Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Non-Sequential Theory of Distributed Systems

These lecture notes cover basic automata-theoretic concepts and logical formalisms for the modeling and verification of concurrent and distributed systems. Many of these concepts naturally extend the classical automata and logics over words, which provide a framework for modeling sequential systems. A distributed system, on the other hand, combines several (finite or recursive) processes, and will therefore be modeled as a collection of (finite or pushdown, respectively) automata. A crucial parameter of a distributed system is the kind of interaction that is allowed between processes. In this lecture, we focus on the message-passing paradigm. In general, communication in a distributed system creates complex dependencies between events, which are hidden when using a sequential, operational semantics. The approach taken here is based on a faithful preservation of the dependencies of concurrent events. That is, an execution of a system is modeled as a partial order, or graph, rather than a sequence of events.
σCDM coupled to radiation: Dark energy and Universe acceleration

Recently, the Chiral Cosmological Model (CCM) coupled to cold dark matter (CDM) has been investigated as σCDM model to study the observed accelerated expansion of the Universe. Dark sector fields (as Dark Energy content) coupled to cosmic dust were considered as the source of Einstein gravity in Friedmann–Robertson–Walker (FRW) cosmology. Such model had a beginning at the matter-dominated era. The purposes of our present investigation are two-fold: To extend “life” of the σCDM for earlier times to radiation-dominated era and to take into account variation of the exponential potential V = V0exp −λ φ MP + V0exp −λ χ MP via variation of the interaction parameter λ. We use Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) procedure to investigate possible values of initial conditions constrained by the measured amount of the dark matter, dark energy and radiation component today. Our analysis includes dark energy contribution to critical density, the ratio of the kinetic and potential energies, deceleration parameter, effective equation of state (EoS) and evolution of DE EoS with variation of coupling constant λ. A comparison with the ΛCDM model was performed. A new feature of the model is the existence of some values of potential coupling constant, leading to a σCDM solution without transition into accelerated expansion epoch.
Constraints in Random Effects Age-Period-Cohort Models

Random effects (RE) models have been widely used to study the contextual effects of structures such as neighborhoods or schools. The RE approach has recently been applied to age-period-cohort (APC) models that are unidentified because the predictors are exactly linearly dependent. However, research has not fully explained how the RE specification identifies these otherwise unidentified APC models. We address this challenge by first making explicit that RE-APC models have greater—not less—rank deficiency than the traditional fixed-effects model, followed by two empirical examples. We then provide intuition and a mathematical proof to explain that for APC models with one RE, treating one effect as an RE is equivalent to constraining the estimates of that effect’s linear component and the random intercept to be zero. For APC models with two REs, the effective constraints implied by the model depend on the true (i.e., in the data-generating mechanism) nonlinear components of the effects that are modeled as REs, so that the estimated linear components of the REs are determined by the true nonlinear components of those effects. In conclusion, RE-APC models impose arbitrary although highly obscure constraints and thus do not differ qualitatively from other constrained APC estimators.
OBTAINING INVARIANT ESTIMATORS FOR MULTIPLE RELATIVE RATES FROM THEIR GIVEN PAIRWISE ESTIMATORS

This article is concerned with the estimation of relative rates of population characteristics of multiple populations when the estimators of the relative rates have been given from the relevant two populations. We generalize the invarince of relative rates estimators and the projection method introduced in previous articles, and propose a class of estimators obtained from the generalized pro jection. It is shown that the estimators are invariant. The consistency and the asymptotic normality of the estimators are proved.
General theory of sending-or-not-sending twin-field quantum key distribution

State Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Physics, Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, People’s Republic of China 2 Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China Hefei, Anhui 230026, China Data Communication Science and Technology Research Institute, Beijing 100191, China 4 Jinan Institute of Quantum technology, SAICT, Jinan 250101, Peoples Republic of China Department of Physics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, People’s Republic of China
JOINT TIME-SERIES AND CROSS-SECTION LIMIT THEORY UNDER MIXINGALE ASSUMPTIONS

In this paper, we complement joint time-series and cross-section convergence results derived in a companion paper Hahn, Kuersteiner, and Mazzocco (2016, Central Limit Theory for Combined Cross-Section and Time Series) by allowing for serial correlation in the time-series sample. The implications of our analysis are limiting distributions that have a well-known form of long-run variances for the time-series limit. We obtain these results at the cost of imposing strict stationarity for the time-series model and conditional independence between the time-series and cross-section samples. Our results can be applied to estimators that combine time-series and cross-section data in the presence of aggregate uncertainty in models with rationally forward-looking agents.
Integral representation of field variables for the finite element solution of viscous flow problems

The kinematics aspects of compressible and incompressible viscous flow problems are recasted into an integral representation for the velocity vector. For the incompressible flow problem, the kinetics aspect is similarly recasted into an integral representation. The result is a system of integral equations ideally suited for the finite element method. The integral representations are shown to permit the confinement of the computation field to the region of nonnegligible vorticity and dilatation which, for the incompressible flow, is identified with the viscous region. This drastic reduction in computation field results in a superior solution speed which is further improved by the use of a flowfield segmentation technique. The new approach is further shown to remove the difficulties associated with previous methods in specifying the far field and extraneous boundary conditions.
Collective flavor oscillations of supernova neutrinos and r-process nucleosynthesis

Neutrino-neutrino interactions inside core-collapse supernovae may give rise to collective flavor oscillations resulting in swap between flavors. These oscillations depend on the initial energy spectra, and relative fluxes or relative luminosities of the neutrinos. It has been observed that departure from energy equipartition among different flavors can give rise to one or more sharp spectral swap over energy, termed as splits. We study the occurrence of splits in the neutrino and antineutrino spectra, varying the initial relative fluxes for different models of initial energy spectrum, in both normal and inverted hierarchy. These initial relative flux variations give rise to several possible split patterns whereas variation over different models of energy spectra give similar results. We explore the effect of these spectral splits on the electron fraction, Ye, that governs r-process nucleosynthesis inside supernovae. Since spectral splits modify the electron neutrino and antineutrino spectra in the region where r-process is postulated to happen, and since the pattern of spectral splits depends on the initial conditions of the spectra and the neutrino mass hierarchy, we show that the condition Ye < 0.5 required for successful r-process nucleosynthesis will lead to constraints on the initial spectral conditions, for a given neutrino mass hierarchy.
Development and validation of the Alcoholic Beverage Identification Deep Learning Algorithm version 2 for quantifying alcohol exposure in electronic images

Abstract Background Seeing alcohol in media has been demonstrated to increase alcohol craving, impulsive decision‐making, and hazardous drinking. Due to the exponential growth of (social) media use it is important to develop algorithms to quantify alcohol exposure efficiently in electronic images. In this article, we describe the development of an improved version of the Alcoholic Beverage Identification Deep Learning Algorithm (ABIDLA), called ABIDLA2. Methods ABIDLA2 was trained on 191,286 images downloaded from Google Image Search results (based on search terms) and Bing Image Search results. In Task‐1, ABIDLA2 identified images as containing one of eight beverage categories (beer/cider cup, beer/cider bottle, beer/cider can, wine, champagne, cocktails, whiskey/cognac/brandy, other images). In Task‐2, ABIDLA2 made a binary classification between images containing an “alcoholic beverage” or “other”. An ablation study was performed to determine which techniques improved algorithm performance. Results ABIDLA2 was most accurate in identifying Whiskey/Cognac/Brandy (88.1%) followed by Beer/Cider Can (80.5%), Beer/Cider Bottle (78.3%), and Wine (77.8%). Its overall accuracy was 77.0% (Task‐1) and 87.7% (Task‐2). Even the identification of the least accurate beverage category (Champagne, 64.5%) was more than five times higher than random chance (12.5% = 1/8 categories). The implementation of balanced data sampler to address class skewness and the use of self‐training to make use of a large, secondary, weakly labeled dataset particularly improved overall algorithm performance. Conclusion With extended capabilities and a higher accuracy, ABIDLA2 outperforms its predecessor and enables the screening of any kind of electronic media rapidly to estimate the quantity of alcohol exposure. Quantifying alcohol exposure automatically through algorithms like ABIDLA2 is important because viewing images of alcoholic beverages in media tends to increase alcohol consumption and related harms.
Increasing trend in enterococcal bacteraemia and vancomycin resistance in a tertiary care hospital in Croatia, 2017–2021

Abstract Background The epidemiology of enterococcal bacteraemia has changed worldwide and vancomycin-resistant enterococci increasingly cause healthcare-associated infections) with limited treatment options. Studies show heterogeneity among countries, regions and individual hospitals. Methods We retrospectively analysed enterococcal bacteraemia with Enterococcus faecalis and E. faecium at the largest hospital in Croatia, University Hospital Centre Zagreb from January 2017 to December 2021. Results A total of 432 cases of enterococcal bacteraemia were identified with 256 (59.3%) due to E. faecalis and 176 (40.7%) to E. faecium. Enterococcal bacteraemia occurred more frequently in men (n = 270; 62.5%) and the median age of all patients was 62 years (IQR: 0–92). We found statistically significant increase in the incidence trend of bacteraemic episodes with an annual percent change of 20.9% (95% confidence interval 14.3 to 27.8; p = .002) predominantly due to an increase of E. faecalis bacteraemia. The majority of patients (362/432; 83.8%) had healthcare-associated infections and 38.0% (165/432) of patients were in the intensive care unit. The proportion of vancomycin-resistant enterococcal bacteraemia increased from 12.7% (n = 8/63) in 2017 to 25.7% (n = 29/113) in 2021, statistically significant increasing trend (p = .0455), mainly due to an increased proportion of vancomycin-resistant E. faecium (p = .0169). Conclusions This is the first study describing the trends in enterococcal bacteraemia and vancomycin-resistance in enterococci in Croatia. We found a rising trend in enterococcal bacteraemia and in the proportion of vancomycin resistance and identified the most vulnerable patient groups, notably intensive care unit patients.
Retiring Unprepared in Abu Dhabi? Predicting Emirati Employees’ Retirement Age and Self-Activation

ABSTRACT The topic of retirement is rarely explored in the context of the Middle Eastern and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. This study drew on data from a large-scale survey of retirees in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a universal welfare state characterized by the persistence of the traditional male-breadwinner model and gender roles, to analyze the determinants of retirement timing and post-retirement work. Multi-level regressions were performed to explore the effects of individual, family, institutional, and social-economic factors. The study revealed that Emirati females tended to retire earlier than men to fulfill their domestic duties and informal caregiving roles, rather than to retire together with their spouse. Additionally, early retirement incentives offered by Abu Dhabi pension systems appeared to attract employees into early retirement. On the other hand, securing more financial resources and reduced sense of belonging in society were among the most significant predictors of post-retirement job searching motivations among Emirati retirees.
Association between dietary patterns and depression: an umbrella review of meta-analyses of observational studies and intervention trials.

CONTEXT Depression is the most common causes of disease burden worldwide (GBD 2017 Disease and Injury Incidence and Prevalence Collaborators. Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 354 diseases and injuries for 195 countries and territories, 1990-2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. Lancet. 2018;392:1789-1858). OBJECTIVE An umbrella review has been performed to assess the strength and validity of the available observational and trial evidence for the association between a variety of dietary patterns and depression. DATA SOURCES MEDLINE/PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, EMBASE, PsycINFO, and Cochrane Database were searched. DATA EXTRACTION The Joanna Briggs Institute Umbrella Review Methodology was used. DATA ANALYSIS The review included 19 articles, covering a relatively wide range of dietary patterns: healthy dietary patterns (n = 8), Mediterranean diet (MedDiet) (n = 6), Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII) (n = 5), Western diet (n = 4), Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) (n = 2), vegetarian diets (n = 4), and other dietary interventions (n = 2). The methodological quality of the included meta-analyses was generally low or critically low. The strength of the evidence was generally weak, although convincing or suggestive evidence was found for an inverse relationship between MedDiet/DII and depression. Higher adherence to the MedDiet and lower DII score were significantly associated with lower risk of depression. CONCLUSION Considering the generally high heterogeneity and low quality of the available evidence, further studies adopting more coherent and uniform methodologies are needed. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION PROSPERO registration no. CRD42020223376.
C-MIL: Continuation Multiple Instance Learning for Weakly Supervised Object Detection

Weakly supervised object detection (WSOD) is a challenging task when provided with image category supervision but required to simultaneously learn object locations and object detectors. Many WSOD approaches adopt multiple instance learning (MIL) and have non-convex loss functions which are prone to get stuck into local minima (falsely localize object parts) while missing full object extent during training. In this paper, we introduce a continuation optimization method into MIL and thereby creating continuation multiple instance learning (C-MIL), with the intention of alleviating the non-convexity problem in a systematic way. We partition instances into spatially related and class related subsets, and approximate the original loss function with a series of smoothed loss functions defined within the subsets. Optimizing smoothed loss functions prevents the training procedure falling prematurely into local minima and facilitates the discovery of Stable Semantic Extremal Regions (SSERs) which indicate full object extent. On the PASCAL VOC 2007 and 2012 datasets, C-MIL improves the state-of-the-art of weakly supervised object detection and weakly supervised object localization with large margins.
Unveiling the complete genome sequence of Alicyclobacillus acidoterrestris DSM 3922T, a taint-producing strain

Abstract Several species from the Alicyclobacillus genus have received much attention from the food and beverages industries. Their presence has been co-related with spoilage events of acidic food matrices, namely fruit juices and other fruit-based products, the majority attributed to Alicyclobacillus acidoterrestris. In this work, a combination of short and long reads enabled the assembly of the complete genome of A. acidoterrestris DSM 3922T, perfecting the draft genome already available (AURB00000000), and revealing the presence of one chromosome (4,222,202 bp; GC content 52.3%) as well as one plasmid (124,737 bp; GC content 46.6%). From the 4,288 genes identified, 4,004 sequences were attributed to coding sequences with proteins, with more than 80% being functionally annotated. This allowed the identification of metabolic pathways and networks and the interpretation of high-level functions with significant reliability. Furthermore, the additional genes of interest related to spore germination, off-flavor production, namely the vdc cluster, and CRISPR arrays, were identified. More importantly, this is the first complete and closed genome sequence for a taint-producing Alicyclobacillus species and thus represents a valuable reference for further comparative and functional genomic studies.
Interplay between new physics in one-loop Higgs couplings and the top-quark Yukawa coupling

After the discovery of a 126 GeV state at the LHC it is imperative to establish whether this particle really is the Higgs boson of the standard model. The early measurements have not yet pinpointed any of the Higgs couplings to fermions, the Yukawa couplings of the standard model. In this paper we study the values of the top-quark-Higgs coupling, ght¯, that are still allowed by the one-loop couplings of the Higgs to two gluons or two photons. We first assume that both the gluon fusion production of the Higgs and its decay into two photons proceed through loops with standard model particles only, albeit with an arbitrary top-Higgs coupling. We find that the current Higgs
Prefrontal Cortical to Mediodorsal Thalamus Projection Neurons Regulate Posterror Adaptive Control of Behavior

Abstract Adaptive control is the online adjustment of behavior to guide and optimize responses after errors or conflict. The neural circuits involved in monitoring and adapting behavioral performance following error are poorly understood. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays a critical role in this form of control. However, these brain areas are densely connected with many other regions, and it is unknown which projections are critical for adaptive behavior. Here, we tested the involvement of four distinct dorsal and ventral prefrontal cortical projections to striatal and thalamic target areas in adaptive control. We re-analyzed data from published experiments, using trial-by-trial analyses of behavior in an operant task for attention and impulsivity. We find that male rats slow their responses and perform worse following errors. Moreover, by combining retrograde labeling and chemogenetic silencing, we find that dorsomedial prefrontal pyramidal neurons that project to the lateral nucleus of the mediodorsal thalamus (MDL) are involved in posterror performance and timing of responses, specifically with unpredictable delays until stimulus presentation. Together, these data show that dorsal medial PFC (mPFC) projection neurons targeting the lateral MDT regulate adaptive control to flexibly optimize behavioral responses in goal-directed behavior.
Microwave-assisted transport via localized states in degenerately doped Si single electron transistors

Resonant microwave-assisted and dc transport are investigated in degenerately doped silicon single electron transistors. A model based on hopping via localized impurity states is developed and first used to explain both the dc temperature dependence and the ac response. In particular, the non-monotonic power dependence of the resonant current under irradiation is proved to be consistent with spatial Rabi oscillations between these localized states.
90 GHz continuum observations of Messier 66

Radio emission at around 90 GHz from star-forming galaxies is expected to be strongly dominated by the free–free component due to ionizing radiation from massive, short-lived, stars. We present high surface-brightness sensitivity observations at 90 GHz of the nearby star-forming galaxy Messier 66 with resolution of about 10 arcsec (corresponding to a physical scale of about 500 pc) and analyse these observations in combination with archival lower frequency radio and mid-infrared measurements. We detect five regions of emission, four of which are well fitted by the models we adopt. For these four regions, we find that the free–free component indeed dominates the emission at 90 GHz, making up 76–90 per cent of the luminosity. However, the data are also consistent with all of the emission being due to free–free. The estimates of free–free luminosities agree, within measurement and decomposition errors, with star formation rates derived from lower radio frequencies and mid-infrared observations. In our analysis we consider both power-law and curved spectra for the synchrotron component but do not find evidence to support the curved model in preference to the power law.
Ratiometric thermometry using single Er3+-doped CaWO4 phosphors

Single doped CaWO4:Er3+ phosphors were synthesized and studied for application of optical thermal sensing within a wide range of 98–773 K. Ratiometric strategy utilizing two luminescence intensity ratios, one between host and Er3+ band (LIR1) and second between different Er3+ transitions (LIR2), results in self-referencing temperature readouts. The presence of two temperature-dependent parameters could improve thermometric characteristics and broaden the working temperature range compared to a usual single-parameter thermometer. Thermometric performances of prepared samples were evaluated in terms of thermal sensitivities, temperature resolution and repeatability. The highest sensitivity of 2.09% K−1@300 K was found for LIR1, whereas LIR2 provided more accurate thermal sensing with a temperature resolution of 0.06–0.1 K. Effect of Er3+ doping concentration on sensing properties were studied. The presented findings indicate that CaWO4:Er3+ phosphors are perspective in dual-mode thermal sensing with high sensitivity and sub-degree resolution.