Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inferring Data Contract for Web-Based API

Web-based API is a new trend for publishing services. To correctly use the API, developers should follow certain service specifications. Data contract is a service specification to express the constraints over the data model used in the APIs. Data contracts, however are not always readily available in a formalized format if not undocumented at all. In this paper, we present an approach to infer formal data contracts for Web-based API. The approach integrates information of the parameters, error messages and testing result of Web-based API. We demonstrate how this approach infers complicated data preconditions for Web-based API in the real-world Web API platforms.
A new single-clock flip-flop for half-swing clocking

We propose a new flip-flop configuration which saves about 60% of total clocking power using a half-swing clock. To use the half-swing clock, level converters or special clock drivers are traditionally required and the power consumptions of this logic cannot be ignored. In the proposed scheme, only NMOS devices are clocked with a half-swing clock in order to make it operate without the level converter or any other additional logics, and the random logic circuits except for the clock and flip-flops are supplied by V/sub cc/ while the clock network is supplied by V/sub cc//2. Compared to the conventional scheme, a great amount of power consumed in clocking which is responsible for a large portion of total chip power can be saved with the proposed new flip-flop configuration.
Analysis of Sparsely-Spread CDMA via Statistical Mechanics

In this paper, we present a framework of statistical-mechanics-based analysis of sparsely-spread CDMA systems. The sparsely-spread CDMA can be considered as a simple mathematical model for various types of CDMA such as frequency-hopping (FH) CDMA and time-hopping (TH) CDMA. After presenting a general framework of analysis by the replica method, we analyze the system with Gaussian inputs, on the basis of the effective medium approximation. We obtain the multiuser efficiency and the spectral efficiency of the sparsely-spread CDMA system, and evaluate its performance in comparison with the densely-spread CDMA system
Assessing the Impacts of IS Offshoring: Preliminary Conclusions Questioning the Validity of Cultural Consideration

This paper defines an analytic framework with which to research the impact of IS offshoring on its various stakeholders and applies this to two significant case studies of offshoring in the financial services industry. It presents conclusions on one particular segment of the research programme, namely the extent to which IS offshoring drives cultural change for IS practitioners in offshore locations. It concludes that the resultant impact is notable, but not different in any significant way to that experienced by any IS practitioner who works overseas. Further, the cultural differences between onshore and offshore practitioners tend to diminish quickly as they adapt to new cultural environments.
Automatic seal image retrieval method by using shape features of Chinese characters

In many eastern countries, a large number of seal images need to be identified every day. The system compares an input seal image with its reference seal and validates the authenticity of it. However, the reference seal is usually found manually. As each reference seal has quite a long corresponding ID, inputting ID to get the needed seal one by one costs quite a lot of time and this manual stage has become the bottleneck of automatic seal identification. To make the seal verification system more automatic, a new retrieval method based on Chinese characters' shape features will be introduced in this paper. Firstly, the main characters region is obtained by transforming the round seal image to a rectangle one and choosing the main part for each seal. Secondly, every single character is segmented using correlation method, and the number of characters in a seal can be got. Thirdly, four horizontal and four vertical features are extracted for each character in a seal and an eigenvector called position code is defined. Finally, the retrieval strategy is mainly based on transform from position code to a weight to decide which two seal images have the most similarity. Experiments on a database of 1000 testing seal images provide the retrieval ability for the proposed approach. The correct rate goes to 95.3%.
Autonomy, Choice and Control for Older Users of Home Care Services: Current Developments in Swedish Eldercare

Abstract In Sweden, a policy shift towards more individualized eldercare, with an emphasis on consumer choice, has taken place. The aim of this study was to analyze the processes and practices of individualized eldercare, focusing on preconditions for older peoples’ choice and control. Data consist of qualitative interviews with users of home care services (n – 12) and staff (n – 12) and participant observations (n – 7) of meetings between staff and older people. The choice and control available to older users emerged as decisions about ‘what’ care and services, ‘who’ should provide the care and services, and ‘how’ the care and services should be performed. Three approaches to enable older people choice and control over their home care services were revealed: test and revise, services elaborated in close collaboration between users, care managers and home care staff; choices in the moment, users could choose services at each occasion; and quality improvement through competition, competing providers develop attractive services. The findings could guide policy makers in combining the strengths of these approaches to enable older people in need of support to become co-producers in designing, managing, as well as consuming, care and services. Future quantitative research is needed to achieve generalizable knowledge about the strengths and weaknesses of different ways to organize eldercare services.
Interference alignment limits for K-user frequency-flat MIMO interference channels

Starting from the zero-forcing constraints, some conditions to be satisfied in order to admit an interference alignment (IA) solution for any K-user frequency-flat MIMO interference channel are derived. Our conditions allow for analytical evaluation of the existence of IA solutions (or lack thereof) for a given K-user MIMO interference channel and degree of freedom allocation. We discuss interference alignment duality and the optimality of linear minimum mean squared error (LMMSE) interference reduction at the receiver for user rate maximization. Motivated by this, we suggest an algorithm for distributed interference alignment in a time division duplex (TDD) setting.
Nanophotonic Devices Based on Silicon-On-Insulator Nanowire Waveguides

While silica-on-silicon is recognized as one of the dominant platforms for microphotonics today, silicon-on-insulator nanowire waveguides appear to be the technology for next generation of super compact integrated devices. Due to very high refractive index contrast and strong light confinement in the core, the waveguide bend radius can be reduced to a few micrometers and the size reduction of the functional integrated circuits can reach several orders of magnitude. An array waveguide grating multi/demultiplexer that usually occupies several square centimetres in silica-on-silicon technology can be reduced to the size of 50 times 50 mum2. The performance of such miniaturized devices with submicrometer-size waveguides strongly depends on the fabrication accuracy: high resolution patterning and low roughness etching. High quality and high precision optimized processing is necessary to obtain satisfactory results. We discuss here the technology issues as well as present some fabricated devices based on silicon nanowire waveguides
Sunyaev-Zeldovich Fluctuations from Spatial Correlations between Clusters of Galaxies

We present angular power spectra of the cosmic microwave background radiation anisotropy due to fluctuations of the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect through clusters of galaxies. A contribution from the correlation among clusters, which has been neglected in previous analyses, is especially focused on. Employing the evolving linear bias factor based on the Press-Schechter formalism, we find that the clustering contribution amounts to 20%-30% of the Poissonian contribution at degree angular scales. If we exclude clusters in the local universe, it even exceeds the Poissonian noise and makes the dominant contribution to the angular power spectrum. As a concrete example, we demonstrate the subtraction of the ROSAT X-ray and Planck SZ flux-limited cluster samples. It indicates that we should include the clustering effect in the analysis of the SZ fluctuations. We further find that the degree scale spectra essentially depend upon the normalization of the density fluctuations, i.e., σ8, and the gas mass fraction of the cluster, rather than the density parameter of the universe and details of cluster evolution models. Our results show that the SZ fluctuations at the degree scale will provide a possible measure of σ8, while the arcminute spectra will provide a probe of the cluster evolution. In addition, the clustering spectrum will give us valuable information on the bias at high redshift, if we can detect it by removing X-ray or SZ luminous clusters.
Symplectic Three-Algebra and N = 6 , Sp ( 2 N ) × U ( 1 ) Superconformal

We introduce an anti-symmetric metric into a 3-algebra and call it a symplectic 3-algebra. The N = 6, Sp(2N) × U(1) superconformal Chern-Simons-matter theory with SU(4) R-symmetry in three dimensions is constructed by specifying the 3-brackets in a symplectic 3-algebra.
Preferential use of the landmark navigational system by head direction cells in rats.

Previous studies have identified a population of cells recorded in the postsubiculum and the anterior thalamic nucleus (ATN) that discharge as a function of an animal's head direction (HD) in the horizontal plane. The present experiments monitored HD cell activity when rats were confronted with a situation in which directional information from internal sensory sources (e.g., proprioceptive, vestibular, or motor efference copy) conflicted with directional information derived from familiar, external landmarks. Results showed that when a salient, familiar cue was reintroduced to rat's environment into a position that conflicted with the cell's current firing direction, HD cells in both the ATN and the postsubiculum shifted their preferred direction to reflect their originally established orientation with this cue. This finding suggests that sensory inputs onto HD cells from external landmark cues are capable of overriding spatial information developed through internal sensory cues.
Facets: Fast Comprehensive Mining of Coevolving High-order Time Series

Mining time series data has been a very active research area in the past decade, exactly because of its prevalence in many high-impact applications, ranging from environmental monitoring, intelligent transportation systems, computer network forensics, to smart buildings and many more. It has posed many fascinating research questions. Among others, three prominent challenges shared by a variety of real applications are (a) high-order; (b) contextual constraints and (c) temporal smoothness. The state-of-the-art mining algorithms are rich in addressing each of these challenges, but relatively short of comprehensiveness in attacking the coexistence of multiple or even all of these three challenges. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive method, FACETS, to simultaneously model all these three challenges. We formulate it as an optimization problem from a dynamic graphical model perspective. The key idea is to use tensor factorization to address multi-aspect challenges, and perform careful regularizations to attack both contextual and temporal challenges. Based on that, we propose an effective and scalable algorithm to solve the problem. Our experimental evaluations on three real datasets demonstrate that our method (1) outperforms its competitors in two common data mining tasks (imputation and prediction); and (2) enjoys a linear scalability w.r. t. the length of time series.
Damage Identification Methods for Stiffness Mutation Position of Tower Structure Based on Dynamic Response Information Truncation

This paper provides one damage identification method for stiffness mutation position of tower structure based on dynamic response information truncation. On the basis of obtaining dynamic response information of tower structure under environment excitation, wavelet transform is adopted for structure damage location identification. When there is mutation point in integral stiffness of tower structure, stiffness mutation will make stiffness change caused by structure damage difficult to identify. Therefore, through stiffness structure analysis, dynamic response information of structure stiffness mutation position is truncated, and the truncated dynamic response information interval is extended, so as to eliminate the influence of Gibbs phenomenon on the boundary of initial dynamic response information interval, so that structure damage identification of extended information interval will be achieved by wavelet transform. Analysis result of examples shows that this method is very effective and reliable for damage identification of stiffness mutation position of tower structure.
GesturePIN: using discrete gestures for associating mobile devices

Mobile devices with wireless network capabilities can be associated to form ad hoc networks to share resources; however, such an association of devices requires authentication. At present, PIN is the common authentication method, but in many cases, small devices may not have input interfaces to accommodate PIN entry. We therefore design a gesture-based authentication scheme, called GesturePIN, for associating multiple mobile devices; our solution provides the advantage of being adaptable to any PIN authentication systems. We have also conducted a quantitative user study to understand the speed and accuracy of people using our gesture-based system compared to using PIN.
Understanding the dynamic nature of teacher/classroom effects on educational outcomes : a cross-cultural investigation

The idea that teachers differ substantially in their ability to motivate and educate students has pervaded educational research for decades. While the education system, and teachers in particular, provide an enormously important service, many people hold teachers almost entirely responsible for differences between classes and for individual students’ performance. The belief that the ‘teacher effect’ is such that students would perform better or worse given a specific teacher remains unfounded, as true experimental design is difficult to apply. The present thesis, employing pseudo-experimental methods, investigated potential teacher/classroom effects on several educational outcomes. The five empirical chapters in this thesis explored whether students’ motivation, academic performance, and perception of learning environment were affected by their teachers and/or classmates, as reflected in average differences between classes. Investigations were conducted longitudinally and cross-culturally, in three different education systems using data from four samples. Two samples were secondary school students aged 10 to 12 years, in their first year of secondary education, from the UK and Russia, and two samples were large representative developmental twin studies, the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) from the UK, and the Quebec Newborn Twin Study (QNTS) from Quebec, Canada. Average differences were observed across classrooms and teacher groups, effect sizes ranging from 2% to 25%. The results suggested a weak influence of current subject teacher that was difficult to disentangle from several confounding factors, such as peer influences, selection processes, individual differences in ability and perceptions, teacher characteristics and evocative processes. The findings suggest that student outcomes, rather than being predominantly influenced by teacher effects, are under multiple influences. Overall, the results call for caution in considering ‘added value’ or ‘teacher effect’ measures as valid criteria for current education policies that affect teacher promotion and employment prospects.
The use of real-time PCR technique in the detection of novel protein 4.2 gene mutations that coexist with thalassaemia alpha in a single patient

α‐Thalassaemia is a very rare disease in Northern Europe in contrast to hereditary spherocytosis that is associated with red blood cell membrane defects. We report here α‐thalassaemia case who was also found to bear the erythrocyte membrane protein 4.2 gene mutations. mRNA relative quantification of red cell membrane protein genes in a Polish patient with α‐thalassaemia trait indicated EPB42 as the gene that could also be involved in anaemia pathogenesis. Sequencing revealed the presence of two novel mutations in the protein 4.2 gene: a G1701A genetic change that predicts an alanine to threonine at position 567 of the protein (A567T) and a T→A substitution that is located at position +6 of the donor splice site of intron 2 (IVS2nt+6T>A). This is the sixth variant of the erythrocyte membrane protein 4.2 gene mutations identified outside the Japanese population.
Topological coded caching

Cache-aided network architectures are emerging as an innovative solution able to harness device memory, a cheap and widely available resource, into bandwidth, so as to meet the predicted dramatic increase of user data traffic generated by on-demand multi-media. In this paper, starting from the previously proposed and widely studied femtocaching network, we consider a partially connected interference network where the femto base stations are equipped with caches and have no access to channel state information beyond the network connectivity (network topology). We aim at characterizing the tradeoff between the cache memory size and the normalized transmission delay for file delivery. We formulate a joint file placement and delivery optimization problem, and propose approaches to compute extreme points of the achievable memory-delay region. Our algorithmic solution consists of decomposing the intractable joint optimization problem into separate subproblems, which are solvable using existing efficient methods.
Fast Empirical Mode Decompositions of Multivariate Data Based on Adaptive spline-Wavelets and a Generalization of the Hilbert-Huang-Transformation (HHT) to Arbitrary Space Dimensions

The Hilbert–Huang-Transform (HHT) has proven to be an appropriate multiscale analysis technique specifically for nonlinear and nonstationary time series on non-equidistant grids. It is empirically adapted to the data: first, an additive decomposition of the data (empirical mode decomposition, EMD) into certain multiscale components is computed, denoted as intrinsic mode functions. Second, to each of these components, the Hilbert transform is applied. The resulting Hilbert spectrum of the modes provides a localized time-frequency spectrum and instantaneous (time-dependent) frequencies. For the first step, the empirical decomposition of the data, a different method based on local means has been developed by Chen et al. (2006). In this paper, we extend their method to multivariate data sets in arbitrary space dimensions. We place special emphasis on deriving a method which is numerically fast also in higher dimensions. Our method works in a coarse-to-fine fashion and is based on adaptive (tensor-product) spline-wavelets. We provide some numerical comparisons to a method based on linear finite elements and one based on thin-plate-splines to demonstrate the performance of our method, both with respect to the quality of the approximation as well as the numerical efficiency. Second, for a generalization of the Hilbert transform to the multivariate case, we consider the Riesz transformation and an embedding into Clifford-algebra valued functions, from which instantaneous amplitudes, phases and orientations can be derived. We conclude with some numerical examples.
Does Quantity Affect Quality? Teachers’ Course Preparations and Effectiveness

Abstract We build on research connecting teaching assignments to teacher effectiveness by examining the characteristics of secondary grades mathematics teachers with more course preparations—both the unique number of courses taught and courses never taught before—and by assessing whether additional course preparations predict teacher value-added. Regarding teacher characteristics, we find a mixed pattern of results. Both better and less well-credentialed teachers have more course preparations. Teachers with higher lagged value-added are assigned to fewer course preparations. Regarding teacher effectiveness, results from teacher fixed-effect models show that additional course preparations are negatively and significantly associated with value-added estimates. Further analyses indicate that teachers’ number of new course preparations fully explain the negative results for total number of course preparations. That is, when teachers have to plan for, learn the content of, and teach a course for the first time, it adversely influences their effectiveness. Our results are slightly smaller than findings from recent teaching assignment studies but take on practical significance given the frequency with which teachers have a new course preparation.
Optimizing Relay Precoding for Wireless Coordinated Relaying

Processing of multiple communication flows in wireless systems has given rise to a number of novel transmission techniques, notably the two-way relaying based on wireless network coding. Recently, a related set of techniques has emerged, termed coordinated direct and relay (CDR) transmissions, where the constellation of traffic flows is more general than the two-way. Regardless of the actual traffic flows, in a CDR scheme the relay has a central role in managing the interference and boosting the overall system performance. In this paper we investigate the novel transmission modes, based on amplify-and-forward, that arise when the relay is equipped with multiple antennas and can use beamforming.
A Kramers-Moyal Approach to the Analysis of Third-Order Noise with Applications in Option Valuation

We propose the use of the Kramers-Moyal expansion in the analysis of third-order noise. In particular, we show how the approach can be applied in the theoretical study of option valuation. Despite Pawula’s theorem, which states that a truncated model may exhibit poor statistical properties, we show that for a third-order Kramers-Moyal truncation model of an option’s and its underlier’s price, important properties emerge: (i) the option price can be written in a closed analytical form that involves the Airy function, (ii) the price is a positive function for positive skewness in the distribution, (iii) for negative skewness, the price becomes negative only for price values that are close to zero. Moreover, using third-order noise in option valuation reveals additional properties: (iv) the inconsistencies between two popular option pricing approaches (using a “delta-hedged” portfolio and using an option replicating portfolio) that are otherwise equivalent up to the second moment, (v) the ability to develop a measure R of how accurately an option can be replicated by a mixture of the underlying stocks and cash, (vi) further limitations of second-order models revealed by introducing third-order noise.