Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Research Paper] Static JavaScript Call Graphs: A Comparative Study

The popularity and wide adoption of JavaScript both at the client and server side makes its code analysis more important than ever before. Most of the algorithms for vulnerability analysis, coding issue detection, or type inference rely on the call graph representation of the underlying program. Despite some obvious advantages of dynamic analysis, static algorithms should also be considered for call graph construction as they do not require extensive test beds for programs and their costly execution and tracing. In this paper, we systematically compare five widely adopted static algorithms - implemented by the npm call graph, IBM WALA, Google Closure Compiler, Approximate Call Graph, and Type Analyzer for JavaScript tools - for building JavaScript call graphs on 26 WebKit SunSpider benchmark programs and 6 real-world Node.js modules. We provide a performance analysis as well as a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the results. We found that there was a relatively large intersection of the found call edges among the algorithms, which proved to be 100% precise. However, most of the tools found edges that were missed by all others. ACG had the highest precision followed immediately by TAJS, but ACG found significantly more call edges. As for the combination of tools, ACG and TAJS together covered 99% of the found true edges by all algorithms, while maintaining a precision as high as 98%. Only two of the tools were able to analyze up-to-date multi-file Node.js modules due to incomplete language features support. They agreed on almost 60% of the call edges, but each of them found valid edges that the other missed.
Quizziz: ESL Students’ Perceptions in rural school

Online Formative Assessment is one of the process to boost the quality of curriculum and learning English language as a second language in Malaysian classroom environment. The aim of using online assessment tool is to attract the students’ interest and passion in learning English. Therefore, this study is executed to find out the students’ perceptions towards the use of online formative assessment tool, Quizziz. The design of this study is quasi-experimental where the control group is using the traditional way of assessment, while the experimental group being introduced the online formative assessment through Quizziz. It is found that the experimental group increase their engagement during the learning session as well as be flexible towards their self-learning. Therefore, this online formative assessment is practical and relevant to be used as one of the teaching evaluation tool in Malaysian English classes. The results suggest that there is a big change in almost all the marks scored by the students on their online formative assessment post-test. Thus, it is confirmed that the online formative assessment tool is a good way of evaluating the pupils’ performance with stress free. This form of evaluation or assessment is helpful for the students to achieve better academic achievement. Optimistically, the practicality of implementing online formative assessment could forecast a positive achievement among students to score better marks in the final test and they are able to refine the English language acquisition amongst the community members.
Physical Activity and Subclinical Measures of Atherosclerosis: Study Replication and Sensitivity Analysis

Abstract Physical Activity and Subclinical Measures of Atherosclerosis: Study Replication and Sensitivity Analysis Julian Jonn Nilsson Whitford Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Lecturer Michelle Averill Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Background: Atherosclerosis contributes greatly to morbidity and mortality in the United States. Prevention of incidence, and progression of atherosclerosis through lifestyle modification represents an opportunity to reduce the burden of this disease. Ankle brachial index (ABI) and coronary artery calcification (CAC) are subclinical measures of atherosclerosis. The effects of physical activity on such subclinical measures in unselected populations is not comprehensively described. Objective: To conduct a replication of the 2013 study by Delaney et al. and sensitivity analysis to examine whether higher physical activity has a protective effect on cardiovascular disease risk. Methods: The replication analyses were based on the methods of Delaney et al. Physical activity measures were used as predictive variables for incident coronary artery calcification and peripheral artery disease in Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) participants clinically free of cardiovascular disease. Physical activity predictors (intentional, sedentary, vigorous, moderate & vigorous, and conditioning) were as continuous variables and measured in Metabolic Equivalents of Task (MET) minutes per week. Additionally, progression of coronary artery calcification and peripheral artery function were determined. Results: The mean age of participants was 61.8 years, with mean body mass index of 28.2 kg/m2 and 48% of participants were male. Following adjustment for traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease and socioeconomic factors, increased intentional activity (OR = 0.64, 95% CI 0.48,0.85) was found to be protective against progression to an ankle brachial index (ABI) of <0.90. Increased sedentary behavior was also observed to lower the odds (OR = 0.52, 95% CI 0.35,0.78) of low ABI progression. Additionally, increased sedentary behavior was associated with an increase in coronary artery calcification (CAC) progression (Coefficient = +0.062, 95% CI 0.014, 0.111). In sensitivity analyses, the associations between increased intentional activity and sedentary behaviors persisted. No significant relationships were consistently observed between other physical activity variables and subclinical measures of atherosclerosis. Conclusion: The key finding of Delaney et al. that intentional physical activity may be protective against progression to low ABI was consistent throughout the present replication and sensitivity analysis. A positive association between sedentary behavior and CAC progression was also found to be consistent. Exercise may be a low risk intervention to reduce mortality and morbidity due to progression of subclinical peripheral arterial disease to clinical disease.
Neural Firing of Coupled Izhikevich Neurons with Bug Neuron

Myriad of neurons exist in our brain. Information processing and transmission are performed by neural firing. In analyzing the neural firing, it is essential to consider the cycle of neural firing and firing pattern. In this study, we focus on the influence that the neuron including a bug has on others neurons. Furthermore, we investigate the phenomena when the neurons are coupled as the ladder network. By carrying out computer simulations, the propagation of the bug is confirmed.
CPAF selectively degrades chlamydial T cell antigens for inhibiting antigen presentation.

INTRODUCTION Chlamydia trachomatis is the leading cause of sexually transmitted bacterial disease, which may cause significant threats, such as pelvic inflammatory disease and tubal factor infertility, to women if untreated. The pathological mechanisms of chlamydia-induced disease remain largely unknown, but it has been proposed that CPAF, a chlamydia-secreted serine protease, may play major roles in aiding chlamydial infection and contribute to chlamydia pathogenesis during in vivo infection. According to previous results, CPAF targets host immunity by degrading antimicrobial peptides and neutralizing complement activity; however, whether CPAF is involved in chlamydial antigen presentation has never been reported. METHODOLOGY Antigen presentation assay was used to monitor the effects of CPAF on OT1-, OT2-, and chlamydia T cell antigen-mediated antigen presentation. In vitro cell-free degradation assay was used to detect CPAF processing of chlamydia T cell antigens. RESULTS We found that CPAF preferably inhibits OT2- but not OT1-mediated antigen presentation. CPAF inhibits OT2 antigen presentation by direct proteolytic cleavage in the wild type CPAF, but not enzymatic mutants. Importantly, several previously identified chlamydial T cell antigens were selectively degraded by CPAF when co-incubated in vitro. In addition, specific inhibition T cell antigen presentation by CPAF was correlated with T cell antigen cleavage by CPAF in vitro assay. CONCLUSIONS Our experiments demonstrated that CPAF selectively and specifically degrades chlamydial T cell antigens, which chlamydia may utilize as a novel mechanism for evading host immune responses to promote chlamydia survival.
Unravelling Social Capital Value in Science Parks: Growth versus R&D orientation

Science and Technology Parks (STPs) have fueled many debates on their effectiveness in policies to enhance innovation and regional economic growth. Some authors put emphasis on advantages of physical proximity between onsite firms and the university, while others pay increasingly attention to benefits from social capital between the stakeholders involved. According to theory, social capital works as a ‘glue that binds’ stakeholders who may originally have different interests, visions and different power positions. Adopting the last point of view, the aim of the paper is to increase understanding of the role of social capital in performance of STPs. The paper explores the relationship between growth and innovativeness of STPs and social capital-related power position, trust, and shared visions, using regression analysis. We make use of a survey-based sample of almost 50 STPs in various Asian countries. With regard to stakeholders and social capital, we distinguish between STPs’ management, local university, local government and national government. We control for variation on country-level regarding innovativeness and planning culture and for variation in STPs’ land-size. Our results show that higher STPs’ growth (numbers of firms) tends to go along with some shortage in social capital, mainly on the local level concerning university and government. This situation may point to different opinions about growth, connected to physical limits regarding land and road system. In contrast, social capital on the local level but also national level, tends to be positively associated with degree of R&D orientation of STP firms.
Prevailing Serum Vitamin D Levels among Individuals in South Karnataka

Introduction: Prevalence of vitamin D is very high in India. The aim of the present study was to determine according to age groups, the status of vitamin D among individuals using samples received at clinical biochemistry laboratory. Materials and methods: The study population was grouped according to gender and age in decades. They were divided into three groups according to serum vitamin D status-NVD (normal serum vitamin D, >30 ng/ml), VDI (vitamin D insufficiency, 20-30 ng/ml), VDD (vitamin D deficiency, <20 ng/ml). Blood was collected in plain vacutainers and serum obtained was used for vitamin D estimation. Results were expressed as percentage of the sub-population in question. Results: Only 13% of the total study population was normal, 70% was vitamin D deficient and 17% showed vitamin D insufficiency. The prevalence of vitamin D deficiency was very high in all age groups and both genders. In all age groups, there were a higher percentage of females in the vitamin D insufficient and deficient groups. Males recorded higher prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in the 0-10 and 20-30 years age group while females recorded higher prevalence of the vitamin deficiency in the 20-30 years and 30-40 years age group Conclusion: The prevalence of vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency in the present study was high at all age groups and both genders. Further research needs to be conducted to correlate the changing dietary habits to the alterations in availability of 7-dehydrocholesterol for cutaneous biosynthesis of vitamin D.
Development of demographic and genetic conservation strategies for maintenance of an endangered annual plant

Cordylanthus palmatus is an annual plant that inhabits seasonally flooded wetlands with saline and alkaline soils in California, USA. In 1986, the plant was listed as endangered due to the small size or threats to its five remaining populations. The goal of our research was to inform conservation strategies by examining genetic diversity and structure and their potential response to demographic and environmental stochasticity. We used nuclear DNA markers to measure genetic characteristics. To explore potential influences on genetic variation and structure we assessed fluctuations in population size and interspecific hybridization between C. palmatus and C. mollis ssp. hispidus. We found geographically separate populations of C. palmatus were genetically distinct, with a FST of 0.23, indicating substantial genetic structure among populations. Within populations, there was no evidence of isolationbydistance. However, two adjacent vernal pools contained genetically distinct sub-populations. Overall, the pattern of genetic variation within populations supported the hypothesis that the historical frequency and extent of seed dispersal by overland flooding has influenced population genetic structure strongly. Despite founder effects and population bottlenecks, small populations maintained levels of genetic variation comparable to large populations. We found no evidence of hybridization between the congeners. All extant populations of C. palmatus are genetically variable and distinct. We recommend that hydrologic connectivity be considered in collection and sowing of seeds intended to increase the abundance of in situ populations or to create experimental ex situ populations.
Appraisal of Shawn Carlson’s Renowned Astrology Tests

Shawn Carlson’s 1985 study, published in Nature, which ended with a devastating verdict of astrology, is scrutinized. The design of Carlson’s study violated the demands of fairness and its mode of analysis ignored common norms of statistics. The study’s piecemeal analysis of sub-samples avoided testing the totals for astrological effects, as did the neglect of test power, effect size, and sample size. Nevertheless, a correct reanalysis of Carlson’s two astrological tests reveals that astrologers matched profiles of the California Personality Inventory to natal charts better than expected by chance with marginal significance (threeway forced choice, p = .054), and that a positive result was replicable by a different assessment method (10-point rating, p = .04). The results are regarded as insufficient to deem astrology as empirically verified, but they are sufficient to regard Carlson’s negative verdict on astrology as untenable
Hamburger Beiträge zur Angewandten Mathematik Observers and dynamic controllers for linear differential-algebraic systems

We study state-estimation and stabilization by dynamic fee dback for linear differential-algebraic systems which are not necessarily regular. We show that the o bs rver synthesis approach for behavioral systems in [M.E. Valcher and J.C. Willems, IEEE Trans. Autom. Control , 44 (1999), pp. 2297–2307] can be applied to differential-algebraic systems in a closed form, i.e., the observers and dynamic controllers are again differentialalgebraic systems. The concept of an (asymptotic, exact) ob server is introduced and existence is characterized. Since initialization of the observer is an important issue w e investigate regular and freely initializable observers, whose existence can be characterized in terms of impulse obs rvability. The observers are then exploited for the construction of dynamic controllers. We show that there exi sts a stabilizing controller if, and only if, the given system is both behaviorally stabilizable and behaviorally detectable.
Learning from Human Feedback: A Comparison of Interactive Reinforcement Learning Algorithms

Reinforcement Learning potentially provides a powerful tool for self improvement of future robots. However, in contrast to learning in simulation, on real robots it is much more important to be sample efficient. When applying Reinforcement Learning, especially the recently successful Deep Reinforcement Learning, usually many interactions with their environment are required to learn. This is not practicable when training with a real system. Another challenge is the design of good reward functions to enable correct and fast learning of the task at hand. In particular, when robots shall interact with us in our everyday life, it would regularly be necessary to learn new tasks or to adapt learned behaviors to new circumstances. Directly integrating the human in the training could hereby help to become more sample efficient in training, and to adapt the reward to human preferences. All in all, human interaction could thereby help to bring Reinforcement Learning to real robot applications. This thesis presents a general framework that can incorporate different kinds of human interaction and the environmental reward in an Interactive Reinforcement Learning algorithm. Through this, it simplifies the combination of several, interactive and not interactive, algorithms. Various such combinations of algorithms are tested in experiments with different learning environments and both, simulated human feedback and feedback from real users . The experimental evaluations showed that human interaction could nearly always speed up the learning process and even enables the learning of tasks that require very extensive exploration, and thus could not be learned with the Reinforcement Learning baseline. In most experiments with real humans, the use of advice worked better than giving feedback.
A New Approach to Improving the Quality of Measurements in Multi-Wave Interference Systems

This paper proposes a method of expanding the range and improving the accuracy of interferometric measurements using three wavelengths. The method is based on the methods of modular mathematics for phase unwrapping. Unlike the known methods of unwrapping the phase accuracy of the proposed method is almost independent of the value of the dynamic range. Keywords—mechatronics; robotics; optical interference system; measuring range; laser
Network on Chip Architectures

Although most research on NoCs has assumed the use of regular topologies like 2D meshes, some current trend s in chip architecture, combined with expected technology limi tations and usage models, will very likely oblige designers to consi der less regular topologies to provide the best cost-performance tr ade-off. Moreover, the set of nodes interconnected by those NoCs will a so be heterogeneous, including computational cores of differnt sizes and computing power, cache blocks and local stores, acceler ators of different kinds, and memory controllers. The memory wall problem will likely be addressed by using 3D integration, which will increase heterogeneity significantly, due to the need f or locating the hottest cores in the top layer. Therefore, in order to deliver the best cost-performance tradeoff while minimizing resource and power consumption and providing the maximum flexibility, heterogeneity needs appropriate hardware support in the NoC. This talk motivates the need for efficiently supporting heterogeneity, and sketche s some results along this direction, describing power-efficient r outing algorithms that provide support for multiple heterogeneous, possibly overlapping regions (e.g. virtual machines, cohe r nce domains) in the presence of faulty components.
Optimal Communication with Multi-Antenna, Multi-Group and Multi-Way Relaying

: Relying on the broadcast nature of the wireless media, a relay assisted communication system emulates a virtual Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) system and exploits diversity techniques to increase the transmission reliability and coverage, without expanding the expenditure of the scarce transmission resources. A multi-group multi-way relaying scenario is considered. Each node has to transmit an individual message and has to receive the messages of all other nodes within its group. These multi-way communications between the multi-antenna nodes are performed via an intermediate multi-antenna relay station. Self as well as known-interference cancellations are exploited at the nodes and are considered for the application of the relay transceiver filter. Furthermore, to achieve high spectral efficiency, a transmission strategy which exploits the ideas of network coding is proposed. The proposed transmission strategy combined with the applied relay transceiver filter requires less antennas at the relay station and achieves higher sum rates compared to conventional approaches which do not fully exploit the interference cancellation capabilities of the nodes.
The emergence of Farmer Field Schools Networks in Eastern Africa

1 The first Farmer Field School (FFS) Networks emerged in Western Kenya during 2000 as a result of exchange visits and communication between farmers, facilitators, trainers and project staff. Similar networks have subsequently emerged elsewhere in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. These FFS Networks were formed by farmers who graduated from an FFS. The main reason for their formation was that FFS graduates wanted to continue activities generated by the FFS process, build local institutions for FFS implementation, continue with farmer-led FFS and benefit from becoming a larger voice in articulating their demands. The networks are characterized as FFSs clustered in a registered or non-registered association or not-for-profit company. To date, the FFS Networks in Eastern Africa support about 2,000 FFSs with close to 50,000 direct beneficiaries. FFS networks in Eastern Africa have clearly shown how farmers themselves have been able to build bottom-up producer organizations during and after projects ended. Through this process the farmers themselves realize their own empowerment. Their leadership is well organized and as an outcome of passing through the FFS training, the networks are also well structured. This transpires into the networks being empowered to demand for services from private and public agricultural service providers, as well a, input and output market access through group bulking. This self-emergence of FFS networks depicts FFS as an efficient and effective approach to organize and empower farmers. However, mechanisms and strategies for these FFS networks to access national and international markets have not yet been fully developed, and further training and support in business skills is required.
Pushed Or Pulled? Factors That Influence Students’ Choice to Study Food and Beverage Management Program

An individual’s career path depends on the choice of the program one chooses to study in college. The choice is influenced by many factors which may push or pull the student to settling for a particular program. Some students may choose a study program as a result of personal benefits it brings while others may settle for it because circumstances have forced them to do so. This paper examined factors that influence students’ choice to study food and beverage management program which leads to a career in the hospitality industry. The target population for the study was students studying FBM program. Questionnaires were administered to a purposely chosen sample of 120 students from four selected colleges in Eldoret Town. The results showed that although students were to some extent pressured to pursue the FBM program, the ultimate reason behind their choice was the attraction they felt for the industry.