Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Forgetting through Generalisation – a Companion with Selective Memory

This research investigates event generalisation in computational episodic memory for artificial companions. Two studies indicated a preference of a biologically-inspired selective memory over an absolute memory companion. Consequently , we present a preliminary implementation of a forgetting mechanism that enables the companion to create " generalised event representations " from its experiences allowing the companion to learn from past encounters.
con-Job Embeddedness Among Hospitality Industry Employees: An Empirical Study in Alanya

The purpose of this study is to analyze the hospitality industry employees’ job embeddedness in the Turkish context and to determine its relationship with community, organization, and demographic variables. For this study, the questionnaire survey method was conducted on 210 employees who work at five-star hotels in Alan-ya. Factor analysis demonstrated as a result a three-factor structure: “organization-related sacrifice”, “fit to organization” and “fit to community”. The findings of this study showed that there were significant differences between the dimensions of “fit to organization” and “fit to community” and community-and organization-related questions. Among the demographic questions, job position, income level, and age were related to all dimensions of job embeddedness
OptiQL: Robust Optimistic Locking for Memory-Optimized Indexes

Modern memory-optimized indexes often use optimistic locks for concurrent accesses. Read operations can proceed optimistically without taking the lock, greatly improving performance on multicore CPUs. But this is at the cost of robustness against contention where many threads contend on a small set of locks, causing excessive cacheline invalidation, interconnect traffic and eventually performance collapse. Yet existing solutions often sacrifice desired properties such as compact 8-byte lock size and fairness among lock requesters. This paper presents optimistic queuing lock (OptiQL), a new optimistic lock for database indexing to solve this problem. OptiQL extends the classic MCS lock---a fair, compact and robust mutual exclusion lock---with optimistic read capabilities for index workloads to achieve both robustness and high performance while maintaining various desirable properties. Evaluation using memory-optimized B+-trees on a 40-core, dual-socket server shows that OptiQL matches existing optimistic locks for read operations, while avoiding performance collapse under high contention.
Characterizing the Function of Gene Editing Components in Tropical Maize

Gene editing technology has revolutionized our ability to make precise genetic changes to fix diseases and improve traits, but the efficiency of this technology has not been tested in important grain crops like tropical maize. My project aims to use various molecular techniques to analyze the inheritance and function of different gene editing components transformed into tropical maize. I will analyze tropical maize plants that were genetically transformed with different molecular elements including but not limited to gene editing reagents, herbicide resistance genes, antibiotic resistance genes, and colored fluorescent proteins. I will analyze two types of transformed maize plants: individual first transgenic (T1) generation plants and second transgenic (T2) generation families that are the progeny of T1 plants. My objectives are to determine if all the genetic components that were used for the initial transformation segregate in the T1 generation and if those components are functional. My objectives for the T2 families are to determine the inheritance pattern of the genetic components in the T2 progeny and if those components are still functional in that generation. To test for the presence and inheritance of specific genetic elements, I will extract total genomic DNA, use the genomic DNA as a template to amplify each genetic element using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and analyze the amplification products using agarose gel electrophoresis. My functional assays will include testing the plants for herbicide or antibiotic resistance and visualizing colored fluorescence in leaf tissue. Through observational and molecular analysis, I expect to determine the inheritance and function of the different elements used for gene editing in tropical maize.
Shock and annealing in the amphibole‐ and mica‐bearing R chondrites

MIL 11207 (R6) and LAP 04840 (R6) contain hornblende and phlogopite; MIL 07440 (R6) contains accessory titan‐phlogopite and no hornblende. All three meteorites have been shocked: MIL 11207 contains extensive sulfide veins, pyroxene that formed from dehydrated hornblende, and an extensive network of plagioclase glass; MIL 07440 contains chromite‐plagioclase assemblages, chromite veinlets and blebs, pincer‐shaped plagioclase patches, but no sulfide veins; LAP 04840 contains olivine grains with chromite‐bleb‐laden cores and opaque‐free rims, rare grains of pyroxene that formed from dehydrated hornblende, and no sulfide veins. These meteorites appear to have been heated to maximum temperatures of approximately 700–900 °C under conditions of moderately high PH2O (perhaps 250–500 bars). All three samples underwent postshock annealing. During this process, olivine crystal lattices healed (giving the rocks the appearance of shock‐stage S1), and diffusion of Fe and S from thin sulfide veins to coarse sulfide grains caused the veins to disappear in MIL 07440 and LAP 04840. This latter process apparently also occurred in most S1–S2 ordinary chondrites of high petrologic type. The pressure–temperature conditions responsible for forming the amphibole and mica in these rocks may have been present at depths of a few tens of kilometers (as suggested in the literature). A giant impact or a series of smaller impacts would then have been required to excavate the hornblende‐ and biotite‐bearing rocks and bring them closer to the surface. It was in that latter location where the samples were shocked, deposited in a hot ejecta blanket of low thermal diffusivity, and annealed.
Growth of Layered Copper − Alkanethiolate Frameworks from Thin Anodic Copper Oxide Films

: We investigated the conversion of electrochemically grown CuO into copper − alkanethiolate lamellar structures supported on a Cu substrate upon immersion in solutions of n - alkanethiols. After considering di ﬀ erent preparation conditions (alkyl chain length, thiol concentration, and type of solvent), we found that the oxide can be rapidly converted into compact and highly passivating lamellar layers in 1-octanethiolate/0.1 M NaOH forming solutions. Alkaline forming solutions play a key role in favoring the conversion of CuO into the lamellar compound vs the competing mechanism in which the oxide is reduced and the thiolates are oxidized to disul ﬁ des. The oxide conversion into the layered structure is incomplete for both short and long alkanethiols, and it is almost complete in the case of 1-octanethiol. The use of less polar solvents such as ethanol or n -hexane is much less e ﬀ ective in producing layered Cu − thiolates. Spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements showed that 10-nm-thick CuO is converted into a 100-nm-thick lamellar compound, which corresponds to around 40 lamellae. After the breakage of the layers during O 2 evolution at high anodic potentials, a healing behavior was observed: the copper surface became passivated again after exposure of the broken layer in the air for a few minutes. The layered compound was extensively characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The decrease of O 1s/Cu 3p ratio and the increase of S 2p/Cu 3p and C 1s/Cu 3p ratios clearly showed the conversion of CuO into a copper − thiolate complex. The Raman spectrum of the Cu − octanethiolate compound shows a considerable enhancement of all bands as compared to a self-assembled monolayer. The sharpness of the most prominent peaks indicates the high crystallinity of the alkyl chains in the layered compound. Density functional theory calculations showed that the alkyl chains lie nearly perpendicular to the layer of Cu atoms. The calculation of Raman vibrational frequencies using density functional perturbation theory allowed an unambiguous assignment of experimental Raman peaks.
Forest Cutover Mapping from X-Band SAR

This paper describes forestry research completed in central Alberta, Canada, using high-resolution STAR-2 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. Hard copy SAR imagery at 1:100 000 scale was used to map cutovers, and detailed area and boundary placement statistical comparisons were made between SAR- and photogrammetrically-derived maps.Results indicated a strong linear relationship (r = 0.98) between the SAR and photogrammetric maps, and that the standard error of the estimate was 4 ha for clearcuts that ranged in size from 0.5 ha to 100 ha. No significant difference existed between the SAR-derived and actual areas after a proportional linear regression model was employed. Cutover boundary mapping accuracy was also evaluated using a vector/perimeter displacement measurement approach, and results indicated that a displacement of −11 (signed vectors) or 29 m (absolute vectors) was attained, depending on the measurement approach taken.
BRNO UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Deepfake creation has improved a lot in recent times and hence is a dreaded menace to society. Deepfake detection methods have also responded with development, but there are still not enough good tools available to the general public. This work focuses on creating a deepfake detection framework that will be easily extended by other detection methods in the future, yet simple and accessible to the general public. Abstrakt Tvorba deepfake se za poslední dobu velmi zlepšila a tudíž je obávanou hroznou pro společnost. Detekční metody odhalující deepfake také reagovali rozvojem, ale stále není široké veřejnosti dostupné dostatečné množství kvalitních nástrojů. Tato práce se zaměřuje na vytvoření frameworku na detekci deepfake, který bude jednoduše rozšiřitlený dalšími detekčními metodami v budounu a přitom jednoduchý a dostupný široké veřejnosti.
A Thorough Evaluation of RAMBAM

The application of masking, widely regarded as the most robust and reliable countermeasure against Side-Channel Analysis~(SCA) attacks, has been the subject of extensive research across a range of cryptographic algorithms, especially AES. However, the implementation cost associated with applying such a countermeasure can be significant and even in some scenarios infeasible due to considerations such as area and latency overheads, as well as the need for fresh randomness to ensure the security properties of the resulting design. Most of these overheads originate from the ability to maintain security in the presence of physical defaults such as glitches and transitions. Among several schemes with a trade-off between such overheads, RAMBAM, presented at CHES~2022, offers an ultra-low latency in terms of the number of clock cycles. It is dedicated to the AES and utilizes redundant representations of the finite field elements to enhance protection against both passive and active physical attacks. In this paper, we have a deeper look at this technique and provide a comprehensive analysis. The original authors reported that the number of required traces to mount a successful attack increases exponentially with the size of the redundant representation. We however examine their scheme from theoretical point of view. More specifically, we investigate the relationship between RAMBAM and the well-established Boolean masking and, based on this, prove the insecurity of RAMBAM. Through the examples and use cases, we assess the leakage of the scheme in practice and use verification tools to demonstrate that RAMBAM does not necessarily offer adequate protection against SCA attacks neither in theory nor in practice. Confirmed by real-world experiments, we additionally highlight that - if no dedicated facility is incorporated - the RAMBAM designs are susceptible to fault-injection attacks despite providing some degree of protection against a sophisticated attack vector, i.e., SIFA.
Expression pattern detection and classification of two types of lung cancer, LUAD and LUSC

Lung cancer is one of the most common cancers with a relatively high mortality rate, where lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) and lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) are the two most common lung cancer subtypes. Despite both being classified as non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), they are different in pathogenesis, prevalence, and prognosis, and thus should be treated differently under the goal of precision medicine. At the same time, machine learning shows great potential in biomedical-related tasks, especially in cancer type classification. How well can these methods be integrated and what interesting insights can they provide about LUAD and LUSC is the driving question of this project. To answer it, we first applied Differential Gene Expression Analysis (DGE) on a subset of the LUAD and LUSC datasets, respectively, where identified features were used to perform pathway enrichment analysis. Meanwhile, these features, together with the rest of the samples served as the dataset for building three classifiers, Logistic regression, Random forest, and XGBoost. Three classifiers all had good performance because of the clear expression patterns detected, especially for the Logistic regression model, which performed best with an F1 score higher than 0.95. Furthermore, explorations on feature importance suggested some features with large weights have biological significance, which might be the reason why logistic regression performed so well. And we also found that feature importance might serve as a tool for finding biomarkers.
Current issues in fish welfare

Human beings may affect the welfare of fish through fisheries, aquaculture and a number of other activities. There is no agreement on just how to we igh the concern for welfare of fish against the hum an interests involved, but ethical frameworks exist th at suggest how this might be approached. Different definitions of animal welfare focus on an animal's condition, on its subjective experience o f that condition and/or on whether it can lead a natu ral life. These provide different, legitimate, pers pectives, but the approach taken in this paper is to focus on welfare as the absence of suffering. An unresolved and controversial issue in discussion s about animal welfare is whether non-human animals exposed to adverse experiences such as physical injury or confinement experience what humans would call suffering. The neocortex, which in huma ns is an important part of the neural mechanism tha t generates the subjective experience of suffering, i s lacking in fish and non-mammalian animals, and it has been argued that its absence in fish indicates that fish cannot suffer. However, a strong alternative view is that complex animals with sophisticated behaviour, such as fish, probably have the capacity for suffer ing, though this may be different in degree and kind fro m the human experience of this state. Recent empirical studies support this view and show that painful stimuli are, at least, strongly avers ive to fish. Consequently, injury or experience of othe r harmful conditions is a cause for concern in term s of welfare of individual fish. There is also growing e vidence that fish can experience fear-like states a nd that they avoid situations in which they have experience d adverse conditions.
Realizing Low Crosstalk Suitable for Next-Generation Short-Reach Optical Interconnects With Low Misalignment Loss

Toward the next-generation exa-scale short-reach optical interconnects (OIs) supporting large-capacity data transmission, a compact computer-compatible 8-core heterogeneous trench-assisted multicore fiber (TA-MCF) is proposed, in which cores are arranged in a rectangular array. To analyze the crosstalk (XT) between adjacent cores of TA-MCF OI, a rigorous full-vectorial H-field finite element method (FEM) and coupled power theory are applied. The impact of various trench design parameters on the modecoupling coefficient Cmn and the coupling length Lc is discussed in detail. An accurate explicit condition for the achievement of low XT in an 8-core heterogeneous TA-MCF OI is obtained through numerical simulations. A rigorous modal solution approach based on the computationally efficient FEM and the least squares boundary residual method is employed to analyze the coupling loss caused by the misalignment to a butt-coupled TA-MCF OI.
An institutional ethnographic investigation into the pastoral work of course leaders for college-based higher education

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to investigate the pastoral work carried out by Course Leaders of College-Based Higher Education (CBHE), asking the question of how does the pastoral work of Course Leaders for CBHE happen? Taking the standpoint of Course Leaders for CBHE and using the work of Dorothy E. Smith, I adopted an institutional ethnographic approach to investigate the pastoral work. Informants were purposively sampled, and data was collected from interviews with Course Leaders and managers, observations of Course Leaders, field notes and texts relating to the work of Course Leaders. I found that the pastoral work of Course Leaders for CBHE was taking place. It was taking place in the talk of the Course Leaders and visible through the observations I carried out. Yet this work was unseen in terms of the documentation relation to the work of the Course Leaders and the absence of facilities in which to carry out this work. However, pastoral work is something that is required for Course Leaders to deliver with the requirements of their role due to the audit culture inherent in The College Group, driven by the need for accountability and financial stability.
The Success of a Food Tourism Destination: A Systematic Review

Purpose: This study aimed to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) of food tourism destinations and analyse their importance for the development of destination tourism. Design/methodology/approach: We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify prevalent CSFs in food tourism destinations. Out of 210 articles related to food tourism destinations, 41 underwent a rigorous selection process for analysis. The chosen articles were examined comprehensively to provide a replicable overview of the subject. Findings: The five most popular factors were: marketing, food quality, food product, cultural identity and visitor experience. It was also found that more studies were conducted on the supply side, while fewer studies were conducted on the demand and supply side. There was a significant difference between the CSFs of supply and demand side statistics separately. Research Practical & Social implications: This comprehensive review of CSFs in food tourism destinations offers a valuable contribution to the field. It encompasses insights into publication patterns, temporal distribution, research methodologies, and the identification of prevalent success factors. This knowledge helps researchers position their work, identify gaps, and align their research for maximum impact. Ultimately, it fosters efficient and productive future research, facilitating meaningful advancements in food tourism. Originality/value: The study clarifies what are the most popular venues for successful food tourism destinations for publishing research. How research on CSFs in food tourism destinations is distributed over time and what the geographical distribution of research looks like. And what are the most popular CSFs for food tourism destinations.
Modeling the land surface water and energy cycles of a mesoscale watershed in the central Tibetan Plateau during summer with a distributed hydrological model

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is the highest plateau in the world, playing an essential role in Asian monsoon development and concurrent water and energy cycles. In this study, the Water and Energy Budget‐based Distributed Hydrological Model (WEB‐DHM) was calibrated and used to simulate water and energy cycles in a central TP watershed during the summer season. The model was first calibrated at a point scale (BJ site). The simulation results show that the model can successfully reproduce energy fluxes and soil surface temperature with acceptable accuracies. The model was further calibrated at basin scale, using observed discharges in summer 1998 and the entire year of 1999. The model successfully reproduced discharges near the basin outlet (Nash‐Sutcliffe efficiency coefficients 0.60 and 0.62 in 1998 and 1999, respectively). Finally, the model was validated using MODIS land surface temperature (LST) data and measured soil water content (SWC) at 15 points within the watershed in 2010. The simulation results show that the model successfully reproduced the spatial pattern and LST means in both nighttime and daytime. Furthermore, the model can generally reproduce 15‐site averaged SWC in four soil layers, with small bias error and root mean square error. Despite the absence of long‐term discharge data for model verification, we validated it using MODIS LST and measured SWC data. This showed that the WEB‐DHM has the potential for use in poorly gauged or ungauged areas such as the TP. This could improve understanding of water and energy cycles in these areas.
Evaluation of the periodic table as a teaching tool and content for conceptual change in chemical processes

This study focused on two crucial chemistry concepts, chemical bonding and related reactions. It explored how learners may conceptually use the periodic table in their scientific understanding. Specifically, the study's goal was to ascertain the effect of the use of this tool on learners' conceptual knowledge and/or reasoning abilities during learning or knowledge construction. The study utilized qualitative methodology and was based on a case (the school). For the purposes of the experiment, the participating learners—learners in grade 11 chemistry—were split into two groups (control group and experimental group). The study's findings indicate relationships between learners' knowledge (re)construction of chemical processes and their applicability to the periodic table. Future research is suggested by the researchers on the links between learning conceptual change and teaching approaches using the periodic table.