Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inexact variants of the alternating direction method of multipliers and their iteration-complexity analyses

Esta tese propoe e analisa algumas variantes do metodo dos multiplicadores das direcoes alternadas (ADMM) para resolver problemas de otimizacao convexa com restricao linear. Esta tese e dividida em tres partes. Primeiro, estabelecemos iteracao complexidade de um ADMM generalizado proximal. Essa variante ADMM, proposta por Bertsekas e Eckstein, introduz um parâmetro de relaxacao no segundo subproblema do ADMM para melhorar seu desempenho computacional. Mostramos que, para uma determinada tolerância ρ>0, o ADMM generalizado proximal com α em (0, 2) fornece, em no maximo O(1/ρ^2) iteracoes, uma solucao aproximada do sistema Lagrangiano associado ao problema de otimizacao considerado. E ainda demonstrado que, em no maximo O(1/ρ) iteracoes, uma solucao aproximada do sistema Lagrangiano pode ser obtida por meio de uma sequencia ergodica associada a sequencia gerada pelo ADMM generalizado proximal com α em (0, 2]. Em segundo lugar, propomos e analisamos uma variante inexata do ADMM generalizado proximal acima mencionado. Nesta variante, o primeiro subproblema e aproximadamente resolvido usando uma condicao de erro relativo, enquanto o segundo e considerado facil de resolver. E importante mencionar que, em muitas aplicacoes do ADMM, um dos subproblemas tem uma solucao em forma fechada; por exemplo, problemas de otimizacao convexos compostos l_1-regularizados. Mostramos que o metodo proposto possui iteracao complexidade semelhantes a sua versao exata. Terceiro, desenvolvemos um ADMM proximal inexato cujo primeiro subproblema e resolvido inexatamente usando um criterio de erro relativo aproximado semelhante ao ADMM inexato generalizado proximal acima mencionado. Os limites de iteracao complexidade pontual e ergodico para o metodo proposto sao estabelecidos. Nossa abordagem consiste em interpretar essas variantes do ADMM como uma instância de um estrutura hibrida proximal extragradiente com algumas propriedades especiais. Finalmente, a fim de mostrar a aplicabilidade e vantagem das variantes inexatas do ADMM propostas aqui, apresentamos alguns experimentos numericos realizados em um cenario de de problemas derivados de aplicacoes da vida real.
XMM-Newton observation of the persistent Be/neutron star system X persei at a high-luminosity level

We report on the XMM-Newton observation of the HMXRB X Persei, the prototype of the persistent and low-luminosity Be/neutron star pulsars, which was performed in February 2003. The source was detected at a luminosity level of ∼1.4 × 10 35 erg s −1 ,w hich is the highest level of the latest three decades. The pulsation period has increased to 839.3 s, thus confirming the overall spin-down of the neutron star detected in the previous observations. The folded light-curve has a complex structure, with features not observed at lower luminosities, and shows a significant energy dependence. The spectral analysis reveals the presence of a significant excess, at low energies, over the main power-law spectral component, which can be described by a black-body spectrum of high temperature (kTBB ∼ 1.5 keV) and small emitting region (RBB ∼ 360 m); its properties are consistent with a polar-cap origin. Phase-resolved spectroscopy shows that the emission spectrum varies along the pulse period, but it is not possible to prove whether the thermal component is pulsed or not.
Usefulness of Preoperative Surgical Simulation with Three-Dimensional Fusion Images for Resection of Cerebral Cavernous Malformations Near Broca's Area

Treating subcortical brain lesions in or near eloquent areas is challenging not only because lesions must be resected while preserving brain tissue involved in essential functions, but also because lesions often cannot be easily identified from the surface of the brain. Here, we report 2 cases of cerebral cavernous malformations near Broca's area. In both cases, lesions were surgically removed by utilizing three-dimensional fusion images created using preoperative magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography data. Excisions were completed without any worsening of speech function, and the use of presurgical simulations was found to be useful in the design and execution of the actual operations. The technique described in this report serves as a useful tool in simulating surgical strategies by using brain gyri and sulci as surgical landmarks. Furthermore, in contrast to other intraoperative techniques, this method can aid in shortening the duration of surgery and can help limit damage to eloquent areas of the brain.
Multi-talker Speech Separation and Tracing with Permutation Invariant Training of Deep Recurrent Neural Networks

Despite the significant progress made in the recent years in dictating single-talker speech, the progress made in speaker independent multi-talker mixed speech separation and tracing, often referred to as the cocktail-party problem, has been less impressive. In this paper we propose a novel technique for attacking this problem. The core of our technique is permutation invariant training (PIT), which aims at minimizing the source stream reconstruction error no matter how labels are ordered. This is achieved by aligning labels to the output streams automatically during the training time. This strategy effectively solves the label permutation problem observed in deep learning based techniques for speech separation. More interestingly, our approach can integrate speaker tracing in the PIT framework so that separation and tracing can be carried out in one step and trained end-to-end. This is achieved using recurrent neural networks (RNNs) by forcing separated frames belonging to the same speaker to be aligned to the same output layer during training. Furthermore, the computational cost introduced by PIT is very small compared to the RNN computation during training and is zero during separation. We evaluated PIT on the WSJ0 and Danish twoand three-talker mixed-speech separation tasks and found that it compares favorably to non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), computational auditory scene analysis (CASA), deep clustering (DPCL) and deep attractor network (DANet), and generalizes well over unseen speakers and languages.
The Tile Assembly Model is Intrinsically Universal

We prove that the abstract Tile Assembly Model (aTAM) of nanoscale self-assembly is intrinsically universal. This means that there is a single tile assembly system U that, with proper initialization, simulates any tile assembly system T. The simulation is "intrinsic" in the sense that the self-assembly process carried out by U is exactly that carried out by T, with each tile of T represented by an m × m "super tile" of U. Our construction works for the full aTAM at any temperature, and it faithfully simulates the deterministic or nondeterministic behavior of each T. Our construction succeeds by solving an analog of the cell differentiation problem in developmental biology: Each super tile of U, starting with those in the seed assembly, carries the "genome" of the simulated system T. At each location of a potential super tile in the self-assembly of U, a decision is made whether and how to express this genome, i.e., whether to generate a super tile and, if so, which tile of T it will represent. This decision must be achieved using asynchronous communication under incomplete information, but it achieves the correct global outcome(s).
Asymptotics of unitary matrix integrals

In this paper, we prove that in small parameter regions, arbitrary unitary matrix integrals converge in the large N limit and match their formal expansion. Secondly we give a combinatorial model for our matrix integral asymptotics and investigate examples related to free probability and the HCIZ integral. And last, our convergence result leads us to new results of smoothness of microstates.
On the Workings and Current Practices of Web-Based Device Fingerprinting

By analyzing the code of three popular browser-fingerprinting code providers, the authors reveal the techniques that allow websites to track users without client-side identifiers. They expose questionable practices, such as the circumvention of HTTP proxies to discover a user's real IP address and the installation of intrusive browser plug-ins. In addition, they measure the adoption of fingerprinting on the Web and evaluate user-agent-spoofing browser extensions, showing that current commercial approaches can bypass the extensions and take advantage of their shortcomings.
Range estimation techniques from Integral Imaging

Image Based Rendering (IBR) is a field of research whose basic aim is to generate a three-dimensional model of a scene using a set of two-dimensional images. This can be used to generate novel 2D views of the scene. Photo-consistency is one of the most widely accepted tools for high quality image based rendering (IBR). The aim of this paper is two-fold: (a) give a short summary about the photo-consistency general concept, some of its main features, and applications, and (b) analyse its applicability in the framework of Integral Imaging (as an autostereoscopic image acquisition and visualisation methodology), and in particular, for integral imaging depth estimation.
Rational extrapolation for the PageRank vector

An important problem in web search is to determine the importance of each page. From the mathematical point of view, this problem consists in finding the nonnegative left eigenvector of a matrix corresponding to its dominant eigenvalue 1. Since this matrix is neither stochastic nor irreducible, the power method has convergence problems. So, the matrix is replaced by a convex combination, depending on a parameter c, with a rank one matrix. Its left principal eigenvector now depends on c, and it is the PageRank vector we are looking for. However, when c is close to 1, the problem is ill-conditioned, and the power method converges slowly. So, the idea developed in this paper consists in computing the PageRank vector for several values of c, and then to extrapolate them, by a conveniently chosen rational function, at a point near 1. The choice of this extrapolating function is based on the mathematical expression of the PageRank vector as a function of c. Numerical experiments end the paper.
Evaluation of Ontology Merging Tools in Bioinformatics

Ontologies are being used nowadays in many areas, including bioinformatics. One of the issues in ontology research is the aligning and merging of ontologies. Tools have been developed for ontology merging, but they have not been evaluated for their use in bioinformatics. In this paper we evaluate two of the most well-known ontology merging tools with a bioinformatics perspective. As test ontologies we have used Gene Ontology and Signal-Ontology.
ON THE RELATION OF CHRONIC INTERSTITIAL PANCREATITIS TO THE ISLANDS OF LANGERHANS AND TO DIABETES MELUTUS

(1) Congenital syphilitic pancreatitis retards the development of the glandular acini but does not affect the islands of Langerhans. Embedded in the stroma, but not invaded by it, the latter maintain their continuity with the small ducts and acini with which they have a common origin. (2) Two types of chronic interstitial inflammation affecting the developed pancreas are distinguishable: (a) Interlobular Pancreatitis. —In the interlobular variety the inflammatory process is localized chiefly at the periphery of the lobule and implicates the islands of Langerhans only when the sclerotic process has reached a very advanced grade. When pancreatitis has followed obstruction of the ducts, the islands long remain unaltered though embedded in dense scar-like tissue. (b) Interacinar Pancreatitis. —In the interacinar type the process is diffuse, invading the lobules and separating individual acini. The inflammatory change invades the islands of Langerhans. (3) A relationship has been observed between lesions of the islands of Langerhans and the occurrence of diabetes mellitus. (a) In one of eleven cases of interlobular panereatitis diabetes of mild intensity occurred. The sclerosis, which in this case followed obstruction of the ducts by calculi, was far advanced and affected the islands of Langerhans. (b) In two of three cases of interacinar pancreatitis, diabetes was present. The third case was associated with a condition, hæmochromatosis, which at a later stage is associated with diabetes, the result of pancreatic lesion. (c) In a fourth case of diabetes, hyaline deposit between the capillaries and the parenchymatous cells had so completely altered the islands of Langerhans that they were no longer recognizable.
Data Collection and Analysis for the Reliability Prediction and Estimation of a Safety Critical System

This paper will describe our experience with collecting and analyzing data for the reliability prediction and estimation of a safety critical system and will discuss the issues encountered. Possible solutions will be briefly addressed. The reliability prediction is based on a set of indirect indicators of reliability such as defects, complexity measures, process measures, etc. These indicators are then linked to reliability through predictive models. Estimation is based on collection and analysis of 10 years of operational data of the system.
Willingness to Pay for Improvements in Air Quality

Central to the discussion of air quality degradation is its effect on health and the costs that it may impose on the health care system and the individuals whose health has been affected. Estimating the monetary benefits associated with improved air quality is problematic, as air (and its quality) is a public goods. By employing daily environmental data from Montreal and the Quebec Health Survey, a component of individuals’ willingness to pay for reductions in ozone is estimated building on the work of Gerking and Stanley (1986). The results suggest a significant relationship between ozone levels, health status and medical care consumption. The results also suggest that the monetary benefits from reducing ozone levels are greater than previously estimated.
A new perspective for efficient virtual-cache coherence

Coherent shared virtual memory (cSVM) is highly coveted for heterogeneous architectures as it will simplify programming across different cores and manycore accelerators. In this context, virtual L1 caches can be used to great advantage, e.g., saving energy consumption by eliminating address translation for hits. Unfortunately, multicore virtual-cache coherence is complex and costly because it requires reverse translation for any coherence request directed towards a virtual L1. The reason is the ambiguity of the virtual address due to the possibility of synonyms. In this paper, we take a radically different approach than all prior work which is focused on reverse translation. We examine the problem from the perspective of the coherence protocol. We show that if a coherence protocol adheres to certain conditions, it operates effortlessly with virtual caches, without requiring reverse translations even in the presence of synonyms. We show that these conditions hold in a new class of simple and efficient request-response protocols that use both self-invalidation and self-downgrade. This results in a new solution for virtual-cache coherence, significantly less complex and more efficient than prior proposals. We study design choices for TLB placement under our proposal and compare them against those under a directory-MESI protocol. Our approach allows for choices that are particularly effective as for example combining all per-core TLBs in a single logical TLB in front of the last level cache. Significant area, energy, and performance benefits ensue as a result of simplifying the entire multicore memory organization.
Brain electric mechanisms of modalities of thinking

29 -. 11 -. 09 . 23* -. 03 -. 04 Note. R-values of significant (p<.05 no correction for multiple testing) correlations are highlighted in bold-face, italic, and underlined (N=68, 66). Style and brain electric activity. As discussed in detail in Manuscript 3, we would also expect correspondences between modalities and brain electric activity. Such correspondences were successfully induced by having participants execute modalityspecific tasks, and by correlating EEG measures with MOTQ-assessed spatial-objectverbal style (see Manuscript 2 and 3). I also investigated whether OSIVQ-assessed style would relate to brain electric activity. Pearson correlations revealed no significant correlations (p>.05, uncorrected) between EEG microstates during resting and OISVQ assessed style (Table 6). However, there was a trend (p>.10) for verbal style to be negatively correlated with duration of
Impact of Femoroacetabular Impingement Morphology on Gait Assessment in Symptomatic Patients

Background: Gait is abnormal in patients with femoroacetabular impingement (FAI). To date, studies have not correlated radiographic FAI morphology with gait abnormalities. Hypothesis: Gait abnormalities in FAI patients will be associated with radiographic FAI morphology. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Level of Evidence: Level 4. Methods: Patients with symptomatic FAI (n = 20) underwent radiographic and gait analysis. Exclusion criteria included previous injuries or surgeries to the lower extremities or lumbar spine as well as bilateral symptomatic FAI. The alpha angle (AA) and center-edge angle (CEA) were measured on anteroposterior (AP) pelvis, Dunn lateral, and false-profile radiographs, and inter- and intraobserver variability was determined. Motion analysis techniques were used to obtain gait data including 3-dimensional kinematic and kinetic data. Descriptive analysis was performed using Spearman correlations for morphologic measurements. A stepwise regression model was used to examine the association of gait measures with AA and CEA. Results: Intraobserver agreement for the AA and CEA was 0.92 (CI, 0.80-0.97) and 0.90 (CI, 0.76-0.96), while interobserver agreement for the angles was 0.96 (CI, 0.89-0.98) and 0.96 (CI, 0.90-0.98), respectively. Descriptive analysis suggested correlations between AA and peak external hip and knee external rotation moments, maximum ankle flexion angle, and ankle range of motion (range, –0.51 to 0.42; P < 0.0001). The CEA correlated with stride, peak external ankle eversion and inversion moments, peak external knee extension moment, and peak external hip flexion moment (range, –0.44 to 0.51; P < 0.0001). We found that gait variables accounted for a large amount of variation in AA (8 variables accounted for 87% variation) and in CEA (7 variables accounted for 82% variation). Conclusion: Lower extremity gait parameters correlate highly with radiographic FAI morphology in symptomatic FAI patients. Clinical Relevance: Gait abnormalities are present in FAI patients and may be a useful measure in outcome studies.
Design and Control of the Quadruped Walking Robot ALDURO

Alduro is a four-legged walking robot. Its main goal is to operate in rugged terrain, translating the cartesian operator commands (joystick) into actuator space by coordinating the legs according to the users wish. At the same time static stability has to be guaranteed, obstacles have to be avoided and the posture of the main body kept. This requires an elaborate motion coordination and controller software. One possible way to organise this is described here: by isolating the physical robot from the motion generation (hardware abstraction layer), by using concurrent behaviours for motion generation and by strict modularisation of the software. The selected tools and realtime operating system are described in the last sections.
Hierarchical reinforcement learning using path clustering

In this paper we intend to study the possibility to improve the performance of the Q-Learning algorithm, by automatically finding subgoals and making better use of the acquired knowledge. This research explores a method that allows an agent to gather information about sequences of states that lead to a goal, detect classes of common sequences and introduce the states at the end of these sequences as subgoals. We use the taxiproblem (a standard in Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning literature) and conclude that, even though this problem's scale is relatively small, in most of the cases subgoals do improve the learning speed, achieving relatively good results faster than standard Q-Learning. We propose a specific iteration interval as the most appropriate to insert subgoals in the learning process. We also found that early adoption of subgoals may lead to suboptimal learning. The extension to more challenging problems is an interesting subject for future work.
Examining and mapping CS teachers' technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) in K-12 schools

Computer Science (CS) teachers' training and profile is crucial to ensure students have access to quality Computer Science Education (CSE). The aim of this study is to examine the profile of CS teachers in Greece and map it using the technique of persona. This study examines a national sample of 1127 CS teachers who teach algorithms and programming in upper secondary education. The building of the persona is based on teachers' abilities and needs regarding the central aspects of their knowledge in respect to three key domains in the Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. According to the results in the TPACK subscales, teachers' state that their Content Knowledge scales is sufficient and Pedagogical, Content Knowledge needs to be improved on. In addition, teachers feel that they need further training in how to incorporate technology in their teaching as well as how to teach algorithms; which are two areas that relate to Pedagogical Content Knowledge and TPACK By mapping the knowledge, abilities and needs of CS teachers, we will be able to recognize the challenges they face during teaching and consider strategies and policies for addressing these challenges.
Towards Fine-Grained Access Control in JavaScript Contexts

A typical Web 2.0 application usually includes JavaScript from various sources with different trust. It is critical to properly regulate JavaScript's access to web application resources. Unfortunately, existing protection mechanisms in web browsers do not provide enough granularity in JavaScript access control. Specifically, existing solutions partially mitigate this sort of threat by only providing access control for certain types of JavaScript objects, or by unnecessarily restricting the functionality of untrusted JavaScript. In this paper, we systematically analyze the complete access control requirements in a web browser's JavaScript environment and identify the fundamental lack of fine-grained JavaScript access control mechanisms in modern web browsers. As our solution, we propose a reference monitor called JCShadow that enables fine-grained access control in JavaScript contexts without unnecessarily restricting the functionality of JavaScript. We have developed a proof-of-concept prototype in the Mozilla Firefox browser and the evaluation with real-world attacks indicates that JCShadow effectively prevents such attacks with low performance overhead.
Towards a comparative performance evaluation of overlays for Networked Virtual Environments

Peer-to-peer overlays for Networked Virtual Environments have recently gained much research interest, resulting in a variety of different approaches for spatial information dissemination. Although designed for the same purpose, the evaluation methodologies used by particular authors differ widely. This makes any comparison of existing systems difficult, if not impossible. To overcome this problem we present a benchmarking methodology which allows for a fair comparison of those systems. We, therefore, define a common set of workloads and metrics. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by testing four typical systems for spatial information dissemination and discovering their specific performance profiles.