when compared to a control group. Methods: A total of 26 healthy young adults (n=14 males; 12 females) completed the pre-assessment phase, and were randomly assigned to either intervention or control group. Physical activity, diet, and physical fitness [strength, cardiorespiratory fitness, and body composition] were assessed. Blood samples were collected at baseline, during and post one-bout of exercise, and baseline on sessions 1, 3, 6 and 9 of 3-week high intensity resistance training (3 times per week). Results. None of the ANOVA effects on irisin concentration were significant after one-bout of exercise or 3 weeks of resistance training. The intervention group showed large significant changes from pre to post in relative body fat (%BF) (t[13]=-3.37, p=0.003), and lean body mass (p=0.016, d=0.72). All muscle strength variables [1RM bench press (F[1,22]=19.54, p<0.001, <0.01); 1RM leg press (F[1,22]= 20.84, p<0.001, =0.03); bench press-to-body weight ratio (F[1,22]=18.93, p<0.001, =0.01); leg press-to-body weight ratio (F[1,22]=23.03, p<0.001, =0.05)] showed significant group by time interaction effects. Conclusions. Serum irisin concentrations did not change during or post one-bout, nor during three-weeks of high-intensity resistance training compared to matched controls, while the program elicited significant changes in body composition and muscle strength in a group of healthy young adults. Additionally, no significant associations were found between irisin levels and physical activity, diet, or physical fitness. However, negative associations were found between baseline serum irisin concentrations and body composition (body weight and skeletal muscle mass) in males. Key words: irisin, high-intensity, resistance training, strength, body composition. Implications: There is still disagreement about the real effects of exercise on irisin levels, and the expected outcomes for different populations (i.e. young adults, elder, active, sedentary, etc.). Our randomized control trial study helped clarify the potential effects of acute and longer-term high intensity exercise on plasma irisin concentrations when compared to a control group. With this randomized controlled trial, researchers would have a reliable source about the proposed effects of resistance training interventions targeting irisin.
Selected Estimated Models with Φ−divergence Statistics

When testing for discriminating between two competing models, a statistical method, usually, proceeds by evaluating the measure for discrepancy between the observed data and each parametric model. The parameter model with smaller value of measure statistic is generally chosen. This paper addresses the question of testing for choosing between two estimated models using some φ−divergence type statistics.We choice for arbitrary √n -asymptotically normal estimators to be used for introducing these statistics. The results here are illustrated by a simulation study, then Large Sample theory and bootstrap methods are used to construct our φ−divergence tests in parametric models.
Improving the energy efficiency of wireless Network on Chip architectures through online selective buffers and receivers shutdown

The wireless Network-on-Chip (WiNoC) design paradigm represents an emergent and viable solution for addressing the scalability limitations of future manycores architectures. Unfortunately, components such as the buffers and the transceiver of the radio-hubs in a WiNoC, account for a significant fraction of the total communication energy budget. In this paper, we present WIRXSleep, a mechanism aimed at improving the energy efficiency of radio-hubs in WiNoC architectures. WIRXSleep selectively and dynamically disables receiver modules and buffers of those radio-hubs that will be not involved in any communication during the next forthcoming clock cycles. Its application on different WiNoC topologies, with different configurations, and under different traffic scenarios has resulted interesting energy savings (up to 25%) without any impact on performance and with a negligible impact on cost metrics.
Enforcing Constraints on Life Cycles of Business Artifacts

Artifact-centric business process models allow to describe artifacts (data objects) and their life cycles, which allow designers to focus on individual artifact in business processes, thus simplifies the design and analysis of business process model. However, this feature is a double-edged sword. The description of the relationships between artifacts becomes a new and nontrivial problem. It is better that the associations among business artifacts are specified at a high level as logical assertions. We think taking business constraints as complements of artifact-centric business operational model is an useful idea. Based on this consideration,in this paper, we propose an approach which combines both the declarative way and the procedural way in the construction of business processes. This flexibility can help designers to separate the parts of a business process that are more likely to change from those that are less likely to change. We propose a language TiLE to specify business constraints, and give complexity results on the satisfiability of TiLE. Moreover, we discussed how to enforce the constraints at run-time.
Switching Activity Estimation Based on Conditional Independence

Power estimation in combinational modules is addressed from a probabilistic point ofview. The zero-delay hypothesis is considered and under highly correlated input streams, the activities at the primary outputs and all internal nodes are estimated. For the first time, the relationship between logical and probabilistic domains is investigated and two new concepts conditional independence and isotropy of signals are brought into attention. Based on them, a sufficient condition for analyzing complex dependencies is given. In the most general case, the conditional independence problem has been shown to be NP-complete and thus appropriate heuristics are presented to estimate switching activity. Detailed experiments demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the method. The results reported here are useful in low power design.
The Effects of Pre-Reading and Sharing Mechanisms on Learning with the Use of Annotations

This study is aimed at investigating students’ annotation behaviors and their effects on learning achievement with prereading (reading before class) exercises and Web-based sharing mechanisms. An 8-week quasi-experiment was conducted with 125 sixth-grade elementary school students. The study shows the following results. First, a significant correlation was evident between pre-reading with a Web-based annotation tool and learning achievement. Furthermore, implementing a pre-reading sharing mechanism with Web-based annotation capabilities could stimulate and help students perform more useful pre-reading by reviewing others’ annotations, thereby enlarging the effectiveness of prereading as it relates to learning. Second, participants’ pre-reading exercises with a Web-based annotation tool revealed their preparation before class as well as reflected their prior knowledge, thereby helping the instructor to prepare the lecture well in advance. In the future, more advanced mechanisms, such as self-regulation learning, will be studied to encourage students to efficiently manage learning before class.
User identification through command history analysis

As any veteran of the editor wars can attest, Unix users can be fiercely and irrationally attached to the commands they use and the manner in which they use them. In this work, we investigate the problem of identifying users out of a large set of candidates (25-97) through their command-line histories. Using standard algorithms and feature sets inspired by natural language authorship attribution literature, we demonstrate conclusively that individual users can be identified with a high degree of accuracy through their command-line behavior. Further, we report on the best performing feature combinations, from the many thousands that are possible, both in terms of accuracy and generality. We validate our work by experimenting on three user corpora comprising data gathered over three decades at three distinct locations. These are the Greenberg user profile corpus (168 users), Schonlau masquerading corpus (50 users) and Cal Poly command history corpus (97 users). The first two are well known corpora published in 1991 and 2001 respectively. The last is developed by the authors in a year-long study in 2014 and represents the most recent corpus of its kind. For a 50 user configuration, we find feature sets that can successfully identify users with over 90% accuracy on the Cal Poly, Greenberg and one variant of the Schonlau corpus, and over 87% on the other Schonlau variant.
Data-driven control of flapping flight

We present a physically based controller that simulates the flapping behavior of a bird in flight. We recorded the motion of a dove using marker-based optical motion capture and high-speed video cameras. The bird flight data thus acquired allow us to parameterize natural wingbeat cycles and provide the simulated bird with reference trajectories to track in physics simulation. Our controller simulates articulated rigid bodies of a bird's skeleton and deformable feathers to reproduce the aerodynamics of bird flight. Motion capture from live birds is not as easy as human motion capture because of the lack of cooperation from subjects. Therefore, the flight data we could acquire were limited. We developed a new method to learn wingbeat controllers even from sparse, biased observations of real bird flight. Our simulated bird imitates life-like flapping of a flying bird while actively maintaining its balance. The bird flight is interactively controllable and resilient to external disturbances.
Cholinergic, GABAergic, and glutamate-enriched inputs from the mesopontine tegmentum to the subthalamic nucleus in the rat

In order to clarify the origin and to examine the neurochemistry and synaptology of the projection from the mesopontine tegmentum (MTg) to the subthalamic nucleus (STN), rats received discrete deposits of anterograde tracers in different regions of the MTg. Anterogradely labeled fibers were examined in the light and electron microscopes. The distribution of GABA or glutamate immunoreactivity was examined by post- embedding immunocytochemistry. The anterograde tracing demonstrated that the projection to the STN arises from at least three divisions of the MTg: the area defined by the cholinergic neurons of the pedunculopontine region (PPN-Ch 5), the more medial and largely noncholinergic midbrain extrapyramidal area (MEA) and to a lesser extent the laterodorsal tegmental nucleus (LDTg). Post-embedding immunocytochemistry revealed that there are GABA-immunopositive and immunonegative components to this projection and at least a proportion of the GABA-immunonegative component is enriched in glutamate immunoreactivity. The similarity of the morphology, trajectory and synaptology of the anterogradely labeled fibers and the choline acetyltransferase (ChAT)-immunopositive fibers supports the proposal that at least part of the projection is cholinergic. The terminals anterogradely labeled from the MTg and the ChAT-immunoreactive terminals form asymmetrical synapses with the dendrites and spines of subthalamic neurons. Both anterogradely labeled and ChAT-positive terminals make convergent synaptic contacts with GABA-immunoreactive terminals that form symmetrical synaptic contacts and are probably derived from the globus pallidus. Taken together these findings imply that the MTg sends cholinergic, GABAergic and glutamatergic projections to the STN where at least one of the functional roles is to modulate the indirect pathway of information flow through the basal ganglia that is carried via the pallidosubthalamic projection.
Human activity recognition for automatic visual surveillance of wide areas

The problem of automatic recognition of human activities is among the most important and challenging open areas of research in Computer Vision. This paper presents a methodology to automatically recognize the human activities embedded in video sequences acquired in outdoor environments by a single large view camera. The activity recognition process is performed in three steps: first of all the binary shape of moving people are segmented, then the human body posture is estimated frame by frame and finally, for each activity to be recognized, a temporal model of the detected postures is generated by Discrete Hidden Markov Models. The system has been tested on image sequences acquired in a real archaeological site meanwhile actors perform both legal and illegal actions. Four kinds of activities have been automatically classified with high percentage of correct decisions. Time performance tests are very encouraging for using the proposed method in real time applications.
Insights into Long-Lasting Protection Induced by RTS,S/AS02A Malaria Vaccine: Further Results from a Phase IIb Trial in Mozambican Children

Background The pre-erythrocytic malaria vaccine RTS,S/AS02A has shown to confer protection against clinical malaria for at least 21 months in a trial in Mozambican children. Efficacy varied between different endpoints, such as parasitaemia or clinical malaria; however the underlying mechanisms that determine efficacy and its duration remain unknown. We performed a new, exploratory analysis to explore differences in the duration of protection among participants to better understand the protection afforded by RTS,S. Methodology/Principal Findings The study was a Phase IIb double-blind, randomized controlled trial in 2022 children aged 1 to 4 years. The trial was designed with two cohorts to estimate vaccine efficacy against two different endpoints: clinical malaria (cohort 1) and infection (cohort 2). Participants were randomly allocated to receive three doses of RTS,S/AS02A or control vaccines. We did a retrospective, unplanned sub-analysis of cohort 2 data using information collected for safety through the health facility-based passive case detection system. Vaccine efficacy against clinical malaria was estimated over the first six-month surveillance period (double-blind phase) and over the following 12 months (single-blind phase), and analysis was per-protocol. Adjusted vaccine efficacy against first clinical malaria episodes in cohort 2 was of 35.4% (95% CI 4.5–56.3; p = 0.029) over the double-blind phase and of 9.0% (−30.6–36.6; p = 0.609) during the single-blind phase. Conclusions/Significance Contrary to observations in cohort 1, where efficacy against clinical malaria did not wane over time, in cohort 2 the efficacy decreases with time. We hypothesize that this reduced duration of protection is a result of the early diagnosis and treatment of infections in cohort 2 participants, preventing sufficient exposure to asexual-stage antigens. On the other hand, the long-term protection against clinical disease observed in cohort 1 may be a consequence of a prolonged exposure to low-dose blood-stage asexual parasitaemia. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00197041