Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neural evidence for age differences in representational quality and strategic retrieval processes

Mounting behavioural evidence suggests that declines in representational quality and impaired strategic retrieval processes contribute to age-related episodic memory decline. The present study sought to identify neural evidence for age-related change in these factors by measuring neural differentiation during encoding of paired associates, and changes in regional BOLD activity, functional connectivity, and cortical reinstatement during retrieval conditions that placed low (intact pairs) and high (recombined pairs) demands on strategic retrieval processes. The results revealed age-related declines in the differentiation of stimulus representations during encoding and cortical reinstatement during retrieval, though a relationship between these metrics was observed only during conditions of low strategic demand (hits). Both older and younger adults preferentially engaged hippocampus and angular gyrus during hits, but only younger adults exhibited increased recruitment of, and hippocampal connectivity with, lateral prefrontal regions during correct rejections, consistent with greater age-related impairments in engaging the retrieval control mechanisms necessary to support goal-directed retrieval. Collectively, these data provide further insights into the neural mechanisms underlying age-related decline in episodic memory.
Nonvolatile Reconfigurable Phase‐Change Metadevices for Beam Steering in the Near Infrared

The development of flat, compact beam‐steering devices with no bulky moving parts is opening up a new route to a variety of exciting applications, such as LIDAR scanning systems for autonomous vehicles, robotics and sensing, free‐space, and even surface wave optical signal coupling. In this paper, the design, fabrication and characterization of innovative, nonvolatile, and reconfigurable beam‐steering metadevices enabled by a combination of optical metasurfaces and chalcogenide phase‐change materials is reported. The metadevices reflect an incident optical beam in a mirror‐like fashion when the phase‐change layer is in the crystalline state, but reflect anomalously at predesigned angles when the phase‐change layer is switched into its amorphous state. Experimental angle‐resolved spectrometry measurements verify that fabricated devices perform as designed, with high efficiencies, up to 40%, when operating at 1550 nm. Laser‐induced crystallization and reamorphization experiments confirm reversible switching of the device. It is believed that reconfigurable phase‐change‐based beam‐steering and beam‐shaping metadevices, such as those reported here, can offer real applications advantages, such as high efficiency, compactness, fast switching times and, due to the nonvolatile nature of chalcogenide phase‐change materials, low power consumption.
Hypervisor-Based Active Data Protection for Integrity and Confidentiality of Dynamically Allocated Memory in Windows Kernel

One of the main issues in the OS security is providing trusted code execution in an untrusted environment. During executing, kernel-mode drivers dynamically allocate memory to store and process their data: Windows core kernel structures, users' private information, and sensitive data of third-party drivers. All this data can be tampered with by kernel-mode malware. Attacks on Windows-based computers can cause not just hiding a malware driver, process privilege escalation, and stealing private data but also failures of industrial CNC machines. Windows built-in security and existing approaches do not provide the integrity and confidentiality of the allocated memory of third-party drivers. The proposed hypervisor-based system (AllMemPro) protects allocated data from being modified or stolen. AllMemPro prevents access to even 1 byte of allocated data, adapts for newly allocated memory in real time, and protects the driver without its source code. AllMemPro works well on newest Windows 10 1709 x64.
BUPT_PRIS at TAC KBP 2015

In this paper, we describe our system frameworks and detailed processing for TAC KBP 2015 trask. We participate in 3 tasks: Cold start slot filling track, Event Nugget Detection track and Event Argument Extraction track. We mainly utilize end-to-end neural network system to extract required information in above tasks, such as convolutional and recurrent neural network, which have been verified to be effective in Natural Language processing. Meanwhile, pattern matching and some conventional machine learning methods are also employed as auxiliary approach to further enhance system performance.
Fluctuating radiocarbon offsets observed in the southern Levant and implications for archaeological chronology debates

Significance We observe a substantive and fluctuating offset in measured radiocarbon ages between plant material growing in the southern Levant versus the standard Northern Hemisphere radiocarbon calibration dataset derived from trees growing in central and northern Europe and North America. This likely relates to differences in growing seasons with a climate imprint. This finding is significant for, and affects, any radiocarbon application in the southern Levant region and especially for high-resolution archaeological dating—the focus of much recent work and scholarly debate, especially surrounding the timeframe of the earlier Iron Age (earlier Biblical period). Our findings change the basis of this debate; our data point to lower (more recent) ages by variously a few years to several decades. Considerable work has gone into developing high-precision radiocarbon (14C) chronologies for the southern Levant region during the Late Bronze to Iron Age/early Biblical periods (∼1200–600 BC), but there has been little consideration whether the current standard Northern Hemisphere 14C calibration curve (IntCal13) is appropriate for this region. We measured 14C ages of calendar-dated tree rings from AD 1610 to 1940 from southern Jordan to investigate contemporary 14C levels and to compare these with IntCal13. Our data reveal an average offset of ∼19 14C years, but, more interestingly, this offset seems to vary in importance through time. While relatively small, such an offset has substantial relevance to high-resolution 14C chronologies for the southern Levant, both archaeological and paleoenvironmental. For example, reconsidering two published studies, we find differences, on average, of 60% between the 95.4% probability ranges determined from IntCal13 versus those approximately allowing for the observed offset pattern. Such differences affect, and even potentially undermine, several current archaeological and historical positions and controversies.
A GENERAL REGRESSION NEURAL NETWORK FOR MODELING THE BEHAVIOR OF PM 10 CONCENTRATION LEVEL IN SANTA MARTA , COLOMBIA

The presence of particulate matter in the air is a risk for human health, especially, when we are exposed to constant sources for a long time. In addition, this pollution factor causes infrastructure damages to the built environment, and damages to nature. Since these damages are permanent, some studies analyze the particulate material distribution over cities and estimate the Total Suspended Particle (TSP), which is a measure of the concentration level of particulate matter in a sampled area. The results are used to predict the behavior of particulate matter concentration, and, in this way, to implement contingency plan and prevent future effects. We present a methodology based on ANN (Artificial Neural Network) model to predict the particulate matter concentration. Initially, the method applies a stage of data preprocessing to smooth the time series, eliminates outliers, corrects missing data, and standardizes and normalizes the data. Then, the method trains a multi-layer perceptron model with a backpropagation algorithm. Finally, we estimate some error and accuracy measures to validate the predictions. The proposed ANN model obtained an accuracy between 85 to 95% in the experiments carried out in this work.
Deep Dungeons and Dragons: Learning Character-Action Interactions from Role-Playing Game Transcripts

An essential aspect to understanding narratives is to grasp the interaction between characters in a story and the actions they take. We examine whether computational models can capture this interaction, when both character attributes and actions are expressed as complex natural language descriptions. We propose role-playing games as a testbed for this problem, and introduce a large corpus of game transcripts collected from online discussion forums. Using neural language models which combine character and action descriptions from these stories, we show that we can learn the latent ties. Action sequences are better predicted when the character performing the action is also taken into account, and vice versa for character attributes.
Recommendation using Multimedia Content Features View project Project Video Recommendation using Multimedia Content Features View project

This paper investigates the use of automatically 1 extracted visual features of videos in the context of rec2 ommender systems and brings some novel contributions in 3 the domain of video recommendations. We propose a new 4 content-based recommender system that encompasses a tech5 nique to automatically analyze video contents and to extract 6 a set of representative stylistic features (lighting, color, and 7 motion) grounded on existing approaches of Applied Media 8 Theory. The evaluation of the proposed recommendations, 9 assessed w.r. t. relevance metrics (e.g., recall) and com10 pared with existing content-based recommender systems that 11 exploit explicit features such as movie genre, shows that our 12 technique leads to more accurate recommendations. Our pro13 posed technique achieves better results not only when visual 14 features are extracted from full-length videos, but also when 15 the feature extraction technique operates on movie trailers, 16 pinpointing that our approach is effective also when full17 length videos are not available or when there are performance 18 requirements. Our recommender can be used in combination 19 with more traditional content-based recommendation tech20 niques that exploit explicit content features associated to 21 B Yashar Deldjoo yashar.deldjoo@polimi.it Mehdi Elahi mehdi.elahi@polimi.it Paolo Cremonesi paolo.cremonesi@polimi.it Franca Garzotto franca.garzotto@polimi.it Pietro Piazzolla pietro.piazzolla@polimi.it Massimo Quadrana massimo.quadrana@polimi.it 1 Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy video files, to improve the accuracy of recommendations. Our 22 recommender can also be used alone, to address the problem 23 originated from video files that have no meta-data, a typical 24 situation of popular movie-sharing websites (e.g., YouTube) 25 where every day hundred millions of hours of videos are 26 uploaded by users and may contain no associated informa27 tion. As they lack explicit content, these items cannot be 28 considered for recommendation purposes by conventional 29 content-based techniques even when they could be relevant 30 for the user. 31
Bayesian Approach for Two-Phase Degradation Data Based on Change-Point Wiener Process With Measurement Errors

Degradation test is an effective method in assessing product reliability when measurements of degradation leading to failure can be observed. The accuracy of reliability inference in degradation analysis highly depends on the fitted model to the observed degradation data. Sometimes, observed degradation paths of the products exhibit multiphase pattern over the testing period. In this paper, we propose a change-point Wiener process with measurement errors (CPWPME) to fit two-phase degradation paths of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). We assume the unit-specific parameters of the CPWPME model by using hierarchical Bayesian method. Based upon the proposed approach, the failure-time distribution and the remaining useful life distribution along with mean time to failure and mean residual life function are derived in closed form. A simulation study shows the utility of the proposed CPWPME model and the validity of the hierarchical Bayesian approach for the degradation data possessing two-phase degradation characteristics. In the analysis of OLED degradation data, the hierarchical Bayesian CPWPME model provides higher modeling flexibility and prediction power for future testing units than existing three degradation models.
Taming irregular applications via advanced dynamic parallelism on GPUs

On recent GPU architectures, dynamic parallelism, which enables the launching of kernels from the GPU without CPU involvement, provides a way to improve the performance of irregular applications by generating child kernels dynamically to reduce workload imbalance and improve GPU utilization. However, in practice, dynamic parallelism does not improve performance due to high kernel launch overhead and low child kernel occupancy. Consequently, most existing studies focus on mitigating the kernel launch overhead. As the kernel launch overhead has decreased due to algorithmic redesigns and hardware architectural innovations, the organization of subtasks to child kernels becomes a new performance bottleneck. We present an in-depth characterization of existing software approaches for dynamic parallelism optimizations on the latest GPUs. We observe that current approaches of subtask aggregation, which use the "one-size-fits-all" method by treating all subtasks equally, can under-utilize resources and degrade overall performance, as different subtasks require various configurations for optimal performance. To address this problem, we leverage statistical and machine-learning techniques and propose a performance modeling and task scheduling tool that can (1) analyze the performance characteristics of subtasks to identify the critical performance factors, (2) predict the performance of new subtasks, and (3) generate the optimal aggregation strategy for new subtasks. Experimental results show that our approach with the optimal subtask aggregation strategy can achieve up to a 1.8-fold speedup over the existing task aggregation approach for dynamic parallelism.
Zunehmende Konfliktregulierung durch Arbeitsgerichte? Eine ökonomische Analyse der Häufigkeit von Kündigungsschutzprozessen

Der vorliegende Beitrag argumentiert, das die regionale Arbeitsmarktsituation (Zugange in Arbeitslosigkeit und Zugange an freien Stellen) die Entscheidung von Arbeitnehmern, eine Kundigungsschutzklage einzureichen, deutlich beeinflust. Regressionsanalysen mit amtlichen Daten fur die westlichen Bundeslander im Zeitraum 1964-1996 zeigen in Abweichung von fruheren Befunden (Falke et al. 1981), das die Haufigkeit von Kundigungsschutzprozessen deutlich und signifikant mit Unterschieden in der regionalen Arbeitsmarktsituation und mit deren zeitlichen Veranderungen erklart werden kann. Die Modellschatzungen zeigen auserdem, das das autonome Niveau der relativen Klagehaufigkeit, das nicht auf die Arbeitsmarktsituation zuruckgefuhrt werden kann, im Beobachtungszeitraum gestiegen ist. Denkbare Ursachen dieser Klagenflut werden abschliesend diskutiert.
Australia's National Health Programs: An Ontological Mapping

Australia has a large number of health program initiatives whose comprehensive assessment will help refine and redefine priorities by highlighting areas of emphasis, under-emphasis, and non-emphasis. The objectives of our research are to: (a) systematically map all the programs onto an ontological framework, and (b) systemically analyse their relative emphases at different levels of granularity. We mapped all the health program initiatives onto an ontology with five dimensions, namely: (a) Policy-scope, (b) Policy-focus, (c) Outcomes, (d) Type of care, and (e) Population served. Each dimension is expanded into a taxonomy of its constituent elements. Each combination of elements from the five dimensions is a possible policy initiative component. There are 30,030 possible components encapsulated in the ontology. It includes, for example: (a) National financial policies on accessibility of preventive care for family, and (b) Local-urban regulatory policies on cost of palliative care for individual-aged. Four of the authors mapped all of Australia’s health programs and initiatives on to the ontology. Visualizations of the data are used to highlight the relative emphases in the program initiatives. The dominant emphasis of the program initiatives is: [National] [educational, personnel-physician, information] policies on [accessibility, quality] of [preventive, wellness] care for the [community]. However, although (a) information is emphasized technology is not; and (b) accessibility and quality are emphasized cost, satisfaction, and quality are not. The ontology and the results of the mapping can help systematically reassess and redirect the relative emphases of the programs and initiatives from a systemic perspective.
QUALITY OF FRIENDSHIP RELATIONSHIPS AND DEVELOPMENTAL TASKS IN ADOLESCENCE

This longitudinal study is aimed at investigating whether friend support and conflicts with friends in adolescence have direct and/or moderation effects on some developmental tasks: a) personal tasks like the acquisition of autonomy in the organization of leisure time; b) social-institutional tasks, in terms of school success; c) relational tasks, in terms of constructing relationships with the other gender (dating). The sample consisted of 622 adolescents of both genders, aged 14 to 20 years, attending different types of high-schools in the northwest of Italy. The findings showed that there was a direct positive effect of support by friends on all the abovementioned developmental tasks. Conflict with friends is negatively related to school success and positively related to dating only in the youngest group. Furthermore, support by friends is able to moderate the effect of conflict with peers, helping adolescents to face their developmental tasks.
5G and wireless body area networks

5G wireless is the next step in the evolution of mobile communications with the aim being to provide connectivity for any kind of device and any kind of application. Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) constitute just one component of connected healthcare utilising small intelligent physiological sensors either on or implanted in the human body. This contribution examines the 5G technologies that will make a significant contribution to providing secure healthcare-orientated WBANs with improved energy efficiency, interference mitigation and wireless power transfer capability.
Guiding Generation for Abstractive Text Summarization Based on Key Information Guide Network

Neural network models, based on the attentional encoder-decoder model, have good capability in abstractive text summarization. However, these models are hard to be controlled in the process of generation, which leads to a lack of key information. We propose a guiding generation model that combines the extractive method and the abstractive method. Firstly, we obtain keywords from the text by a extractive model. Then, we introduce a Key Information Guide Network (KIGN), which encodes the keywords to the key information representation, to guide the process of generation. In addition, we use a prediction-guide mechanism, which can obtain the long-term value for future decoding, to further guide the summary generation. We evaluate our model on the CNN/Daily Mail dataset. The experimental results show that our model leads to significant improvements.
Failure toRecoverMajor EventsofGeneFlux inReal Biological Data Due to Method Misapplication

Inprokaryotes, known mechanismsof lateral gene transfer (transformation, transduction, conjugation, and gene transfer agents) generate new combinations of genes among chromosomes during evolution. In eukaryotes, whose host lineage is descended from archaea, lateral gene transfer from organelles to the nucleus occurs at endosymbiotic events. Recent genome analyses studyinggenedistributions have uncoveredevidence for sporadic, discontinuous eventsofgene transfer frombacteria toarchaea duringevolution.Other studies haveused traditional modelsdesigned to investigategene family sizeevolution (Count) to support claims that gene transfer to archaea was continuous during evolution, rather than involving occasional periodic mass gene influx events. Here, we show that the methodology used in analyses favoring continuous gene transfers to archaea was misapplied in other studies and does not recover known events of single simultaneous origin for many genes followed by differential loss in real data:plastidgenomes.Using the samesoftwareand the samesettings, wereanalyzedpresence/absencepatterndata for proteins encoded in plastid genomes and for eukaryotic protein families acquired from plastids. Contrary to expectations under a plastid origin model, we found that the methodology employed inferred that gene acquisitions occurred uniformly across the plant tree. Sometimes as many as nine different acquisitions by plastid DNA were inferred for the same protein family. That is, the methodology that recovered gradual and continuous lateral gene transfer among lineages for archaea obtains the same result for plastids, even though it is known that massive gains followed by gradual differential loss is the true evolutionary process that generated plastid gene distribution data. Our findings caution against the use of models designed to study gene family size evolution for investigatinggene transferprocesses, especiallywhentransfers involvingmore thanonegenepereventarepossible.
Experimental Simulation of an Airborne Movement: Applicability of the Body Segment Parameter Estimation Methods

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to investigate the effect of the method of body segment parameter (BSP) estimation on the accuracy of the experimental simulation of a complex airborne movement; and (b) to assess the applicability of selected BSP estimation methods in the experimental simulation. It was hypothesized that different BSP estimation methods would provide different simulation results. A sensitivity analysis was performed to identify the BSP items and segments responsible for the inter-method differences in the simulation accuracy. The applicability of the estimation methods was assessed based on the simulation results and the number of anthropometric parameters required. Ten BSP estimation methods classified into 3 groups (4 cadaver-based, 4 gamma mass scanning-based, and 2 geometric) were employed in a series of experimental simulations based on 9 double-somersault-with-full-twist H-bar dismounts performed by 3 male college gymnasts. The simulated body orientation angles were compar.