Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Saturation of Stellar Winds from Young Suns

We investigate mass losses via stellar winds from sun-like main sequence stars with a wide range of activity levels. We perform forward-type magnetohydrodynamical numerical experiments for Alfven wave-driven stellar winds with a wide range of the input Poynting flux from the photosphere. Increasing the magnetic field strength and the turbulent velocity at the stellar photosphere from the current solar level, the mass loss rate rapidly increases at first owing to the suppression of the reflection of the Alfven waves. The surface materials are lifted up by the magnetic pressure associated with the Alfven waves, and the cool dense chromosphere is intermittently extended to 10 -- 20 % of the stellar radius. The dense atmospheres enhance the radiative losses and eventually most of the input Poynting energy from the stellar surface escapes by the radiation. As a result, there is no more sufficient energy remained for the kinetic energy of the wind; the stellar wind saturates in very active stars, as observed in Wood et al. The saturation level is positively correlated with B_{r,0}f_0, where B_{r,0} and f_0 are the magnetic field strength and the filling factor of open flux tubes at the photosphere. If B_{r,0}f_0 is relatively large >~ 5 G, the mass loss rate could be as high as 1000 times. If such a strong mass loss lasts for ~ 1 billion years, the stellar mass itself is affected, which could be a solution to the faint young sun paradox. We derive a Reimers-type scaling relation that estimates the mass loss rate from the energetics consideration of our simulations. Finally, we derive the evolution of the mass loss rates, \dot{M} t^{-1.23}, of our simulations, combining with an observed time evolution of X-ray flux from sun-like stars, which is shallower than \dot{M} t^{-2.33+/-0.55} in Wood et al.(2005).
Do Current Natural Language Inference Models Truly Understand Sentences? Insights from Simple Examples

Natural language inference (NLI) is a task to in-001 fer the relationship between a premise and a hy-002 pothesis (e.g. entailment, neutral, or contradic-003 tion), and transformer-based models perform 004 well on current NLI datasets such as MNLI 005 and SNLI. Nevertheless, given the complex-006 ity of the task, especially the complexity of 007 the sentences used for model evaluations, it re-008 mains controversial whether these models can 009 truly infer the meaning of sentences or they 010 simply guess the answer via non-humanlike 011 heuristics. Here, we reduce the complexity of 012 the task using two approaches. The first ap-013 proach simplifies the relationship between the 014 premise and hypothesis by making them unre-015 lated. A test set, referred to as Random Pair , 016 is constructed by randomly pairing premises 017 and hypotheses in MNLI/SNLI. Models fine-018 tuned on MNLI/SNLI identify a large propor-019 tion (up to 77.6 % ) of these unrelated statements 020 as being contradictory. Models fine-tuned 021 on SICK, a dataset that included unrelated 022 premise-hypothesis pairs, perform well on Ran-023 dom Pair . The second approach simplifies the 024 task by constraining the premises/hypotheses to 025 be syntactically/semantically simple sentences. 026 A new test set, referred to as Simple Pair , is 027 constructed using simple sentences, such as 028 short SVO sentences, and basic conjunction 029 sentences. We find that models fine-tuned on 030 MNLI/SNLI generally fail to understand these 031 simple sentences, but their performance can 032 be boosted by re-fine-tuning the models using 033 only a few hundreds of samples from SICK. 034 All models tested here, however, fail to un-035 derstand the fundamental compositional bind-036 ing relation between a subject and a predicate
Adaptive Virtual Assistant for Virtual Reality-based Remote Learning

Dr. Richard Zhao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Calgary and the principal investigator on this research. He leads the serious games research group, focusing on games for training and education where he utilizes artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and eye-tracking technologies. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Computing Science from the University of Alberta. Dr. Zhao has served as a program committee member on academic conferences such as the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG), the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE), and the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Technical Symposium.
Complex variable methods in feedback systems analysis and design

Generalized Nyquist and generalized Root-Locus diagrams are algebraic curves derived from the spectral analysis of appropriate matrix-valued functions of a complex variable. Their key properties can be comprehensively analysed in terms of a state-space model of the feedback loop which is being studied Such an analysis is essentially geometrical in nature and is concerned with the way in which certain subspaces, defined via the various operators involved, sit with respect to one another, and with ways of assigning complex frequencies to these subspaces. The current status of work on the' design of feedback systems using these results is briefly discussed, and possible future developments are noted.
Toward a Post-Quantum Zero-Knowledge Verifiable Credential System for Self-Sovereign Identity

The advent of quantum computers brought a large interest in post-quantum cryptography and in the migration to quantum-resistant systems. Protocols for Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) are among the fundamental scenarios touched by this need. The core concept of SSI is to move the control of digital identity from third-party identity providers directly to individuals. This is achieved through Verifiable Credentials (VCs) supporting anonymity and selective disclosure. In turn, the implementation of VCs requires cryptographic signature schemes compatible with a proper Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) framework. This tutorial paper presents the general concepts of a ZKP VCs sys-tem for SSI, highlighting the required building blocks and providing concrete examples that embody these concepts. In detail, we describe two main ZKP VCs schemes based on classical cryptographic assumptions, that is, the signature scheme with efficient protocols of Camenisch and Lysyanskaya, which is based on the strong RSA assumption, and the BBS+ scheme of Boneh, Boyen and Shacham, which is based on the strong Diffie–Hellman assumption. Since these schemes are not quantum-resistant, we select as one of the possible post-quantum alternatives a lattice-based scheme proposed by Jeudy, Roux-Langlois, and Sander, and we try to identify the open problems for achieving VCs suitable for selective disclosure, non-interactive renewal mechanisms, and efficient revocation.
Constraining fundamental physics with the cosmic microwave background

The temperature anisotropies and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation provide a window back to the physics of the early universe. They encode the nature of the initial fluctuations and so can reveal much about the physical mechanism that led to their generation. In this contribution we review what we have learnt so far about early-universe physics from CMB observations, and what we hope to learn with a new generation of high-sensitivity, polarization-capable instruments.
Turbulent transition in a truncated one-dimensional model for shear flow

We present a reduced model for the transition to turbulence in shear flow that is simple enough to admit a thorough numerical investigation, while allowing spatio-temporal dynamics that are substantially more complex than those allowed in previous modal truncations. Our model allows a comparison of the dynamics resulting from initial perturbations that are localized in the spanwise direction with those resulting from sinusoidal perturbations. For spanwise-localized initial conditions, the subcritical transition to a ‘turbulent’ state (i) takes place more abruptly, with a boundary between laminar and turbulent flows that appears to be much less ‘structured’ and (ii) results in a spatio-temporally chaotic regime within which the lifetimes of spatio-temporally complicated transients are longer, and are even more sensitive to initial conditions. The minimum initial energy E0 required for a spanwise-localized initial perturbation to excite a chaotic transient has a power-law scaling with the Reynolds number E0∼Rep with p≈−4.3. The exponent p depends only weakly on the width of the localized perturbation and is lower than that commonly observed in previous low-dimensional models where typically p≈−2. The distributions of lifetimes of chaotic transients at the fixed Reynolds number are found to be consistent with exponential distributions.
SUPPORTING PRACTICE-BASED TEACHER PROFESSIONAL LEARNING AND ASSESSMENT AT SCALE IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

The successful delivery of teacher professional development (TPD) at scale in the Global South faces significant challenges, yet this is critical to improving the quality of classroom teaching and learning, thereby contributing to SDG4. Challenges include access, rigour, dislocation from teachers’ specific sites of practice, the ability to authentically assess such practice, and a stubborn structural incompatibility with digital delivery and support. However, the conditions of the pandemic have accelerated the digitisation of teacher education programmes and highlighted the affordances of teachers’ own mobile devices for professional learning at scale. With a focus on a case study of teachers from over 200 schools in two Eastern states in India we frame digital badges as one example of newly emerging technologies that have affordances compatible with moving TPD into an expanding digital space and supporting the scaling of assessment for, as and of such learning. In India alone it is estimated that over 400 million hours of TPD will be required to meet the aspirations of the 2020 National Education Policy. Such challenges are echoed globally and represent the need for a step-change in thinking and practice around technology-mediated TPD across interconnecting scales and geographies, and in the role of assessment for teacher learning within such provision. Our study concerned three, short online TPD courses that were delivered during the pandemic, each designed to enhance teachers’ competencies and skills in using digital technologies to support their adoption of more constructivist classroom pedagogies. The Teacher participants were awarded a digital badge for each course if they succeeded in achieving a minimum total score across the associated assessment tasks. Unlike many digitally badged courses that only use multiple choice questions to assess learning, we specifically sought to promote change in teachers’ practice – whether in real or virtual classrooms - through a variety of assessment tasks, among these, peer review of teaching plans and artefacts, and guided reflection on the application of their learning. Support was provided by volunteer master trainers and the project team. State government stakeholders were fully involved in the programme and publicly endorsed the badges. Drawing on data from pre-, mid-and post-course surveys and interviews with the teacher participants, this study will examine the relationship between their values, their participation in peer learning before and during the TPD courses, their perceptions of digital badge affordances, and the extent to which they subsequently share their digital badge awards. Few studies have sought to make such connections or capture data about how digital badge earners display and share their achievements, particularly in the Global South. We conclude with a consideration of the significance of our findings in respect of the utilisation of four key affordances of digital badges - scalability, modularity, pedagogic flexibly and shareability - for TPD at scale.
A Zero-Resource Approach to Cross-Lingual Query-Focused Abstractive Summarization

We present a novel approach for cross-001 lingual query-focused abstractive summariza-002 tion (QFAS) that leverages the translate-then-003 summarize paradigm. We approach cross-004 lingual QFAS as a zero-resource problem and 005 introduce a framework to create a synthetic 006 QFAS corpus from a standard summarization 007 corpus using a novel query-generation strat-008 egy. Our model summarizes documents in for-009 eign languages for which translation quality is 010 poor. It learns not only to identify and con-011 dense salient information relevant to a query, 012 but also to appropriately rephrase grammati-013 cal errors and disfluencies that may occur in 014 the noisy translations. Our technique enhances 015 a pre-trained encoder-decoder transformer by 016 introducing query focus to the encoder. We 017 show that our method for creating synthetic 018 QFAS data leads to more robust models that 019 not only achieve state-of-the-art performance 020 on our corpus, but also perform better on out-021 of-distribution data as compared to prior work. 022
’ s repository of research publications and other research outputs Can you do all in one professional label ? Complementarity , substitution , and independence effects in academic life Journal Item

The diffusion of evaluation systems based on research excellence has been confronting scholars with the dilemma of how to combine the different activities and roles characterizing the academic profession. Besides research, other types of knowledge transfer and academic citizenship, i.e., the service activities and roles carried out on behalf of the university within and outside organizational boundaries, are in fact cornerstones of universities’ functioning that allow for their thriving and need to be valued. This study investigates the complementarity, substitution, and independence effects between the various types of knowledge transfer and academic citizenship in a sample of 752 Italian academics working in business schools. We collected data combining different sources including CVs, publication records, and national datasets. Multivariate path analysis was employed to measure covariances between knowledge transfer and academic citizenship. We contribute to the debate on academic citizenship by showing that public and discipline-based service are complementary to knowledge transfer activities, while institutional service is independent from knowledge transfer. Remarkably, journal papers are research outcomes complementary to most academic activities, and the same holds true for dissemination at workshops and conferences. Running counter dominant rhetoric, this study testifies to the likelihood of faculty being “all-round” professionals. We disclose that activities and roles are influenced by academics’ previous pathways and research grants and discuss the need to value academic citizenship in performance measurement systems.
Towards perfect CRYSTALS in Helium

In this work, we present a tool for the automated super optimization of Armv8.1-M Helium assembly on Cortex-M55. It consists of two parts: Firstly, a generic framework SLOTHY – Super (Lazy) Optimization of Tricky Handwritten assemblY – for expressing the super optimization of small pieces of assembly as a constraint satisfaction problem which can be handed to an external solver – concretely, we pick CP-SAT from Google OR-Tools . Secondly, an instantiation HeLight 55 of SLOTHY with the Armv8.1-M architecture and aspects of the Cortex-M55 microarchitecture. We demonstrate the power of SLOTHY and HeLight 55 by using it to optimize two workloads: First, a radix-4 complex Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) in ﬁxed-point arithmetic, fundamental in Digital Signal Processing. Second, the instances of the Number Theoretic Transform (NTT) underlying CRYSTALS-Kyber and CRYSTALS-Dilithium [SAB + 22],[LDK + 22], two recently announced winners of the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography standardization project [NIS16].
Rethinking News Text Classification from a Timeliness Perspective under the Pre-training and Fine-tuning Paradigm

Pre-trained language models (PLMs) have 001 made significant progress in NLP. News text 002 classification is one of the most fundamental 003 tasks in NLP, and various existing works have 004 shown that fine-tuned on PLMs could score up 005 to the accuracy of 98% on the target task. It 006 seems that this task has been well-addressed. 007 However, we discover that news timeliness can 008 cause a massive impact on the news text classifi-009 cation, which drops nearly 20% points from the 010 initial results. In this paper, we define timeli-011 ness issues in news classification and design the 012 experiment to measure the influence. Moreover, 013 we investigate several methods to recognize 014 and replace obsolete vocabularies. However, 015 the results show that it is difficult to eliminate 016 the impact of news timeliness from the words’ 017 perspective. In addition, we propose a set of 018 large-scale, time-sensitive news datasets to fa-019 cilitate the study of this problem. 020
HOLOGRAPHIC-LIKE MODELS AS A FIVE-DIMENSIONAL REWRITING OF LARGE-Nc QCD

The AdS/QCD models are known to be closely related to the QCD sum rules in the large-Nc (called also planar) limit. Rewriting the theory of infinite tower of free stable mesons expected in the large-Nc QCD as a five-dimensional theory, we scrutinize to what extend the bottom-up holographic models may be viewed as an alternative language expressing the phenomenology of planar QCD sum rules. It is found that many features of AdS/QCD models can be thereby obtained without invoking prescriptions from the original AdS/CFT correspondence. Under some assumptions, all possibilities leading to simple Regge trajectories are classified, and it is argued that the most phenomenologically consistent model is the one called "soft wall model" in the holographic approach, with a preference to the positive-sign dilaton background.
Correlated optical/X‐ray long‐term variability in LMXB 4U 1636‐536

We have conducted a 3-month programme of simultaneous optical, soft and hard X-ray monitoring of the LMXB 4U 1636-536/V801 Ara using the SMARTS 1.3-m telescope and archival RXTE/ASM and Swift/XRT data. 4U 1636-536 has been exhibiting a large amplitude, quasi-periodic variability since 2002 when its X-ray flux dramatically declined by roughly an order of magnitude. We confirmed that the anticorrelation between soft (2-12 keV) and hard (>20 keV) X-rays, first investigated by Shih et al., is not an isolated event but a fundamental characteristic of this source's variability properties. However, the variability itself is neither strictly stable nor changing on an even longer characteristic time-scale. We also demonstrate that the optical counterpart varies on the same time-scale, and is correlated with the soft, and not the hard, X-rays. This clearly shows that X-ray reprocessing in LMXB discs is mainly driven by soft X-rays. The X-ray spectra in different epochs of the variability revealed a change of spectral characteristics which resemble the state change of black hole X-ray binaries. All the evidence suggest that 4U 1636-536 is frequently (∼monthly) undergoing X-ray state transitions, a characteristic feature of X-ray novae with their wide range of luminosities associated with outburst events. In its current behavioural mode, this makes 4U 1636-536 an ideal target for investigating the details of state changes in luminous X-ray binaries.
A Case of Common Variable Immunodeficiency with CREBP Gene Mutation without Rubinstein Taybi Syndrome Features

Hypogammaglobulinemias, based on inborn errors of immunity, are primary immunodeficiencies (PIDs) that can also be diagnosed for the first time in adulthood. Common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) is a multifactorial disease often symptomatic due to antibody deficiency. In addition, some PIDs are classified into the category of immunodeficiencies with syndromic features due to their accompanying clinical findings unrelated to immunity. In this article, a patient with CVID who was diagnosed in adulthood and who was revealed to have a mutation specific to Rubinstein–Taybi syndrome and clinical features reminiscent of this syndrome only after molecular tests was presented.
Why, how and when MHD turbulence at low $\mathit{Rm}$ becomes three-dimensional

Abstract Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence at low magnetic Reynolds number is experimentally investigated by studying a liquid metal flow in a cubic domain. We focus on the mechanisms that determine whether the flow is quasi-two-dimensional, three-dimensional or in any intermediate state. To this end, forcing is applied by injecting a DC current $I$ through one wall of the cube only, to drive vortices spinning along the magnetic field. Depending on the intensity of the externally applied magnetic field, these vortices extend part or all of the way through the cube. Driving the flow in this way allows us to precisely control not only the forcing intensity but also its dimensionality. A comparison with the theoretical analysis of this configuration singles out the influences of the walls and of the forcing on the flow dimensionality. Flow dimensionality is characterised in several ways. First, we show that when inertia drives three-dimensionality, the velocity near the wall where current is injected scales as $U_{b}\sim I^{2/3}$ . Second, we show that when the distance $l_{z}$ over which momentum diffuses under the action of the Lorentz force (Sommeria & Moreau, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 118, 1982, pp. 507–518) reaches the channel width $h$ , the velocity near the opposite wall $U_{t}$ follows a similar law with a correction factor $(1-h/l_{z})$ that measures three-dimensionality. When $l_{z}<h$ , by contrast, the opposite wall has less influence on the flow and $U_{t}\sim I^{1/2}$ . The central role played by the ratio $l_{z}/h$ is confirmed by experimentally verifying the scaling $l_{z}\sim N^{1/2}$ put forward by Sommeria & Moreau ( $N$ is the interaction parameter) and, finally, the nature of the three-dimensionality involved is further clarified by distinguishing weak and strong three-dimensionalities previously introduced by Klein & Pothérat (Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 104 (3), 2010, 034502). It is found that both types vanish only asymptotically in the limit $N\rightarrow \infty$ . This provides evidence that because of the no-slip walls, (i) the transition between quasi-two-dimensional and three-dimensional turbulence does not result from a global instability of the flow, unlike in domains with non-dissipative boundaries (Boeck et al. Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 101, 2008, 244501), and (ii) it does not occur simultaneously at all scales.
Spot Volatility Estimation Using the Laplace Transform

A new non-parametric estimator of the instantaneous volatility is defined relying on the link between the Laplace transform of the price process and that of the volatility process for Brownian semimartingale models. The proposed estimation method is a global one, in the spirit of methods based on Fourier series decomposition, with a plus for improving the precision of the volatility estimates near the boundary of the time interval. Consistency and asymptotic normality of the proposed estimator are proved. A simulation study confirms the theoretical results and Monte Carlo evidence of the favorable performance of the proposed estimator in the presence of microstructure noise effects is presented.