Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Messing Up with BART: Error Generation for Evaluating Data-Cleaning Algorithms

We study the problem of introducing errors into clean databases for the purpose of benchmarking data-cleaning algorithms. Our goal is to provide users with the highest possible level of control over the error-generation process, and at the same time develop solutions that scale to large databases. We show in the paper that the error-generation problem is surprisingly challenging, and in fact, NP-complete. To provide a scalable solution, we develop a correct and efficient greedy algorithm that sacrifices completeness, but succeeds under very reasonable assumptions. To scale to millions of tuples, the algorithm relies on several non-trivial optimizations, including a new symmetry property of data quality constraints. The trade-off between control and scalability is the main technical contribution of the paper.
Codes and designs related to lifted MRD codes

The lifted maximum rank distance codes are considered. It is shown that these codes form structures which are transversal designs and also have some similarity to q-analog of transversal designs. Upper bounds on the sizes of codes which contain the lifted maximum rank distance codes are derived. A new construction for codes which attain one of these upper bounds is given. Low density parity check codes are derived from the lifted maximum rank distance codes and some of these codes are quasi-cyclic codes attaining the Griesmer bound.
Foundations of Gauge and Perspective Duality

We revisit the foundations of gauge duality and demonstrate that it can be explained using a modern approach to duality based on a perturbation framework. We therefore put gauge duality and Fenchel-Rockafellar duality on equal footing, including explaining gauge dual variables as sensitivity measures, and showing how to recover primal solutions from those of the gauge dual. This vantage point allows a direct proof that optimal solutions of the Fenchel-Rockafellar dual of the gauge dual are precisely the primal solutions rescaled by the optimal value. We extend the gauge duality framework to the setting in which the functional components are general nonnegative convex functions, including problems with piecewise linear quadratic functions and constraints that arise from generalized linear models used in regression.
FAULT EFFECT REASONING IN DIGITAL SYSTEMS BY TOPOLOGICAL VIEW ON LOW-AND HIGH-LEVEL DECISION DIAGRAMS To memory of my opponent

In order to cope with complexity of diagnostic reasoning of today's digital systems, hierarchical multi-level approaches should be used. In this paper, the possibilities of using Decision Diagrams (DD) for uniform diagnostic modeling of digital systems at different levels of abstraction are discussed. Binary Decision Diagrams (BDD) have become the state-of-the-art data structure in VLSI CAD. A special class of BDDs is presented called Structurally Synthesized BDDs (SSBDD). The idea of SSBDDs is to establish one-to-one mapping between the nodes of SSBDDs and signal paths in gate-level networks, which allows to investigate and solve with SSBDDs test and diagnosis problems directly associated with structural aspects of circuits, like fault modeling, fault collapsing, fault masking, delays, hazards. The main concept of SSBDDs lays on exploiting the topology of graphs for fault reasoning which allows to generalize the methods of test synthesis and fault analysis from the Boolean level to higher register-transfer or behavior levels of hierarchy by introducing a novel High-level DDs (HLDD).
Lmx1b is essential for Fgf8 and Wnt1 expression in the isthmic organizer during tectum and cerebellum development in mice

Secreted factors FGF8 and WNT1 are essential either for the inductive activity of the isthmus organizer or for the regionalization of the midbrain-hindbrain boundary (MHB). However, transcriptional regulation of these secreted factors during development remains to be elucidated. Here we show that the LIM homeobox gene Lmx1b is expressed in the anterior embryo as early as E7.5 and its expression becomes progressively restricted to the isthmus at E9.0. Analysis of gene expression in the MHB of the mutant embryos showed that many genes were lost by E9.5. In the MHB of Lmx1b-/- embryos, the expression of Fgf8, which normally occurs at the 4-somite stage, was completely absent, whereas Wnt1 was downregulated before the 4-somite stage. Moreover, transcription factors En1 and Pax2 were also downregulated prior to the 4-somite stage, whereas Gbx2 downregulation occurred at the 4-somite stage. By contrast, Otx2 and Pax6 expression was not affected in Lmx1b-/- embryos. The requirement of specific Lmx1b expression in the MHB was further confirmed by Wnt1-Cre-mediated region-specific conditional knockout of Lmx1b. As a result of these molecular defects, the development of the tectum and cerebellum was severely impaired in Lmx1b-/- mice. Taken together, our results indicate that Lmx1b plays an essential role in the development of the tectum and cerebellum by regulating expression of Fgf8, Wnt1 and several isthmus-related transcription factors in the MHB, and is a crucial component of a cross-regulatory network required for the induction activity of the isthmic organizer in the MHB.
In Vivo 3-Dimensional Strain Mapping Confirms Large Optic Nerve Head Deformations Following Horizontal Eye Movements.

Purpose To measure lamina cribrosa (LC) strains (deformations) following abduction and adduction in healthy subjects and to compare them with those resulting from a relatively high acute intraocular pressure (IOP) elevation. Methods A total of 16 eyes from 8 healthy subjects were included. Among the 16 eyes, 11 had peripapillary atrophy (PPA). For each subject, both optic nerve heads (ONHs) were imaged using optical coherence tomography (OCT) at baseline (twice), in different gaze positions (adduction and abduction of 20°) and following an acute IOP elevation of approximately 20 mm Hg from baseline (via ophthalmodynamometry). Strains of LC for all loading scenarios were mapped using a three-dimensional tracking algorithm. Results In all 16 eyes, LC strains induced by adduction and abduction were 5.83% ± 3.78% and 3.93% ± 2.57%, respectively, and both significantly higher than the control strains measured from the repeated baseline acquisitions (P < 0.01). Strains of LC in adduction were on average higher than those in abduction, but the difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.07). Strains of LC induced by IOP elevations (on average 21.13 ± 7.61 mm Hg) were 6.41% ± 3.21% and significantly higher than the control strains (P < 0.0005). Gaze-induced LC strains in the PPA group were on average larger than those in the non-PPA group; however, the relationship was not statistically significant. Conclusions Our results confirm that horizontal eye movements generate significant ONH strains, which is consistent with our previous estimations using finite element analysis. Further studies are needed to explore a possible link between ONH strains induced by eye movements and axonal loss in optic neuropathies.
A CMOS 8-Bit High-Speed A/D Converter IC

A novel high-speed low-power CMOS balanced comparator circuit is proposed and implemented in an 8M fully parallel analog-to-digital (A/D) converter IC. A 20-MHz sampling rate with 350-mW power dissipation from a single 5-V power supply has been realized. Integral linearity of /spl plusmn/ 1/2 LSB to 8-bit conversion has been achieved through intensive transistor dimension optimization applied to the comparator circuit, instead of employing an offset canceling technique.
QoS-aware virtual machine scheduling for video streaming services in multi-cloud

Video streaming services are trending to be deployed on cloud. Cloud computing offers better stability and lower price than traditional IT facilities. Huge storage capacity is essential for video streaming service. More and more cloud providers appear so there are increasing cloud platforms to choose. A better choice is to use more than one data center, which is called multi-cloud. In this paper a closed-loop approach is proposed for optimizing Quality of Service (QoS) and cost. Modules of monitoring and controlling data centers are required as well as the application feedback such as video streaming services. An algorithm is proposed to help choose cloud providers and data centers in a multi-cloud environment as a video service manager. Performance with different video service workloads are evaluated. Compared with using only one cloud provider, dynamically deploying services in multi- cloud is better in aspects of both cost and QoS. If cloud service costs are different among data centers, the algorithm will help make choices to lower the cost and keep a high QoS.
Matrix converter open circuit fault diagnosis with asymmetric one zero SVM

An open-circuit fault detection and diagnosis strategy for a direct matrix converter is proposed in this paper. The current recirculating path during an open circuit condition is considered in detail with the aim of contributing more expert knowledge to the fault detection system for matrix converter. Simulation results are presented demonstrate the open circuit fault behavior of matrix converter. This expert knowledge is extremely important for the fault detection system to avoid false diagnosis. This work leads to the presentation of a reliable and fast fault detector for the Matrix Converter.
Correlations of Behavioral Deficits with Brain Pathology Assessed through Longitudinal MRI and Histopathology in the R6/2 Mouse Model of HD

Huntington’s disease (HD) is caused by the expansion of a CAG repeat in the huntingtin (HTT) gene. The R6/2 mouse model of HD expresses a mutant version of exon 1 HTT and develops motor and cognitive impairments, a widespread huntingtin (HTT) aggregate pathology and brain atrophy. Despite the vast number of studies that have been performed on this model, the association between the molecular and cellular neuropathology with brain atrophy, and with the development of behavioral phenotypes remains poorly understood. In an attempt to link these factors, we have performed longitudinal assessments of behavior (rotarod, open field, passive avoidance) and of regional brain abnormalities determined through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) (whole brain, striatum, cortex, hippocampus, corpus callosum), as well as an end-stage histological assessment. Detailed correlative analyses of these three measures were then performed. We found a gender-dependent emergence of motor impairments that was associated with an age-related loss of regional brain volumes. MRI measurements further indicated that there was no striatal atrophy, but rather a lack of striatal growth beyond 8 weeks of age. T2 relaxivity further indicated tissue-level changes within brain regions. Despite these dramatic motor and neuroanatomical abnormalities, R6/2 mice did not exhibit neuronal loss in the striatum or motor cortex, although there was a significant increase in neuronal density due to tissue atrophy. The deposition of the mutant HTT (mHTT) protein, the hallmark of HD molecular pathology, was widely distributed throughout the brain. End-stage histopathological assessments were not found to be as robustly correlated with the longitudinal measures of brain atrophy or motor impairments. In conclusion, modeling pre-manifest and early progression of the disease in more slowly progressing animal models will be key to establishing which changes are causally related.
View-independent Video Synchronization from Temporal Self-similarities

This paper deals with the temporal synchronization of videos representing the same dynamic event from different viewpoints. We propose a novel approach to automatically synchronize such videos based on temporal self-similarities of sequences. We explore video descriptors which capture the structure of video similarity over time and remain stable under viewpoint changes. We achieve temporal synchronization of videos by aligning such descriptors by Dynamic Time Warping. Our approach is simple and does not require point correspondences between views while being able to handle strong view changes. The method is validated on two public datasets with controlled view settings as well as on other videos with challenging motions and large view variations.
Macrocontinuous Dynamics for Hyperredundant Robots: Application to Kinematic Locomotion Bioinspired by Elongated Body Animals

In this paper, we present a unified dynamic modeling approach of (elongated body) continuum robots. The robot is modeled as a geometrically exact beam continuously actuated through an active strain law. Once included in the geometric mechanics of locomotion, the approach applies to any hyperredundant or continuous robot that is devoted to manipulation and/or locomotion. Furthermore, by the exploitation of the nature of the resulting model of being a continuous version of the Newton-Euler model of discrete robots, an algorithm is proposed that is capable of computing the internal control torques (and/or forces), as well as the rigid net motions of the robot. In general, this algorithm requires a model of the external forces (responsible for the self-propulsion), but we will see how such a model can be replaced by a kinematic model of a combination of contacts that are related to terrestrial locomotion. Finally, in this case, which we name “kinematic locomotion,” the algorithm is illustrated through many examples directly related to elongated body animals, such as snakes, worms, or caterpillars, and their associated biomimetic artifacts.
MobiCom 2011 poster: vehicular mobility in large-scale urban environments?

Vehicles are envisioned to become real communication hubs in the near future, thanks to the growing presence of radio interfaces on the cars as well as to the increasing utilization of smartphones and tablets by their passengers. In such a context, simulation remains the mean of choice for the evaluation of large-scale deployments of new vehicular networking solutions. In order to evaluate the effect of high-speed, strongly-correlated and constrained movements of vehicles on vehicular network connectivity, we present a synthetic dataset of the car traffic over a typical 24 hours in a 400-km2 region around Köln, Germany.
AVIO: detecting atomicity violations via access interleaving invariants

Concurrency bugs are among the most difficult to test and diagnose of all software bugs. The multicore technology trend worsens this problem. Most previous concurrency bug detection work focuses on one bug subclass, data races, and neglects many other important ones such as atomicity violations, which will soon become increasingly important due to the emerging trend of transactional memory models.This paper proposes an innovative, comprehensive, invariantbased approach called AVIO to detect atomicity violations. Our idea is based on a novel observation called access interleaving invariant, which is a good indication of programmers' assumptions about the atomicity of certain code regions. By automatically extracting such invariants and detecting violations of these invariants at run time, AVIO can detect a variety of atomicity violations.Based on this idea, we have designed and built two implementations of AVIO and evaluated the trade-offs between them. The first implementation, AVIO-S, is purely in software, while the second, AVIO-H, requires some simple extensions to the cache coherence hardware. AVIO-S is cheaper and more accurate but incurs much higher overhead and thus more run-time perturbation than AVIOH. Therefore, AVIO-S is more suitable for in-house bug detection and postmortem bug diagnosis, while AVIO-H can be used for bug detection during production runs.We evaluate both implementations of AVIO using large realworld server applications (Apache and MySQL) with six representative real atomicity violation bugs, and SPLASH-2 benchmarks. Our results show that AVIO detects more tested atomicity violations of various types and has 25 times fewer false positives than previous solutions on average.
A study of four methods for scaling paired comparisons data.

An experiment of paired comparisons of nine lotteries is reported. Ratings were also made of apparent magnitude of difference in each pair. Conventional techniques as well as the author's correlational scaling method were applied on paired comparisons data. Ratings were analyzed according to successive intervals scaling. Non-linear relations between scales were found. Dispersion terms from correlational scaling covary with those from the analysis of ratings.
A control theory based rate adaption scheme for dash over multiple servers

Recently, Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) has been widely deployed in the Internet. However, the research about DASH over Multiple Content Distribution Servers (MCDS) is few. Compared with traditional single-server-DASH, MCDS are able to offer expanded bandwidth, link diversity, and reliability. It is, however, a challenging problem to smooth video bitrate switchings over multiple servers due to their diverse bandwidths. In this paper, we propose a block-based rate adaptation method considering both the diverse bandwidths and feedback buffered video time. Multiple fragments are grouped into a block, and the fragments are downloaded in parallel from multiple servers. We propose to adapt video bitrate at the block level rather than at the fragment level. By dynamically adjusting the block length and scheduling fragment requests to multiple servers, the requested video bitrates from the multiple servers are synchronized, making the fragments downloaded orderly. Then, we propose a control-theoretic approach to select an appropriate bitrate for each block. By modeling and linearizing the rate adaption system, we propose a novel Proportional-Derivative (PD) controller to adapt video bitrate with high responsiveness and stability. Theoretical analysis and extensive experiments on the Internet demonstrate the good efficiency of our DASH designs.
Optimization of temperature-sensitive paint formulation for large-scale cryogenic wind tunnels

In this paper, a new temperature-sensitive paint (TSP) technique for boundary-layer transition detection in a production-type large cryogenic wind tunnel is present. The formulation of Ru(trpy) based TSP system has been optimized in terms of luminescence intensity and robustness. The optimum dye-binder-solvent combination has been determined through systematic sample tests. A new binder has been introduced and the resulting coating was found free from cracking at cryogenic temperatures. This is contrary to the silicone-based pervious cryogenic TSP that are subject to micro cracks at reduced temperatures. The new TSP can meet the root-mean-square roughness requirement less than 0.15 /spl mu/m. Experiments in the NAL 0.1-m transonic cryogenic wind tunnel have shown that transition occurs earlier on the unpolished surface than the polished surface, although the roughness value itself increasing by polishing. This suggests that the waviness of the coating could affect on the growth of instability in boundary layers.
Three dimensional simulated modelling of diffusion capacitance of polycrystalline bifacial silicon solar cell

A three dimensional (3-D) simulated modelling was developed to analyse the excess minority carrier density in the base of a polycrystalline bifacial silicon solar cell. The concept of junction recombination velocity was ado-pted to quantify carrier flow through the junction, and to examine the solar cell diffusion capacitance for three illumination modes (front side, back side and both front and back sides). Plots of diffusion capacitance against grain size, grain boundary recombination velocity, junction recombination velocity and illumination wavelength were used to study the influence of cell parameters on the capacitance. The results indicated that junction and grain boundary recombination velocities played determinant roles, especially, for small grain size and long wav-elength. Hence, high diffusion capacitance was obtained for high junction recombination velocity, large grain size and long wavelength; while small grain size led to increased recombination centers and corresponding decrease in the diffusion capacitance
Efficient Security Mechanisms for Routing Protocols

As our economy and critical infrastructure increasingly rely on the Internet, securing routing protocols becomes of critical importance. In this paper, we present four new mechanisms as tools for securing distance vector and path vector routing protocols. For securing distance vector protocols, our hash tree chain mechanism forces a router to increase the distance (metric) when forwarding a routing table entry. To provide authentication of a received routing update in bounded time, we present a new mechanism, similar to hash chains, that we call tree-authenticated oneway chains. For cases in which the maximum metric is large, we present skipchains, which provides more efficient initial computation cost and more efficient element verification; this mechanism is based on a new cryptographic mechanism, called MW-chains, which we also present. For securing path vector protocols, our cumulative authentication mechanism authenticates the list of routers on the path in a routing update, preventing removal or reordering of the router addresses in the list; the mechanism uses only a single authenticator in the routing update rather than one per router address. We also present a simple mechanism to securely switch one-way chains, by authenticating the next one-way chain using the previous one. These mechanisms are all based on efficient symmetric cryptographic techniques and can be used as building blocks for securing routing protocols.
An experimental evaluation of a symbolic execution system

In this paper, we describe a symbolic execution system that assists in the construction of test data and the detection of program errors. The system automatically generates a subset of all possible execution paths in the program, according to a certain path selection criterion. It symbolically executes each one of these paths and creates conditions on input variables that cause the path to be executed. These conditions form a system of equalities and inequalities. Solving this system gives input variable values that cause the path to be executed. If the system of conditions for a path is insoluble, the path is infeasible. We present the results ofexperiments that have been carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the system and the path selection criterion employed in it.
Certificates of impossibility of Hilbert-Artin representations of a given degree for definite polynomials and functions

We deploy numerical semidefinite programming and conversion to exact rational inequalities to certify that for a positive semidefinite input polynomial or rational function, any representation as a fraction of sums-of-squares of polynomials with real coefficients must contain polynomials in the denominator of degree no less than a given input lower bound. By Artin's solution to Hilbert's 17th problems, such representations always exist for some denominator degree. Our certificates of infeasibility are based on the generalization of Farkas's Lemma to semidefinite programming. The literature has many famous examples of impossibility of SOS representability including Motzkin's, Robinson's, Choi's and Lam's polynomials, and Reznick's lower degree bounds on uniform denominators, e.g., powers of the sum-of-squares of each variable. Our work on exact certificates for positive semidefiniteness allows for non-uniform denominators, which can have lower degree and are often easier to convert to exact identities. Here we demonstrate our algorithm by computing certificates of impossibilities for an arbitrary sum-of-squares denominator of degree 2 and 4 for some symmetric sextics in 4 and 5 variables, respectively. We can also certify impossibility of base polynomials in the denominator of restricted term structure, for instance as in Landau's reduction by one less variable.