Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Self-Reflective Variational Autoencoder

The Variational Autoencoder (VAE) is a powerful framework for learning probabilistic latent variable generative models. However, typical assumptions on the approximate posterior distribution of the encoder and/or the prior, seriously restrict its capacity for inference and generative modeling. Variational inference based on neural autoregressive models respects the conditional dependencies of the exact posterior, but this flexibility comes at a cost: such models are expensive to train in high-dimensional regimes and can be slow to produce samples. In this work, we introduce an orthogonal solution, which we call self-reflective inference. By redesigning the hierarchical structure of existing VAE architectures, self-reflection ensures that the stochastic flow preserves the factorization of the exact posterior, sequentially updating the latent codes in a recurrent manner consistent with the generative model. We empirically demonstrate the clear advantages of matching the variational posterior to the exact posterior - on binarized MNIST, self-reflective inference achieves state-of-the art performance without resorting to complex, computationally expensive components such as autoregressive layers. Moreover, we design a variational normalizing flow that employs the proposed architecture, yielding predictive benefits compared to its purely generative counterpart. Our proposed modification is quite general and complements the existing literature; self-reflective inference can naturally leverage advances in distribution estimation and generative modeling to improve the capacity of each layer in the hierarchy.
Continual Adaptation for Deep Stereo

Depth estimation from stereo images is carried out with unmatched results by convolutional neural networks trained end-to-end to regress dense disparities. Like for most tasks, this is possible if large amounts of labelled samples are available for training, possibly covering the whole data distribution encountered at deployment time. Being such an assumption systematically unmet in real applications, the capacity of <italic>adapting</italic> to any unseen setting becomes of paramount importance. Purposely, we propose a continual adaptation paradigm for deep stereo networks designed to deal with challenging and ever-changing environments. We design a lightweight and modular architecture, <underline>M</underline>odularly <underline>AD</underline>aptive <underline>Net</underline>work (<italic>MADNet</italic>), and formulate <underline>M</underline>odular <underline>AD</underline>aptation algorithms (<italic>MAD</italic>, <italic>MAD</italic>++) which permit efficient optimization of independent sub-portions of the entire network. In our paradigm, the learning signals needed to continuously adapt models online can be sourced from self-supervision via right-to-left image warping or from traditional stereo algorithms. With both sources, no other data than the input images being gathered at deployment time are needed. Thus, our network architecture and adaptation algorithms realize the first real-time self-adaptive deep stereo system and pave the way for a new paradigm that can facilitate practical deployment of end-to-end architectures for dense disparity regression.
Third-Order Asymptotics of Variable-Length Compression Allowing Errors

This study investigates the fundamental limits of variable-length compression in which prefix-free constraints are not imposed (i.e., one-to-one codes are studied) and non-vanishing error probabilities are permitted. Due in part to a crucial relation between the variable-length and fixed-length compression problems, our analysis requires a careful and refined analysis of the fundamental limits of fixed-length compression in the setting where the error probabilities are allowed to approach either zero or one polynomially in the blocklength. To obtain the refinements, we employ tools from moderate deviations and strong large deviations. Finally, we provide the third-order asymptotics for the problem of variable-length compression with non-vanishing error probabilities. We show that unlike several other information-theoretic problems in which the third-order asymptotics are known, for the problem of interest here, the third-order term depends on the permissible error probability.A full version of this paper with proofs of the theorems and the lemmas herein is accessible at [1].
$S^1$-invariant Laplacian flow

The Laplacian flow is a geometric flow introduced by Robert Bryant as a way for finding torsion free $G_2$-structures. If the flow is $S^1$-invariant then it descends to a flow of $SU(3)$-structures on a $6$-manifold. In this article we derive expressions for these evolution equations. In our search for examples we discover the first inhomogeneous shrinking solitons.
XSleepNet: Multi-View Sequential Model for Automatic Sleep Staging

Automating sleep staging is vital to scale up sleep assessment and diagnosis to serve millions experiencing sleep deprivation and disorders and enable longitudinal sleep monitoring in home environments. Learning from raw polysomnography signals and their derived time-frequency image representations has been prevalent. However, learning from multi-view inputs (e.g., both the raw signals and the time-frequency images) for sleep staging is difficult and not well understood. This work proposes a sequence-to-sequence sleep staging model, XSleepNet,1 that is capable of learning a joint representation from both raw signals and time-frequency images. Since different views may generalize or overfit at different rates, the proposed network is trained such that the learning pace on each view is adapted based on their generalization/overfitting behavior. In simple terms, the learning on a particular view is speeded up when it is generalizing well and slowed down when it is overfitting. View-specific generalization/overfitting measures are computed on-the-fly during the training course and used to derive weights to blend the gradients from different views. As a result, the network is able to retain the representation power of different views in the joint features which represent the underlying distribution better than those learned by each individual view alone. Furthermore, the XSleepNet architecture is principally designed to gain robustness to the amount of training data and to increase the complementarity between the input views. Experimental results on five databases of different sizes show that XSleepNet consistently outperforms the single-view baselines and the multi-view baseline with a simple fusion strategy. Finally, XSleepNet also outperforms prior sleep staging methods and improves previous state-of-the-art results on the experimental databases.
The Drag Instability in a 1D Isothermal C-shock

We investigate whether the drag instability, proposed by Gu et al., occurs in a one-dimensional (1D) C-shock. The 1D background model proposed by Chen & Ostriker for a steady isothermal C-shock is adopted, and a 1D isothermal linear analysis is performed. We confirm the postulation of Gu et al. that the drift velocity between ions and neutrals is sufficiently high within a C-shock to allow for the drag instability. We also study the underlying physics of the decaying modes in the shock and postshock regions. The drag instability is an overstability phenomenon associated with an exponentially growing mode of a propagating wave. We find that the growing wave mode can only propagate downstream within the shock and subsequently decay in the postshock region. The maximum total growth for such an unstable wave before it is damped is estimated in typical environments of star-forming clouds, which is approximately 10–30 times larger than the initial perturbation at the modest shock velocities and can be significantly enhanced several hundred times for a stronger C-shock with a larger width.
Response of some tomato cultivars to sodium chloride stress under in vitro culture condition.

The response of calli of six tomato cultivars (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) to salt stress was investigated under in vitro conditions. Callus relative growth rate (RGR), dry matter percentage (DM), osmotic potential and proline content were evaluated. Significant differences were found among cultivars regarding above traits. ‘PS-10’ had the highest RGR, while ‘Roma’ had the lowest amount of this trait under salt levels. Any increase in salinity levels in the media led to decrease of RGR and in contrast increased DM and osmotic potential in all treatments compared to control. In all cultivars, proline levels increased in response to salinity stress. High callus formation was correlated with low proline content. ‘PS-10’ and ‘Imperial’ had the highest callus formation and the lowest proline content. Significant differences were recorded in regeneration potential of cultivars under salt treatments. ‘PS-10’ possessed the highest and ‘Roma’ had the lowest regeneration rate. It is concluded that the more the salt tolerant genotype the more is the reduction in osmotic potential and proline content. Key words: Tomato, callus, in vitro, sodium chloride stress.
A STUDY ON THE BIOCHEMICAL AND HEMATOLOGICAL PARAMETERS ASSOCIATED WITH PASTEURELLA MULTOCIDA OUTER MEMBRANE PROTEINS IMMUNIZATION IN RABBITS

This study was included extraction and purification of outer membrane proteins (OMP) of Pasteurella multocida by using sepharose  6B as well as chemical analysis of OMP content. Half lethal dose (LD50) was 250 /ml of the purified OMP. The rabbits is considered more susceptible animal to Pasteurella multocidainfection, so, (15) rabbits were injected S/C by 25 /ml. The other (15) rabbits were injected S/C by phosphate buffer saline (PBS) as a control group. 2 doses at 2 weeks intervals. At 15 th and 27 th days immunization the hematological and biochemical parameters were measured and it is found that there is not significant differences in the hematological and biochemical parameters in the OMP group of Immunization comparable to the control group. Although slight increase the level of both hematological and biochemical parameters in the group of Immunization with OMP, but still with normal level of control group.
Participating Life Insurance Contracts with Periodic Premium Payments

We consider participating life insurance products and their benefits to the insured. Our main focus is on the impact of different contribution schemes, i.e. when and how much the insured contributes. This is important since the insured’s benefits depend on the performance of the investment strategy conducted by the product provider. In addition, we consider the interactions of the premium contribution scheme, embedded guarantees, and different management rules accounting of a regime switch in the risk profile of the insurance company. We shed light on two effects on the utility of the insured. The combination of contribution scheme, embedded guarantees and management rule has an impact on the investment risk of the insured. A second main effect is a price effect. Assuming that the guarantees are fairly priced, the guarantee costs also depend on all the above mentioned factors.
DISTRIBUTION OF ELECTRIC FIELD BETWEEN ELECTRODES IN PLASMA JET: COMPUTATIONAL STUDY

Gliding Arc discharges are recently used in many environmental, biomedical and industrial applications. The discharge is generated between two diverging electrodes at atmospheric pressure. In this paper we present the computational study of the influence of I. the geometry shape of electrodes, II. distance of the gap between electrodes and III. the bias on the powered electrode on electric field distribution between the electrodes. We focused our attention especially on the influence of these parameters on the breakdown voltage needed for the discharge ignition. The mathematical model is based on standard equations of electrostatics, the numerical realization and data processing was performed in the program COMSOL Multiphysics. It was found that the geometry shape of electrodes significantly influences the value of the breakdown voltage.
Zeuzerocossus Yakovlev, gen. n., a new genus of Cossidae from south-eastern Asia

Zeuzerocossus Ya kovlev, gen. n. (type species - Cossus cinereus Roepke, 1957) and Zeuzerocossini Yakovlev, tribus n. (type genus Zeuzerocossus Yakovlev, gen. n.) are described, a new combination Zeuzerocossus cinereus (Roepke, 1957), comb. n. is proposed.
M ASTER OF S CIENCE T HESIS

This thesis focuses on data-intensive workﬂows, and addresses the problem of scheduling workﬂow ensembles under cost and deadline constraints in Infrastructure as a Service (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) clouds. The previous research in this area ignores ﬁle transfers between workﬂow tasks, which, as we show, often have a large impact on workﬂow ensemble execution. In this thesis we propose and implement a simulation model for handling ﬁle transfers between tasks, featuring the ability to dynamically calculate bandwidth and supporting a conﬁgurable number of replicas, thus allowing us to simulate various levels of congestion. The resulting model is capable of representing a wide range of storage systems available on clouds: from in-memory caches (such as memcached), to distributed ﬁle systems (such as NFS servers) and cloud storage (such as Amazon Simple Storage Service or Google Cloud Storage). We observe that ﬁle transfers may have a signiﬁcant impact on ensemble execution; for some applications up to 90% of execution time is spent on ﬁle transfers. Next, we propose and evaluate a novel scheduling algorithm that minimizes the number of transfers by taking advantage of data caching and ﬁle locality. We ﬁnd that for data-intensive applications it perform better than other scheduling algorithms. Additionally, we modify the original scheduling algorithms to effectively operate in environments where ﬁle transfers take non-zero time.
The benefits of premedication for small surgical interventions in one-day surgery in children

Material and research methods:Midazolam at a dose of 0.4 mg/kg per os or 0.3 mg/kg intramuscularly 20 minutes before anesthesia was used as a sedative drug for sedation. The necessity of prescribing a sedative drug in premedication was determined individually and was guided by the obtained data of the Kerdo vegetative index. The results of the study: Analysis of the depth of sedation showed that 5 minutes after sedation in 7 children (8.4%), the degree of sedation was at the RO level, and in 67 children (80.7%) at the RI level, in 9 children (10.8%) at R2 level. After 10 minutes, 72.3% of the children began to experience drowsiness, but at the same time they were in contact, performed simple commands, opened their eyes to treatment, which corresponded to the R3 degree of sedation. The remaining 27.7% of the children did not experience drowsiness, while they were calm and contact (sedation degree R2). At the 20th minute of the study, 84.3% of the children reached R3 sedation. And 15.7% of children at the time of separation from their parents corresponded to degree R2.Thus, in the light of the above information, each anesthetist should carefully plan all aspects of the preoperative introduction of each individual child, including premedication means in this plan, if there is a clear need for them. The point of view of some doctors "applying" standard premedication is extremely erroneous, since there are no two identical patients. It is necessary to choose the method of sedation that is optimal and ideal for the child.
The Concept of the Welfare State and Typologies of Welfare Regimes- A Review

The welfare state expresses an institutionalized structure after World War II. Among the studies on the welfare state, the classification-centered ones have a special place. The studies on the classification of the welfare state have improved in the period of institutionalization. The first studies on this subject mainly focused on the level of social spending, the scope of social security systems, and the provision of welfare services. In spite of the precursor works, the generally accepted approach to the classification of welfare states is based on the work carried out by Esping-Andersen in 1990. EspingAndersen updated his views in 1999 with a new study. This study aims to expose the studies on the classification of welfare states. Accordingly, first of all, precursor studies have been explained, and then the modeling of Esping-Andersen has been laid out. In the last part of the study, criticism has been put about the modeling of Esping-Andersen.
Downsizing and Employment Protection Legislation: Evidence from Chilean Manufacturing Firms (1980- 1994)

Employment protection legislation is present worldwide, being more stringent mainly in developing countries. While these laws are positive for short-term job stability, they can hinder enterprises’ ability to optimally adjust when facing negative shocks, which may harm their efficiency and long-term economic growth. This paper analyzes the impact of stringent employment protection legislation on the propensity to downsize, exploiting the heterogeneity of productivity levels of firms within various sectors. Using a parsimonious theoretical model and an empirical application for panel data of manufacturing plants in Chile between 1980 and 1994, the evidence presented in this paper strongly supports the idea that when firing costs are higher, the probability of downsizing will decrease but will do so heterogeneously. The differences arise from sectors’ price growth rates, firm productivity, and the labor wedge.
Improved dP P&O MPPT for Photovoltaic System Using Solar Irradiation Modeling

Maximum power point (MPP) tracking (MPPT) techniques are widely used in photovoltaic (PV) systems to build PV array generate peak power which depends on solar irradiation. In this paper, an improved dP P&O MPPT algorithm is developed based on solar irradiation modeling. This algorithm aims to overcome the confusion in the direction of tracking during rapidly changing solar irradiance using half sine wave modeling of solar irradiation. The proposed algorithm gives fast tracking compared to existing dP P&O method. Operation point of the photovoltaic system is controlled via a boost type DC–DC converter. The complete system is modeled and simulated in the MATLAB using SIMULINK. The proposed MPPT and existing dP P&O MPPT algorithms are simulated and the performance comparison is made. Simulation result shows that the proposed algorithm is faster than the dP P&O algorithm.
Evolving Models of Ovarian Cancer: Defining the Role of PAX8 in Fallopian Tube Tumorigenesis

Ovarian cancer is the most deadly gynecological malignancy in the US. Once thought to be a single disease arising from the ovarian surface epithelium, we now understand that it is in fact a heterogenous disease with origins across the female reproductive tract. Ovarian cancers can be broken down into type I and type II tumors. While type I tumors are typically slow growing and arise from the ovary, type II tumors are highly aggressive, particularly the most common and deadliest subtype, High Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer (HGSOC), which arises from the fallopian tube epithelium. While our understanding of the complexity of ovarian cancer has evolved significantly over the last few decades, ovarian cancer is still primarily modeled by a few historical and robust cell lines which poorly recapitulate the genetics of HGSOC patient tumors. Here we characterize less studied cell lines with high genomic fidelity to HGSOC, KURAMOCHI and OVSAHO. Through in vivo xenograft experiments, we determined that these two cell lines form more diffuse tumors which better represent the HGSOC phenotype. In vitro, these lines are tractable to a variety of standard molecular biology techniques, but only express a subset of common markers of HGSOC, including PAX8 and stabilized TP53, while others were absent. These results indicate that it is important to take both molecular and genetic relevance into consideration when selecting cell lines for laboratory studies. PAX8 is a nuclear transcription factor critical to the development of the female reproductive tract, including the fallopian tube, and is conserved in both the adult fallopian tube and HGSOC. Recent studies have identified PAX8 as a differentially expressed, essential gene to ovarian cancer, making it a promising drug target for HGSOC. Here, we identify a subset of ovarian cancers that exhibit decreased proliferation when PAX8 expression is decreased, and determine that in KURAMOCHI cells this defect
THE INTERNATIONALIZATION AND E-MARKETING ADOPTION OF EMERGING ECONOMY SMEs

Although the last two decades interest in the role of e-marketing for business internationalization has been growing (Venkatesh & Davis, 2000), the literature reveals a lack of evidence regarding the adoption of emarketing to expand the business internationally among SMEs from emerging economies. The purpose of this study is to re-examine the emerging economy (Lithuania) SMEs’ internationalization and their emarketing adoption to facilitate this process. The specific aims were to identify and gain an understanding of the pathways of emerging economies SMEs’ internationalization in the framework of Uppsala internationalization model, and the implementation issues faced by these enterprises when attempting to adopt e-marketing strategy to facilitate the internationalization process.
Numerical Contribution to Airflow Study Through a Generic Merchant Ship Models

The merchant ships are continuously recruited by the world meteorological organization (WMO) as Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS) for the collect of meteorological parameters at the ocean surface. VOS meteorological observation includes many parameters such as the wind speed measured by anemometers. This measurement is biased by the presence of ship and superstructure. Little work was carried out in this field. Between them we find the experimental work at a low speed wind tunnel of Southampton University which studies the airflow distortion over simple models (generic models) of VOS merchant ship. This study presents numerical results of a 3D simulation analyzing airflow effect above the bridge of a generic merchant ship models involved in VOS. For this purpose three-dimensional, stationary and turbulent, numerical simulation has been achieved the flow over the bridge of a tanker and a container ship at 1/ 46 scale using a numerical code and CFX code with turbulence k-ε models. This numerical study allows us to know the position of the line of equality as well as the zone of acceleration and deceleration of the flow. The results obtained numerically by numerical code and CFX code are compared with those obtained experimentally in the wind tunnel of Southampton University. Numerical results are in a good agreement with experimental results and can be used as a reference to find the position of the equality line and to know the error range in of the anemometer velocity reading.
The impact of family-external business succession on digitalization: exploring management buy-ins

Digitalization in small- and medium-sized (SME) family firms and processes of family-external business succession within these firms are under-researched areas. As SME and their future viability are important for many economies around the world, we aim to study the effects of succession processes on those companies’ digitalization activities. Utilizing a unique data set comprising of around 340 pages of transcribed interviews within a multiple case study involving four family firms in the DACH region of Europe, we perform exploratory research of this matter. Our findings indicate that incumbent and new owner-managers focus on efficiency-related digitalization activities during succession processes. More long-term issues such as changes to business models or the exploitation of external opportunities through digitalization are underrated and postponed. Our findings contribute to both digitalization and family firm literature and we provide suggestions for future research in this regard.