Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SHA-3 implementation using ReRAM based in-memory computing architecture

Emerging non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies with computation capabilities can be effectively leveraged for computing tasks on resource-constrained Internet of Things (IoT) nodes. Redox-based Resistive RAM (ReRAM) is a promising NVM technology due to its high density, low leakage power and ability to perform functionally complete set of Boolean operations. The secure transmission of IoT sensory data is of paramount importance to guard confidentiality and authenticity. However, encryption and authentication requires additional computing resources leading to significant performance overhead. An alternative approach, as explored in this current manuscript, is to use the in-memory computing capability of ReRAM. In particular, we study ReRAM based in-memory computing architecture for round function of cryptographic hash algorithm known as SHA-3 or Keccak. Our carefully done mapping reveals a bit/word-serial architecture for SHA-3. In that respect, the estimated throughput for ReRAM-based implementation is comparable to a highly optimized, bit-serial, lightweight CMOS realization.
A Lattice-Based Framework for Enhancing Statistical Parsers with Information from Unlabeled Corpora

Great strides have been made in building statistical parsers trained on annotated corpora such as the Penn tree-bank. However, recently performance improvements have leveled off. New information sources need to be considered to make further progress in parsing. In this paper, we propose a new method of using unlabeled corpora for improving syntactic disambiguation. The method is tested on the problem of relative clause attachment with encouraging results.
A Support Vector Machines network for traffic sign recognition

The objective of this paper is to describe an algorithm able to solve the traffic sign recognition problem, based on a structure composed by a cascade of competing classifiers and some computer vision pre-processing operations. Traffic sign recognition is a very complex problem, involving a multiclass analysis with unbalanced class frequencies, most of them very similar to each other. With our system, that we are going to call Traffic Sign Classifier (TSC), during the competition promoted by the Institut für Neuroinformatik, Ruhr Universität Bochum, it was possible to recognize more than 40 classes of signs with an average error close to 3%. The algorithm, realized by our development team, consists basically of two modules: a preprocessing module, where the data are managed in order to extract some features, such as the Hue Histogram (HH) and the Histograms of Oriented Gradients (HOG); a second module, where the data coming from the first one are analyzed using a sequence of Support Vector Machines (SVM), implemented with the One Versus All (OVA) methodology. This module includes a couple of systems, composed of several SVMs; one of these systems consists of a hierarchical structure. The results coming out from both the systems are compared with each other in order to define which is the most reliable. This work is performed by the so called “Combining the Results and Assigning the Labels” procedure; calibrating the systems and the parameters employed inside the several analyses performed, it is possible to decrease the number of misclassifications and consequently increase the performance of the entire network.
Very long-term memories may be stored in the pattern of holes in the perineuronal net

A hypothesis and the experiments to test it propose that very long-term memories, such as fear conditioning, are stored as the pattern of holes in the perineuronal net (PNN), a specialized ECM that envelops mature neurons and restricts synapse formation. The 3D intertwining of PNN and synapses would be imaged by serial-section EM. Lifetimes of PNN vs. intrasynaptic components would be compared with pulse-chase 15N labeling in mice and 14C content in human cadaver brains. Genetically encoded indicators and antineoepitope antibodies should improve spatial and temporal resolution of the in vivo activity of proteases that locally erode PNN. Further techniques suggested include genetic KOs, better pharmacological inhibitors, and a genetically encoded snapshot reporter, which will capture the pattern of activity throughout a large ensemble of neurons at a time precisely defined by the triggering illumination, drive expression of effector genes to mark those cells, and allow selective excitation, inhibition, or ablation to test their functional importance. The snapshot reporter should enable more precise inhibition or potentiation of PNN erosion to compare with behavioral consequences. Finally, biosynthesis of PNN components and proteases would be imaged.
DISTINGUISHING FACTS AND ARTIFACTS IN GROUP-BASED MODELING*

Group-based methodology (SPGM) has been presented as suitable to test for the existence of subpopulations not directly observable. Several criminological studies have used this methodology, and it is fair to say that typological theorizing has been spurred by its development. In particular, much of the empirical support for Moffitt's taxonomy (1993, 2006) is from studies using SPGM. In a small simulation experiment, I investigate whether SPGM is suitable for such tests, and I examine the extent to which similar trajectories might equally well result from mechanisms suggested by general theories. I conclude that, as it is usually applied, SPGM cannot provide evidence either for or against a taxonomy and that the usual findings can be explained by competing theories. I argue that this result is not only because of the methodology characteristics but also because of the modeling strategy applied.
Weakly Supervised Multi-Embeddings Learning of Acoustic Models

We trained a Siamese network with multi-task same/different information on a speech dataset, and found that it was possible to share a network for both tasks without a loss in performance. The first task was to discriminate between two same or different words, and the second was to discriminate between two same or different talkers.
Towards a Communicative Curriculum for Teaching Chinese to Students in Japan

It is the aim of this research article to discuss and define a communicative approach for teaching Chinese language and culture to university students in Japan. Through examining the characteristics of Chinese-language learners from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, the study analyzes in what aspects Chinese-language teaching should vary for different groups of learners. To achieve the goal of implementing an efficient Chinese-language teaching program for learners with Japanese background, a wider scope with three different categories of Chinese-language learners is investigated: (1) learners with a Chinese language and culture background, (2) those with an English language and culture background, and (3) those with a Japanese language and culture background. Each group of learners requires its own unique curriculum, syllabus, teaching method and learning focus to achieve communicative competence. In addressing the learning needs of Japanese students, the article discusses concepts for classroom and self-learning activities in Chinese language acquisition. The linguistic transparency existing between the Chinese and Japanese languages as well as the common cultural heritage of Japan and China are further taken into account. By incorporating the most recent trends in language teaching theory, this paper intends to provide insights for teaching methodology and syllabus/curriculum development so as to be a reference for educators and administrators in designing foreign language training programs.
Exposure–outcome analysis in depressed patients treated with paroxetine using population pharmacokinetics

Purpose This study investigated population pharmacokinetics of paroxetine, and then performed an integrated analysis of exposure and clinical outcome using population pharmacokinetic parameter estimates in depressed patients treated with paroxetine. Patients and methods A total of 271 therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) data were retrospectively collected from 127 psychiatric outpatients. A population nonlinear mixed-effects modeling approach was used to describe serum concentrations of paroxetine. For 83 patients with major depressive disorder, the treatment response rate and the incidence of adverse drug reaction (ADR) were characterized by logistic regression using daily dose or area under the concentration–time curve (AUC) estimated from the final model as a potential exposure predictor. Results One compartment model was developed. The apparent clearance of paroxetine was affected by age as well as daily dose administered at steady-state. Overall treatment response rate was 72%, and the incidence of ADR was 30%. The logistic regression showed that exposure predictors were not associated with treatment response or ADR in the range of dose commonly used in routine practice. However, the incidence of ADR increased with the increase of daily dose or AUC for the patients with multiple concentrations. Conclusion In depressed patients treated with paroxetine, TDM may be of limited value for individualization of treatment.
Cholinergic modulation of Pavlovian fear conditioning: Effects of intrahippocampal scopolamine infusion

Cholinergic neurotransmission has been implicated in the acquisition of a variety of tasks, including Pavlovian fear conditioning. To more precisely define the role of cholinergic modulation in this process, the effect of site‐specific cholinergic antagonism was assessed. Male Long‐Evans rats were implanted with chronic, bilateral cannulae aimed at the dorsal hippocampus. Infusions of scopolamine hydrobromide (50 μg bilaterally) or phosphate‐buffered saline (PBS) were made immediately prior to a signaled Pavlovian fear conditioning procedure. On consecutive days following training, all rats were given independent tests assessing freezing to both the training context and the tone conditional stimulus (CS). Relative to PBS infused controls, rats that received intrahippocampal infusions of scopolamine showed a significant attenuation of contextual freezing but comparable levels of freezing to the tone CS. Neither shock sensitivity nor general activity levels differed between rats infused with scopolamine or PBS. These findings suggest that fear conditioning to context, but not discrete CS, requires intact cholinergic neurotransmission in the hippocampus. Hippocampus 2001;11:371–376. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Changing Incentives and Time Allocations for Academic Economists: Results from 1995 and 2000 National Surveys

How much time do academic economists allocate to teaching, research, and service, and how much time do their departments want them to allocate to these pursuits. As a result of the decline in economics majors in the early 1990s, was there a change in the reward system and time allocation of academic economists toward teaching. In this study, the authors combine 1995 and 2000 survey data collected by Becker and Watts (1996, 2001) to describe teaching methods in undergraduate economics courses at five Carnegie Foundation categories of colleges and universities in the United States. The focus here is on a previously unreported section of these surveys, in which respondents were asked to indicate the percentage of time they allocated to teaching, research, and service and to provide the weightings they felt their own departments assigned to these activities in making decisions about annual raises or promotion and tenure.
Untangling the Intersectional Biopolitics of Neoliberal Globalization: Asia, Asian, and the Asia-Pacific Rim

The article argues that the biopolitical stratification of human beings through the intersection of race, gender, and class is a central neoliberal governing technique to facilitate the global division and migration of labor. Also, the intersectional cultural contours of race, gender, and class provide a fundamental discursive repository for the justification of the globalizing process. These governing parameters are not simply the essential conduits to enable neoliberal globalization, but they are also crucial sites to normalize it. Focusing on the Asia-Pacific Rim in general and China in particular, the article attempts to unpack the different values laden with the discourses about Asia and Asian to illustrate how the intersection of race, gender, and class is invoked to facilitate and justify the transnational movement of capital and labor in this area. In an interlocking relationship with one another, these categories create a matrix of power that sustains the dominance of neoliberalism as the single world order. As the article suggests, within this matrix, any attempt to challenge one form of oppression without considering the overarching structure would reproduce other forms of domination and reinforce neoliberal global control on a different level.
Use of magnetic beads for plasma cell-free DNA extraction: toward automation of plasma DNA analysis for molecular diagnostics.

Urine, breast milk, plasma, and serum have been shown to contain cell-free DNA (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7). For plasma DNA detection, several recent studies addressed the need for careful evaluation and standardization of preanalytical processes (8)(9)(10)(11)(12). Key problems appear, such as possible contamination of plasma by white blood cells; the generally low and variable amount of circulating DNA, making extraction/quantification difficult and time-consuming; poor DNA quality; and the presence of PCR inhibitors. In any case, automation of DNA extraction, which is a prerequisite for introduction of these diagnostic approaches in clinical laboratories, is difficult to achieve because of the volumes of plasma necessary to get sufficient DNA. In this study (summarized in Fig. 1⇓ ), we propose a new semiautomated, time-saving process for extraction of plasma cell-free DNA that provides high yields and is suitable for PCR amplification. Two 5-mL blood samples from each of 23 patients being monitored for lung (n = 19) or colon cancer (n = 4) and 20 healthy controls were collected in EDTA-containing tubes. Informed consent was obtained for each. Blood was centrifuged at 800 g for 10 min, and the collected plasma was transferred to a 15-mL BD FalconTM polypropylene tube for an additional centrifugation step of 10 min at 1500 g to remove any remaining leukocytes and platelets. An equal volume of 2× concentrated proteolytic buffer (2×: 20 mmol/L Tris-HCl, 50 mmol/L EDTA, 200 mmol/L NaCl, 10 g/L sodium dodecyl sulfate, and 400 mg/L proteinase K) was added to the plasma, mixed, and incubated 1 h at 37 °C. After digestion, plasma samples were concentrated by centrifugation at room temperature (to avoid sodium dodecyl sulfate precipitation) for 20 min at 2600 g in Amicon …
On the Identification of Misoriented Objects: Effects of Task and Level of Stimulus Description

Three experiments are reported that examined the effects of misorientation in-the-plane on identification of natural objects and artifacts. Performance was tested in three tasks requiring the assignment of base level names, superordinate names and subordinate names to objects, respectively. The effects of misorientation varied as a function of the task, with stronger effects apparent on base level and subordinate level naming than on naming at the superordinate level, and stronger effects on subordinate than on base level naming. Rotation effects, when they occurred, were additive with effects of stimulus category. These results suggest that object identification can proceed in parallel with processes that normalise misoriented stimuli, but the object descriptions derived without normalisation are coarse and consistently sufficient only for superordinate classification. Before finergrained identification processes can operate for base level or subordinate naming of both natural objects and artifacts, some.
Optimal Resource Allocation for Multiuser MIMO-OFDM Systems With User Rate Constraints

With the proliferation of wireless services, personal connectivity is quickly becoming ubiquitous. As the user population demands greater multimedia interactivity, data rate requirements are set to soar. Future wireless systems, e.g., multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM), need to cater to not only a burgeoning subscriber pool but also to a higher throughput per user. Furthermore, resource allocation for multiuser MIMO-OFDM systems is vital for the optimization of the subcarrier and power allocations to improve overall system performance. Using convex optimization techniques, this paper proposes an efficient solution to minimize the total transmit power subject to each user's data rate requirement. Using a Lagrangian dual decomposition, the complexity is reduced from one that is exponential in the number of subcarriers M to one that is only linear in M. To keep the complexity low, linear beamforming is incorporated at both the transmitter and the receiver. Although frequency-flat fading has been known to plague OFDM resource allocation systems, a modification, i.e., dual proportional fairness, seamlessly handles flat or partially frequency-selective fading. Due to the nonconvexity of the optimization problem, the proposed solution is not guaranteed to be optimal. However, for a realistic number of subcarriers, the duality gap is practically zero, and optimal resource allocation can be evaluated efficiently. Simulation results show large performance gains over a fixed subcarrier allocation.
Experiments on detection of Denial of Service attacks using ensemble of classifiers

Malicious users of the internet can launch Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks with the intent of making the throughput of a network next to none. As the types and number of users of the internet increases, the requirement of an effective Intrusion Detection System(IDS) to detect these attacks also increases. Different techniques such as data mining and pattern recognition are being used to design IDS. One of the major challenges faced while designing IDSs is maximizing the accuracy of detection. To address this issue, this paper has used Ensemble of classifiers approach where each class uses different learning paradigm. The classifiers used for experimentation are Naive Bayesian(NB), Bayesian Network(BN), Sequential Minimal Optimization(SMO), J48(C4.5) and Reduced Error Pruning Tree(REPTree). Experimental results show improvements in detection accuracy for Denial of Service attacks.
Yesterday's Weather: guiding early reverse engineering efforts by summarizing the evolution of changes

Knowing where to start reverse engineering a large software system, when no information other than the system's source code itself is available, is a daunting task. Having the history of the code (i.e., the versions) could be of help if this would not imply analyzing a huge amount of data. We present an approach for identifying candidate classes for reverse engineering and reengineering efforts. Our solution is based on summarizing the changes in the evolution of object-oriented software systems by defining history measurements. Our approach, named Yesterday's Weather, is an analysis based on the retrospective empirical observation that classes which changed the most in the recent past also suffer important changes in the near future. We apply this approach on two case studies and show how we can obtain an overview of the evolution of a system and pinpoint its classes that might change in the next versions.
Examination preparation, anxiety and examination performance in a group of adult students

The study reported here examined the relationship between the final examination performance of adults enrolled in a university preparatory, or Access, course and (1) 29 approaches to studying; (2) 25 ways of coping; (3) trait anxiety; and (4) self‐reported examination anxiety. Eight approaches to studying and six ways of coping were significantly correlated with final examination mark. Extreme levels (high/low) of trait anxiety were significantly associated with lower final examination performance, moderate trait anxiety with higher final examination performance. Level of self‐reported examination anxiety was significantly positively correlated with level of trait anxiety but not with final examination performance. There were no significant differences in final examination performance associated with gender, age‐group or the presence/absence of recent examination experience.
Effect of Parenchymal Stiffness on Canine Airway Size with Lung Inflation

Although airway patency is partially maintained by parenchymal tethering, this structural support is often ignored in many discussions of asthma. However, agonists that induce smooth muscle contraction also stiffen the parenchyma, so such parenchymal stiffening may serve as a defense mechanism to prevent airway narrowing or closure. To quantify this effect, specifically how changes in parenchymal stiffness alter airway size at different levels of lung inflation, in the present study, we devised a method to separate the effect of parenchymal stiffening from that of direct airway narrowing. Six anesthetized dogs were studied under four conditions: baseline, after whole lung aerosol histamine challenge, after local airway histamine challenge, and after complete relaxation of the airways. In each of these conditions, we used High resolution Computed Tomography to measure airway size and lung volume at five different airway pressures (0, 12, 25, 32, and 45 cm H2O). Parenchymal stiffening had a protective effect on airway narrowing, a fact that may be important in the airway response to deep inspiration in asthma. When the parenchyma was stiffened by whole lung aerosol histamine challenge, at every lung volume above FRC, the airways were larger than when they were directly challenged with histamine to the same initial constriction. These results show for the first time that a stiff parenchyma per se minimizes the airway narrowing that occurs with histamine challenge at any lung volume. Thus in clinical asthma, it is not simply increased airway smooth muscle contraction, but perhaps a lack of homogeneous parenchymal stiffening that contributes to the symptomatic airway hyperresponsiveness.
Community-based Service-learning as a Context for Youth Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness

Framed by self-determination and identity development theories, this study examined the process through which participating in a community-based service-learning project supported high school students’ feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness, and how these feelings were related to students’ intentions for doing more service in the future. The goals were to understand 1) the task and time related variations in students’ reports of autonomy, competence and relatedness, and 2) whether these task and time related variations differed for youth who did service voluntarily compared to those who did service to fulfill a requirement. Results showed increases in autonomy, competence and relatedness over the course of the project, as well as task-related variations in these feelings. Competence and relatedness positively predicted internalized reasons for future service. Internalized reasons positively predicted strong intentions for future service. Required and voluntary service participants reported similar levels of autonomy, competence and relatedness, as well as similar reasons and intentions for future service. Implications provide insights into designing service programs for adolescents’ optimal psychosocial development during out-of-school time.