Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
First order heterogeneous agent computations

Eiter et. al. (1999) have developed a semantics for agents built on top of legacy code bases. In this paper, we study positive agents in their setting. Their semantics are given in terms of "ground" status atoms. In this paper, we argue that the requirement of being ground poses a huge computational overhead. We propose a non-ground semantics for heterogeneous agents in which the semantical structures proposed by Eiter et. al. can be succinctly represented. We use this representation to efficiently compute the nonground representations. We describe our algorithms as well as a prototype experimental implementation using which we validate the efficiency gains realized with our new implementation.
A Matrix-Form LSQR Iterative Method for Solving the Second-Order Sylvester Matrix Equation EXF2+AXF+CX+BY=D

In this paper, an iterative method is proposed to solve the second-order Sylvester matrix equation EXF^{2}+AXF+CX+BY=D with unknown matrix pair [X, Y], based on a matrix form of LSQR algorithm. By this iterative method, we can obtain the minimum Frobenius norm solution pair or the minimum Frobenius norm least squares solution pair over some constrained matrices, such as symmetric, generalized bisymmetric and (R, S)-symmetric matrices.
Culture matters: a comparative study of teachers’ views of universal pre-kindergarten in two state regions

ABSTRACT This multi-case analysis uses video-cued multi-voiced ethnography in two culturally distinct regions of a Universal Pre-Kindergarten (UPK) U.S. state with high levels of accountability to explore how cultural and demographic differences within state borders might impact how teachers view UPK curriculum and standards, how they teach, and how they view one another’s language and literacy practices. The report focused on pre-kindergarten teachers in P-5 public schools. The pre-kindergarten teachers carried out unique processes of emplacement. Emplacement in this case was the process of pre-kindergarten becoming part of the P-5 public schools while remaining uniquely aligned with early childhood. Fields of care and domains of commonality are two major themes from the fields of anthropology and geography used to organize the findings. The findings have implications for thinking about the role of culture in P-5 education. This study shows promise for using video-cued methods in state-level research and associated professional development contexts.
CLUDE: An Efficient Algorithm for LU Decomposition Over a Sequence of Evolving Graphs

In many applications, entities and their relationships are represented by graphs. Examples include the WWW (web pages and hyperlinks) and bibliographic networks (authors and co-authorship). A graph can be conveniently modeled by a matrix from which various quantitative measures are derived. Some example measures include PageRank and SALSA (which measure nodes’ importance), and Personalized PageRank and Random Walk with Restart (which measure proximities between nodes). To compute these measures, linear systems of the form Ax = b, where A is a matrix that captures a graph’s structure, need to be solved. To facilitate solving the linear system, the matrix A is often decomposed into two triangular matrices (L and U). In a dynamic world, the graph that models it changes with time and thus is the matrix A that represents the graph. We consider a sequence of evolving graphs and its associated sequence of evolving matrices. We study how LU-decomposition should be done over the sequence so that (1) the decomposition is efficient and (2) the resulting LU matrices best preserve the sparsity of the matrices A’s (i.e., the number of extra non-zero entries introduced in L and U are minimized.) We propose a cluster-based algorithm CLUDE for solving the problem. Through an experimental study, we show that CLUDE is about an order of magnitude faster than the traditional incremental update algorithm. The number of extra non-zero entries introduced by CLUDE is also about an order of magnitude fewer than that of the traditional algorithm. CLUDE is thus an efficient algorithm for LU decomposition that produces high-quality LU matrices over an evolving matrix sequence.
Tourism Research, for What?

While tourism scholars have struggled over decades to establish tourism as a valid academic discipline, it’s no less true that social scientists have developed a negative image of our colleagues. This in fact happens because for social imaginary leisure and tourism are naive activities, or practices enrooted in an alienatory nature. Paradoxically, many of founding parents of sociology of tourism was embraced this belief, the advance of modernity, as well as tourism, will disorganize the social ties. In this essay review, we place the French Tradition under the critical lens of scrutiny revealing alternatives in tourism epistemology between tourism as a profit-oriented industry and as a mechanism of discipline.
PowerInsight - A commodity power measurement capability

The challenge of balancing between power and performance is now well established. While research in this area is well underway, the ability to measure power and energy in situ has remained an obstacle. This problem is magnified in the field of High Performance Computing (HPC). To meet this challenge, a device called PowerInsight has been designed to accomplish component level power and energy instrumentation of commodity hardware. PowerInsight was designed by Penguin Computing, in close cooperation with Sandia National Laboratories, to further power and energy research in HPC and other areas. This paper documents the design and development of PowerInsight, hardware and software. Validation of the functionality of PowerInsight was done during design and development as well as experimentally after integrating the first PowerInsight devices into a commodity cluster. This paper only begins to show the wide range of impact this level of power and energy instrumentation can have on a range of architectural and application research and analysis topics.
Rounding Methods for Discrete Linear Classification

Learning discrete linear classifiers is known as a difficult challenge. In this paper, this learning task is cast as combinatorial optimization problem: given a training sample formed by positive and negative feature vectors in the Euclidean space, the goal is to find a discrete linear function that minimizes the cumulative hinge loss of the sample. Since this problem is NP-hard, we examine two simple rounding algorithms that discretize the fractional solution of the problem. Generalization bounds are derived for several classes of binary-weighted linear functions, by analyzing the Rademacher complexity of these classes and by establishing approximation bounds for our rounding algorithms. Our methods are evaluated on both synthetic and real-world data.
Sensitivity and specificity of single-nucleotide polymorphism scanning by high-resolution melting analysis.

BACKGROUND Screening for heterozygous sequence changes in PCR products, also known as "mutation scanning", is an important tool for genetic research and clinical applications. Conventional methods require a separation step. METHODS We evaluated the sensitivity and specificity of homogeneous scanning, using a saturating DNA dye and high-resolution melting. Heterozygous single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) detection was studied in three different sequence backgrounds of 40%, 50%, and 60% GC content. PCR products of 50-1000 bp were generated in the presence of LCGreen I. After fluorescence normalization and temperature overlay, melting curve shape was used to judge the presence or absence of heterozygotes among 1632 cases. RESULTS For PCR products of 300 bp or less, all 280 heterozygous and 296 wild-type cases were correctly called without error. In 672 cases between 400 and 1000 bp with the mutation centered, the sensitivity and specificity were 96.1% and 99.4%, respectively. When the sequence background and product size with the greatest error rate were used, the sensitivity of off-center SNPs (384 cases) was 95.6% with a specificity of 99.4%. Most false negatives occurred with SNPs that were compared with an A or T wild type sequence. CONCLUSIONS High-resolution melting analysis with the dye LCGreen I identifies heterozygous single-base changes in PCR products with a sensitivity and specificity comparable or superior to nonhomogeneous techniques. The error rate of scanning depends on the PCR product size and the type of base change, but not on the position of the SNP. The technique requires only PCR reagents, the dye LCGreen I, and 1-2 min of closed-tube, post-PCR analysis.
Parallel block-layered nonbinary QC-LDPC decoding on GPU

This paper presents an efficient implementation of a parallel block-layered nonbinary quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check (NB-QC-LDPC) decoder on a graphics processing unit (GPU) to achieve significant improvements in both flexibility and scalability. An efficient block-layered scheme and a data structure suitable for parallel computing are proposed to perform decoding on the GPU. The scheme is applied to a min-max decoding algorithm that exploits the inherent massive parallelization capabilities of NB-QC-LDPC decoder. The results of the proposed approach demonstrate that the layered scheme can be efficiently implemented in a GPU device. Moreover, experimental results show that the proposed GPU-based block-layered NB-QC-LDPC decoder provides a faster decoding runtime compare to CPU-based implementation and obtains a coding gain under a low 10-10 BER and low 10-7 FER.
“Managing by Not Managing”: How Gay Engineering Students Manage Sexual Orientation Identity

Abstract: From a social constructivist paradigm I explored the experiences of 7 openly gay engineering students to understand how, if at all, they made sense of the intersections between their engineering and sexual orientation identities. By eliciting stories through individual and focus group interviews, a narrative approach allowed me to capture the influence of students’ experiences prior to college as well as their expectations for the future to situate their college experiences within the broader developmental narratives of their lives. Overall, these 7 students’ narratives point to the ways the culture and climate within engineering, moderated by norms regarding masculinity, affected their experiences as gay men within the academic engineering context.
Structural integrity assessment of materials by thermography

Thermographic approaches, passive and active, are widely used due to the outstanding advantages that offer in a number of applications and particularly for the assessment of materials. Nonetheless, there are limitations; depending upon the approach used, as well as on the materials thermal, optical and physical properties, proper assessment (detection and/or quantification) is feasible. In this work, different applications, employing thermographic testing, concerning the assessment of various materials are presented. The following applications are included: The results of this study show that thermography can be used successfully for the structural integrity assessment of different materials and/or components.
FGF‐4 regulates neural progenitor cell proliferation and neuronal differentiation

The FGF‐4 (fibroblast growth factor 4, known as HST‐1) protein is an important mitogen for a variety of cell types. However, only limited information is available concerning tissue distribution and the biological role of FGF‐4 in the brain. In situ hybridization analysis revealed localization of mouse Fgf‐4 mRNA in the normal postnatal mouse hippocampus, subventricu‐lar zone (SVZ), and the rostral migratory stream where new neurons generate, migrate, and become incorporated into the functional circuitry of the brain. We also investigated whether FGF‐4 could promote both proliferation and differentiation of the neural progenitor cells by using an in vitro neurosphere assay. The addition of recombinant FGF‐4 generated large prolif‐erative spheres that have a multipotent differentiation ability. Furthermore, recombinant FGF‐4 significantly promotes neuronal differentiation in attached clonal neurosphere culture. These findings suggest that FGF‐4 has an ability to promote neural stem cell proliferation and neuronal differentiation in the postnatal brain. —Kosaka, N. , Kodama, M. , Sasaki, H. , Yamamoto, Y. , Takeshita, F. , Takahama, Y. , Sakamoto, H. , Kato, T. , Terada, M. , Ochiya, T. FGF‐4 regulates neural progenitor cell proliferation and neuronal differentiation. FASEB J. 20, E623–E629 (2006)
Adaptive display power management for mobile games

In this paper, we show how tone mapping techniques can be used to dynamically increase the image brightness, thus allowing the LCD backlight levels to be reduced. This saves significant power as the majority of the LCD's display power is consumed by its backlight. The Gamma function (or equivalent) can be efficiently implemented in smartphones with minimal resource cost. We describe how we overcame the Gamma function's non-linear nature by using adaptive thresholds to apply different Gamma values to images with differing brightness levels. These adaptive thresholds allow us to save significant amounts of power while preserving the image quality. We implemented our solution on a laptop and two Android smartphones. Finally, we present measured analytical results for two different games (Quake III and Planeshift), and user study results (using Quake III and 60 participants) that shows that we can save up to 68% of the display power without significantly affecting the perceived gameplay quality.
Word Learning During Reading: Effects of Language Ability in School-Age Children

Most vocabulary growth during the school-age years occurs incidentally. However, little is understood about the influence of language skills on word knowledge growth during reading. Using a pretest–posttest quasi-experimental design, we examined incidental word learning through reading, considering the presence/absence of supportive context and the role of language ability. Children with a range of language abilities (N = 32), aged 10 years, 6 months to 16 years, 5 months, were exposed three times to rare nouns and verbs within stories or in isolation. Small but significant knowledge gains were found for rare words encountered in context, but not for words in isolation. Language skill predicted overall word knowledge but not rate of word knowledge growth. Findings suggest children with low oral language ability are at a disadvantage in acquiring vocabulary through reading; however, the word learning process may be qualitatively similar for children with varying language skill levels.
Compiler-managed memory system for software-exposed architectures

Microprocessors must exploit both instruction-level parallelism (ILP) and memory parallelism for high performance. Sophisticated techniques for ILP have boosted the ability of modern-day microprocessors to exploit ILP when available. Unfortunately, improvements in memory parallelism in microprocessors have lagged behind. This thesis explains why memory parallelism is hard to exploit in microprocessors and advocate bank-exposed architectures as an e ective way to exploit more memory parallelism. Bankexposed architectures are a kind of software-exposed architecture: one in which the lowlevel details of the hardware are visible to the software. In a bank-exposed architecture, the memory banks are visible to the software, enabling the compiler to exploit a high degree of memory parallelism in addition to ILP. Bank-exposed architectures can be employed by general-purpose processors, and by embedded chips, such as those used for digital-signal processing. This thesis presents Maps, an enabling compiler technology for bank-exposed architectures. Maps solves the problem of bank-disambiguation, i.e., how to distribute data in sequential programs among several banks to best exploit memory parallelism, while retaining the ability to disambiguate each data reference to a particular bank. Two methods for bank disambiguation are presented: equivalence-class uni cation and modulo unrolling. Taking a sequential program as input, a bank-disambiguation method produces two outputs: rst, a distribution of each program object among the memory banks; and second, a bank number for every reference that can be proven to access a single, known bank for that data distribution. Finally, the thesis shows why non-disambiguated accesses are sometimes desirable. Dependences between disambiguated and non-disambiguated accesses are enforced through explicit synchronization and software serial ordering. The MIT Raw machine is an example of a software-exposed architecture. Raw exposes its ILP, memory and communication mechanisms. The Maps system has been implemented in the Raw compiler. Results on Raw using sequential codes demonstrate that using bank disambiguation in addition to ILP improves performance by a factor of 3 to 5 over using ILP alone. Thesis Advisors: S. Amarasinghe, Assistant Professor, Computer Science & Engineering A. Agarwal, Professor, Computer Science & Engineering
Enabling autonomic system software with hot-swapping

Autonomiccomputingsystemsaredesignedtobeself-diagnosingandself-modifying,such thatthey noticeperformanceandcorrectnessproblems,pinpointtheircauses, andreactaccordingly. Theseabilities can increaseperformance,uptime,andsecurity, while simultaneously reducingthe effort andknowledgerequiredof systemadministrators.Oneway that systems cansupporttheseabilities is by allowing monitoringcode,diagnosticcode,andfunction implementationsto bedynamicallyinsertedandremoved in live systems.This “hot swapping” Universityof Toronto,Deptof ComputerScience CarnegieMellon University IBM T. J.WatsonResearchCenter SOMA Networks,Inc. IBM Beaverton Univ of Toronto,Deptof ElectricalandComputerEngineering approachavoids the requisiteprescienceandadditionalcomplexity inherentin creatingsystemsthathave all possibleconfigurationsbuilt in aheadof time. For already-comple x pieces of codesuchasoperatingsystems,hot-swappingprovidesa simpler, higherperformance, and moremaintainablemethodof achieving autonomicbehavior. This paperdescribesan aspectof autonomiccomputingfor systemssoftwareusinghotswapping. We describeits advantagesandsystemstructurerequisitefor hot-swapping. The K42 OperatingSystem(OS) explicitly supportsinterpositionand replacementof active OS code. We describeK42’s infrastructureandgive examplesfrom our researchwork demonstratingautonomicbehavior.
Leveraging existing instrumentation to automatically infer invariant-constrained models

Computer systems are often difficult to debug and understand. A common way of gaining insight into system behavior is to inspect execution logs and documentation. Unfortunately, manual inspection of logs is an arduous process and documentation is often incomplete and out of sync with the implementation. This paper presents Synoptic, a tool that helps developers by inferring a concise and accurate system model. Unlike most related work, Synoptic does not require developer-written scenarios, specifications, negative execution examples, or other complex user input. Synoptic processes the logs most systems already produce and requires developers only to specify a set of regular expressions for parsing the logs. Synoptic has two unique features. First, the model it produces satisfies three kinds of temporal invariants mined from the logs, improving accuracy over related approaches. Second, Synoptic uses refinement and coarsening to explore the space of models. This improves model efficiency and precision, compared to using just one approach. In this paper, we formally prove that Synoptic always produces a model that satisfies exactly the temporal invariants mined from the log, and we argue that it does so efficiently. We empirically evaluate Synoptic through two user experience studies, one with a developer of a large, real-world system and another with 45 students in a distributed systems course. Developers used Synoptic-generated models to verify known bugs, diagnose new bugs, and increase their confidence in the correctness of their systems. None of the developers in our evaluation had a background in formal methods but were able to easily use Synoptic and detect implementation bugs in as little as a few minutes.
Confidence in and beliefs about first-year engineering student success: case study from KU Leuven, TU Delft, and TU Graz

This paper explores the confidence starting first-year engineering students have in being successful in the first study year and which study-related behaviour they believe to be important to this end. Additionally, this paper studies which feedback these students would like to receive and compares it with the experiences of second-year students regarding feedback. To this end, two questionnaires were executed: one within three European higher education institutes with freshman engineering students and one with second-year engineering students in one institute. The results show that starting first-year engineering students are confident regarding their study success. This confidence is, however, higher than the observed first-year students’ success. Not surprisingly, the students have good intentions and believe that most academic activities are important for student success. When students look back on their first year, their beliefs in the importance of these activities have strongly decreased, especially for preparing classes and following communication through email and the virtual learning environment. First-year students expect feedback regarding their academic performance and engagement. They expect that this feedback primarily focuses on the impact of their future study pathway rather than on comparison to peer students. Second-year students indicate that the amount of feedback they receive could be improved, but agree with the first-year students that comparative feedback is less important.
Crystallization and cryocrystallography inside X-ray capillaries

This paper presents a modification of the gel acupuncture method to grow isolated crystals inside X-ray capillaries. Protein crystals are grown from 2–12 µl of gelled agarose–protein solution, cryoprotected and immobilized by the gel matrix. The same X-ray capillary that acts as a crystallization reactor is used to transport the crystals to the X-ray source and to collect data at both room temperature and 100 K, without any post-crystallization manipulation. To enhance the flash-cooling stage, two additional elements are proposed for inclusion in the cryosystems currently in use: a laser pointer to illuminate the crystal to be flash-cooled and a trap to divert the N2 flow and switch from room temperature to 100 K without misalignment of the crystal. With the proposed implementation, data can be collected at different temperatures from the same crystal in exactly the same orientation. This permits the study, at lattice level, of changes in unit-cell parameters, mosaic spread and crystal quality induced by cryogenic temperatures and annealing techniques.