Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Analysis of Heapsort

Heapsort is a classical sorting algorithm due to Williams. Given an array to sort, Heapsort first transforms the keys of the array into a heap. The heap is then sorted by repeatedly swapping the root of the heap with the last key in the bottom row, and then sifting this new root down to an appropriate position to restore heap order. In Williams' original Heapsort, the new root is sifted down by repeatedly comparing its two children, and swapping it with its larger child if a comparison shows the child to be larger than the key being sifted. Floyd proposed an important variant of Williams' Heapsort which unconditionally performs the swap with the larger child. This thesis analyzes the asymptotic number of executions of each instruction for both versions of Heapsort in the average, best, and worst cases. In the average case, when sorting a uniformly generated random heap on N distinct keys, Williams' Heapsort performs $\sim$2N lg N key comparisons while Floyd's variant performs ${\sim}N$ lg N key comparisons (lg is the logarithm base two). Another quantity of interest is the number of times keys are swapped with their right children. Both Williams' and Floyd's versions of Heapsort expect to perform ${\sim}{1\over2}N$ lg N such swaps. Sedgewick, and independently Fleischer and Wegener, have presented arguments to demonstrate that the number of key comparisons required by Williams' Heapsort in the best case and Floyd's Heapsort in the worst case are ${\sim}N$ lg N and ${\sim}{3\over2}N$ lg N respectively. These arguments are extended and applied in a different form to demonstrate that in the worst case, Williams' and Floyd's Heapsorts perform ${\sim}{3\over2}N$ lg N swaps of keys with their right children, while in the best case at most ${\sim}{1\over4}N$ lg N such swaps are performed. For both versions of Heapsort, it is shown that these best and worst case numbers can be found in heaps that also require the best and worst case numbers of key comparisons.
Speech enhancement using Long Short-Term Memory based recurrent Neural Networks for noise robust Speaker Verification

In this paper we propose to use a state-of-the-art Deep Recurrent Neural Network (DRNN) based Speech Enhancement (SE) algorithm for noise robust Speaker Verification (SV). Specifically, we study the performance of an i-vector based SV system, when tested in noisy conditions using a DRNN based SE front-end utilizing a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) architecture. We make comparisons to systems using a Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) based front-end, and a Short-Time Spectral Amplitude Minimum Mean Square Error (STSA-MMSE) based front-end, respectively. We show in simulation experiments that a male-speaker and text-independent DRNN based SE front-end, without specific a priori knowledge about the noise type outperforms a text, noise type and speaker dependent NMF based front-end as well as a STSA-MMSE based front-end in terms of Equal Error Rates for a large range of noise types and signal to noise ratios on the RSR2015 speech corpus.
Fully Dynamic Algorithms for Maintaining Shortest Paths Trees

We propose fully dynamic algorithms for maintaining the distances and the shortest paths from a single source in either a directed or an undirected graph with positive real edge weights, handling insertions, deletions, and weight updates of edges. The algorithms require linear space and optimal query time. The cost of the update operations depends on the class of the considered graph and on the number of the output updates, i.e., on the number of vertices that, due to an edge modification, either change the distance from the source or change the parent in the shortest paths tree. We first show that, if we deal only with updates on the weights of edges, then the update procedures require O(logn) worst case time per output update for several classes of graphs, as in the case of graphs with bounded genus, bounded arboricity, bounded degree, bounded treewidth, and bounded pagenumber. For general graphs with n vertices and m edges the algorithms require O(mlogn) worst case time per output update. We also show that, if insertions and deletions of edges are allowed, then similar amortized bounds hold.
Pharmacological Evaluation of Ayurvedic Plants for Aphrodisiac Activity in Experimental Animals

Vajikaran Chikitsa is the branch of Ashtanga Ayurveda, which deals with all types of physical and psychological sexual problems like impotence, libido, poor erection, and early ejaculation in males. The WHO estimated that the usage of traditional medicine in developing countries is 80% and suggested a need for further exploration of the natural aphrodisiacs for the mechanism of action. Considering the prevalence of the sexual dysfunctioning in the society, side effects with the conventional aphrodisiac drugs, the study was planned to evaluate some Ayurvedic plants like Abutilon indicum and Withania somnifera for the aphrodisiac potential. An attempt was also made to elucidate the possible mechanism of action of these plants for their use in Vagikarana chikitsa. From the present study, it could be concluded that A. indicum and W. somnifera both possessed marked aphrodisiac activity complying many facets such as enhancement in libido, increase in the sexual performance, penile erection and anabolism, increased spermatogenesis as well as sperm validity. Study results pointed out the place of these drugs in the Vajikarana Chikitsa. A. indicum would be useful in management of erectile dysfunction as it had shown to relax penile cavernosal tissue probably by phosphodiesterase inhibition and cGMP accumulation.
The Portuguese Version of the Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy Scale—Short Form

The objective of this study was to translate and psychometrically assess a Portuguese version of the Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy Scale—Short Form (BSES-SF). The original English version of the BSES-SF was translated to Portuguese and tested among a sample of 89 mothers in southern Brazil from the 2nd to 12th postpartum week followed by face-to-face interviews. The mean total score of the Portuguese version of the BSES-SF was 63.6 ± 6.22. The reliability analysis of each item in the scale attained significant Cronbach’s alphas of 0.63 or superior. The Cronbach’s alpha generated by the entire range of 14 questions was 0.71. A factor analysis identified one factor that contributed to 20% of the variance. This study demonstrates that the original English version of the BSES-SF was successfully adapted to Portuguese. The Portuguese version of the BSES-SF constitutes a reliable research instrument for evaluating breastfeeding self-efficacy in Brazil. J Hum Lact. 26(3):297-303.
Real-time intrusion detection

A real-time intrusion-detection expert system (IDES) is described that observed user behavior on a monitored computer system and adaptively learns what is normal for individual users, groups, remote hosts, and the overall system behavior. Observed behavior is flagged as a potential intrusion if it deviates significantly from the expected behavior or if it triggers a rule in the expert-system rule base. It is shown that because IDES combines a statistical user profile approach with a rule-based expert system that characterizes intrusions, it has the potential to become a strong intrusion-detection system. The IDES prototype is capable of detecting anomalous behavior, as evidenced by preliminary experiments, in real time. <<ETX>>
UC Office of the President Recent Work Title Temporal Evaluation of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ether ( PBDE ) Serum Levels in Middle-Aged and Older California Women , 2011 − 2015

In response to health concerns and widespread human exposures, two widely used commercial formulations of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) were banned in the United States in 2005. Initial biomonitoring data have provided early indications of reduced human exposures since these bans took effect. Our objective was to evaluate temporal trends in PBDE serum levels among a population of older California women during a four-year period, beginning approximately five years after these formulations were banned. Automated solid phase extraction and gas chromatography/high resolution mass spectrometry were used to measure PBDE levels in blood collected during 2011−2015 among 1253 women (ages 40−94) participating in the California Teachers Study. Only congeners with detection frequencies (DF) ≥ 75% were included in the present analysis: BDE-47 (DF = 88%); BDE-100 (DF = 78%); and BDE-153 (DF = 80%). Results from ageand race/ethnicity-adjusted linear regression analyses indicated modest, but statistically significant, average annual percent increases in the serum concentrations of all three PBDEs over the four-year study period. While not without limitations, these results, in the context of other biomonitoring data, suggest that earlier reported declines in PBDE levels may have plateaued and may now be starting to increase. Further biomonitoring to ascertain current trends and determinants of population exposures is warranted.
A Pilot Study of Home-Based Videoconferencing for Breastfeeding Support

Background: Research on using videoconferencing for breastfeeding support is limited. Purpose: Although European case reports have described videoconferencing for providing lactation support, this was the first study to assess the reliability and feasibility of home videoconferencing for breastfeeding assessment and support in the United States. Method: The study used 4 real-time, secure videoconferencing sessions to deliver lactation support to 10 mothers in the home. To assess interrater reliability, percentage agreement was calculated on LATCH assessment scores from telehealth and home-visit International Board Certified Lactation Consultants (IBCLCs) during the first 2 visits. Participants’ perceptions of satisfaction and the overall experiences were documented. Results: The percentage agreement on the 5 LATCH score dimensions ranged between 40% to 100% during the first visit and 80% to 100% during the second visit. To assess feasibility, participants reported their satisfaction with the technology and their perceptions of the videoconference consultation. All participants “strongly agreed” that they were comfortable talking about breastfeeding concerns using home videoconferencing. Conclusion: The findings suggest videoconferencing can potentially be used to support breastfeeding mothers in their homes.
On the Intrinsic Complexity of Elimination Theory

Abstract We consider the intrinsic complexity of selected algorithmic problems of classical elimination theory in algebraic geometry. The inputs and outputs of these problems are given by finite sets of polynomials which we represent alternatively in dense form or by straight line programs. We begin with an overview on the known upper bounds for the sequential and parallel time complexity of these problems and show then that in the most important cases these bounds are tight. Our lower bound results include both the relative and the absolute viewpoint of complexity theory. On one side we give reductions of fundamental questions of elimination theory to NP- and P#-complete problems and on the other side we show that some of these questions may have exponential size outputs. In this way we confirm the intrinsically exponential character of algorithmic problems in elimination theory whatever the type of data structure may be.
Overview of memory channel network for PCI

The parallel performance of a cluster is often limited by performance compromises in conventional networks. This paper discusses the benefits of a more specialized networking approach and the resulting design of a low-cost, high-performance interconnect optimized specifically to enhance both the parallel performance and high-availability aspects of a cluster. This interconnect, Memory Channel Network for PCI, attaches to the industry-standard PCI bus found in most computers. The first-generation product, running on a standard Digital UNIX Cluster, provides cluster communication latency and overhead improvements of more than 50 and 1000 times respectively, compared to conventional networks.
A Speed Hump Sensing Approach to Global Positioning in Urban Cities without Gps Signals

Outdoor localization is of great importance for driving navigation, attracting many research efforts in past decades. Prevailing GPS achieves meter-level localization accuracy under general outdoor conditions. Yet, GPS service performs poorly in urban canyons where skyscrapers blocks GPS signals and drain mobile phone battery quickly within few hours. In this work, we exploit common city facilities, i.e. speed humps, as an indicator for vehicle location. The key insight is that when the vehicle passes through the speed bump, it experiences significant fluctuations, causing larger acceleration in the vertical direction. On this basis, we design a localization scheme that utilizes the accelerator equipped on modern smart phones to track sequence of speed bumps, which is further transferred into sequence of moving directions of the vehicle, and adopt effective road mapping technology to derive real-time location. As we have concerned, it is the first attempt to exploit the spatiotemporal characteristics generated by the speed humps to recover the trajectory of the travelling route and infer the current position. Experimental results in typical outdoor environment (campus) demonstrate a comparable performance with GPS method, yet achieve lower energy consumption.
Assessing Child Care Providers’ Knowledge and Attitudes Regarding Support of Breastfeeding in a Region with Low Breastfeeding Prevalence

Background: Working mothers who place their infants into out-of-home child care face many challenges to sustaining breastfeeding. Child care providers, who are in frequent close contact with young families, may be potential resources for promoting breastfeeding. Objectives: This study focused on identifying child care providers’ attitudes toward and knowledge about breastfeeding as well as providers’ perceptions about strategies to increase breastfeeding rates among mothers of infants in child care centers. Methods: Seventy-five providers from 11 child care centers in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, area were surveyed using paper and pencil questionnaires. Self-reported demographics, attitudes, knowledge, and perceptions about breastfeeding were collected. Results: Responses demonstrated a generally positive attitude toward breastfeeding among child care providers but a knowledge deficit in terms of the health impacts and proper handling of breast milk. A minority of providers reported that their center’s staff currently receives breastfeeding education, but most providers believed that measures to promote the use of breast milk in their center should target parents rather than the center staff. Conclusion: Child care providers need resources about the benefits of human milk, proper handling of expressed milk, and ways to make centers more breastfeeding friendly. Many providers feel ineffective in supporting breastfeeding and are unaware of the role they may play in mothers’ infant feeding decisions. Though child care providers do not appear to believe they can influence parents’ decisions about breastfeeding, educating and empowering them could play an important role in increasing breastfeeding rates.
Inferno security

This paper describes the mechanisms used by Inferno to secure communications between machines. All security is optional: an application may use it or avoid it. Inferno provides strong mutual authentication message encryption, message digesting, and digital signatures. Authentication and digital signatures are performed using public key cryptography. Public keys are certified by Inferno-based certifying authorities that sign the public keys with their own private key.
Learnability in Hilbert Spaces with Reproducing Kernels

We explore the question of the learnability of classes of functions contained in a Hilbert space which has a reproducing kernel. We show that if the evaluation functionals are uniformly bounded and if the class is norm bounded then it is learnable. We formulate a learning procedure related to the well known support vector machine (SVM), which requires solving a system of linear equations, rather than the quadratic programming needed for the SVM. As a part of our discussion, we estimate the fat-shattering dimension of the unit ball of the dual of a Banach space when considered as a set of functions on the unit ball of the space itself. Our estimate is based on a geometric property of the Banach space called the type.
Virtualized and self-configurable utility communications enabled by software-defined networks

Utility communications are increasingly required to support machine-to-machine (M2M) communications for hundreds to millions of end devices ranging from meters and PMUs to tiny sensors, high-powered sensors (e.g., intelligent electric devices), and electric vehicles. The Software Defined Network (SDN) concept provides inherent features to support in a self-configurable and scalable manner the deployment and management of existing and envisioned utility communication networks that will connect between end devices and application servers, or among end devices. The programmability of SDN technology allows the agile, elastic, and scalable deployment of present and future utility applications with varying requirements on security and time criticality. In this work, we first show that a well-known standard solution (i.e., IEEE 802.1Q [1]), which is popularly employed for virtual networking in industry, is limited to support large-scale utility M2M applications. Next, with some utility application use cases, we demonstrate that using the SDN technology (i.e., OpenFlow [2]), we enable elastically adaptable virtual utility network slices per-application to securely, dynamically, and cost-efficiently meet the utility communication needs. Specifically, we design a SDN-based architectural solution for virtual utility networks that will support self-configurable, secure, and scalable deployment of utility applications that leverage many end devices. Using two SDN-enabled Ethernet switches [3] available in today's market, the feasibility of our idea is discussed.
A Framework for Testing Safety and Effective Computability

This paper presents a methodology for testing a logic program containing function symbols and built-in predicates forsafetyandeffective computability. Safety is the property that the set of answers for a given query is finite. A related issue is whether the evaluation strategy can effectively compute all answers and terminate. We consider these problems under the assumption that queries are evaluated using a fair bottom-up fixpoint computation. We also model the use of function symbols, to construct complex terms such as lists, and arithmetic operators, by considerating Datalog programs with infinite base relations over whichfiniteness constraintsandmonotonicity constraintsare imposed. One of the main results of this paper is a recursive algorithm,check? clique, to test the safety and effective computability of predicates in arbitrarily complex cliques in the predicate connection graph. This algorithm takes certain procedures as parameters, and its applicability can be strengthened by making these procedures more sophisticated. We specify the properties required of these procedures precisely, and present a formal proof of correctness for the algorithmcheck? clique. This work can be seen as providing a framework for testing safety and effective computability of recursive programs, in some ways analogous to thecapture rulesframework of Ullman. A second important contribution is a framework for analyzing programs that are produced by theMagic Setstransformation utilizingcheck? cliqueto analyze recursive cliques. The transformed program unfortunately often has a clique structure that combines several cliques of the original program. Given the complexity of algorithmcheck? clique, it is important to keep cliques as small as possible. We deal with this problem by considering cliques in an intermediate program, called theadorned program, produced by the Magic Sets transformation. The clique structure of the adorned program is similar to that of the original program, and by showing how to analyze the transformed program in terms of the cliques in the adorned program, we avoid the potentially expensive analysis of the cliques in the transformed program.
111Indium labeling of endothelial cells: Potential problems when applied to studies of vascular graft seeding

Abstract111Indium labeling of endothelial cells has been widely used to study the kinetics of endothelial cell seeding of vascular grafts. In the current study two potential areas of inaccuracy of the technique were investigated, namely, the rate of spontaneous loss of111indium from the labeled cells and the degree to which the free111indium attaches to the surface of vascular graft material. It was found that a significant amount of spontaneous leakage of111indium occurred from both human umbilical vein (HUVECs) and omental microvascular (HOTMECs) endothelial cells such that by 4 h only 50.6% of the original tracer remained in the HOTMECs and 72.4% in the HUVECs (p<0.05). With regard to the attachment of free111indium-oxine to polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) or compliant polyurethane (CPU) vascular graft material, there were significant (p<0.01) differences between the two materials treated with a range of surface coatings (fibronectin, collagen, and blood preclot). It is concluded that if the technique is used to quantify endothelial cell attachment in graft-seeding experiments, then separate validations for cell type, experimental and culture conditions, and graft surface studied are required.
Deciding the Vapnik-Červonenkis Dimension in ∑p3-Complete

N. Linialet al.raised the question of how difficult the computation of the Vapnik? ervonenkis dimension of a concept class over a finite universe is. C. Papadimitriou and M. Yannakakis obtained a first answer using matrix representations of concept classes. However, this approach does not capture classes having exponential size, like monomials, which are encountered in learning theory. We choose a more natural representation, which leads us to redefine the VC DIMENSION problem. We establish that VC DIMENSION is? p3-complete, thereby giving a rare natural example of a? p3-complete problem.
Clinical Trials: A Practical Approach

Introduction: The Rationale of Clinical Trials. The Historical Development of Clinical Trials. Organization and Planning. The Justificaton for Randomized Controlled Trials. Methods of Randomization. Blinding and Placebos. Ethical Issues. Crossover Trials. The Size of a Clinical Trial. Monitoring Trial Progress. Forms and Data Management. Protocol Deviations. Basic Principles of Statistical Analysis. Further Aspects of Data Analysis. Publication and Interpretation of Findings. References. Index.