Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimizers in Industry My Experiences as an Industrial Research Mathematician

What follows is a personal view but an honest one. I trust it will not annoy too many friends and at least they will recognise my voice. The year was 1989. I had been at the University of Waterloo, except for a postdoctoral fellowship at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem in 1971 and two sabbaticals in France, ever since I joined as a Ph. D. student in 1968. It was fair to say that I was becoming a little restless, in spite of how great the University Waterloo was for me and my research, but it had never occurred to me to work anywhere other than at a university. I had always had reservations about moving to the USA but I had started to feel that my prejudices should be tested and I should find out first-hand their validity or otherwise. In any case I was certainly considering appointments at US universities since it is not easy to leave Waterloo 2 SIAG/OPT Views-and-News for another Canadian university. Then one day, at Oberwolfach, Ellis Johnson asked me if I would consider going to work at the T. J. Watson Research Center. I said I would, I went down for an interview and accepted a position within a year. Some points to consider. Working at T. J. Wat-son is not a typical industrial position. At the time I was recruited, one of my main interests was large-scale nonlinear optimization (the LANCELOT book was nearing completion) and I was anxious to be working on solving problems in which people were extremely interested in the answer. Furthermore, it is really good for ones ego to be asked to apply for a position. The salary I was offered seemed enormous and the working conditions sounded idyllic. Although, as can be expected, most did not turn out exactly as it appeared at the time, I have few regrets concerning the choice I made. Since the most contentious issues are likely to be associated with my reservations about moving to the US let me just say that many of my prejudices were wrong but many of them were also updated to new ones. Suffice it say that after seventeen years I am still here. Moreover, crazy as it may seem to some, where we live is beautiful and both my wife Bar-bara and I adore New York City for many reasons. It turned out that my move to …
Mutational analysis of the AtNUDT7 Nudix hydrolase from Arabidopsis thaliana reveals residues required for protein quaternary structure formation and activity.

Arabidopsis thaliana AtNUDT7, a homodimeric Nudix hydrolase active on ADP-ribose and NADH, exerts negative control on the major signaling complex involved in plant defense activation and programmed cell death. The structural and functional consequences of altering several amino-acid residues of the AtNUDT7 protein have been examined by site-directed mutagenesis, far-UV circular dichroism (CD), attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) and photon correlation (PCS) spectroscopy, biochemical analysis and protein-protein interaction studies. Alanine substitutions of F73 and V168 disallowed dimer formation. Both the F73A- and V168A-mutated proteins displayed no observable enzymatic activity. Alanine substitution of the V69 residue did not significantly alter the enzyme activity and had no influence on dimer arrangement. The non-conserved V26 residue, used as a negative control, did not contribute to the enzyme quaternary structure or activity. Detailed biophysical characterization of the wild-type and mutant proteins indicates that the mutations do not considerably alter the secondary structure of the enzyme but they affect dimer assembly. In addition, mutating residues V69, F73 and V168 disrupted the binding of AtNUDT7 to the regulatory 14.3. 3 protein. These are the first studies of the structure-function relationship of AtNUDT7, a Nudix hydrolase of important regulatory function.
The SCL gene: from case report to critical hematopoietic regulator.

T HIS STORY BEGINS with a seminal case report describing a 16-year-old boy who presented with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). [1][1] He had an elevated white blood cell (WBC) count, thymic enlargement, and leukemic cells with an early T-cell phenotype (CD2 and CD7 positive; CD3, CD4 and CD8
Practical and lightweight domain isolation on Android

In this paper, we introduce a security framework for practical and lightweight domain isolation on Android to mitigate unauthorized data access and communication among applications of different trust levels (e.g., private and corporate). We present the design and implementation of our framework, TrustDroid, which in contrast to existing solutions enables isolation at different layers of the Android software stack: (1) at the middleware layer to prevent inter-domain application communication and data access, (2) at the kernel layer to enforce mandatory access control on the file system and on Inter-Process Communication (IPC) channels, and (3) at the network layer to mediate network traffic. For instance, (3) allows network data to be only read by a particular domain, or enables basic context-based policies such as preventing Internet access by untrusted applications while an employee is connected to the company's network. Our approach accurately addresses the demands of the business world, namely to isolate data and applications of different trust levels in a practical and lightweight way. Moreover, our solution is the first leveraging mandatory access control with TOMOYO Linux on a real Android device (Nexus One). Our evaluation demonstrates that TrustDroid only adds a negligible overhead, and in contrast to contemporary full virtualization, only minimally affects the battery's life-time.
Molecular scatology as a tool to study diet: analysis of prey DNA in scats from captive Steller sea lions

The DNA of prey present in animal scats may provide a valuable source of information for dietary studies. We conducted a captive feeding trial to test whether prey DNA could be reliably detected in scat samples from Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus). Two sea lions were fed a diet of fish (five species) and squid (one species), and DNA was extracted from the soft component of collected scats. Most of the DNA obtained came from the predator, but prey DNA could be amplified using prey‐specific primers. The four prey species fed in consistent daily proportions throughout the trial were detected in more than 90% of the scat DNA extractions. Squid and sockeye salmon, which were fed as a relatively small percentage of the daily diet, were detected as reliably as the more abundant diet items. Prey detection was erratic in scats collected when the daily diet was fed in two meals that differed in prey composition, suggesting that prey DNA is passed in meal specific pulses. Prey items that were removed from the diet following one day of feeding were only detected in scats collected within 48 h of ingestion. Proportions of fish DNA present in eight scat samples (evaluated through the screening of clone libraries) were roughly proportional to the mass of prey items consumed, raising the possibility that DNA quantification methods could provide semi‐quantitative diet composition data. This study should be of broad interest to researchers studying diet since it highlights an approach that can accurately identify prey species and is not dependent on prey hard parts surviving digestion.
Young people empathising with other animals: reflections on an Australian RSPCA Humane Education Program

INTRODUCTION: Empathy is associated with engagement, compassion, social support and emotional sensitivity, and it is a hallmark of good social work practice. Empathy rightfully receives much attention in social work practice, however, interspecies empathy has yet to be included. This article has been written to address this gap. METHODS: Two main research questions guide our conceptual discussion of young people, interspecies empathy and social work: (1) Why is empathy important to social work with young people? (2) What can an Australian RSPCA Humane Education Programme (HEP) teach social workers about the benefits of interspecies empathy for young people? After our literature review, we examine our illustrative example, which is an HEP offered mostly to newly arrived refugee and migrant young people living in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, whose prior experiences of and/or attitudes towards animals may not have been positive. FINDINGS: Social workers are wise to prioritise empathy because extensive research has shown that, across a diverse range of fields, modes of practice in and beyond social work, empathic practitioners are more effective, achieving better outcomes with their clients. From the letters the young people sent to the RSPCA Victoria after completing an HEP, we note their self-reported increases in empathy for animals, including those they had previously feared or shunned. CONCLUSION: There are many potential benefits of recognising, fostering and valuing interspecies empathy through humane education programmes. However, for these to be ethical, care and empathy must be shown towards the wellbeing of the animals involved, not just the human participants.
Adhesion and anisotropic friction enhancements of angled heterogeneous micro-fiber arrays with spherical and spatula tips

Angled polyurethane fiber arrays are modified by adding soft spherical and spatula shaped tips via dipping. These fibers are characterized for adhesion and friction and compared with unmodified fibers and flat material samples. Sphere and spatula tip fiber samples demonstrate increased adhesion, with 10 and 23 times the maximum adhesion of the unmodified fiber sample, respectively. The sphere and spatula tip fiber samples also show increased friction, with 1.6 and 4.7 times the maximum friction of the unmodified fiber sample, respectively. Friction and adhesion are simultaneously observed in a synthetic dry angled fibrillar adhesive sample (spatula tip fiber sample). The direction dependent friction of angled fibers is investigated. The adhesion and friction results reported in this paper suggest that fibers with negligible adhesion can be modified to exhibit both significant adhesion and friction enhancements by the proposed fiber tip modifications.
Dual form back propagation on the EM algorithm

Vladimir N. Vapnik. (1998) pointed out that maxlikelihood functions in EM algorithms are just a special risk function. Based on this opinion, a novel EM algorithm uses a risk function differ with maxlikelihood functions, in stead, a risk formula based on the least square method is used. The gradient descending approach should be used in such kind approaches. Such kind EM algorithms can estimate the parameters of a random model from both labeled and unlabeled samples, and are suitable for semi-supervised learning.
Recognition of complex human activities by using sequential pyramid matching

Human action recognition is a topic of increasing interest in recent years. Most of the work is focused on actions that have simple, periodic structure such as walking, running and hugging, but our everyday life contains very different types of actions with challenging problems. Space-time interest points and the bag of words approach have been shown a good performance on action recognition. For more complex activities, finer representations must be employed. In this article, we present the performance of the space-time interest points and bag of words approach by using sequential histogram pyramid on a challenging dataset. According to the test results, it is shown that in complex activity recognition the proposed approach increases recognition performance.
Sequences with grouped factors

We deene a new class of sequences, sequences with grouped factors, in which all factors of a given length occur consecutively at some position. This class contains periodic sequences, Sturmian sequences, but also sequences with maximal complexity. As a particular case, we obtain a new characteristic property of Sturmian words.
Second Generation High-Temperature Superconducting Wires for Fault Current Limiter Applications

In this paper, we report the results from evaluation on the use of 2nd generation high-temperature superconducting wires, or 2G HTS conductors, as elements for superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL). The unique features of 2G HTS conductors such as high N-values, superior electromechanical performance, large surface area available for cooling, and their availability in long-lengths that could be produced by high-throughput and low-cost manufacturing, may provide advantages for SFCL applications. We tested SuperPower's standard ion-beam-assisted-deposition based 2G HTS conductors under various conditions. First, individual conductors 10-20 cm long with dc critical current (Ic) ranging from 180 amps to 277 amps were tested at prospective fault current up to 3 kA (peak). 2G HTS conductors demonstrated good fault current limiting performance, including first peak limitation. Quench current was in the range of 1.8 to 3 times Ic, and the response time was within 1 ms. Secondly, 3-5 conductors in parallel connections demonstrated uniform current sharing and fast recovery under no-load condition. Finally, an assembly consisted of 12 elements in series connection was tested at high-power condition at KEMA PowerTest. Each element had four 40 cm long conductors with Ic 120 A in parallel connection. With 1080 V supply voltage and 90 kA prospective fault peak current, the fault current was limited to 32 kA at the 1st peak with 3.2 kA in the HTS elements. The response time was less than 1 ms. All these testing results indicate that our 2G HTS conductors are promising for practical SFCL applications.
Multinational banks and the global financial crisis: Weathering the perfect storm?

We use data on the 48 largest multinational banking groups to compare the lending of their 199 foreign subsidiaries during the Great Recession with lending by a benchmark of 202 domestic banks. Contrary to earlier and more contained crises, parent banks were not a significant source of strength to their subsidiaries during 2008–09. When controlling for other bank characteristics, multinational bank subsidiaries had to slow down credit growth almost three times as fast as domestic banks. This was in particular the case for subsidiaries of banking groups that relied more on wholesale funding.
Evaluation of the Military Functional Assessment Program: Inter rater Reliability of Task Scores

Abstract : The Military Functional Assessment Program (MFAP) is a 10-task (based on Basic Soldier Skills) assessment program used to help determine whether a Service member is prepared to return-to-duty. Performance on the tasks is rated by a non-commissioned officer (NCO), occupational therapist, physical therapist, and mental health provider. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability of NCO MFAP ratings using vignettes describing the 10 tasks. Participants were 30 NCOs nave to the MFAP. Results suggest good overall consistency on average yet inspection of individual tasks suggest that the land navigation task yielded the most consistent ratings. Improvement to the instructions provided for rating the MFAP tasks may be appropriate for enhancing consistency.
On dynamics, complementarity and passivity: Electrical networks with ideal diodes

In this paper we study linear passive electrical circuits mixed with ideal diodes and voltage/current sources within the framework of linear complementarity systems. Linear complementarity systems form a subclass of hybrid dynamical systems and as such questions about existence and uniqueness of solution trajectories are non-trivial and will be investigated here. The nature of the behaviour is analyzed and characterizations of the inconsistent states of the network are presented. Also explicit jump rules from these inconsistent states are given in various forms. Finally, these results lead to a generalization of the notion of passivity to linear complementarity systems.
Making robots emotion-sensitive - preliminary experiments and results

It is well known that implicit communication between the communicators plays a significant role in social interactions. It would be immensely useful to have a robotic system that is capable of such implicit communication with the operator and can modify its behavior if required. This paper presents a framework for human-robot interaction in which the operator's physiological signals were analyzed to infer his/her probable anxiety level and robot behavior was adapted as a function of the operator affective state. Peripheral physiological signals were measured through wearable biofeedback sensors and a control architecture inspired by Riley's original information-flow model was developed to implement such human-robot interaction. The target affective state chosen in this work was anxiety. The results from affect-elicitation tasks for human participants showed that it is possible to detect anxiety through physiological sensing in real-time. A robotic experiment was also conducted to demonstrate that the presented control architecture allowed the robot to adapt its behavior based on operator anxiety level.
Combining beamforming with MMSE Alamouti multiuser interference cancellation receiver

The minimum mean square error (MMSE) interference cancellation (IC) technique exploits the algebraic structure of the Alamouti space-time block code (STBC) to suppress one multiuser interferer with only one additional antenna in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication scenario. However, the performance is suboptimal. A receiver structure that concatenates optimum receiver beamforming with MMSE IC technique is proposed to improve the bit-error-rate (BER) performance. Prior to the MMSE IC, two beamformers suppress cochannel interference (CCI) independently while preserving orthogonality of the MIMO channel To adopt beamforming, the MMSE IC process is modified. The array gain provided by the two beamformers brings the BER performance improvement of the original scheme.
Techniques of Facial Synthesis: A Comprehensive Literature Review

As an important area of computer graphics, realistic image synthesis provides principles and techniques for creating realistic imagery through computations based upon models of real-world objects and behaviors. Facial expression is one of the primary communication means of the human. The ultimate goal of realistic image synthesis is to achieve perfect realism -the synthesized images are visually indistinguishable from their real-world counterparts. This area has widespread applications in industry and scientific research including 3D design, omputer animation, scientific visualization and virtual reality Facial expression synthesis has many useful applications in practice. How to synthesize facial expression images robustly and simply is still a challenging problem. This paper surveys the state of the art in this area.
Computing stable contact interface for customized surgical jigs

This paper presents a framework to compute stable contact interfaces for automatically designing customized jigs used in bone surgeries. Given the surface model of a bone represented by polygonal meshes, we find out a small region on the surface to be used as the interface of a customized jig so that it can be stably fixed on the bone under a directional clamping force. The variation of directions on the clamping force is allowed in our formulation. Moreover, the surface region serves as the interface of stable contact must also be disassemblable so that the jig and the bone can be separated after removing the clamping force. The analysis of stable contact is formulated on a Gaussian map by the common regions of half-spaces according to the motion restrictions. A flooding algorithm is proposed to determine those disassemblable and stable contact interfaces on the surface of a bone, where the contact surfaces are later converted into the solid model of a jig to be fabricated by additive manufacturing. Experimental tests are taken to verify the stable contact between a bone and the jig generated by our approach.
SELF-RECO FIGURABLE EMBEDDED SYSTEMS O SPARTA -3

This paper describes the architecture and design flow of a self-reconfigurable embedded system, mapped on a Spartan-3 low-cost FPGA, where a fixed area is reserved to accommodate a reconfigurable coprocessor. Spartan-3 lowcost family lacks of the ICAP (Internal Configuration Access Port) and design tools for self-reconfiguration. The paper also deals with other issues, such as OPB isolation, bit-stream retrieve from external SRAM, bit-stream processing, and clock routing.
A Dynamically Adapting Network Programming Framework

High speed networking is a demanding task that has traditionally been performed in dedicated, purpose built hardware or specialized network processors. These platforms sacrifice ? exibility or programmability in favor of performance. Recently, there has been much interest in using multi-core general purpose processors, which have the advantages of being easily programmable and upgradeable. We present the design of a high performance packet processing framework that divorces application programming from packet scheduling and mapping
The Effects of Network Groups on Minority Employee Turnover Intentions

Companies in the United States are concerned with retaining minority employees to maintain or increase the diversity of their workforce. Here we assess the value of one approach companies have used to retain minority employees: "network" groups. Based on data obtained from a large company with extensive network groups, this study compares the turnover intentions of minority employees who have joined one of the company's network groups to those who have not joined one of the company's network groups. The data show that employee network groups can be useful in helping companies retain managerial-level minority employees. Extensive recommendations are provided to help organizations maximize the effectiveness of network groups.
NetCodec: Community Detection from Individual Activities

The real social network and associated communities are often hidden under the declared friend or group lists in social networks. We usually observe the manifestation of these hidden networks and communities in the form of recurrent and time-stamped individuals’ activities in the social network. Inferring the underlying network and finding coherent communities are therefore two key challenges in social networks analysis. In this paper, we address the following question: Could we simultaneously detect community structure and network infectivity among individuals from their activities? Based on the fact that the two characteristics intertwine and that knowing one will help better revealing the other, we propose a multidimensional Hawkes process that can address them simultaneously. To this end, we parametrize the network infectivity in terms of individuals’ participation in communities and the popularity of each individual. We show that this modeling approach has many benefits, both conceptually and experimentally. We utilize Bayesian variational inference to design NetCodec, an efficient inference algorithm which is verified with both synthetic and real world data sets. The experiments show that NetCodec can discover the underlying network infectivity and community structure more accurately than baseline method.