Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Taking Stock of Concept Inventories in Computing Education: A Systematic Literature Review

Background and context. Concept inventories (CIs) are a widely used tool in STEM education that can help instructors identify specific misconceptions students hold about key concepts. Over the past several years, much research has been published contributing to CIs in computer science education. Objectives. This research aims to investigate the state of CIs in computer science education through a systematic literature review built around two research questions: 1) What do we know about CIs for computer science today, and 2) Have researchers been able to effectively tackle the 4 challenges specific to computer science CIs outlined by Taylor et al. in their previous 2014 literature review on this topic? Method. We conducted a systematic literature review focusing on CIs in computer science education. We included research from any country, provided it was published in English between 2004 and 2022. We searched with key terms across four databases (Compendex, Inspec, Education Source, and ERIC) and collated a final list of 65 studies for analysis from 175 initial results. Findings. From these 65 papers, we identified 33 total CIs in computer science, 12 of which are currently validated. Of the 65 studies, the majority used established techniques for choosing concepts, identifying misconceptions, and/or developing questions, but a few (n = 4) reported on successful alternative techniques. We found that although no papers explicitly articulated an objective to tackle the aforementioned challenges, they are a recurring theme in the literature and have been addressed in various ways. Implications. At the time of the previous literature review, there were few computer science CIs. Our findings are promising, suggesting that researchers have found effective ways to tackle Taylor et al.’s challenges and that the number of CIs across computer science is gradually increasing. Future work is warranted regarding non-traditional techniques researchers proposed for developing CIs.
Examples of Unsuccessful Use of Code Comprehension Strategies: A Resource for Developing Code Comprehension Pedagogy

Background: Code comprehension research has identified gaps between the strategies experts and novices use in comprehending code. In computer science (CS) education, code comprehension has recently received increased attention, and research has identified correlations between code comprehension and code writing. While there is a long history of identifying expert code-comprehension strategies, there has been less work to understand and support the incremental development of code comprehension expertise. Purpose: The goal of the paper is to identify potential code-comprehension strategies that educators could teach students. Methods: In this paper, I analyze and present examples from a novice programmer engaged in a code-comprehension task. Findings: I identify five code-comprehension strategies that overlap with previously identified, expert code-comprehension strategies. While an expert would use these strategies to produce correct inferences about code, I primarily examine a novice’s unsuccessful attempts to comprehend code using these strategies. Implications: My case study provides an existence proof that shows that these five strategies can be used by a novice. This is essential for identifying potential strategies to teach novices. My primary empirical contribution is identifying potential building blocks for developing code-comprehension expertise. My primary theoretical contribution is proposing to build code-comprehension pedagogy on specific, expert strategies that I show are usable by a novice. More broadly, I hope to encourage CS education researchers to focus on understanding the complex processes of learning that occur in between the end points of novice and expert.
Dairy intake and risk of hip fracture in prospective cohort studies: non-linear algorithmic dose-response analysis in 486 950 adults

Abstract Previous studies on the relationship between dairy consumption and hip fracture risk have reported inconsistent findings. Therefore, we aimed to conduct an algorithmically driven non-linear dose-response meta-analysis of studies assessing dairy intake and risk of developing incident hip fracture. Meta-analysis from PubMed and Google Scholar searches for articles of prospective studies of dairy intake and risk of hip fracture, supplemented by additional detailed data provided by authors. Meta-regression derived dose-response relative risks, with comprehensive algorithm-driven dose assessment across the entire dairy consumption spectrum for non-linear associations. Review of studies published in English from 1946 through December 2021. A search yielded 13 studies, with 486 950 adults and 15 320 fractures. Non-linear dose models were found to be empirically superior to a linear explanation for the effects of milk. Milk consumption was associated with incrementally higher risk of hip fractures up to an intake of 400 g/d, with a 7 % higher risk of hip fracture per 200 g/d of milk (RR 1⋅07, 95 % CI 1⋅05, 1⋅10; P < 0⋅0001), peaking with 15 % higher risk (RR 1⋅15, 95 % CI 1⋅09, 1⋅21, P < 0⋅0001) at 400 g/d versus 0 g/d. Although there is a dose-risk attenuation above 400 g/d, milk consumption nevertheless continued to exhibit elevated risk of hip fracture, compared to zero intake, up to 750 g/d. Meanwhile, the analysis of five cohort studies of yoghurt intake per 250 g/d found a linear inverse association with fracture risk (RR 0⋅85, 95 % CI 0⋅82, 0⋅89), as did the five studies of cheese intake per 43 g/d (~1 serving/day) (RR 0⋅81, 95 % CI 0⋅72, 0⋅92); these studies did not control for socioeconomic status. However, no apparent association between total dairy intake and hip fracture (RR per 250 g/d of total dairy = 0⋅97, 95 % CI 0⋅93, 1⋅004; P = 0⋅079). There were both non-linear effects and overall elevated risk of hip fracture associated with greater milk intake, while lower risks of hip fracture were reported for higher yoghurt and cheese intakes.
Identifying γ-ray emitting blazars in the PASIPHAE era: polarimetry as a unique probe

Abstract The Fermi γ-ray telescope has detected 6658 sources, with 1845 of them remaining unidentified. We show that polarimetry of γ-ray fields is a powerful asset in the hunt of active galactic nuclei (AGN) as potential optical counterparts for γ-ray sources. We have studied an unidentified Fermi field (3FGL J0221.2+2518) and found a previously-unknown highly-polarized extragalactic object as a potential optical counterpart within the 1-sigma error ellipse of the corresponding γ-ray source. Based on a collection of data, we find that it most probably is a composite object: a star-forming galaxy accompanied by AGN. PASIPHAE is a large polarimetric experiment which will measure the polarisation of sources away from the galactic plane. This will provide an excellent opportunity to study hundreds of unidentified γ-ray sources and unveil potential optical counterparts, using polarimetry.
Compensation of Academic Research Computing and Data Professionals

Previous work identified low compensation levels as a barrier to recruitment and retention in the Research Computing and Data (RCD) field. In order to better understand the characteristics of RCD compensation, a 2021 survey of RCD professionals in the United States gathered salary information from 480 full-time, currently-employed RCD professionals, including 394 respondents working at non-medical academic institutions. The median salary reported for academic institutions was $90,000 ($80,000 for individual contributor levels), with variation observed across respondents’ position levels, gender, ethnicity, education, years of experience, and geography. While RCD roles require a combination of expertise in two fields — research and technology — the median compensation for academic RCD professionals falls below that for either of these fields independently. The variation in compensation within the academic RCD field is also found to be less than the variation in the non-academic technology industry or for academic research faculty positions, with salary ranges limited at the upper end. Smaller differences in compensation between respondents based on years of experience and education were observed compared to the broader labor market. Further research with data from more RCD professionals is needed for a complete analysis of compensation within the RCD field.
Is Knowledge about Running Applications Helping Improve Runtime Prediction of HPC Jobs?

High-performance computing systems rely upon scheduling algorithms to achieve high utilization. These schedulers rely upon user estimates of job resource requirements, such as runtime, to determine optimal scheduling of incoming jobs. These user estimates, however, are prone to error. To mitigate this error, significant research has been directed at providing better estimates of job runtime, usually employing machine learning techniques. These techniques are dependent upon the input features selected. Among the possible features is the primary application used by the job. In a survey of more than 20 papers directed at improving runtime prediction, only four included primary application as an input feature. We focus this investigation specifically on the value of adding primary application as an input feature, and find that it does improve model performance, especially for jobs with longer runtimes, though this improvement varies based on the application used. We recommend further research to determine the cause of this variability as well as an optimal strategy for employing a mixture of models both including and not including primary application as a feature.
The Inclusive Conferences Survey: Analysis and validation of inclusivity at HPC conferences

As conferences and events take steps to welcome a broader range of people, it is important to accurately assess these efforts. We present and validate the Inclusive Conferences Survey, a tool to measure perceptions of a welcoming atmosphere, conference inclusivity, and likelihood of recommending HPC conferences to new attendees. Our analysis showed that respondents who rated conferences as more inclusive were less likely to think of leaving the HPC field. We found significant differences in conference experiences based on gender identity, as well as differing perceptions of a welcoming environment between societally advantaged and disadvantaged groups. We recommend that HPC conferences and events continue inclusivity initiatives while using assessment tools such as the Inclusive Conferences Survey to focus on areas for improvement.
A Further Study of Linux Kernel Hugepages on A64FX with FLASH, an Astrophysical Simulation Code

We present an expanded study of the performance of FLASH when using Linux Kernel Hugepages on Ookami, an HPE Apollo 80 A64FX platform. FLASH is a multi-scale, multi-physics simulation code written principally in modern Fortran and makes use of the PARAMESH library to manage a block-structured adaptive mesh. Our initial study used only the Fujitsu compiler to utilize standard hugepages (hp), but further investigation allowed us to utilize hp for multiple compilers by linking to the Fujitsu library libmpg and transparent hugepages (thp) by enabling it at the node level. By comparing the results of hardware counters and in-code timers, we found that hp and thp do not significantly impact the runtime performance of FLASH. Interestingly, there is a significant reduction in the TLB misses, differences in cache and memory access counters, and strange behavior is observed when using thp.
Explainable lexical entailment with semantic graphs

Abstract We present novel methods for detecting lexical entailment in a fully rule-based and explainable fashion, by automatic construction of semantic graphs, in any language for which a crowd-sourced dictionary with sufficient coverage and a dependency parser of sufficient accuracy are available. We experiment and evaluate on both the Semeval-2020 lexical entailment task (Glavaš et al. (2020). Proceedings of the Fourteenth Workshop on Semantic Evaluation, pp. 24–35) and the SherLIiC lexical inference dataset of typed predicates (Schmitt and Schütze (2019). Proceedings of the 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 902–914). Combined with top-performing systems, our method achieves improvements over the previous state-of-the-art on both benchmarks. As a standalone system, it offers a fully interpretable model of lexical entailment that makes detailed error analysis possible, uncovering future directions for improving both the semantic parsing method and the inference process on semantic graphs. We release all components of our system as open source software.
Phosphoproteomics implicates glutamatergic and dopaminergic signalling in the antidepressant-like properties of the iron chelator deferiprone

Current antidepressants have limitations due to insufficient efficacy and delay before improvement in symptoms. Polymorphisms of the serotonin transporter (5-HTT) gene have been linked to depression (when combined with stressful life events) and to altered response to selective serotonergic reuptake inhibitors. We have previously revealed the antidepressant-like properties of the iron chelator deferiprone in the 5-HTT knock-out (KO) mouse model of depression. Furthermore, deferiprone was found to alter neural activity in the prefrontal cortex of both wild-type (WT) and 5-HTT KO mice. In the current study, we examined the molecular effects of acute deferiprone treatment in the prefrontal cortex of both genotypes via phosphoproteomics. In WT mice treated with deferiprone, there were 22 differentially expressed phosphosites, with gene ontology analysis implicating cytoskeletal proteins. In 5-HTT KO mice treated with deferiprone, we found 33 differentially expressed phosphosites. Gene ontology analyses revealed phosphoproteins that were predominantly involved in synaptic and glutamatergic signalling. In a drug naive cohort, the analysis revealed 21 differentially expressed phosphosites in 5-HTT KO compared to WT mice. We confirmed the deferiprone-induced increase in Tyrosine hydroxylase serine 40 residue phosphorylation (pTH-Ser40) (initially revealed in our phosphoproteomics study) by western blots, with deferiprone increasing pTH-Ser40 expression in WT and 5-HTT KO mice. As glutamatergic and synaptic signalling are dysfunctional in 5-HTT KO mice (and are the target of fast-acting antidepressant drugs such as ketamine), these molecular effects may underpin deferiprone’s antidepressant-like properties. Furthermore, dopaminergic signalling may also be involved in deferiprone’s antidepressant-like properties.
Tauopathy severely disrupts homeostatic set-points in emergent neural dynamics but not in the activity of individual neurons

The homeostatic regulation of neuronal activity is essential for robust computation; key set-points, such as firing rate, are actively stabilized to compensate for perturbations. From this perspective, the disruption of brain function central to neurodegenerative disease should reflect impairments of computationally essential set-points. Despite connecting neurodegeneration to functional outcomes, the impact of disease on set-points in neuronal activity is unknown. Here we present a comprehensive, theory-driven investigation of the effects of tau-mediated neurodegeneration on homeostatic set-points in neuronal activity. In a mouse model of tauopathy, we examine 27,000 hours of hippocampal recordings during free behavior throughout disease progression. Contrary to our initial hypothesis that tauopathy would impact set-points in spike rate and variance, we found that cell-level set-points are resilient to even the latest stages of disease. Instead, we find that tauopathy disrupts neuronal activity at the network-level, which we quantify using both pairwise measures of neuron interactions as well as measurement of the network’s nearness to criticality, an ideal computational regime that is known to be a homeostatic set-point. We find that shifts in network criticality 1) track with symptoms, 2) predict underlying anatomical and molecular pathology, 3) occur in a sleep/wake dependent manner, and 4) can be used to reliably classify an animal’s genotype. Our data suggest that the critical set-point is intact, but that homeostatic machinery is progressively incapable of stabilizing hippocampal networks, particularly during waking. This work illustrates how neurodegenerative processes can impact the computational capacity of neurobiological systems, and suggest an important connection between molecular pathology, circuit function, and animal behavior.
Descending control and regulation of spontaneous flight turns in Drosophila

The clumped distribution of resources in the world has influenced the pattern of foraging behavior since the origins of life, selecting for a common locomotor search motif in which straight movements through resource-poor regions alternate with zig-zag exploration in resource-rich domains (Berg, 2000). For example, flies execute rapid changes in flight heading called body saccades during local search (Censi et al., 2013; Collett and Land, 1975; Schilstra and van Hateren, 1999; Wagner and Land, 1986), but suppress these turns during long-distance dispersal (Giraldo et al., 2018; Leitch et al., 2021) or when surging upwind after encountering an attractive odor plume (Budick and Dickinson, 2006; van Breugel and Dickinson, 2014). Here, we describe the key cellular components of a neural network in flies that generates spontaneous turns as well as a specialized neuron that inhibits the network to promote straight flight. Using 2-photon imaging, optogenetic activation, and genetic ablation, we show that only four descending neurons appear sufficient to generate the descending commands to execute flight saccades. The network is organized into two functional couplets—one for right turns and one for left—with each couplet consisting of an excitatory (DNae014) and inhibitory (DNb01) neuron that project to the flight motor neuropil within the ventral nerve cord. Using resources from recently published connectomes of the fly brain (Scheffer et al., 2020; Dorkenwald et al., 2023; Schlegel et al., 2023), we identified a large, unique interneuron (VES041) that forms inhibitory connections to all four saccade command neurons and created specific genetic driver lines for this cell. As predicted by its connectivity, activation of VES041 strongly suppresses saccades, suggesting that it regulates the transition between local search and long-distance dispersal. These results thus identify the critical elements of a network that not only structures the locomotor behavior of flies, but may also play a crucial role in their foraging ecology.
Impact of Ferroelectric Material BaTiO3 on Negative Capacitance TFET Device and Its Circuit Application

Abstract With the increase in scaling of transistors in nanometer regime, various short channel effects are emerging in transistor operation that are required to resolved while putting conventional transistor to any practical application. Various device modifications and structure improvizations have been made and reported by the researchers to overcome the short channel effects and replace the conventional MOSFET with an optimized device in practical circuit applications. The device structure proposed in this work incorporates the negative capacitance phenomenon for making subthreshold swing steeper and enhancing current ratio of TFET. Further the device dimensions are being optimized to get improvised characteristics and best results are obtained at 3 nm thick BaTiO3 Ferroelectric material for making negative capacitance gate stack. In this paper, negative capacitance TFET so formed is used for implementing inverter and 1 T DRAM cell. Results obtained shows that the inverter and DRAM cell operates at a very lower supply voltage and are more suitable for low power applications as compared to conventional circuits.
True to Form: Rising and Falling Declaratives as Questions in English

This book is concerned with the meaning and use of two kinds of declarative sentences: 1) It's raining? 2) It's raining. The difference between (1) and (2) is intonational: (1) has a final rise--indicated by the question mark--while (2) ends with a fall. Christine Gunlogson's central claim is that the meaning and use of both kinds of sentences must be understood in terms of the meaning of their defining formal elements, namely declarative sentence type and rising versus falling intonation. Gunlogson supports that claim through an investigation of the use of declaratives as questions. On one hand, Gunlogson demonstrates that rising and falling declaratives share an aspect of conventional meaning attributable to their declarative form, distinguishing them both from the corresponding polar interrogative (Is it raining? ) and constraining their use as questions. On the other hand, since (1) and (2) constitute a minimal pair, differing only in intonation, systematic differences in character and function between them--in particular, the relative "naturalness" of (1) as a question compared to (2) --must be located in the contrast between the fall and the rise. To account for these two sets of differences, Gunlogson gives a compositional account of rising and falling declaratives under which declarative form expresses commitment to the propositional content of the declarative. Rising versus falling intonation on declaratives is responsible for attribution of the commitment to the Addressee versus the Speaker, respectively. The result is an inherent contextual "bias" associated with declaratives, which constitutes the crucial point of difference with interrogatives. The compositional analysis is implemented in the framework of context update semantics (Heim 1982 and others), using an articulated version of the Common Ground (Stalnaker 1978) that distinguishes the commitments of the individual discourse participants. Restrictions on the use of declaratives as questions, as well as differences between rising and falling declaratives as questions, are shown to follow from this account. Gunlogson argues that neither rising nor falling declaratives are inherently questioning--rather, the questioning function of declaratives arises through the interaction of sentence type, intonation, and context.