Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimal Bounds for Noisy Sorting

Sorting is a fundamental problem in computer science. In the classical setting, it is well-known that (1± o(1)) nlog2 n comparisons are both necessary and sufficient to sort a list of n elements. In this paper, we study the Noisy Sorting problem, where each comparison result is flipped independently with probability p for some fixed p∈ (0, 1/2). As our main result, we show that (1± o(1)) ( 1/I(p) + 1/(1−2p) log2 (1−p/p) ) nlog2 n noisy comparisons are both necessary and sufficient to sort n elements with error probability o(1) using noisy comparisons, where I(p)=1 + plog2 p+(1−p)log2 (1−p) is capacity of BSC channel with crossover probability p. This simultaneously improves the previous best lower and upper bounds (Wang, Ghaddar and Wang, ISIT 2022) for this problem. For the related Noisy Binary Search problem, we show that (1± o(1)) ((1−δ)log2(n)/I(p) + 2 log2 (1/δ)/(1−2p)log2(1−p/p)) noisy comparisons are both necessary and sufficient to find the predecessor of an element among n sorted elements with error probability δ. This extends the previous bounds of (Burnashev and Zigangirov, 1974), which are only tight for δ = 1/no(1).
Best-of-Three-Worlds Linear Bandit Algorithm with Variance-Adaptive Regret Bounds

This paper proposes a linear bandit algorithm that is adaptive to environments at two different levels of hierarchy. At the higher level, the proposed algorithm adapts to a variety of types of environments. More precisely, it achieves best-of-three-worlds regret bounds, i.e., of ${O}(\sqrt{T \log T})$ for adversarial environments and of $O(\frac{\log T}{\Delta_{\min}} + \sqrt{\frac{C \log T}{\Delta_{\min}}})$ for stochastic environments with adversarial corruptions, where $T$, $\Delta_{\min}$, and $C$ denote, respectively, the time horizon, the minimum sub-optimality gap, and the total amount of the corruption. Note that polynomial factors in the dimensionality are omitted here. At the lower level, in each of the adversarial and stochastic regimes, the proposed algorithm adapts to certain environmental characteristics, thereby performing better. The proposed algorithm has data-dependent regret bounds that depend on all of the cumulative loss for the optimal action, the total quadratic variation, and the path-length of the loss vector sequence. In addition, for stochastic environments, the proposed algorithm has a variance-adaptive regret bound of $O(\frac{\sigma^2 \log T}{\Delta_{\min}})$ as well, where $\sigma^2$ denotes the maximum variance of the feedback loss. The proposed algorithm is based on the SCRiBLe algorithm. By incorporating into this a new technique we call scaled-up sampling, we obtain high-level adaptability, and by incorporating the technique of optimistic online learning, we obtain low-level adaptability.
Analogue of a Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector for particle orbits (timelike geodesics) in Schwarzschild spacetime

In Schwarzschild spacetime, the timelike geodesic equations, which define particle orbits, have a well-known formulation as a dynamical system in coordinates adapted to the timelike hypersurface containing the geodesic. For equatorial geodesics, the resulting dynamical system is shown to possess a conserved angular quantity and two conserved temporal quantities, whose properties and physical meaning are analogues of the conserved Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector, and its variant known as Hamilton's vector, in Newtonian gravity. When a particle orbit is projected into the spatial equatorial plane, the angular quantity yields the coordinate angle at which the orbit has either a turning point (where the radial velocity is zero) or a centripetal point (where the radial acceleration is zero). This is the same property as the angle of the respective Laplace-Runge-Lenz and Hamilton vectors in the plane of motion in Newtonian gravity. The temporal quantities yield the coordinate time and the proper time at which those points are reached on the orbit. In general, for orbits that have a single turning point, the three quantities are globally constant; for orbits that possess more than one turning point, the temporal quantities are just locally constant as they jump at every successive turning point, while the angular quantity similarly jumps only if an orbit is precessing. This is analogous to the properties of a generalized Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector and generalized Hamilton's vector which are known to exist for precessing orbits in post-Newtonian gravity. The angular conserved quantity can be used to define a direct analogue of these vectors at spatial infinity.
Leveraging Diffusion for Strong and High Quality Face Morphing Attacks

Face morphing attacks seek to deceive a Face Recognition (FR) system by presenting a morphed image consisting of the biometric qualities from two different identities with the aim of triggering a false acceptance with one of the two identities, thereby presenting a significant threat to biometric systems. The success of a morphing attack is dependent on the ability of the morphed image to represent the biometric characteristics of both identities that were used to create the image. We present a novel morphing attack that uses a Diffusion-based architecture to improve the visual fidelity of the image and the ability of the morphing attack to represent characteristics from both identities. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed attack by evaluating its visual fidelity via Fréchet Inception Distance (FID). Also, extensive experiments are conducted to measure the vulnerability of FR systems to the proposed attack. The ability of a morphing attack detector to detect the proposed attack is measured and compared against two state-of-the-art GAN-based morphing attacks along with two Landmark-based attacks. Additionally, a novel metric to measure the relative strength between different morphing attacks is introduced and evaluated.
Classifying Paddy Rice by Morphological and Color Features Using Machine Vision

ABSTRACT From five paddy rice cultivars grown in Taiwan and harvested in the summers of 1997, 1998, and 1999, five calibrated models were established by backpropagation neural network program through different morphological and color features selection for classifying paddy rice harvested in the summer of 2000. With 60 features, the average classification rates of Model 1 and Model 5 were 92 and 99.8%, respectively. With the most effective 50 features, by loading in the first principal component, the average classification rate of Model 2 was 90.0%. With 35 features selected from the correlation coefficient matrix, the average classification rate of Model 3 was 91.0%. With the most effective 20 features of area, area/perimeter, 48th width, shape factor, maximum length/maximum width, average intensity of blue, maximum length, average intensity of green, 47th width, 50th width, average intensity of red, 1st width, 19th width, 5th width, 6th width, 29th width, perimeter, 46th width, 42nd width, and 4th width.
ASYMPTOTICS OF THE ALTARELLI-PARISI-LIPATOV EVOLUTION KERNELS OF PARTON DISTRIBUTIONS

The asymptotics of the evolution kernels Pab(z) of parton distributions is investigated as z→1. It is proven that to all orders of perturbative QCD, $P_{ab} \left( z \right) = \delta _{ab} \left( {2\Gamma _{{\rm{cusp}}}^{\left( \alpha \right)} } \right. \left( {{1 \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {1 {\left( {1 - z} \right) + }}} \right. \kern-\nulldelimiterspace} {\left( {1 - z} \right) + }}} \right C_a \delta \left. {\left( {1 - z} \right)} \right) + O\left( {\left( {1 - z} \right)^0 } \right)$ where $\Gamma _{{\rm{cusp}}}^{\left( \alpha \right)} $ is the cusp anomalous dimension of the contour functionals in the fundamental (α=“quark”) and adjoint (α=“gluon”) representations of gauge group and, to the lowest orders, Cα are related to the anomalous dimension of a quark field in the axial gauge and the beta function of QCD by a simple equation.
Correlation Functions from the Perseus-Pisces Redshift Survey

The three- and four-point correlation functions are evaluated from the Perseus Pisces galaxy redshift sample. Former results on the two-point function ξ are also reviewed. In the range of distances from 1 h -1 Mpc to 10 h -1 Mpc, three- and four-point functions do not agree with the expressions of the hierarchical clustering model. On the contrary they are steeper and can be fitted by adding terms with a higher power of ξ. Such results from a redshift catalog partially modifies the picture of the large-scale matter distribution obtained from early two-dimensional samples. The relation among these results, biased models of galaxy formation, and observed velocity fields is discussed
Mean-field approach to excitations of a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate gas at finite temperatures

The monopole and quadrupole oscillations of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) gas trapped in a spherically symmetric potential are calculated using the time-dependent Hartree approximation which enables us to use an orthonormal single-particle basis for the description of both the condensate and noncondensate components. It is found that the monopole mode has a much smaller damping rate than the quadrupole mode. The obtained temperature dependence of the frequency shifts and the damping rates of the collective oscillations are found to be consistent with experimental data obtained for BEC gases in anisotropic trapping potentials. A comparison between the time-dependent Hartree approximation and the time-dependent Hartree-Fock approximation is also made and it is found that there is a rather small difference.
TOGA COARE Upper-Air Sounding Data Archive: Development and Quality Control Procedures

Abstract One of the most important datasets to wine from the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA COARE) is the most complete, high-resolution upper-air sounding dataset ever collected in the equatorial western Pacific Ocean. The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research/Office of Field Project Support ‘UCAR/OFPS (recently combined with the UCAR/Joint International Climate Projects Planning Office and renamed the Joint Office for Science Support)’ was given the responsibility of processing, quality controlling, and archiving the dataset. OFPS, in consultation with the TOGA COARE scientific community, developed a four-stage process to provide the community with a thoroughly quality controlled dataset. The TOGA COARE sounding dataset includes over 14 000 soundings, collected from 14 countries, in over 20 different original formats. The first OFPS processing step was the conversion of all soundings to a single, easy to use format, the OFPS quality control .
GENERALIZED METHODS FOR CALIBRATION

In chemometrics traditional calibration in case of spectral measurements express a quantity of interest (e.g. a concentration) as a linear combination of the sp ectral measurements at a number of wavelengths. Often the spectral measurements are performed at a large number of wavelengths and in this case the number of coefficients in the linear combination is magnitudes larger than the number of observations. Traditional approaches to handling this problem includes Principal Components Regression, (PCR), Partial Least Squares regression, (PLS), Ridge Regre ssion, (RR) and variable selection. They are all presented with theory and appli cation. Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator, (LASSO), which has recently been improved to handle sigular design matrices, is also presented here. Furthermore a new approach that combines these methods with B-spline basis functions is presented.
Body of revolution phi flip matrix and BOR-PATCH system matrix optimization

A new phi flip unit matrix is introduced into the body of revolution (BOR) system matrix theory which aides in the development of negative mode expressions for the impedance, admittance, voltage, current, and row matrices. A demonstration of the phi hip matrix provides a succinct proof of existing results for scattered fields using positive modes. The BOR-PATCH system matrix equation and its solution are then presented using the phi flip matrix to optimize the partition solution. It is shown that the Z/sub effective/ matrix is symmetric and may be computed using positive modes and that the row R/sub effective/ measurement matrix may be obtained directly from the transpose of the V/sub effective/ excitation column matrix. For this work, the entire polarization scattering matrix is the goal since the optimizations introduced operate better at this level of formulation.
Non-linear spectral estimation

This work describes the use of constraints in variational procedures for spectral analysis. It is reported how the designer in a variational approach for spectral estimation has to select a set of constraints. At the same time it is shown that the selected set of constraints becomes more relevant, as concerns with the resulting quality of the estimate, than the objective function minimized or maximized in the procedure. Finally, some examples are presented which are the result of considering correlation and envelope constraints and minimizing the correlation extrapolation energy.
Temporal rate of postmortem DNA degradation in archived tissue samples: evidence from liver and muscle

Guidelines identifying best practices for harvesting tissues that lead to optimal DNA preservation are few but are important curatorial concerns for genetic resource collections. We conducted a temporal study to establish rate of DNA degradation of tissue samples extracted from field-caught museum specimens. Five individuals of Sigmodon hispidus were collected and their liver and muscle tissues were harvested. Each tissue type was sectioned into 15 subsamples, and each was preserved in liquid nitrogen at different time intervals (2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 min; 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 h; and 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 days) following death. DNA was extracted using an automated robotic instrument and molecular mass profiles were determined fluorometrically. Postmortem DNA degradation was continuous and dependent on time, but also was significantly affected by differences among individual cotton rats. DNA fragments of ≥10,000 base pairs in length were present in muscle samples across all time intervals, whereas DNA fragments of this size in liver samples were no longer present after 8–16 h postmortem. DNA molecular mass profiles showed that muscle samples retained 80% of their longest fragments (≥10,000 base pairs) until 1 day postmortem, whereas liver samples retained the same percentage only until 8 min after death. Although rates of decay were measured from samples in a laboratory (not field) setting, rates of decay presented here can guide field and museum workers in best practices. Results suggest that opportunistic samples, such as those from roadkill specimens, are more likely to be of use for a variety of molecular methods when muscle is preserved. Considerations of differences in rates of degradation may also guide selection of tissue types housed in genetic resource collections, especially under space-limited circumstances.
Treatment-resistant depression – is magnetic seizure therapy the novel treatment?

SUMMARY Depression has a large socioeconomic burden, affecting an estimated 280 million people worldwide. Up to 55% remain symptomatic following pharmacological and psychological treatment and may be classified as having treatment-resistant depression. This commentary assesses two treatment options for this group – electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and a novel approach, magnetic seizure therapy (MST) – with reference to a Cochrane Review comparing the two. The Cochrane analysis showed no clear benefit for MST, but the evidence is currently insufficient to draw firm conclusions.
Divergence in interspecific and intersubspecific gene expression between two closely related horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus)

Closely related species have been used as representative systems to investigate the genetic mechanisms involved in the early stages of species differentiation. Previous studies have indicated that variation in gene expression might be a sensitive indicator of initial species divergence, although the role of expression divergence, and especially that associated with phenotypic variation remained relatively undefined. For three organs (cochlea, brain, and liver) from two closely related bat species (Rhinolophus siamensis and R. episcopus), the interspecific and intersubspecific gene expression profiles were compared using transcriptomics in this study. Striking organ specificity of expression was observed, and expression profiles exhibited similarities between cochlea and brain tissues. Numerous differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified for each organ in the interspecific comparison (cochlea/brain/liver: 1,069/647/692) and intersubspecific comparison (608/528/368). Functional enrichment analysis indicated vital variation in expression related to the immune system, ion activities, neuronal function, and multisensory system regulation in both comparisons. DEGs relevant to the variation in echolocation calls (RF) were found, and some of them were involved in the pivotal patterns of expression variation. The regulation of immune, ion channel, neural activity, and sophisticated sensory functions at the expression level might be key mechanisms in the early species divergence of bats, and the expression variation related to acoustical signal could have played a crucial part. This study expands our knowledge of gene expression and patterns of variation for three key organs to echolocation at both the interspecific and intersubspecific levels. Further, the framework described here provides insight into the genetic basis of phenotypic variation during the incipient stage of species differentiation.
Asymmetric wakes in flows past circular cylinders confined in channels

Abstract In this paper, we investigate the flow past a circular cylinder confined in a channel at a blockage ratio of $\beta =0.7$ (the ratio of the cylinder diameter and the channel height) for Reynolds numbers between ${\textit {Re}}=300$ and $3900$ using direct numerical simulation (DNS). We show for varying Reynolds numbers a wide range of wake dynamics occur as the spanwise domain length is changed. At a lower Reynolds number of ${\textit {Re}}=300$, a reverse von Kármán wake alongside either a top- or bottom-biased asymmetry was observed at different spanwise locations. The asymmetry was structurally similar the two-dimensional asymmetry studied by prior investigators, and was found to be a result of the confinement effect. Further, wake-jumping between the two intermittent states was present. For larger Reynolds numbers, ${\textit {Re}}=1000$ and $3900$, these asymmetric structures were found to become dominant. We also examine the dependence of the asymmetries on the spanwise domain. For small spanwise domains the asymmetries were uniformly orientated across the span. In contrast, for sufficiently large spanwise domains, the asymmetry flips its orientation at different spanwise locations. Comparisons of flow statistics demonstrate good agreement between the different spanwise domains, which suggests the same mechanism maintains the asymmetry in both cases. Further analysis at ${\textit {Re}}=1000$ found the number of times the wake flips is dependent on the initial conditions, with a wake that flips zero (purely asymmetric), two and four times being observed. These structures were also determined to remain stable over time scales of $1000D/U$.
Multiple polarized beam interferometers for array generation with improved efficiency

A highly efficient multiple polarized beam interferometer for the generation of hexagonal array is reported. An expression for the intensity distribution is worked out using Jones’ calculus and computed pattern is compared with the experimental results. The array pattern could be scanned over large longitudinal distances without loss of distortion. Fringe visibility of interferograms has been studied as a function of relative state of polarization of the interfering beams. Some of the potential applications of such arrays are also proposed.
A Proposed Approach to Crowd Selection in Crowdsourced Requirements Engineering for Mobile Apps

Lately, we have witnessed an overwhelming growth of mobile apps and their usage. Fast and continuously changing desires of users, and rising competition within the technology industry, have put greater stress on mobile apps producers. Meeting users' expectations cannot be easily fulfilled and requires new approaches to engage crowd of interested users in requirements engineering (RE) activities. Recently, a great deal of emphasis has been shed on leveraging crowdsourcing model for supporting RE activities. Identifying the right crowd is the key to obtain innovative and quality features and requirements, where few studies have researched. In addition, social media platforms have since become a fertile source for crowd-generated content. Such content reveal information that can assist in preforming crowd selection. Therefore, in this research-in-progress paper, we propose an approach which utilizes the available data on Twitter to find a subset of the crowd to crowdsource RE tasks for mobile apps.
The method of stationary cluster amplitudes and the phase transition in the Lipkin pseudospin model

The coupled-cluster (or exp(S)) method is extended to a form which employs the stationariness property of an energy functional with respect to two kinds of linked-cluster amplitudes. The applications to the Lipkin pseudospin model shows that this basically perturbative method can equally well describe the phase transition into a deformed phase above the critical coupling.
Glassy colloidal systems

This review focuses on recent developments in the theoretical, numerical and experimental study of slow dynamics in colloidal systems, with a particular emphasis on the glass transition phenomenon. Colloidal systems appear to be particularly suited for tackling the general problem of dynamic arrest, since they show a larger flexibility compared to atomic and molecular glasses because of their size and the possibility of manipulating the physical and chemical properties of the samples. Indeed, a wealth of new effects, not easily observable in molecular liquids, have been predicted and measured in colloidal systems. The slow dynamic behavior of three classes of colloidal suspension is reviewed – hard colloids, short-range attractive colloids and soft colloidal systems – selecting the model systems among the most prominent candidates for grasping the essential features of dynamic arrest. Emphasis is on the possibility of performing a detailed comparison between experimental data and theoretical predictions based on the mode coupling theory of the glass transition. Finally, the importance of understanding the system's kinetic arrest phase diagram, i.e. the regions in phase space where disordered arrested states can be expected, is stressed. When and how these states are kinetically stabilized with respect to the ordered lowest free energy phases is then examined in order to provide a framework for interpreting and developing new ideas in the study of new materials. Contents PAGE 1. Introduction 472 2. Theoretical background 473 2.1. Mode coupling theory 473 2.2. MCT features 475 2.3. Other theoretical approaches 479 3. Hard colloids 480 3.1. Hard sphere colloids 481 3.2. Polydisperse hard spheres 485 3.3. Hard ellipsoids 487 4. Attractive colloids 490 4.1. MCT predictions 491 4.2. Experiments 494 4.3. Numerical studies 498 4.4. Higher-order singularities 499 4.5. Mechanical properties 500 4.6. Remarks on attractive colloids 502 5. Soft colloids 504 5.1. Charged colloids and the Wigner glass 504 5.2. Competing interactions: cluster phases 509 5.3. Ultrasoft colloids: star polymers 515 6. Perspectives and conclusions 517 Acknowledgements 518 References 518