Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
2 L ’ Ecuyer ’ s Multiple Recursive Generator MRG 32 k 3 a 2 . 1 Formulation

In this chapter, we discuss the parallelisation of three very popular random number generators. In each case, the random number sequence which is generated is identical to that produced on a CPU by the standard sequential algorithm. The key to the parallelisation is that each CUDA thread block generates a particular block of numbers within the original sequence, and to do this it needs an efficient skip-ahead algorithm to jump to the start of its block. Although the general approach is the same in the three cases, there are significant differences in the details of the implementation due to differences in the size of the state information required by each generator. This is perhaps the point of most general interest, the way in which consideration of the number of registers required, the details of data dependency in advancing the state, and the desire for memory coalescence in storing the output lead to different implementations in the three cases.
ManPy: An Open-Source Layer of DES Manufacturing Objects Implemented in SimPy

This paper presents a new Discrete Event Simulation (DES) engine focused in the modelling of manufacturing systems. This work is part of an FP7 project titled "Decision support in Real-time for Efficient Agile Manufacturing" (DREAM) which started in October of 2012. As a first step of our work a review of open-source simulation tools was carried out and the results indicated that SimPy could provide a basis for developing a simulation application development platform. Using SimPy we created a layer of basic manufacturing objects, which we named Many (Manufacturing in Python). Many was tested in several model topologies for its accuracy, speed and expandability. In parallel to this work a Graphical User Interface (GUI) is being developed separately, but having in mind that the two modules will cooperate. Results are demonstrated and insight as to how this work will be expanded to a modular, semantic free open simulation application development platform is presented.
Talking to the Shameless?: Sexual Violence and Mediation in Intrastate Conflicts

To what extent, does sexual violence influence the likelihood of conflict management in intrastate conflicts? Despite a growing body of research that explores conflict-related sexual violence, the literature presents little insight on its effects on conflict resolution. Extending feminist international relations (IR) theory to intrastate conflicts and applying a gender lens to the power to hurt argument, I argue that when rebel sexual violence is public knowledge, the likelihood of conflict management increases because the state perceives it as a threat to its masculinity. I systematically test this argument on all intrastate conflict years from 1990 to 2009 using the Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict and the Civil War Mediation data set. The results provide robust support for the argument. This presents an important refinement of traditional rationalist conflict bargaining theories and opens new avenues for the research and practice of conflict management.
Towards Assessing Software Architecture Quality by Exploiting Code Smell Relations

We can evaluate software architecture quality using a plethora of metrics proposed in the literature, but interpreting and exploiting in the right way these metrics is not always a simple task. This is true for both fixing the right metric threshold values and determining the actions to be taken to improve the quality of the system. Instead of metrics, we can detect code or architectural anomalies that give us useful hints on the possible architecture degradation. In this paper, we focus our attention on the detection of code smells and in particular on their relations and co-occurrences, with the aim to evaluate technical debt in an architectural context. We start from the assumption that certain patterns of code anomalies tend to be better indicators of architectural degradation than simple metrics evaluation.
Learning Hierarchical Visual Codebook for Iris Liveness Detection

Iris liveness detection is an important module in an iris recognition system to reduce the risks of being spoofed by fake iris patterns at the sensor input. A general framework is proposed to detect multiple types of fake iris images based on texture analysis. A novel iris pattern representation method namely hierarchical visual codebook (HVC) is proposed to encode the distinctive and robust texture primitives of genuine and fake iris images. HVC takes advantages of both locality-constrained linear coding and vocabulary tree. Therefore, it can achieve less visual code quantization error, capture salient texture pattern sparsely, and reduce the dependence on coding at the upper level of vocabulary tree. To establish a benchmark for research of iris liveness detection, we develop a large fake iris image database including various fake iris images. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves 99% accuracy in fake iris detection.
Standardising Home Range Studies for Improved Management of the Critically Endangered Black Rhinoceros

Comparisons of recent estimations of home range sizes for the critically endangered black rhinoceros in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park (HiP), South Africa, with historical estimates led reports of a substantial (54%) increase, attributed to over-stocking and habitat deterioration that has far-reaching implications for rhino conservation. Other reports, however, suggest the increase is more likely an artefact caused by applying various home range estimators to non-standardised datasets. We collected 1939 locations of 25 black rhino over six years (2004–2009) to estimate annual home ranges and evaluate the hypothesis that they have increased in size. A minimum of 30 and 25 locations were required for accurate 95% MCP estimation of home range of adult rhinos, during the dry and wet seasons respectively. Forty and 55 locations were required for adult female and male annual MCP home ranges, respectively, and 30 locations were necessary for estimating 90% bivariate kernel home ranges accurately. Average annual 95% bivariate kernel home ranges were 20.4 ± 1.2 km2, 53 ±1.9% larger than 95% MCP ranges (9.8 km2 ± 0.9). When home range techniques used during the late-1960s in HiP were applied to our dataset, estimates were similar, indicating that ranges have not changed substantially in 50 years. Inaccurate, non-standardised, home range estimates and their comparison have the potential to mislead black rhino population management. We recommend that more care be taken to collect adequate numbers of rhino locations within standardized time periods (i.e., season or year) and that the comparison of home ranges estimated using dissimilar procedures be avoided. Home range studies of black rhino have been data deficient and procedurally inconsistent. Standardisation of methods is required.
The Effects of Teachers’ Social and Human Capital on Urban Science Reform Initiatives: Considerations for Professional Development

Background Recent research investigating the conditions under which science teachers can successfully implement science education reforms suggests that focusing only on professional development to improve content knowledge and teaching skills—often referred to as human capital—may not be enough. Increasingly, possessing social capital, defined as capacities acquired through direct and indirect relationships in social networks, has become an important teaching characteristic to develop, however, more empirical research needs to be conducted. Purpose This article details our efforts to examine the relative influence of teachers’ social and human capital on instruction in the science classroom. The following research question guided our analysis: “What is the impact of teachers’ social and human capital on their classroom enactments, and what implications does this have for implementing science reform projects? ” Setting This research was conducted in a large urban public school district in the northeast region of the United States. Teachers participated in professional development activities focused on learning about, constructing, and implementing nanoscale content through problem-based and inquiry-based units, integrated with technology applications such as computer simulations. Population The teacher group was comprised of 10 males and 11 females, eight of whom identified as African American and 13 as White. Teaching experience ranged from 1 to 33 years, with a mean of 11.18 years. Data were collected from 545 students in their classes, of whom 52.19% were African American and 65.03% received free or reduced-priced lunch. Students ranged in level between eighth and 12th grade in the subject areas of biology, chemistry, and physical science. Research Design The research design entailed a within group comparison assessing variables that quantified teacher's social and human capital as discreet measures. They were then compared to survey outcomes collected from their students that indicated change in instructional enactments as they were related to the nanoscale units. Data Collection and Analysis A regression analysis was used in the study. Student surveys of perceptions of instructional enactments in two factors—cognitively-rich pedagogies and computer-related technology use–were used as the predicted variables. The social and human capital measures were established from application surveys and year-end interviews of teachers and used as predictor variables. Results With both predictors in the model, only social capital was found to be predictive of teachers’ successful implementation, indicating that social capital was a stronger predictor than human capital. Conclusions The study shows that focusing on the development of a teacher's social capital may be an important feature of professional development activities alongside the development of human capital particularly in urban populations where access to resources is limited.
Measuring the effects of internet path faults on reactive routing

Empirical evidence suggests that reactive routing systems improve resilience to Internet path failures. They detect and route around faulty paths based on measurements of path performance. This paper seeks to understand why and under what circumstances these techniques are effective.To do so, this paper correlates end-to-end active probing experiments, loss-triggered traceroutes of Internet paths, and BGP routing messages. These correlations shed light on three questions about Internet path failures: (1) Where do failures appear? (2) How long do they last? (3) How do they correlate with BGP routing instability? Data collected over 13 months from an Internet testbed of 31 topologically diverse hosts suggests that most path failures last less than fifteen minutes. Failures that appear in the network core correlate better with BGP instability than failures that appear close to end hosts. On average, most failures precede BGP messages by about four minutes, but there is often increased BGP traffic both before and after failures. Our findings suggest that reactive routing is most effective between hosts that have multiple connections to the Internet. The data set also suggests that passive observations of BGP routing messages could be used to predict about 20% of impending failures, allowing re-routing systems to react more quickly to failures.
Selecting Neural Networks for a Committee Decision

To improve recognition results, decisions of multiple neural networks can be aggregated into a committee decision. In contrast to the ordinary approach of utilizing all neural networks available to make a committee decision, we propose creating adaptive committees, which are specific for each input data point. A prediction network is used to identify classification neural networks to be fused for making a committee decision about a given input data point. The jth output value of the prediction network expresses the expectation level that the jth classification neural network will make a correct decision about the class label of a given input data point. The proposed technique is tested in three aggregation schemes, namely majority vote, averaging, and aggregation by the median rule and compared with the ordinary neural networks fusion approach. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated on two artificial and three real data sets.
Temporal Data Driven Naive Bayesian Text Classifier

Traditional text classifiers usually concern nothing about the producing time of samples, but many samples may involve seasonal features, which contain necessary prior information for classification. This paper firstly discovered the emporal relation between classes by means of chi-square test on a 2 * p dimensional contingency table for the data set of the mayor's complain telephone texts, and then proposed a NB classifier for temporal data when driven by producing time of samples and utilized kernel regression for parameter estimation. The experiment showed a ignificantly improved classification performance.
A cascade detector for text detection in natural scene images

In this paper, we present a text detection and localization method. Our detection technique is based on a cascade of boosted ensemble and localizer uses standard image processing techniques. We propose a small set of features (39 in total) capable of detecting various type of text in grey level natural scene images. Two weak learners, linear discriminant function and log likelihood-ratio test under gaussian assumption, are evaluated. Single features and combination of features are used to form weak classifiers. The proposed scheme is evaluated on ICDAR 2003 robust reading and text locating database. The results are encouraging and the detector can process an images of 640 times 480 pixels in less than 2 seconds.
Effects of Newly-Developed Superimposed Binaural Beat on Anxiety in University Students in Thailand: A Randomised Controlled Trial

This study aimed to investigate the effects of superimposed binaural beat in reducing anxiety among university students and to compare the effects of superimposed binaural beat to those of receptive music listening and relaxation treatment. The 134 participants who participated in the double-blind randomised controlled trial were randomly selected from 539 students with anxiety. According to block randomisation, the participants were assigned to superimposed binaural beat (n = 45), receptive music listening (n = 45), and blank audio (Control, n = 44) groups. All three groups received general relaxation treatment in 20-minute daily sessions over a period of 5 consecutive days. The median differences in anxiety level were measured by the self-administered State-Trait Anxiety Inventory form-Y before and after treatment for the superimposed binaural beat, music listening, and control groups at -20.00, -16.00, and -15.00, respectively. The differences between the superimposed binaural beat group and the control (P = 0.04) and music listening (P = 0.02) groups were statistically significant. Anxiety levels were effectively reduced in 100% of participants in the superimposed binaural beat group, which was higher than the rate in the control group (84.09%: P < 0.01). Superimposed binaural beat-based interventions may reduce anxiety in university students more effectively than the music listening and general relaxation methods. The research findings are potentially beneficial for policymakers and for developing interventions aimed at reducing anxiety in university students.
On the Conformal Anomaly from Higher Derivative Gravity in AdS/CFT Correspondence

We follow Witten's proposal1 in the calculation of conformal anomaly from (d + 1)-dimensional higher derivative gravity via AdS/CFT correspondence. It is assumed that some d-dimensional conformal field theories have a description in terms of above (d + 1)-dimensional higher derivative gravity which includes not only the Einstein term and cosmological constant but also curvature squared terms. The explicit expression for two-dimensional and four-dimensional anomalies is found, it contains higher derivative corrections. In particular, it is shown that not only Einstein gravity but also theory with the Lagrangian L =aR2 + bRμνRμν + Λ (even when a=0 or b=0) is five-dimensional bulk theory for super-Yang–Mills theory in AdS/CFT correspondence. Similarly, the d + 1 = 3 theory with (or without) Einstein term may describe d = 2 scalar or spinor CFT's. That gives new versions of bulk side which may be useful in different aspects. As application of our general formalism we find next-to-leading corrections to the conformal anomaly of supersymmetric theory from d = 5 AdS higher derivative gravity (low energy string effective action).
Immune response to infection with Salmonella typhimurium in mice

Infection of mice with Salmonella typhimurium results in systemic infection and a disease similar to that seen in humans after infection with S. typhi. The innate immune system can restrict replication of S. typhimurium to a certain degree, but for effective control and eradication of bacteria, acquired immunity is essential. Salmonella infection induces the generation of specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, and both T cell populations are important for protection during primary and secondary responses, although the mechanisms underlying T cell‐mediated protection are not yet completely understood. Infection with S. typhimurium also results in a strong antibody response to Salmonella antigens and, in contrast to most other intracellular bacteria, this antibody response participates in protection. In summary, the response to S. typhimurium involves both T and B cell‐mediated immunity, and mechanisms mediated by both lymphocyte populations are important for control of primary infection and protection against secondary infection. J. Leukoc. Biol. 67: 457–463; 2000.
Mechanisms and functional significance of aberrant seizure‐induced hippocampal neurogenesis

Studies of experimental mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE) indicate that prolonged seizures in the adult not only damage the hippocampal formation but also dramatically stimulate neurogenesis. Endogenous neural progenitor cells (NPCs) located in the adult rodent dentate gyrus and striatal subventricular zone are stimulated by experimental status epilepticus (SE) to generate increased numbers of dentate granule cells (DGCs) and olfactory interneurons, respectively ( Bengzon et al., 1997 ; Parent et al., 1997, 2002 ; Scott et al., 1998 ). In this review, we discuss current knowledge regarding the consequences of seizure activity on NPC proliferation, focusing on the hippocampus, and on the migration and integration of adult‐born hippocampal neurons. We also describe the effects of seizure‐induced neurogenesis on hippocampal network function and the potential relevance of aberrant neurogenesis to human mTLE.
LIMITS ON HDS/H2S ABUNDANCE RATIOS IN HOT MOLECULAR CORES

We have searched for HDS emission in a small number of hot cores. Using observations of H 34 2 S, we have derived upper limits to the [HDS]/[H2S] abundance ratio. The upper limits, which are close to 10 −3 can be interpreted in two ways, depending on whether grain surface reactions contribute to the formation of H2S. If grains do not dominate, then the H 2S observed is formed in hot, post-shocked gas and a ratio close to the cosmic [D]/[H] ratio is expected for [HDS]/[H 2S]. This scenario is consistent with our upper limits and with the relatively low abundance ratio found for [HDO]/[H 2O] in hot cores but does not seem to account for all of the molecular [D]/[H] ratios observed in hot cores. If grains do dominate the formation of H2S, then the observed upper limit to the ratio is consistent with the formation of ‘hot core ices’ at a temperature of 60–80 K, close to the temperature at which cometary ices are thought to form.
MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF RICKETTSIAE

The morphological structures of the rickettsiae of epidemic and endemic typhus fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and Q fever are similar to one another and to certain bacteria. The rickettsial organisms in common with the elementary bodies of vaccinia virus and all bacteria would appear to have a limiting membrane which surrounds a substance that seems to be protoplasmic in nature; numbers of dense granules are embedded in the inner protoplasm.
FPGA implementation of spectral subtraction for in-car speech enhancement and recognition

The use of speech recognition in noisy environments requires the use of speech enhancement algorithms in order to improve recognition performance. Deploying these enhancement techniques requires significant engineering to ensure algorithms are realisable in electronic hardware. This paper describes the design decisions and process to port the popular spectral subtraction algorithm to a Virtex-4 field-programmable gate array (FPGA) device. Resource analysis shows the final design uses only 13% of the total available FPGA resources. Waveforms and spectrograms presented support the validity of the proposed FPGA design.
Benders Decomposition for the Design of a Hub and Shuttle Public Transit System

The BusPlus project aims at improving the off-peak hours public transit service in Canberra, Australia. To address the difficulty of covering a large geographic area, proposes a hub and shuttle model consisting of a combination of a few high-frequency bus routes between key hubs and a large number of shuttles that bring passengers from their origin to the closest hub and take them from their last bus stop to their destination. This paper focuses on the design of the bus network and proposes an efficient solving method to this multimodal network design problem based on the Benders decomposition method. Starting from a mixed-integer programming (MIP) formulation of the problem, the paper presents a Benders decomposition approach using dedicated solution techniques for solving independent subproblems, Pareto-optimal cuts, cut bundling, and core point update. Computational results on real-world data from Canberra’s public transit system justify the design choices and show that the approach outperforms the MIP.
Scheduling parallel I/O operations

The I/O bottleneck in parallel computer systems has recently begun receiving increasing interest. Most attention has focused on improving the performance of I/O devices using fairly low-level parallelism in techniques such as disk striping and interleaving. Widely applicable solutions, however, will require an integrated approach which addresses the problem at multiple system levels, including applications, systems software, and architecture. We propose that within the context of such an integrated approach, scheduling parallel I/O operations will become increasingly attractive and can potentially provide substantial performance benefits.We describe a simple I/O scheduling problem and present approximate algorithms for its solution. The costs of using these algorithms in terms of execution time, and the benefits in terms of reduced time to complete a batch of I/O operations, are compared with the situations in which no scheduling is used, and in which an optimal scheduling algorithm is used. The comparison is performed both theoretically and experimentally. We have found that, in exchange for a small execution time overhead, the approximate scheduling algorithms can provide substantial improvements in I/O completion times.