Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient large-scale graph processing: optimisations for storage, performance and evolving graphs

Graph processing systems are used in a wide variety of fields, ranging from biology to social networks. Algorithms to mine graphs incur many random accesses, and the sparse nature of the graphs of interest, exacerbates this. As DRAM sustains high bandwidth in the presence of random accesses, traditionally, it was the chosen medium to store and process graphs from. Many in-memory systems were presented at top tier conferences, and every system compared to the previous in algorithm execution time. What is not clearly evaluated are the overheads of pre-processing the input in order to support particular optimisations. More critical, for a systems designer, it is very hard to reason about what are the fundamental techniques that lead to performance gains. We implement the proposed optimisations of state-of-the-art systems within one system to answer this question. We found that the pre-processing cost often dominates the cost of algorithm execution, calling into question the benefits of proposed algorithmic optimisations that rely on extensive pre-processing. The design of a system has to be carefully guided by the characteristics of the algorithms, graphs and hardware. Furthermore, in-memory systems are often limited by the amount of available memory on a single machine. When the graph cannot fit in the available DRAM, many systems scale up to secondary storage on one machine, or in the cloud. As storage is cheaper than memory, they trade off performance for more space, at a lower cost. Emerging non-volatile technologies such as 3D XPoint, offer a new opportunity for bridging this performance gap. Designing a system that fully utilises these storage devices is not straightforward. Traditional I/O optimisations, designed for SSDs, underutilise the device, and systems end up being CPU bound on fast storage. By removing the dedicated I/O layers, and combining pre-processing approaches for in-memory and out-of-core systems, we are able to switch graph representations to benefit a particular algorithm. This improves the end-to-end execution time up to 2×. However, in the presence of updates to the graph structure, the data structures used by static algorithms need to be re-created on every update, and the algorithm executed from scratch. The high latency of this process is not acceptable for critical applications such as fraud detection. We address this problem by developing two systems to compute on evolving graphs, using an update friendly graph representation. Each system targets a different group of applications: graph analytics and graph pattern mining (GPM). For graph analytics we trade sub-millisecond latencies for consistency. For GPM, we use re-computation and backtracking to handle millions of updates per second, outperforming state of the art by up to 5×.
Social action learning: applicability to comrades in adversity in Nigeria

ABSTRACT The paper considers the learning of former abductees in Nigeria who enrolled on the New Foundation School University Preparatory (NFSUP) programme at the American University of Nigeria (AUN). The research question is: Can action learning enable a holistic evaluation of the student learning experiences of former terrorist abductees on a university preparatory programme at the AUN? The methodology employed is based on the praxeology of action learning, combined with grounded theory. Literature relating to abduction, stigmatisation and exclusion are considered along with coverage of the Boko Haram abduction of Chibok school girls in Nigeria. Findings show action learning enables student engagement, promotes confidence, encourages social and emotional learning and provides a forum for feedback from NFSUP students. This paper could also be relevant for preparatory and transformational courses in a wider community that includes refugees, internally displaced persons, child soldiers, teenage victims of trafficking and sexual grooming. Action learning probably enables a more holistic evaluation of student learning than Course Experience Questionnaires. A hybrid of both approaches should be considered by educational institutions as an assessment tool.
Multi-Feature Discrete Collaborative Filtering for Fast Cold-start Recommendation

Hashing is an effective technique to address the large-scale recommendation problem, due to its high computation and storage efficiency on calculating the user preferences on items. However, existing hashing-based recommendation methods still suffer from two important problems: 1) Their recommendation process mainly relies on the user-item interactions and single specific content feature. When the interaction history or the content feature is unavailable (the cold-start problem), their performance will be seriously deteriorated. 2) Existing methods learn the hash codes with relaxed optimization or adopt discrete coordinate descent to directly solve binary hash codes, which results in significant quantization loss or consumes considerable computation time. In this paper, we propose a fast cold-start recommendation method, called Multi-Feature Discrete Collaborative Filtering (MFDCF), to solve these problems. Specifically, a low-rank self-weighted multi-feature fusion module is designed to adaptively project the multiple content features into binary yet informative hash codes by fully exploiting their complementarity. Additionally, we develop a fast discrete optimization algorithm to directly compute the binary hash codes with simple operations. Experiments on two public recommendation datasets demonstrate that MFDCF outperforms the state-of-the-arts on various aspects.
Toward Image-to-Tactile Cross-Modal Perception for Visually Impaired People

It is still a great challenge for the visually impaired people to perceive their surroundings from a global perspective, which makes it difficult for them to interact with unfamiliar environments. The reason is that these conventional assisting devices only address the obstacle avoidance problem. They do not provide visually impaired people with a global perception of the surrounding environment. In this article, a new generative adversarial network (GAN) model is developed to effectively transform the ground images into the tactile signal, which can be displayed by an off-the-shelf vibration device. The algorithm module and the hardware are integrated into a portable device, which provides visually impaired people with effective surrounding perception capability. In addition, a visual-tactile cross-modal data set is constructed to train the proposed deep-learning architecture. Experimental results show that the proposed system can help visually impaired people sense the ground and bring a better traveling experience for them. Note to Practitioners—This article presents a portable device that provides tactile recognition assistance for visually impaired people. Such a technology can be extensively used in tactile mouse and white cane. The developed technology can be extensively used for various industrial applications, such as surrounding monitoring and manipulation. The proposed work demonstrates the promising ability of artificial intelligence in healthcare applications. The generated tactile signals are expected to be used in many human-centered systems, and we believe that our contribution is an important step toward the development of a more comprehensive assisting technology for visually impaired people.
Prevalence of Salmonella enterica in slaughtered pigs in Serbia: Serotyping, PFGE-genotyping and antimicrobial resistance.

INTRODUCTION The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of Salmonella along the slaughter line and to identify possible critical control points in one slaughterhouse facility located in the city of Belgrade. METHODOLOGY In total, 700 samples were tested: two swabs from both sides of carcass were taken from each of 100 pigs. In this way, 200 pig skin swab samples were taken after stunning, 200 after processing and 200 after chilling. Additional 100 samples of ileal contents were also taken from the same pigs to obtain a collection of 270 isolates. All samples were analyzed using standard culture methods and serotyping. PFGE was performed for 27 isolates. Determination of antimicrobial resistance was performed by E-test. RESULTS In total, 47 (23.5%) swab samples were positive for the presence of Salmonella after stunning. After processing, Salmonella was isolated in two swab samples (1%), whereas all samples which were collected after chilling were negative for Salmonella. The sampling of ileal contents was positive for five Salmonella isolates (5%). The most frequently isolated serotypes were S. Derby (90.74%), S. Infantis (5.56%) and S. Typhimurium (3.7%). All tested isolates were resistant to tetracycline. Resistance was recorded to nalidixic acid (23.3%), ciprofloxacin (20%), ampicillin (10%) and chloramphenicol (14.4%), as well. The PFGE results indicated that isolates had a high genetic similarity. CONCLUSIONS The investigation has confirmed that bacteriological examinations of carcass swabs, as well as ileal content, could be used to assess the carriage of salmonellae in pigs at the time of slaughter.
Responsiveness of Chinese Urogenital Distress Inventory and Incontinence Impact Questionnaire short form in women undergoing pelvic floor exercise

Study design, materials and methods Women who were diagnosed urodynamic stress incontinence (USI) alone and referred to received pelvic floor exercise training by Continence Advisor participated in this study. They were all assessed by Chinese UDI-6 and IIQ-7at baseline. Thereafter, they took an educational class on how to perform pelvic floor exercise and followed by one to two consultations with the Continence Advisor. At the last visit, they completed the UDI-6 and IIQ-7 again. Responsiveness of Chinese UDI-6 and IIQ-7 were evaluated by effect sizes, standardized response mean, paired samples t-test or Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. Effect size (ES) is equal to the mean change in scores divided by the standard deviation (SD) of the baseline score. Standardized response mean (SRM) is equal to the mean change in scores divided by the SD of the change in scores (2). For both ES and SRM, value of 0.2 is considered “small” effect, 0.5 for “moderate” effect; and the significance level was set at P <0.05.
Técnicas robustas para el control automático de sistemas robóticos móviles

This work seeks to mitigate the effects of constraints on mobile robotic systems. To this end, auxiliary control loops and robust tuning techniques are proposed. The former are proposed to mitigate the effects of constraints on the input and output of the systems through the modification of the motion parameter in path following applications. Then, PID controllers are considered as a structural constraint, given its wide use in robotics particularly at low control level. A robust tuning methodology considering this constraint is proposed which achieves good performance levels even when facing disturbances. Finally, to deal with robustness in presence of robots nonlinearity constraints, an analysis and tuning tool for sliding mode controllers is proposed. The particularity of this tuning method, based on global optimization and interval techniques, is that it allows generating tuning maps of the parameter regions where the desired performance criterion is fulfilled. All the proposed strategies are put into practice, through real experimentation or in validated simulators, over the AUV Ciscrea available at ENSTA Bretagne.
A whole-brain connectivity map of mouse insular cortex

The insular cortex (IC) plays key roles in emotional and regulatory brain functions and is affected across psychiatric diseases. However, the brain-wide connections of the mouse IC have not been comprehensively mapped. Here we traced the whole-brain inputs and outputs of the mouse IC across its rostro-caudal extent. We employed cell-type specific monosynaptic rabies virus tracings to characterize afferent connections onto either excitatory or inhibitory IC neurons, and adeno-associated viral tracings to label excitatory efferent axons. While the connectivity between the IC and other cortical regions was highly reciprocal, the IC connectivity with subcortical structures was often unidirectional, revealing prominent top-down and bottom-up pathways. The posterior and medial IC exhibited resembling connectivity patterns, while the anterior IC connectivity was distinct, suggesting two major functional compartments. Our results provide insights into the anatomical architecture of the mouse IC and thus a structural basis to guide investigations into its complex functions.
Correlational study on thermal comfort and outdoor activities

This research has investigated several correlation patterns between spatial behaviour and outdoor thermal comfort for urban spaces. An eight-hour field work of behavioural snapshots has been carried out at Market square, Cambridge, on a sunny day of May. The universal thermal climatic index (UTCI) was acquired from microclimate simulation in ladybug. The thermal-comfort zones were coupled with four featured behaviours: sitting, standing, strolling and walking. The results have shown a tendency toward occupying shady spaces in general. The canvas awnings have proved the correlation between comfort and behaviour. More interestingly, less comfortable areas appear to be acceptable for more than half of the observed groups with a 4°C increase in UTCI.
Patient safety: a phenomenological investigation of a research group

Aim: to reveal the typical ideal of members of a research group in nursing regarding patient safety. Method: this is a descriptive study, using a qualitative approach that follows, as a theoretical reference, the comprehensive approach of the Social Phenomenology. Data collection took place in March 2015, using the focal group technique. Nine members of a research group from a Public University in North Eastern Brazil participated. Data were analyzed from Schutz's comprehensive approach. Result: the characterization of the members of the research group is discussed from the reasons-to consolidate patient safety; the reasons-why patient safety is not yet consolidated and actions in the world and in everyday life in search of security. Conclusion: the members of the research group point out typical actions to consolidate patient safety resulting from multi-professional teamwork and effective patient participation.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF MICROFINANCE TO THE RESILIENCE STRATEGIES OF SMALLHOLDER TEA FARMERS IN BURUNDI

Microfinance services are of undeniable importance in the development of agriculture and in improving living standards in rural areas. However, their accessibility in developing countries is problematic. The objective of this article is to assess the contribution of microfinance to improve the living conditions of the population in rural areas of Burundi. An exploratory survey was conducted among 120 smallholder tea farmers in 2018 in two zones (Ijenda and Teza). These smallholder tea farmers are between 30 and 86 years old with a basic level of education. The results of the survey showed that the loans made it possible to carry out small projects and met some urgent needs. However, the level of indebtedness was low due to lack of collateral guarantee and the interest rate was relatively high. In addition, the information collected in Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) revealed a lack of support services within MFIs to enable optimal allocation of credits. To compensate for financial shortfalls, smallholder tea farmers are developing mechanisms for saving in kind and tontine systems with multiple socio-economic roles built up. Credit beneficiaries in MFIs are increasingly losing interest in the MFIs credit systems in favour of tontines. In Ijenda zone, only 37.5% want to renew the credits against 41.4% in Teza zone.
Preparing Doctoral Students to Succeed in Counselor Education Programs

Although many doctoral students in counselor education (CE) programs successfully complete their programs and obtain a doctoral degree, some students drop out for a variety of reasons (Protivnak & Foss, 2009). Given the negative consequences that accompany doctoral student attrition for non-completers and their university (Willis & Carmichael, 2011), scholars have begun to explore students’ experiences in CE doctoral programs (Hoskins & Goldberg, 2005; Protivnak & Foss, 2009). Despite the growing body of literature on students’ program experiences in CE doctoral programs, in general, little emphasis has been placed on how programs prepare students for success. In particular, to date, the literature related to how CE-sponsored programming orients students for doctoral training in CE is largely unknown. Such knowledge has the potential to shed light on student attrition and retention and further professional development issues in students. As such, this study aimed to fill this void by exploring aspects of CE doctoral student orientations and students’ perceptions of the degree to which these orientations met their needs.
Modulating Wine Pleasantness Throughout Wine-Yeast Co-Inoculation or Sequential Inoculation

Wine sensory experience includes flavor, aroma, color, and (for some) even acoustic traits, which impact consumer acceptance. The quality of the wine can be negatively impacted by the presence of off-flavors and aromas, or dubious colors, or sediments present in the bottle or glass, after pouring (coloring matter that precipitates or calcium bitartrate crystals). Flavor profiles of wines are the result of a vast number of variations in vineyard and winery production, including grape selection, winemaker’s knowledge and technique, and tools used to produce wines with a specific flavor. Wine color, besides being provided by the grape varieties, can also be manipulated during the winemaking. One of the most important “tools” for modulating flavor and color in wines is the choice of the yeasts. During alcoholic fermentation, the wine yeasts extract and metabolize compounds from the grape must by modifying grape-derived molecules, producing flavor-active compounds, and promoting the formation of stable pigments by the production and release of fermentative metabolites that affect the formation of vitisin A and B type pyranoanthocyanins. This review covers the role of Saccharomyces and non-Saccharomyces yeasts, as well as lactic acid bacteria, on the perceived flavor and color of wines and the choice that winemakers can make by choosing to perform co-inoculation or sequential inoculation, a choice that will help them to achieve the best performance in enhancing these wine sensory qualities, avoiding spoilage and the production of defective flavor or color compounds.
GENERATING INTENTION OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS TO USE SMARTPHONE IN LEARNING

: This study aims to determine attributes in the model of Perceived Characteristics of Innovating Theory (PCIT) which can arouse students’ intention to use smartphones in learning at elementary school. This research uses quantitative methods, the questionnaire is used as an instrument to obtain data from all respondents and is made using a Likert scale in the form of a survey that must be answered by respondents. Respondents selected in this study were 225 students from seven state primary schools spread across seven provinces in Indonesia consisting of class 4, class 5 and class 6. Multiple regression analysis was used to measure the effect of independent variables on the dependent variables. The results of this study indicate that the relative adventage, visibility, and voluntariness attributes can significantly evoke the intention of elementary school students to use smartphones in learning. Meanwhile, the attributes of compatibility, trialability, ease of use, result demonstrability, and image were not significant in arousing the intention of elementary school students to use smartphones in learning. The results of the study are very useful for schools to make students want to use smartphones as a learning aid.
Temperature Activates Contact Aging in Silica Nanocontacts

Matthias Vorholzer, J. G. Vilhena, Ruben Perez, Enrico Gnecco, Dirk Dietzel, and André Schirmeisen Institute of Applied Physics, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, 35392 Giessen, Germany Department of Physics, University of Basel, Klingelbergstrasse 82, 4056 Basel, Switzerland Departamento de Física Teórica de la Materia Condensada, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, E-28049 Madrid, Spain Condensed Matter Physics Center (IFIMAC), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, E-28049 Madrid, Spain Otto Schott Institute of Materials Research, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, 07742 Jena, Germany Center for Materials Research, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, 35392 Giessen, Germany
Path properties of levy processes

This thesis can be split into two main components, the �first of which looks at the fractal dimension, specifically, box-counting dimension, of sets related to subordinators (non-decreasing L�evy processes). It was recently shown in [111] that lim�! 0 U(�)N(t; �) = t almost surely, where N(t; �) is the minimal number of boxes of size at most � needed to cover a subordinator's range up to time t, and U(�) is the subordinator's renewal function. The main result in this section is a central limit theorem (CLT) for N(t; �), complementing and refining work in [111]. Box-counting dimension is defined in terms of N(t; �), but for subordinators we prove that it can also be defined using a new process obtained by shortening the original subordinator's jumps of size greater than �. This new process can be manipulated with remarkable ease in comparison to N(t; �), and allows better understanding of the box-counting dimension of a subordinator's range in terms of its L�evy measure, improving upon [111, Corollary 1]. We prove corresponding CLT and almost sure convergence results for the new process. The second main component of this thesis studies Markov processes conditioned so that their local time must grow slower than a prescribed function. Building upon recent work on Brownian motion with constrained local time in [8] and [78], we study whether or not the conditioned process is transient or recurrent, working with a broad class of Markov processes. In order to understand the local time, it is equivalent to study the inverse local time, which is itself a subordinator. The problem at hand is effectively equivalent to determining the distribution of a subordinator (the inverse local time) conditioned to remain above a given function. In conditioning a subordinator to remain above a curve of the form g(t); t � 0, the process is restricted to a time-dependent region, in contrast to previous works in which a process is conditioned to remain in a fixed region (e.g. cones in [43] and [60]). This means that we study boundary crossing probabilities for a family of curves, and must obtain uniform asymptotics for such a family. The main result in this section is a necessary and su�fficient condition for transience or recurrence of the conditioned Markov process. We will explicitly determine the distribution of the inverse local time for the conditioned process, and in the transient case, we explicitly determine the law of the conditioned Markov process. In the recurrent case, we characterise the entropic repulsion envelope via necessary and suffi�cient conditions.