Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The MD 6 hash function A proposal to NIST for SHA-3

This report describes and analyzes the MD6 hash function and is part of our submission package for MD6 as an entry in the NIST SHA-3 hash function competition. Significant features of MD6 include: • Accepts input messages of any length up to 2 − 1 bits, and produces message digests of any desired size from 1 to 512 bits, inclusive, including the SHA-3 required sizes of 224, 256, 384, and 512 bits. • Security—MD6 is by design very conservative. We aim for provable security whenever possible; we provide reduction proofs for the security of the MD6 mode of operation, and prove that standard differential attacks against the compression function are less efficient than birthday attacks for finding collisions. We also show that when used as a MAC within NIST recommendedations, the keyed version of MD6 is not vulnerable to linear cryptanalysis. The compression function and the mode of operation are each shown to be indifferentiable from a random oracle under reasonable assumptions. • MD6 has good efficiency: 22.4–44.1M bytes/second on a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo laptop with 32-bit code compiled with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 for digest sizes in the range 160–512 bits. When compiled for 64-bit operation, it runs at 61.8–120.8M bytes/second, compiled with MS VS, running on a 3.0GHz E6850 Core Duo processor. • MD6 works extremely well for multicore and parallel processors; we have demonstrated hash rates of over 1GB/second on one 16-core system, and over 427MB/sec on an 8-core system, both for 256-bit digests. We have also demonstrated MD6 hashing rates of 375 MB/second on a typical desktop GPU (graphics processing unit) card. We also show that MD6 runs very well on special-purpose hardware. • MD6 uses a single compression function, no matter what the desired digest size, to map input data blocks of 4096 bits to output blocks of 1024 bits— a fourfold reduction. (The number of rounds does, however, increase for larger digest sizes.) The compression function has auxiliary inputs: a “key” (K), a “number of rounds” (r), a “control word” (V ), and a “unique ID” word (U). • The standard mode of operation is tree-based: the data enters at the leaves of a 4-ary tree, and the hash value is computed at the root. See Figure 2.1. This standard mode of operation is highly parallelizable. 1http://www.csrc. nist.gov/pki/HashWorkshop/index.html
A parallel workflow for online correlation and clique-finding : with applications to finance

Education: M.Sc. in Computer Science at the University of British Columbia (2007) • Thesis Title: A Parallel Workflow for Online Correlation and Clique-finding – With Applications to Finance B.Sc. (Honours) with High Honours in Computer Science, University of Regina (2003) • Presidents Medal, for Academic Excellence and Leadership • University Prize in Science, for the Most Outstanding Science Graduate One semester abroad on an Exchange Program at the University of Technology, Sydney (2002) Graduated from Sheldon Williams Collegiate with Honours (1998)
In This Series W. K L E 1 N Second Language Acquisition W. Croft Typology and Universals R . C a N N Formal Semantics Optimality Theory

f! l Cmnbndge UmVC1'sity Press 1999 Thts publtcat1on is in copyright. Sub;ect to statutory excepuon and to the prov1sions of relevant collective ltcensmg agreementS, no reproduction of any part may take place w1thout the wntten penn1ssion of Cambridge Umvcrstty Press. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Libra1y of Congress cataloguing in publicatzon data Kager, Rene. Opumaltty theory I Rene Kagcr. p. em. -(Cambndge textbooks m lmgu1stics) Includes b • bllographical references and mdexes. ISBN 0 52 1 5! 019 6 (hardback). ISB 0 521 58980 0 (paperback) Cambndge Un • vcrs1ty Press has no responsibility forth~ persistence or ~ccu racy of URLs forext~rnal or third-party in tenet websitcs referred to in this publ1catton, and does not guarantee that any content on such websitcs is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Control elements targeting Tgfb3 expression to the palatal epithelium are located intergenically and in introns of the upstream Ift43 gene

Tgfb3 is strongly and specifically expressed in the epithelial tips of pre-fusion palatal shelves where it plays a critical non-redundant role in palatal fusion in both medial edge epithelial (MEE) cells and in a thin layer of flattened peridermal cells that covers the MEE. It is not known how Tgfb3 expression is regulated in these specific cell types. Using comparative genomics and transgenic reporter assays, we have identified cis-regulatory elements that could control Tgfb3 expression during palatogenesis. Our results show that a 61-kb genomic fragment encompassing the Tgfb3 gene drives remarkably specific reporter expression in the MEE and adjacent periderm. Within this fragment, we identified two small, non-coding, evolutionarily conserved regions in intron 2 of the neighboring Ift43 gene, and a larger region in the intervening sequence between the Ift43 and Tgfb3 genes, each of which could target reporter activity to the tips of pre-fusion/fusing palatal shelves. Identification of the cis-regulatory sequences controlling spatio-temporal Tgfb3 expression in palatal shelves is a key step toward understanding upstream regulation of Tgfb3 expression during palatogenesis and should enable the development of improved tools to investigate palatal epithelial fusion.
From Data Center Resource Allocation to Control Theory and Back

Continuously adjusting the horizontal scaling of applications hosted by data centers appears as a good candidate to automatic control approaches allocating resources in closed-loop given their current workload. Despite several attempts, real applications of these techniques in cloud computing infrastructures face some difficulties. Some of them essentially turn back to the core concepts of automatic control: controllability, inertia of the controlled system, gain and stability. In this paper, considering our recent work to build a management framework dedicated to automatic resource allocation in virtualized applications, we attempt to identify from experiments the sources of instabilities in the controlled systems. As examples, we analyze two types of policies: threshold-based and reinforcement learning techniques to dynamically scale resources. The experiments show that both approaches are tricky and that trying to implement a controller without looking at the way the controlled system reacts to actions, both in time and in amplitude, is doomed to fail. We discuss both lessons learned from the experiments in terms of simple yet key points to build good resource management policies, and longer term issues on which we are currently working to manage contracts and reinforcement learning efficiently in cloud controllers.
Model-Free adaptive neural fuzzy feed forward torque control for nonlinear parallel mechanism

Many modern and intelligent control methods had been developed for nonlinear systems in order to get better motion accuracy and dynamic performance for parallel robot. This paper aims to propose a nouvelle model-free adaptive neural fuzzy feed forward torque control for parallel mechanism. The advantage of this kind model-free control is that it uses the information directly from the nonlinear dynamics, without knowing the robot physical parameters and complex models. The neural fuzzy inference system for the model-free adaptive neural fuzzy feed forward control is learning from the robot dynamical data base (joint angular displacement, velocity, acceleration and torque) generated from a PID control system. It is believed that the model-free control is simple, flexible and robust. Results from numerical simulation on a 4-bar planar parallel mechanism show the effectiveness and satisfactory of the proposed control.
Satisfiability algorithms for conjunctive queries over trees

We investigate the satisfiability problem for conjunctions of constraints over ordered, unranked trees, including child, descendant, following-sibling, root, leaf, and first/last child constraints. We introduce new, symbolic approaches based on graph transformations, which simplify and check the consistency of a problem first, and delay blind search as long as possible. We prove correctness and termination for these algorithms. We also analyze the complexity of important special cases: binary and κ-ary intersection of certain classes of XPath expressions. Our main complexity result is that binary intersection (for positive, simple navigational XPath over all axes) is tractable for expressions with a bounded number of changes in direction in the path, which is typically small.
Characterizing modulatory interactions between areas V1 and V2 in human cortex: A new treatment of functional MRI data

Reversible cooling experiments in monkey visual cortex have demonstrated that visually driven neuronal activity in V2 depends on feedforward projections from V1, whereas neuronal activity in V1 is modulated by feedback, or reentrant, projections from V2. We present evidence for a homologous asymmetry in reciprocal connections between V1 and V2 in human cortex using physiological measurements obtained with functional MRI. The analysis was based on a nonlinear model of effective connectivity that partitioned the influence that one region exerted over another into an obligatory effect (an effect that depended only on the input) and a modulatory effect (an effect that represented an interaction between input and activity intrinsic to the target region). Using estimates of the modulatory effect we tested two related hypotheses: (1) that V2 would be a major source of modulatory influences on V1; and (2) that the modulatory effects of V2 on V1 would be greater than those of V1 on V2. The first constitutes a hypothesis about the regional or topographic organization of (modulatory) effective connectivity and the second hypothesis directly addresses the functional asymmetry suggested by reversible cooling experiments. The results confirmed that the origins of feedback modulatory effects on V1 were regionally specific and most pronounced in V2. In contrast, feedforward modulatory influences on V1 on V2 were negligible. This apparent asymmetry between feedforward and feedback modulatory interactions was evident in both hemispheres and appears to be a fairly robust feature of nonlinear interactions between striate and extrastriate cortex. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Developmental Changes in the Neurotransmitter Regulation of Correlated Spontaneous Retinal Activity

Synchronized spontaneous rhythmic activity is a feature common to many parts of the developing nervous system. In the early visual system, before vision, developing circuits in the retina generate synchronized patterns of bursting activity that contain information useful for patterning connections between retinal ganglion cells and their central targets. However, how developing retinal circuits generate and regulate these spontaneous activity patterns is still incompletely understood. Here we show that in developing retinal circuits, the nature of excitatory neurotransmission driving correlated bursting activity in ganglion cells is not fixed but undergoes a developmental shift from cholinergic to glutamatergic transmission. In addition, we show that this shift occurs as presynaptic glutamatergic bipolar cells form functional connections onto the ganglion cells, implicating the role of bipolar cells in providing endogenous drive to bursting activity later in development. This transition coincides with the period when subsets of ganglion cells (On and Off cells) develop distinct activity patterns that are thought to underlie the refinement of their connectivity with their central targets. Here, our results suggest that the differences in activity patterns of On and Off ganglion cells may be conferred by differential synaptic drive from On and Off bipolar cells, respectively. Taken together, our results suggest that the regulation of patterned spontaneous activity by neurotransmitters undergoes systematic change as new cellular elements are added to developing circuits and also that these new elements can help specify distinct activity patterns appropriate for shaping connectivity patterns at later ages.
Patterns of Diagnosed Mathematical Content and Process Skills in TIMSS-R Across a Sample of 20 Countries

This study used a diagnostic testing approach to compare the mathematics achievement of eighth-grade students across a sample of 20 countries, analyzing data from the Third International Math and Science Study–Revised (TIMSS-R, 1999). Using the rule-space method, student mastery was measured on 23 specific content knowledge and processing subskills (“attributes”) underlying students’ item scores, using 23 attributes previously defined and validated. Mean mastery levels for each attribute were compared for the 20 selected countries. Clear differences among the countries were found in patterns of subskill achievement. U.S. students were strong in some content and quantitative reading skills, but weak in others, notably geometry. Interestingly, success in geometry was found to be highly associated with logical reasoning and other important mathematical thinking skills across the sampled countries.
Information Brokers: Gathering Information from Heterogeneous Information Sources

The Internet provides dramatic new opportunities for gathering information from multiple, distributed, heterogeneous information sources. However, this distributed environment poses difficult technical problems for the information-seeking client, including finding the information sources relevant to an interest, formulating questions in the terms that the sources understand, interpreting the retrieved information, and assembling the information retrieved from several sources into a coherent answer. In this paper, we describe techniques that will enable vendors and buyers to build and maintain networkbased information brokers capable of retrieving information about services and products via the Internet from multiple vendor catalogs and data bases for both human and computerbased clients.
Advancing Bayesian Optimization: The Mixed-Global-Local (MGL) Kernel and Length-Scale Cool Down

Bayesian Optimization (BO) has become a core method for solving expensive black-box optimization problems. While much research focussed on the choice of the acquisition function, we focus on online length-scale adaption and the choice of kernel function. Instead of choosing hyperparameters in view of maximum likelihood on past data, we propose to use the acquisition function to decide on hyperparameter adaptation more robustly and in view of the future optimization progress. Further, we propose a particular kernel function that includes non-stationarity and local anisotropy and thereby implicitly integrates the efficiency of local convex optimization with global Bayesian optimization. Comparisons to state-of-the art BO methods underline the efficiency of these mechanisms on global optimization benchmarks.
Projection Framework for Hybrid Methods Derived From Finite-Difference Operators in Time and Frequency Domain

A systematic approach to the construction of hybrid time- and frequency-domain algorithms derived from finite-difference operators is presented. The idea originates from projection formalism in a finite-dimensional vector space. We show that various algorithms can be obtained by an appropriate transformation of finite-difference operators. In the developed formalism, a transformation can be applied to the entire or a part of the computational domain, which can be easily employed to construct hybrid algorithms that combine, for instance, multiresolution techniques with eigenfunction expansion or finite differences. The stability of the developed time-domain hybrid schemes is shown. Numerical examples are given, illustrating different issues related to presented algorithms.
Neuroanatomical bases for synesthesia and their implications for perception and consciousness

Synesthesia is a condition that affects an individual’s conscious perception of the world. Individuals with this disorder vary greatly, but have in common the phenomenon of cross-modal perceptions. For example, grapheme-color synesthetes perceive color when presented with graphemes, such as letters and numbers. In this review, we investigate this phenomenon further in order to evaluate the plausibility of currently proposed mechanisms. There is some debate about whether synesthetic mechanisms are primarily perceptual or are primarily concept-driven. There are also important questions about the relationship of attention and consciousness to synesthesia, and here we examine specific studies that shed light on this issue. We will show that the evidence suggests a wide heterogeneity between synesthetic subjects. We will also demonstrate that both perceptual and concept driven hypotheses are crucial to the understanding of the inner neural mechanisms of synesthesia. By achieving said understanding, we may be able to gain valuable information about how conscious experience is produced through neural
Strategic Behavior in Interaction Selection and Contact Selection

Social search platforms like Aardvark or Yahoo Answers have attracted a lot of attention lately. In principle, participants have two strategic dimensions in social search systems: (1) Interaction selection, i.e., forwarding/processing incoming requests (or not), and (2) contact selection, i.e., adding or dropping contacts. In systems with these strategic dimensions, it is unclear whether nodes cooperate, and if they form efficient network structures. To shed light on this fundamental question, we have conducted a study to investigate human behavior in interaction selection and to investigate the ability of humans to form efficient networks. In order to limit the degree of problem understanding necessary by the study participants, we have introduced the problem as an online game. 193 subjects joined the study that was online for 67 days. One result is that subjects choose contacts strategically and that they use strategies that lead to cooperative and almost efficient systems. Surprisingly, subjects tend to overestimate the value of cooperative contacts and keep cooperative but costly contacts. This observation is important: Assisting agents that help subjects to avoid this behavior might yield more efficiency.
Norges Teknisk-naturvitenskapelige Universitet Error Estimates in Inverse Design of Photonic Crystals Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim, Norway Error Estimates in Inverse Design of Photonic Crystals

We present an a posteriori error estimate together with an adaptive finite element method for an inverse design problem applied to reconstruction of the structure of a photonic crystal. The inverse problem is formulated as an optimal control problem, where we solve the equations of optimality expressing stationarity of an associated Lagrangian. We present an a posteriori error estimate for the error in the La-grangian which couples residuals of the computed solution to weights of the reconstruction. We show also that weights can be obtained by solving an associated linearized problem for the Hessian of the Lagrangian and thus the value of the error in the reconstructed parameter can be obtained. The performance of the adaptive finite element method and the usefulness of the a posteriori error estimator are illustrated in numerical examples on reconstruction of the structure of a two-dimensional photonic crystal.
Analysis for quadrilateral MITC elements for the Reissner-Mindlin plate problem

The present paper is made up of two parts. In the first part, we study the mathematical stability and convergence of the quadrilateral MITC elements for the Reissner-Mindlin plate problem in an abstract setting. We generalize the Brezzi-Bathe-Fortin conditions to the quadrilateral MITC elements by weakening the second and fourth conditions. Under these conditions, we show the well-posedness of the discrete problem and establish an abstract error estimate in the energy norm. The conclusion of this part is sparsity in the mathematical research of the quadrilateral MITC elements in the sense that one only needs to check these five conditions. In the second part, we extend four families of rectangular MITC elements of Stenberg and Suri to the quadrilateral meshes. We prove that these quadrilateral elements satisfy the generalized Brezzi-Bathe-Fortin conditions from the first part. We develop the h-p error estimates in both energy and L 2 norm for these quadrilateral elements. For the first three families of quadrilateral elements, the error estimates indicate that their convergent rates in both energy and L 2 norm depend on the mesh distortion parameter a. We can get optimal error estimates for them provided that a = 1. In addition, we show the optimal convergence rates in energy norm uniformly in a for the fourth family of quadrilateral elements. Like their rectangular counterparts, these quadrilateral elements are locking-free.
Mining topics on participations for community discovery

Community discovery on large-scale linked document corpora has been a hot research topic for decades. There are two types of links. The first one, which we call d2d-link, indicates connectiveness among different documents, such as blog references and research paper citations. The other one, which we call u2u-link, represents co-occurrences or simultaneous participations of different users in one document and typically each document from u2u-link corpus has more than one user/author. Examples of u2u-link data covers email archives and research paper co-authorship networks. Community discovery in d2d-link data has achieved much success, while methods for that in u2u-link data either make no use of the textual content of the documents or make oversimplified assumptions about the users and the textual content. In this paper we propose a general approach of community discovery for u2u-link data, i.e., multiple user data, by placing topical variables on multiple authors' participations in documents. Experiments on a research proceeding co-authorship corpus and a New York Times news corpus show the effectiveness of our model.
An experimental study of reliable wireless communications in vehicles

Recent works on enhancing comfortability and convenience in vehicles reveal that information collections by various wireless sensor nodes have the potential due to their easiness of install and their small size. However, the conventional wireless network standards achieve insufficient reliability for practical in-vehicle communications. In this paper, through implementing 2.4GHz devices in an actual vehicle with crews in the cabin. Based on the results, we propose a method to provide reliable multi-hop communications in a vehicle using overhearing. In the proposed method, the neighbor nodes overhear a packet sent from a source node. If the destination node does not receive the packet, neighbor nodes send the overheard packet as proxies of the source node. We evaluate the performance of the proposed method by computer simulation and experimental implementation. One of the results shows that the proposed method achieves 99.9% packet arrival ratio within 20ms.