Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ESCAPES: evacuation simulation with children, authorities, parents, emotions, and social comparison

In creating an evacuation simulation for training and planning, realistic agents that reproduce known phenomenon are required. Evacuation simulation in the airport domain requires additional features beyond most simulations, including the unique behaviors of first-time visitors who have incomplete knowledge of the area and families that do not necessarily adhere to often-assumed pedestrian behaviors. Evacuation simulations not customized for the airport domain do not incorporate the factors important to it, leading to inaccuracies when applied to it. In this paper, we describe ESCAPES, a multiagent evacuation simulation tool that incorporates four key features: (i) different agent types; (ii) emotional interactions; (iii) informational interactions; (iv) behavioral interactions. Our simulator reproduces phenomena observed in existing studies on evacuation scenarios and the features we incorporate substantially impact escape time. We use ESCAPES to model the International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and receive high praise from security officials.
Class-Based Attribute Weighting for Time Series Classification

In this paper, we present two novel class-based weighting methods for the Euclidean nearest neighbor algorithm and compare them with global weighting methods considering empirical results on a widely accepted time series classification benchmark dataset. Our methods provide higher accuracy than every global weighting in nearly half of the cases and they have better overall performance. We conclude that class-based weighting has great potential for improving time series classification accuracy and it might be extended to use with other distance functions than the Euclidean distance.
Singularities in motion and displacement functions for a 7 degree-of-freedom manipulator

The authors propose a method for the determination of singularities in motion and displacement functions for a seven degree-of-freedom manipulator. The manipulator is considered, hereby, as a set of six degree-of-freedom manipulators. It is proven that two types of singularities in motion can occur at link positions that are independent and dependent with respect to the trajectory to be executed. The relations between the structure of singularity equations and displacement equations are discussed. The derivation of displacement equations for a manipulator with singularities of the second type is based on the idea of modeling of a manipulator by two open kinematic chains and invariants that may be found for these chains. The inverse kinematic equations and the equations of singularities in motion have been derived using a symbolic computer program which can handle manipulators of general structure (with five, six, and seven degrees-of-freedom). This program is written in the Symbolic Computation Language REDUCE.
Do larger pollinators have higher pollination eﬃciency for a generalist plant Hibiscus mutabilis?

Many insect species provide pollination services for ﬂowering plants. However, the pollination eﬃciency of various pollinator species varies greatly due to diﬀerences in body size, foraging behavior, and visitation rate. Here, we investigated a generalist plant Hibiscus mutabilis, and we compared the body size, visitation rate, and pollination eﬃciency of ﬁve pollinator species. Our observations revealed that the pollination eﬃciency of the moth species was relatively lower than all bee species. The body length of ﬁve pollinator species increased the amount of transferred pollen, and larger bees tended to remove more pollen from anthers and deposit more pollen on stigmas, resulting in higher pollination eﬃciency. However, there was no correlation between the intertegular distance and pollination eﬃciency of visitors in H. mutabilis. Body length may be a better index of body size than intertegular distance.
An investigation on slowness‐weighted CCP stacking and its application to receiver function imaging

Common-conversion-point (CCP) stacking of receiver functions is a widely used technique to image velocity discontinuities in the mantle. The CCP imaging technique assumes that receiver functions are composed solely of P to S conversions at velocity boundaries, whose depths can be mapped out through their arrival times. The multiple reflections at shallow boundaries with large velocity contrasts, such as the base of unconsolidated sediments and the Moho, can lead to artificial structures in the CCP images. We develop a refined CCP stacking method that uses relative slowness as a weighting factor to suppress the multiples (slowness weighted CCP stacking; SWCCP). We conduct extensive numerical tests with synthetic data to seek the best weighting scheme and to verify the robustness of the images. We apply this technique to receiver function data of NECESSArray in China and the transportable array in western US, and find most of the events in the depth range of 200-400 km shown in the regular CCP images are eliminated. The SWCCP images, on the other hand, reveal a clear negative event under some parts of the two arrays, indicating the presence of low velocity layer above the 410-km discontinuity, which was reported by previous studies.
Statistical method for revealing form-function relations in biological networks

Over the past decade, a number of researchers in systems biology have sought to relate the function of biological systems to their network-level descriptions—lists of the most important players and the pairwise interactions between them. Both for large networks (in which statistical analysis is often framed in terms of the abundance of repeated small subgraphs) and for small networks which can be analyzed in greater detail (or even synthesized in vivo and subjected to experiment), revealing the relationship between the topology of small subgraphs and their biological function has been a central goal. We here seek to pose this revelation as a statistical task, illustrated using a particular setup which has been constructed experimentally and for which parameterized models of transcriptional regulation have been studied extensively. The question “how does function follow form” is here mathematized by identifying which topological attributes correlate with the diverse possible information-processing tasks which a transcriptional regulatory network can realize. The resulting method reveals one form-function relationship which had earlier been predicted based on analytic results, and reveals a second for which we can provide an analytic interpretation. Resulting source code is distributed via http://formfunction.sourceforge. net.
Assessing Parameter Uncertainty of a Semi‐Distributed Hydrology Model for a Shallow Aquifer Dominated Environmental System

This paper examines the performance of a semi‐distributed hydrology model (i.e., Soil and Water Assessment Tool [SWAT]) using Sequential Uncertainty FItting (SUFI‐2), generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE), parameter solution (ParaSol), and particle swarm optimization (PSO). We applied SWAT to the Waccamaw watershed, a shallow aquifer dominated Coastal Plain watershed in the Southeastern United States (U.S.). The model was calibrated (2003‐2005) and validated (2006‐2007) at two U.S. Geological Survey gaging stations, using significant parameters related to surface hydrology, hydrogeology, hydraulics, and physical properties. SWAT performed best during intervals with wet and normal antecedent conditions with varying sensitivity to effluent channel shape and characteristics. In addition, the calibration of all algorithms depended mostly on Manning's n‐value for the tributary channels as the surface friction resistance factor to generate runoff. SUFI‐2 and PSO simulated the same relative probability distribution tails to those observed at an upstream outlet, while all methods (except ParaSol) exhibited longer tails at a downstream outlet. The ParaSol model exhibited large skewness suggesting a global search algorithm was less capable of characterizing parameter uncertainty. Our findings provide insights regarding parameter sensitivity and uncertainty as well as modeling diagnostic analysis that can improve hydrologic theory and prediction in complex watersheds. Editor's note: This paper is part of the featured series on SWAT Applications for Emerging Hydrologic and Water Quality Challenges. See the February 2017 issue for the introduction and background to the series.
Aggregation and Sedimentation of Thalassiosira weissflogii (diatom) in a Warmer and More Acidified Future Ocean

Increasing Transparent Exopolymer Particle (TEP) formation during diatom blooms as a result of elevated temperature and pCO2 have been suggested to result in enhanced aggregation and carbon flux, therewith potentially increasing the sequestration of carbon by the ocean. We present experimental results on TEP and aggregate formation by Thalassiosira weissflogii (diatom) in the presence or absence of bacteria under two temperature and three pCO2 scenarios. During the aggregation phase of the experiment TEP formation was elevated at the higher temperature (20°C vs. 15°C), as predicted. However, in contrast to expectations based on the established relationship between TEP and aggregation, aggregation rates and sinking velocity of aggregates were depressed in warmer treatments, especially under ocean acidification conditions. If our experimental findings can be extrapolated to natural conditions, they would imply a reduction in carbon flux and potentially reduced carbon sequestration after diatom blooms in the future ocean.
Critical Review and Comparative Analysis of the Government of Punjab’s ‘Policy on Controlling Smog, 2017’ with Counterpart Strategies in London, Beijing and Los Angeles

Lahore, the capital of Punjab, Pakistan, has experienced worsening episodes of smog since the early 2000s. Poor air quality reduces the life expectancy of its population by roughly seven years and results in 128,000 premature annual deaths. According to various emissions inventories, Nitrogen Oxides (NO x ) and Particulate Matter (PM) frequently exceed World Health Organization (WHO) standards, more than other air pollutants in the city. In 2017, the Government of Punjab developed the ‘Policy on Controlling Smog’ to mitigate the effects of air pollution across Punjab, including Lahore. This paper critically examines the policy. First, it establishes a scientific baseline to describe smog to justify a comparison between Lahore, London, Beijing, and Los Angeles. Second, it establishes a positive correlation between poor air quality and negative public health outcomes. Next, it points out scientific, data and other concerns in Punjab’s smog policy, and then compares it and draws lessons from counterpart policies in the same cities. The paper argues and concludes that while the ‘Policy on Controlling Smog, 2017’ is a useful blueprint to organise efforts in Pakistan’s Punjab province, it is not leveraging lessons from other cities nor is it consistent with the latest scientific research on air quality in general and Lahore in particular. Hence, it is ill-equipped to maximise public health outcomes .
Object-Oriented Type Inference for Telescoping Languages

The telescoping-languages approach achieves high performance from applications encoded as high-level scripts. The core idea is to pre-compile underlying libraries to generate multiple variants optimized for use in different possible contexts including different argument types. We have previously developed a type inference algorithm that enables type-based specialization. The algorithm infers types over untyped library procedures before actual inputs are known. Type inference is necessary both to determine the minimum number of variants needed to handle all possible uses of the library procedure as well as to statically determine, for each variant, which optimized implementations should be dispatched at each call location. In this paper, we extend the type inference algorithm to handle user-defined types in an object-oriented scripting language such as Python. Variants will be generated in order to eliminate dynamic dispatch where possible. This will allow for faster runtimes as well as enable more cross-method optimizations. Two problems that arise when handling user-defined types are the lack of a bound on the number of types and the possibility of extensions to the type hierarchy after type inference. We address these problems and describe the type inference solution.
Delta-Sigma Modulators for Power-Efficient A/D Conversion in High-Speed Wireless Communications

This paper describes how the signal path within a DeltaSigma modulator can be designed, independent of its noise-shaping characteristics, in order to significantly reduce the harmonic distortion due to opamp nonidealities and to lower the power dissipation. This paper then presents architectural approaches for designing high-resolution DeltaSigma modulators at low oversampling ratios (OSRs) and low supply voltages. Thus, analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) can be designed in low-voltage nano-scale digital CMOS technologies to achieve high-speed and high-resolution A/D conversion, with high power efficiency (energy dissipation less than lpj per conversion step). Such DeltaSigma ADCs are attractive for emerging broadband communication applications.
MADGene: retrieval and processing of gene identifier lists for the analysis of heterogeneous microarray datasets

Summary: MADGene is a software environment comprising a web-based database and a java application. This platform aims at unifying gene identifiers (ids) and performing gene set analysis. MADGene allows the user to perform inter-conversion of clone and gene ids over a large range of nomenclatures relative to 17 species. We propose a set of 23 functions to facilitate the analysis of gene sets and we give two microarray applications to show how MADGene can be used to conduct meta-analyses. Availability: The MADGene resources are freely available online from http://www.madtools. org, a website dedicated to the analysis and annotation of DNA microarray data. Contact: gerard.ramstein@univ-nantes.fr Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Quadratic forms on graphs

AbstractWe introduce a new graph parameter, called the Grothendieck constant of a graph G=(V,E), which is defined as the least constant K such that for every A:E→ℝ, $$\sup_{f:V\to{S}^{|V|-1}}\sum_{\{u,v\}\in{E}} A(u,v)\cdot\langle{f(u),f(v)}\rangle\le{K}\sup_{\varphi:V\to\{-1,+1\}}\sum_{\{u,v\}\in{E}}A(u,v)\cdot\varphi(u)\varphi(v). $$ The classical Grothendieck inequality corresponds to the case of bipartite graphs, but the case of general graphs is shown to have various algorithmic applications. Indeed, our work is motivated by the algorithmic problem of maximizing the quadratic form ∑{u,v}∈EA(u,v)ϕ(u)ϕ(v) over all ϕ:V→{-1,1}, which arises in the study of correlation clustering and in the investigation of the spin glass model. We give upper and lower estimates for the integrality gap of this program. We show that the integrality gap is $O(\log\vartheta(\overline{G}))$, where $\vartheta(\overline{G})$ is the Lovász Theta Function of the complement of G, which is always smaller than the chromatic number ofG. This yields an efficient constant factor approximation algorithm for the above maximization problem for a wide range of graphs G. We also show that the maximum possible integrality gap is always at least Ω(log ω(G)), where ω(G) is the clique number of G. In particular it follows that the maximum possible integrality gap for the complete graph on n vertices with no loops is Θ(logn). More generally, the maximum possible integrality gap for any perfect graph with chromatic number n is Θ(logn). The lower bound for the complete graph improves a result of Kashin and Szarek on Gram matrices of uniformly bounded functions, and settles a problem of Megretski and of Charikar and Wirth.
You can run but you cannot hide from memory: Extracting IM evidence of Android apps

Smartphones have become a vital part of our business and everyday life, as they constitute the primary communication vector. Android dominates the smartphone market (86.2%) and has become pervasive, running in ‘smart’ devices such as tablets, TV, watches, etc. Nowadays, instant messaging applications have become popular amongst smartphone users and since 2016 are the main way of messaging communication. Consequently, their inclusion in any forensics analysis is necessary as they constitute a source of valuable data, which might be used as (admissible) evidence. Often, their examination involves the extraction and analysis of the applications' databases that reside in the device's internal or external memory. The downfall of this method is the fact that databases can be tampered or erased, therefore the evidence might be accidentally or maliciously modified. In this paper, a methodology for retrieving instant messaging data from the volatile memory of Android smartphones is proposed, instead of the traditional database retrieval. The methodology is demonstrated with the use of a case study of four experiments, which provide insights regarding the behavior of such data in memory. Our experimental results show that a large amount of data can be retrieved from the memory, even if the device's battery is removed for a short time. In addition, the retrieved data are not only recent messages, but also messages sent a few months before data acquisition.
Spatiotemporal Selves on a Location-Based Social Network A Postphenomenological Autoethnography of Snap Map

The location-based social network (LBSN) Snapchat allows millions of users to share their locations to others through Snap Map: a digital map that updates their position each time they open the app. While social science studies have explored sentiments, behaviors and norms among Snap Map users, there is limited research on this type of location-based social network in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI), indicating a need for expanding the understanding of the roles that this technology and its design play in shaping the experiences and interactions among users. To address this need, this dialogical study applied a mixed-methods approach consisting of autoethnography and semi-structured interviews with two co-participants over the course of five weeks. The outcomes were analyzed using concepts from postphenomenology, introducing the main stabilities being seen and seeing others that were leveraged to nuance how Snap Map impacts e.g. communication, agency and what it means to act. The postphenomenological findings where then discussed from the lens of the spatial self to unpack how Snap Map mediates identity and performance. This combination of methods and lenses applied to a social media platform is a novel and fruitful approach in HCI, that led to discussions on how the design of Snap Map leads to concepts such as spatiotemporal ambiguity and the nexus of selves, shaping users’ relations to each other, themselves and their identity.
Digital Commons@Becker Digital Commons

The GloPID-R (Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness) chikungunya (CHIKV), o’nyong-nyong (ONNV) and Mayaro virus (MAYV) Working Group has been established to investigate natural history, epidemiology and clinical aspects of infection by these viruses. Here, we present a report dedicated to entomological aspects of CHIKV, ONNV and MAYV. Recent global expansion of chikungunya virus has been possible because CHIKV established a transmission cycle in urban settings using anthropophilic vectors such as Aedes albopictus and Aedes aegypti . MAYV and ONNV have a more limited geographic distribution, being confined to Africa (ONNV) and central-southern America (MAYV). ONNV is probably maintained through an enzootic cycle that has not been characterized yet, with Anopheles species as main vectors and humans as amplification hosts during epidemics. MAYV is transmitted by Haemagogus species in an enzootic cycle using non-human primates as the main amplification and maintenance hosts, and humans becoming sporadically infected when venturing in or nearby forest habitats. Here, we focused on the transmission cycle and natural vectors that sustain circulation of these viruses in their respective locations. The knowledge of the natural ecology of transmission and the capacity of different vectors to transmit these viruses is crucial to understand CHIKV emergence, and to assess the risk that MAYV and ONNV will expand on wide scale using anthropophilic mosquito species not normally considered primary vectors. Finally, the experts identified knowledge gaps and provided adapted recommendations, in order to address future entomological investigations in the right direction.
CROSSCON: Interoperable IoT Security Stack - The RISC-V Opportunity

CROSSCON is a 3-year, multi-million euro, Research and Innovation Action funded under Horizon Europe. The project aims to design a new open, modular, highly portable, and vendor-independent IoT security stack that can run on various devices using heterogeneous hardware architectures, including RISC-V. The Consortium sees in RISC-V a two-fold opportunity. Firstly, by aiming to develop an interoperable reference security stack, we believe we can contribute to the expected specifications of ongoing initiatives for Trusted Execution and Confidential Computing on Application processors (i.e., CoVE) and microcontrollers. Secondly, RISC-V offers a unique opportunity to develop novel security hardware extensions for software services, either by creating extensions directly to the ISA or developing non-ISA hardware mechanisms that support the efficient implementation of security guarantees at the application level.
Eph Receptors and Ephrins in the Developing Chick Cerebellum: Relationship to Sagittal Patterning and Granule Cell Migration

Spatiotemporal expression patterns of six members of the Eph gene family (EphA4, EphA3, EphB2, ephrin-B1, ephrin-A2, and ephrin-A5) were characterized immunocytochemically at various stages of chick cerebellar development. EphA4 expression is observed in the cerebellar anlage as early as embryonic day 5 (E5) and continues in the posthatch cerebellum. During the early period of cerebellar development (E3–E8), complementarity is observed between EphA4 and ephrin-A5 expression within the cerebellar-isthmal region. By E8, differential expression of EphA4 in parasagittal Purkinje cell bands is evident, and the expression remains banded in the posthatch cerebellum. Banded expression of the ephrin-A5 ligand complements EphA4 expression during the middle period (E9–E15). During this period, ephrin-A2 and EphA3 are coexpressed in a banded pattern and with variable correlation to EphA4. Variability in the banding expression is observed for EphA4, EphA3, ephrin-A5, and ephrin-A2 across different lobes, and graded complementarity in the expression pattern of EphA3 and ephrin-A5 is observed in the external granular layer between the posterior and anterior lobes. Analysis of Purkinje cell birth date in correlation with Eph–ephrin expression during the middle period reveals that early-born cells express EphA4, whereas late-born cells express ephrin-A5. Finally, EphA4 expression domains are respected by migrating granule cell ribbons, which express both ephrin-B1 and EphB2. These expression patterns suggest multiple roles for the Eph–ephrin system in cerebellar development, including demarcation/enforcement of boundaries of the cerebellar anlage, formation/maintenance of Purkinje cell compartments, and restriction of the early phase of granule cell migration to ribbons.