Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Local smoothness and the price of anarchy in atomic splittable congestion games

We resolve the worst-case price of anarchy (POA) of atomic splittable congestion games. Prior to this work, no tight bounds on the POA in such games were known, even for the simplest non-trivial special case of affine cost functions. We make two distinct contributions. On the upper-bound side, we define the framework of "local smoothness", which refines the standard smoothness framework for games with convex strategy sets. While standard smoothness arguments cannot establish tight bounds on the POA in atomic splittable congestion games, we prove that local smoothness arguments can. Further, we prove that every POA bound derived via local smoothness applies automatically to every correlated equilibrium of the game. Unlike standard smoothness arguments, bounds proved using local smoothness do not always apply to the coarse correlated equilibria of the game. Our second contribution is a very general lower bound: for every set L that satisfies mild technical conditions, the worst-case POA of pure Nash equilibria in atomic splittable congestion games with cost functions in L is exactly the smallest upper bound provable using local smoothness arguments. In particular, the worst-case POA of pure Nash equilibria, mixed Nash equilibria, and correlated equilibria coincide in such games.
Order with Things? Humans, Artifacts, and the Sociological Problem of Rule-Following

This paper examines the thesis formulated by the Actor-Network Theory (ANT), namely that understanding social order and action needs treating artifacts as its active co-constituents. This contention has at its core the principle of generalized symmetry formulated by Bruno Latour. The grounds of the argument are to be found in the concepts of rule and of rule-following action. Starting from them, the paper examines the ANT solution to how social rules are followed and reproduced, and compares it with the solutions offered by ethnomethodology and by Bourdieu's practice theory. Two key methodological aspects guide the analysis: how these constituents are conceived and which concepts are needed to describe them. Against this background, a distinction is made between methodological and ontological symmetry. The paper argues that the notions of social rules and of rule-following social action can be understood only on the premises of ontological asymmetry. In the conclusion, the paper argues against Bruno Latour's principle of generalized symmetry, that (1) applying a principle of methodological symmetry leads to (2) conceiving the asymmetry between human actors and artifacts as a necessary condition for the reproduction of social order.
A Structural Theory of Social Influence: List of Tables and Figures

List of tables and figures Preface Part A. Theory and Setting: 1. Social structure and social Control 2. Toward a structural social psychology 3. A setting in the scientific community Part B. Measures of the Theoretical Constructs: 4. A structural parameterization 5. Interpersonal influence 6. Self and other 7. Social positions Part C. Analysis: 8. The structure of social space 9. The production of consensus 10. Influence of actors and social positions 11. Durkheim's vision References Index.
Needles in a Haystack: Mining Information from Public Dynamic Analysis Sandboxes for Malware Intelligence

Malware sandboxes are automated dynamic analysis systems that execute programs in a controlled environment. Within the large volumes of samples submitted every day to these services, some submissions appear to be different from others, and show interesting characteristics. For example, we observed that malware samples involved in famous targeted attacks - like the Regin APT framework or the recently disclosed malwares from the Equation Group - were submitted to our sandbox months or even years before they were detected in the wild. In other cases, the malware developers themselves interact with public sandboxes to test their creations or to develop a new evasion technique. We refer to similar cases as malware developments. In this paper, we propose a novel methodology to automatically identify malware development cases from the samples submitted to a malware analysis sandbox. The results of our experiments show that, by combining dynamic and static analysis with features based on the file submission, it is possible to achieve a good accuracy in automatically identifying cases of malware development. Our goal is to raise awareness on this problem and on the importance of looking at these samples from an intelligence and threat prevention point of view.
Accounting for Variations in Pupil Attainment at the End of Key Stage 1

Abstract This article analyses pupil national assessment results at Key Stage 1 (KS1) in the three core curriculum areas (English, mathematics and science) and in terms of an overall measure of performance across these areas for a sample of over 2400 pupils drawn from 62 inner London primary schools. It explores the influence of pupil background characteristics and school attended on attainment at KS1 and provides a contextualised analysis of schools’ performance. The findings demonstrate the greater importance of background factors (gender, age, low income, fluency in English) as influences on English attainment in comparison with other subjects and the implications of this for the publication of raw national assessment results are highlighted. The extent to which process information about school and classroom organisation and teaching practices accounts for school‐level variation in pupils’ attainment is also explored. A number of significant relationships are identified and their implications discussed.
Use of Mature miRNA Strand Selection in miRNAs Families in Cervical Cancer Development

Aberrant miRNA expression is well recognized as a cancer hallmark, nevertheless miRNA function and expression does not always correlate in patients tissues and cell lines studies. In addition to this issue, miRNA strand usage conduces to increased cell signaling pathways modulation diversifying cellular processes regulation. In cervical cancer, 20 miRNA families are involved in carcinogenesis induction and development to this moment. These families have 5p and 3p strands with different nucleotide (nt) chain sizes. In general, mature 5p strands are larger: two miRNAs of 24 nt, 24 miRNAs of 23 nt, 35 miRNAs of 22 nt and three miRNAs of 21 nt. On the other hand, the 3p strands lengths observed are: seven miRNAs of 23 nt, 50 miRNAs of 22 nt, six miRNAs of 21 nt and four miRNAs of 20 nt. Based on the analysis of the 20 miRNA families associated with cervical cancer, 67 3p strands and 65 5p strands are selected suggesting selectivity and specificity mechanisms regulating cell processes like proliferation, apoptosis, migration, invasion, metabolism and Warburg effect. The insight reviewed here could be used in the miRNA based therapy, diagnosis and prognosis approaches.
stability-indicating HPLC method for simultaneous determination of orphine and naltrexone

This study developed a stability-indicating reversed-phase HPLC method for the simultaneous determination of morphine sulfate and naltrexone hydrochloride content in bulk, Solid dosage forms and in-vitro dissolution samples to support product development and quality control efforts. Chromatographic separation of the pharmaceutical compound was achieved on a perfectSilTM MZ C18 column (250 × 4.6 mm, 5 m) with an isocratic mobile phase composed of a mixture of acetate buffer (10 mM, pH 4, containing 0.1% of 1-heptanesulfonic acid sodium salt) and acetonitrile with 80/20 at a flow rate of 1.5 ml min−1. Both analytes were quantified using a photodiode array detector set at a wavelength of 280 nm and column temperature was set to 30 ◦C. naltrexone, morphine and a mixture of the two were subjected to thermal, orphine altrexone tability-indicating PLC peroxide, acid, base and photolytic degradation and their peak homogeneity was obtained using a photodiode array detector, demonstrating the specificity of method. These pharmaceuticals were spiked in biological fluid to examine method selectivity. The method was validated for system suitability, linearity, accuracy, precision, detection and quantification limits and robustness and was found it is acceptable in range of 2–250 g ml−1 for morphine and 4–100 g ml−1 for naltrexone. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Accuracy of Computed Tomographic Colonography for the Detection of Polyps and Colorectal Tumors: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background: The real accuracy of computed tomographic colonography (CTC) is still unknown. Objective: To perform a meta-analysis of the diagnostic accuracy of CTC for the detection of polyps and colorectal tumors. Methods: Selection of studies:Studiesassessing the accuracy of CTC for the detection of colorectal polyps and tumors were selected. Data synthesis:Meta-analyses combining sensitivities, specificities and likelihood ratios (LRs) for the diagnosis of polyps and colorectal tumors were carried out. Results: Forty-seven studies, providing data of 10,546 patients, were included. Overall per-polyp sensitivity of CTC was 66% (64–68%), for polyps 6–9 mm in size it was 59% (56–61%), and 76% (73–79%) for polyps larger than 9 mm. Overall per-patient sensitivity was 69% (66–72%), for polyps 6–9 mm 60% (56–65%), and 83% (70–85%) for lesions larger than 9 mm. Overall CTC specificity was 83% (81–84%). Positive and negative LRs were 2.9 (1.8–4) and 0.38 (0.27–0.53), respectively; for polyps 6–9 mm in size, they were 3.8 (2.5–5.7) and 0.4 (0.27–0.59), and 12.3 (7.7–19.4) and 0.19 (0.12–0.3) for polyps larger than 9 mm. Conclusion: CTC is highly specific for the detection of colorectal polyps and tumors. Some studies reported high sensitivities, but the results of the studies were highly heterogeneous, while the studied variables explained only part of this discrepancy.
‘Zombies ahead!’ A study of how hacked digital road signs destabilize the physical space of roadways

This article explores some of the ways in which hacked Changeable Message Signs (CMSs) destabilize the physical space of motor transport spaces and jeopardize the institutionalized function of travel. While CMSs draw attention to the correlation between motorists’ current positions, possible inconveniences ahead and their final destination, hacked CMSs and the subsequent projection of unsanctioned messages destabilize this correlation. Hence, the seemingly straightforward relationship between motor transport spaces and the activities of motorists, pedestrians and passers-by is in fact fashioned by the particular kind of message that is displayed at any given moment. Focusing on the spatial effects of hacked CMSs and how the dissemination of unsanctioned information points to the social stratifications of motor transport spaces, hacking is understood as a means of combating the disciplinary regimes of roadways.
Multi-Atlas-Based Segmentation With Local Decision Fusion—Application to Cardiac and Aortic Segmentation in CT Scans

A novel atlas-based segmentation approach based on the combination of multiple registrations is presented. Multiple atlases are registered to a target image. To obtain a segmentation of the target, labels of the atlas images are propagated to it. The propagated labels are combined by spatially varying decision fusion weights. These weights are derived from local assessment of the registration success. Furthermore, an atlas selection procedure is proposed that is equivalent to sequential forward selection from statistical pattern recognition theory. The proposed method is compared to three existing atlas-based segmentation approaches, namely (1) single atlas-based segmentation, (2) average-shape atlas-based segmentation, and (3) multi-atlas-based segmentation with averaging as decision fusion. These methods were tested on the segmentation of the heart and the aorta in computed tomography scans of the thorax. The results show that the proposed method outperforms other methods and yields results very close to those of an independent human observer. Moreover, the additional atlas selection step led to a faster segmentation at a comparable performance.
Configuring crowdsourcing for requirements elicitation

Crowdsourcing is an emerging paradigm which utilises the power of the crowd in contributing information and solving problems. Crowdsourcing can support requirements elicitation, especially for systems used by a wide range of users and working in a dynamic context where requirements evolve regularly. For such systems, traditional elicitation methods are typically costly and limited in catering for the high diversity, scale and volatility of requirements. In this paper, we advocate the use of crowdsourcing for requirements elicitation and investigate ways to configure crowdsourcing to improve the quality of elicited requirements. To confirm and enhance our argument, we follow an empirical approach starting with two focus groups involving 14 participants, users and developers, followed by an online expert survey involving 34 participants from the Requirements Engineering community. We discuss our findings and present a set of challenges of applying crowdsourcing to aid requirements engineering with a focus on the elicitation stage.
Pitfalls when using parallel streams in OMNeT + + simulations

By means of a simple OMNeT++ simulation scenario, which uses parallel streams of random numbers, we want to point out several technical pitfalls when applying different random number generators and using different initialization values for them. We describe shortcomings of the built-in random number generator (RNG) and describe traps when using modern RNGs. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of simulation results expose the danger of a careless simulation setup with regard to random components.
Screening for depression in stroke patients: the reliability and validity of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale.

This study examined the inter-observer reliability and validity of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) as a measure of depressive symptomatology in stroke patients, and its utility as a screening tool for depression in this population. The CES-D Scale is a brief questionnaire originally designed for use in community surveys. Twenty-seven non-aphasic patients enrolled in the Stroke Data Bank at the University of Maryland were interviewed by a research nurse using the CES-D. On the same day, each patient was independently evaluated by a research assistant using a psychiatric battery for depression and measures of cognitive, physical, and social functioning. Forty-one percent (11/27) of the patients were depressed according to clinical criteria for major or minor depression. With a cutpoint corresponding to the upper (most severe) 20% in community surveys, the CES-D Scale picked up 73% (8/11) of the depressed patients. In this sample no nondepressed patient scored over 16 on the CES-D (no false positives). The CES-D Scale scores correlated significantly with the other depression measures (r = .57 to r = .82, p less than .002) and did not correlate with the measures of cognitive, physical, or social functioning. Based on 24 patients who received a CES-D Scale score from both the nurse and the research assistant, inter-rater reliability was high (r = .76, p less than .001). Thus, the CES-D was found to be reliable and valid as a screening tool for assessing depression in stroke patients.
Television Violence, African-Americans, and Social Control 1950-1976

Television, over the past three decades, has become the primary interpreter of American life and history, and the principal socializing institution in the United States (Cater and Adler, 1974). Because of the great popularity of this medium, the prevalence of violence on television has precipitated an ongoing debate, and a voluminous literature, about the effect that violent TV programs have on the social behavior of children and adults. I One side contends that continuous exposure to TV violence stimulates aggressive anti-social behavior among select members of the mass viewing audience, and that this had led to increases in violent crime and juvenile delinquency. TV, this side argues, not only mirrors the violent content of social reality, but also contributes to violent behavior by creating a vast fantasy world peopled with appealing but violent characters who serve as social role models (Newcombe, 1979; Cater and Strickland, 1975; Seigal, 1957). The other side argues that television merely reflects the ideas that people already have about the world in which they live, and that TV violence has little effect on the social behavior of
Eecient, Protected Message Interface in the Mit M-machine

We present a user-level message interface that provides high performance and very low processor overhead. In this system, messages are launched from within the user's general register le, and received in a hardware queue mapped to a general register. A message handler is started within the latency of a jump instruction upon arrival of the rst message word, up to 18 faster than conventional interrupt-driven interfaces. These tightly-integrated mechanisms feature end-to-end latencies as low as nearly one quarter that of memory-mapped interfaces. Copying is eliminated in these mechanisms, reducing processor occupancy by up to one-third when compared with other integrated register-mapped systems. The interface also features a low overhead, robust protection model using virtually-addressed message destinations and certiied trusted handlers. Both are speciied with unforgeable pointers, enabling ne-grain control over a user thread's accessible domain as well as its permitted remote operations. We discuss the application of this system in the framework of the multithreaded MIT M-Machine, and show that unlike other approaches, it is able to provide protection and avoid starvation while maintaining high eeciency.
Recent Advances in Phospholipids from Colostrum, Milk and Dairy By-Products

Milk is one of the most important foods for mammals, because it is the first form of feed providing energy, nutrients and immunological factors. In the last few years, milk lipids have attracted the attention of researchers due to the presence of several bioactive components in the lipid fraction. The lipid fraction of milk and dairy products contains several components of nutritional significance, such as ω-3 and ω-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, CLA, short chain fatty acids, gangliosides and phospholipids. Prospective cohort evidence has shown that phospholipids play an important role in the human diet and reinforce the possible relationship between their consumption and prevention of several chronic diseases. Because of these potential benefits of phospholipids in the human diet, this review is focused on the recent advances in phospholipids from colostrum, milk and dairy by-products. Phospholipid composition, its main determination methods and the health activities of these compounds will be addressed.
High-speed measuring equipment of fiber core position of optical fiber array using piezo actuator

A new measuring method of the offset of the fiber core position for an optical fiber array was investigated. In the conventional method, the absolute core positions are measured by a CCD camera and laser interferometers, but the measurement time is rather long. In the new method, the sample array is compared with the standard array and its core positions are measured relatively. The standard array is fixed on the piezoelectric actuator and given a high-speed and minute circular motion, and the sample array is set face to face with it. The relative offset of the fiber core position of the sample is obtained in a short time by measuring the vibration of the optical coupling coefficient that is produced by the circular motion. The repeatability of the measurement is under 0.05 /spl mu/m and good agreement with the conventional method is obtained. We can apply this new method to the automatic inspection of the fiber array.
Dimensions and correlates of prosocial behavior in young children.

YARROW, MARIAN RADKE, and WAXLER, CAROLYN ZAHN, with the collaboration of BARRETT, DAVID; DARBY, JEAN; KING, ROBERT; PICKETT, MARILYN; and SMITH, JUDITH. Dimensions and Correlates of Prosocial Behavior in Young Children. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1976, 47, 118-125. 3 kinds of prosocial behavior-helping, sharing, and comforting-were studied in experimental and naturalistic settings, in 108 children, ages 3 to 71/2. In both settings, helping occurred more frequently than sharing or comforting. There was some consistency across settings in sharing and comforting. Neither age nor sex is related to frequency of prosocial responding. Prosocial and aggressive behavior are complexly related-sometimes positively, sometimes negatively, and sometimes unrelated-depending on absolute level of aggression and on amount of aggression received. Observations document considerable differences in affect and motivation accompanying both intervention and nonintervention in others' distress.
Content-Based approaches for Cold-Start Job Recommendations

This paper provides an overview of the approach we adopted as team Lunatic Goats for the ACM RecSys Challenge 2017 [7]. The competition, organized by XING.com, focuses on a cold start job recommendation scenario. The goal was to design and tune a recommendation system able to predict past users' interactions, for the offline stage, and to provide recommendations pushed every day to real users through the XING portal, for the online stage. Our strategy, which saw models coming from different techniques combined in a multi-layer ensemble, granted us the first place in the offline part and the qualification as second best team in the final leaderboard. All our algorithms mainly resort to content-based approaches, that, thanks to its ability to provide good recommendations even for cold-start items allowed us, quite unexpectedly, to achieve good results in terms of prediction quality and computational time.
Learning first-order definable concepts over structures of small degree

We consider a declarative framework for machine learning where concepts and hypotheses are defined by formulas of a logic over some “background structure”. We show that within this framework, concepts defined by first-order formulas over a background structure of at most polylogarithmic degree can be learned in polylogarithmic time in the “probably approximately correct” learning sense.
Design and construction of a machine-tractable Japanese-Malay dictionary

We present a method for combining two bilingual dictionaries to make a third, using one language as a pivot. In this case we combine a Japanese-English dictionary with a Malay-English dictionary, to produce a Japanese-Malay dictionary suitable for use in a machine translation system. Our method differs from previous methods in its use of semantic classes to rank translation equivalents: word pairs with compatible semantic classes are preferred to those with dissimilar classes. We also experiment with the use of two pivot languages. We have made a prototype dictionary of over 75,000 pairs.