Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Software-engineering challenges of building and deploying reusable problem solvers

Abstract Problem solving methods (PSMs) are software components that represent and encode reusable algorithms. They can be combined with representations of domain knowledge to produce intelligent application systems. A goal of research on PSMs is to provide principled methods and tools for composing and reusing algorithms in knowledge-based systems. The ultimate objective is to produce libraries of methods that can be easily adapted for use in these systems. Despite the intuitive appeal of PSMs as conceptual building blocks, in practice, these goals are largely unmet. There are no widely available tools for building applications using PSMs and no public libraries of PSMs available for reuse. This paper analyzes some of the reasons for the lack of widespread adoptions of PSM techniques and illustrate our analysis by describing our experiences developing a complex, high-throughput software system based on PSM principles. We conclude that many fundamental principles in PSM research are useful for building knowledge-based systems. In particular, the task–method decomposition process, which provides a means for structuring knowledge-based tasks, is a powerful abstraction for building systems of analytic methods. However, despite the power of PSMs in the conceptual modeling of knowledge-based systems, software engineering challenges have been seriously underestimated. The complexity of integrating control knowledge modeled by developers using PSMs with the domain knowledge that they model using ontologies creates a barrier to widespread use of PSM-based systems. Nevertheless, the surge of recent interest in ontologies has led to the production of comprehensive domain ontologies and of robust ontology-authoring tools. These developments present new opportunities to leverage the PSM approach.
Applications of Interactive Proof to Data Flow Analysis and Security

We show how to formalise a small imperative programming language in the theorem prover Isabelle/HOL, how to define its semantics, and how to prove properties about the language, its type systems, and a number of data flow analyses. The emphasis is not on formalising a complex language deeply, but to teach a number of formalisation techniques and proof strategies using simple examples. For this purpose, we cover a basic type system with type safety proof, more complex security type systems, also with soundness proofs, and different kinds of data flow analyses, in particular definite initialisation analysis and constant propagation, again with correctness proofs.
Characterization of the Partitioning System of Myxococcus Plasmid pMF1

pMF1 is the only autonomously replicating plasmid that has been recently identified in myxobacteria. This study characterized the partitioning (par) system of this plasmid. The fragment that significantly increased the retaining stability of plasmids in Myxococcus cells in the absence of selective antibiotics contained three open reading frames (ORFs) pMF1.21-pMF1.23 (parCAB). The pMF1.22 ORF (parA) is homologous to members of the parA ATPase family, with the highest similarity (56%) to the Sphingobium japonicum ParA-like protein, while the other two ORFs had no homologs in GenBank. DNase I footprinting and electrophoretic mobility shift assays showed that the pMF1.23 (parB) product is a DNA-binding protein of iteron DNA sequences, while the product of pMF1.21 (parC) has no binding activity but is able to enhance the DNA-binding activity of ParB to iterons. The ParB protein autogenously repressed the expression of the par genes, consistent with the type Ib par pattern, while the ParC protein has less repressive activity. The ParB-binding iteron sequences are distributed not only near the partitioning gene loci but also along pMF1. These results indicate that the pMF1 par system has novel structural and functional characteristics.
Automatic and robust method for registration of optical imagery with point cloud data

Aim to the difficulty of automatic and robust registration of optical imagery with point cloud data, this paper propose a new method based on SIFT and Mutual Information (MI). The SIFT features are firstly extracted and matched, whose result is used to derive the coarse geometric relationship between the optical imagery and the point cloud data. Secondly, the MI-based similarity measure is used to derive the conjugate points. And then the RANSAC algorithm is adopted to eliminate the erroneous matching points. Repeating the procedure of MI matching and mismatching points deletion until the finest pyramid image level. Using the matching results, the transform model is determined. The experiments have been made and they demonstrate the potential of the MI-based measure for the registration of optical imagery with the point cloud data, and this highlight the feasibility and robustness of the method proposed in this paper to automated registration of multi-modal, multi-temporal remote sensing data for a wide range of applications.
Multi-task Gaussian Process Learning of Robot Inverse Dynamics

The inverse dynamics problem for a robotic manipulator is to compute the torques needed at the joints to drive it along a given trajectory; it is beneficial to be able to learn this function for adaptive control. A robotic manipulator will often need to be controlled while holding different loads in its end effector, giving rise to a multi-task learning problem. By placing independent Gaussian process priors over the latent functions of the inverse dynamics, we obtain a multi-task Gaussian process prior for handling multiple loads, where the inter-task similarity depends on the underlying inertial parameters. Experiments demonstrate that this multi-task formulation is effective in sharing information among the various loads, and generally improves performance over either learning only on single tasks or pooling the data over all tasks.
Modelling natural and man-induced hydrological changes on Sebkhet Kelbia, Tunisia

The 120 km2 ephemeral lake at Sebkhet Kelbia, which is unique in the Maghreb by virtue of its lack of a salt crust when dry, is internationally important for wintering waterfowl. It is threatened by dams for flood control and water-supply and its volume has been reduced by 63 per cent since 1933 by a combination of sedimentation and erosion. A deterministic digital model of the monthly water and salt balance of the whole 15 000 km2 catchment for 1900 to 1975 is fitted to the limited lake level and lake salinity data, as well as other disparate observations. The lake is shown to have cycles of long periodicity which make short runs of data very unreliable. The 1930-55 historic record shows that Kelbia is dry for 31-4 per cent of the time whereas the 76 years of synthetic data generated by the model show that it is dry for only 10-2 per cent of the period. The historical records for the period of World War II are shown to be suspect. The effects of sedimentation and erosion of the sill are so great that the actual records of lake level and salinity are not an adequate reflection of conditions today. The analysis shows that the dams will exacerbate some of the effects of reduced lake volume. Future desiccation will be 2-5 times more frequent than in the past. The lake will have more spells of freshwater conditions but in aggregate they will last for 8 per cent less time. The frequency of damaging overflows from Kelbia will double. An embankment at the outflow would keep the lake in existence for as long and as fresh as before the dams were constructed. Kelbia's conservation will benefit wintering waterfowl, the fishery, flood protection for communications and tourists from nearby hotels.
Preparation and evaluation of tilmicosin-loaded hydrogenated castor oil nanoparticle suspensions of different particle sizes

Three tilmicosin-loaded hydrogenated castor oil nanoparticle (TMS-HCO-NP) suspensions of different particle sizes were prepared with different polyvinyl alcohol surfactant concentrations using a hot homogenization and ultrasonic technique. The in vitro release, in vitro antibacterial activity, mammalian cytotoxicity, acute toxicity in mice, and stability study were conducted to evaluate the characteristics of the suspensions. The in vitro tilmicosin release rate, antibacterial activity, mammalian cytotoxicity, acute toxicity in mice, and stability of the suspensions were evaluated. When prepared with polyvinyl alcohol concentrations of 0.2%, 1%, and 5%, the mean diameters of the nanoparticles in the three suspensions were 920±35 nm, 452±10 nm, and 151±4 nm, respectively. The three suspensions displayed biphasic release profiles similar to that of freeze-dried TMS-HCO-NP powders, with the exception of having a faster initial release. Moreover, suspensions of smaller-sized particles showed faster initial release, and lower minimum inhibitory concentrations and minimum bactericidal concentrations. Time-kill curves showed that within 12 hours, the suspension with the 151 nm particles had the most potent bactericidal activity, but later, the suspensions with larger-sized particles showed increased antibacterial activity. None of the three suspensions were cytotoxic at clinical dosage levels. At higher drug concentrations, all three suspensions showed similar concentration-dependent cytotoxicity. The suspension with the smallest-sized particle showed significantly more acute toxicity in mice, perhaps due to faster drug release. All three suspensions exhibited good stability at 4°C and at room temperature for at least 6 months. These results demonstrate that TMS-HCO-NP suspensions can be a promising formulation for tilmicosin, and that nanoparticle size can be an important consideration for formulation development.
Venus trough-and-ridge tessera - Analog to earth oceanic crust formed at spreading centers?

One type of tessera terrain on Venus, the trough-and-ridge tessera, exhibits a distinctive morphology composed of throughgoing generally parallel linear valleys and shorter orthogonal valleys and ridges. The similarity of this pattern to oceanic crustal topography and morphology is examined. Oceanic crust on Earth is characterized by a distinctive orthogonal pattern, with transforms and fracture zones in one direction and linear abyssal hills developed parallel to the rise crest in the other. Similarities between the components of the tessera terrain and terrestrial seafloor fabric and structure are found in terms of linearity, parallelism, length, width, spacing, orthogonality, and general morphology. A difference is that trough and ridge tessera tend to occur as plateau-like regions at intermediate elevations (average ∼2 km) above the surrounding plains, while terrestrial seafloor ranges in elevation from that observed at rise crests and oceanic plateaus such as Iceland, down to depths of several kilometers on the abyssal floors, where the orthogonal pattern is often masked by sedimentation. On the basis of the similarities it is proposed that trough-and-ridge tessera may have originated through processes analogous to those responsible for the ocean floor fabric on Earth, forming at a rise crest similar to divergent boundaries on the Earth's seafloor, and evolving to its present morphology and configuration through processes of crustal spreading. The plateau-like nature of the trough-and-ridge tessera distribution could be the result of localized crustal thickening in the spreading process, producing elevated Iceland-like plateaus whose texture is preserved from subsequent lowland volcanic flooding. Some regions of more complex tessera patterns may result from deformation of the basic trough-and-ridge pattern of tessera. This hypothesis can be tested with global high-resolution imaging and altimetry data and gravity data from the Magellan mission.
Exchange rate and the demand for money in Malaysia

This paper investigates the long run relationship between exchange rate and money demand in Malaysia. The Johansen:Juselius (1990) likelihood ratio tests support the importance of exchange rate in m2 but not in ml money demand. The Hansen:Johansen (1993) likelihood ratio tests however found some evidence of instability in the long run parameters and this could be due to the recent financial crisis in this region. Overall analysis has provided support to the empirical investigation of the relation between exchange rate and money demand.
Pollination ecology and breeding systems of five Gesneria species from Puerto Rico.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The genus Gesneria diversified in the Greater Antilles giving rise to various floral designs corresponding to different pollination syndromes. The goal of this study was to characterize the pollination and breeding systems of five Puerto Rican Gesneria species. METHODS The study was conducted in Arecibo and El Yunke National Forest, Puerto Rico, between 2003 and 2007. Floral visitors were documented by human observers and video cameras. Floral longevity and nectar production were recorded for the five study species. Tests for self-compatibility and autonomous selfing were conducted through hand-pollination and bagging experiments. KEY RESULTS Floral phenology and nectar production schedules agree with nocturnal (in bell-shaped flowered G. pedunculosa and G. viridiflora subsp. sintenisii) or diurnal pollination syndromes (in tubular-flowered G. citrina, G. cuneifolia and G. reticulata). Nectar concentration is consistently low (8-13 %) across species. Gesneria citrina and G. cuneifolia are exclusively pollinated by hummingbirds, while Gesneria reticulata relies mostly on autonomous self-pollination, despite having classic ornithophilous flowers. A variety of floral visitors was recorded for the two species with bell-shaped flowers; however, not all visitors have the ability to transfer pollen. Bats are the primary pollinators of G. pedunculosa, with bananaquits probably acting as secondary pollinators. For G. viridiflora subsp. sintenisii, both bats and hummingbirds contact the flower's reproductive organs, thus, this species is considered to be a generalist despite its nocturnal floral syndrome. All species are self-compatible but only tubular-flowered Gesneria are capable of autonomous self-pollination. CONCLUSIONS The visitation patterns described in this study fit the predicted hummingbird and bat pollination syndromes and support both specialization and generalization of pollination systems in Puerto Rican Gesneria. Specialization is associated with low pollinator visitation, particularly by hummingbirds, which may explain the occurrence of autonomous selfing mechanisms in tubular-flowered species.
Robust speech feature extraction by growth transformation in reproducing kernel Hilbert space

A robust speech feature extraction procedure, by kernel regression nonlinear predictive coding, is presented. Features maximally insensitive to additive noise are obtained by growth transformation of regression functions spanning a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). Experiments on TI-DIGIT demonstrate consistent robustness of the new features to noise of varying statistics, yielding significant improvements in digit recognition accuracy over identical models trained using Mel-scale cepstral features and evaluated at noise levels between 0 and 30 dB SNR.
Basis: Basic Achievement Skills Individual Screener

Screening tests for achievement are now in wide use since they offer a quick assessment that can be easily administered along with other instruments in an educational or psychological test battery. Such tests make it possible for the assessment of a greater number of students than was ever before possible with standard comprehensive achievement tests. Although these tests have received criticism (e.g., Coleman and Harmer 1982; Pikulski and Shanahan 1982; and Bristow, Pikulski, and Pelosi 1983), their practicality cannot be ignored, and rather than abandoning their use, clinicians are on the lookout for achievement screening tests that represent an improvement over those that have been available in the past. A new achievement test on the horizon is the Basic Achievement Skills Individual Screener [(BASIS) Psychological Corporation 1983]. It is an individual achievement test that
Interindividual Variation in Metabolism of Soy Isoflavones and Lignans: Influence of Habitual Diet on Equol Production by the Gut Microflora

The soy isoflavones, daidzein and genistein, and the lignans, matairesinol and secoisolariciresinol, are phytoestrogens metabolized extensively by the intestinal microflora. Considerable important evidence is already available that shows extensive interindividual variation in isoflavone metabolism, and we have investigated the extent of this variation in a crossover study of a soy-containing food low or high in isoflavones (each treatment period lasted for 17 days, and the 2 treatment periods were separated by a 25-day washout period) in 24 healthy subjects [19 women and 5 men, mean age 30 yr, range 19-40, mean body mass index 22.5 ±3.5 (SD) kg/m2]. There was a 16-fold variation in total isoflavonoid excretion in urine after the high-isoflavone treatment period. The variation in urinary equol excretion was greatest (664-fold), and subjects fell into two groups: poor equol excretors and good equol excretors (36%). A significant negative correlation was found between the proportion of energy from fat in the habitual diet and urinary equol excretion (r = -0.55; p = 0.012). Good equol excretors consumed less fat as percentage of energy than poor excretors (26 ± 2.3% compared with 35 ± 1.6%, p < 0.01) and more carbohydrate as percentage of energy than poor excretors (55 ± 2.9% compared with 47 ± 1.7%, p < 0.05). Interindividual variation in the urinary excretion of O-desmethylangolensin (O-DMA) was also apparent (76-fold after the high-isoflavone treatment period), but there was no relationship between equol excretion and O-DMA excretion. Enterolactone was the major lignan metabolite in urine and plasma but showed less interindividual variation than equol and O-DMA. It is suggested that the dietary fat intake decreases the capacity of gut microbial flora to synthesize equol.
Possibilities and Challenges for Academic Psychology

This article focuses on explicitly expanding contemporary definitions of the academic community and its disciplines, in particular academic psychology, to include virtue. The academy benefits from the civic trust; thus, it has moral obligations to serve the public with integrity and respect. This article places academic psychology in this larger context of the academy and uses the metaphor of the academic conversation for describing tensions between coherence and uncertainty indicative of academic life. Four major virtues of academic psychology that derive from its goals, practices, and distinguishing features are suggested: the self-regarding virtues of prudence and integrity and the other-regarding virtues of respectfulness and benevolence. Several challenges to achieving a virtuous academic psychology are presented. The ideas in this article are not meant to be definitive but rather are intended to provoke further conversation about these matters and their helpfulness in enhancing competent psychological research, instruction, practice, and policy making.
Design of high performance 8 bit Vedic Multiplier using compressor

This paper proposes the design of high speed Vedic Multiplier using the compressor which is based on ancient Indian Vedic mathematics that has improved the performance of multiplier. As the technology advent the Multiplier require high speed, low power and small area. Vedic mathematics, a system of ancient Indian mathematics, which has a unique technique of solutions based on only 16 sutras. In this paper we introduce a new architecture of Vedic multiplier by using 4:2 compressors and 7:2 compressors for addition that increase the speed of Multiplier and reduce the area 2% than Urdhwa-Tiryakbhyam Multiplier. The 7:2 compressors are made of 5:2 compressors and two full adders. The design was performed on a Xilinx Spartan 3 series of FPGA and the timing and area of the design, on the same have been calculated.
The Systematic Form of a Class of Regular Structured LDPC Codes

In this paper, we propose a systematic form about a class of regular structured LDPC codes. This class of LDPC codes is quasi-cyclic code with variable node degree dv = 2 on the Tanner graph. The defining parity-check matrices are composed of circulant permutation matrices. By columns permutation, we can locate the information bits and parity check bits easily. Furthermore, the values of associated parity check bits can be calculated directly on the Tanner graph.
Reusing Historical Interaction Data for Faster Learning

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Evolving distortion function by exploiting the differences among comparable adaptive steganography

So far, the most effective model for adaptive steganography is to minimize a well-defined distortion function, in which the distortion function determines the modification probability (MP) of each pixel. We found that the MPs of some pixels calculated by a group of steganographic methods may be very different even though these methods have close performances in resisting the detection of steganalysis. We call such pixels as controversial pixels, and consider that steganalysis is not sensitive to such pixels. Therefore we can assign more payloads to the controversial pixels by increasing MPs on them to generate a new steganographic distortion function. We call this evolutionary strategy as the rule of Controversial Pixels Prior (CPP). Taking the state-of-art methods {WOW, UNIWARD} and {HILL, MVG} as two pairs of examples, we show that the principle of CPP can improve the security of state of the art steganographic algorithms for spatial images.
A comparative histological study on the skin occlusion performance of a cream made of solid lipid nanoparticles and Vaseline

The water content of the epidermis is a main factor in maintaining skin smoothness and elasticity and preventing skin dryness. Occlusive products can greatly affect skin hydration by forming a barrier on the skin following the topical administration of oil-based formulations. These products repair the skin barrier by restoring the skin lipids as well. Solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) have recently been introduced as a novel carrier with several benefits in pharmaceutics and cosmeceutics. It has been suggested that SLNs may have an occlusive effect following topical application. In this study, the occlusion effects of lipidic particles in different size ranges were investigated in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo, and the results were compared with the positive (vaseline) and negative (blank) controls. Although larger lipidic particles showed better occlusion properties than nanoparticles in vitro, but ex vivo experiments confirmed the benefits of nanoparticles (almost 30% higher occlusion factor for particles in the range of 170 nm than ones in the range of 600 and 1800 nm). The superiority of SLN formulation to Vaseline as a positive reference was confirmed by the in vivo study. SLN formulation resulted in much thicker stratum corneum than Vaseline. It was indicated that in vitro and ex vivo study methods may not be a good reflective of the in vivo method for determining the occlusive properties of nanoparticulate systems. It was concluded that formulations containing SLNs can be used as efficient skin moisturizer products.