Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
World-Space Sample Caching for Efficient Ray Tracing of Highly Complex Scenes

Ray tracing is known for its photorealistic image quality and logarithmic scalability with scene size. In particular, ray tracing is considered output sensitive and only weakly dependent on scene complexity, because only (indirectly) visible parts of the scene are considered in the computations. However, ray tracing is still tightly coupled to the complexity of the visible parts of the scene, including their geometric complexity, which might require high oversampling to avoid spatial and temporal aliasing. Additionally, photorealistic images often require highly complex and costly shading and lighting computations that can dramatically increase the cost of each ray. We propose a novel world-space sample cache that leverages spatial index structures already present for ray tracing for temporarily storing the results of expensive visibility, shading, and illumination computations. By creating and adaptively updating the cache during rendering, no preprocessing is required. Reusing these samples in later frames minimizes these costly computations, and allows for significantly increasing image quality as well as rendering performance in both offline and interactive applications.
Self-Verifying Execution (Position Paper)

This paper proposes a notion called self-verifying execution (SVX). SVX substantially lowers several hurdles that real-world programmers face when adopting traditional program verification approaches. The current focus of SVX is to verify safety properties for programs that implement cloud-API integrations. We envision that, if adopted by real-world programmers, the SVX approach will enable a positive paradigm shift in the community toward more rigorous reasoning about security goals of cloud-API protocols.
An Investigation of Grinding Process Optimization via Evolutionary Algorithms

In this paper, the performance of some evolutionary algorithms on grinding process optimization of silicon carbide (SiC) is investigated. The grinding of SiC is not an easy task due to its low fracture toughness, therefore making the material sensitive to cracking. The efficient grinding involves the optimal selection of operating parameters to maximize the material removal rate (MRR) while maintaining the required surface finish and limiting surface damage. In this work, optimization based on the available model has been carried out to obtain optimum parameters for silicon carbide grinding via three prominent evolutionary algorithms. They are particle swarm optimization (PSO), differential evolution (DE) and genetic algorithm (GA). The objective of this optimization process is to maximize the MRR, subject to surface finish and damage constraints of the grinding process. Numerical results show that PSO is comparatively superior in comparison with DE and GA algorithms for grinding process optimization in terms of its accuracy and convergent capability
Home Advantage in Football: A Current Review of an Unsolved Puzzle

The existence of home advantage in football is a well known and well documented fact. However the precise causes and the way in which they affect performance are still not clear. A comprehensive review is made of published re- search under the main hypothesized explanations for home advantage in football which are: crowd effects, travel effects, familiarity, referee bias, territoriality, specific tactics, rule factors and psychological factors. Their interactions, and other factors that need to be taken into account when investigating home advantage, are considered. Home advantage in football has long been established as an important factor in determining the result of a game. Its existence is certain to affect the attitude of players, coaches, referees, fans and the media alike. Surprisingly, and despite over 25 years of research, the precise causes of home advan- tage and the way in which they operate are still not well un- derstood. A review of the evidence for and against plausible explanations needs to be set against a background of the fol- lowing basic facts. Home advantage has been in existence at least since the start of organized football at the end of the 19th century. It is a worldwide phenomenon, but varies con- siderably from country to country. It has declined in the ma- jor leagues in Europe over the last 15 years. It tends to be greater in football than in other team sports. The first report and quantitative description of home ad- vantage in football was by Morris in 1981 (1). This was soon followed by Dowie (2) and by Pollard (3) who gave a de- tailed quantitative description of home advantage in football and outlined the main hypothesized causes. This paper has been recently updated (4,5). These explanations are now examined in the context of a comprehensive review of pub- lished research on home advantage as it relates specifically to football. The scope of this paper does not allow a detailed critical review of each publication, but should facilitate a literature review for any future research study on a specific aspect of football's home advantage.
Randomness Testing of Compressed Data

Random Number Generators play a critical role in a number of important applications. In practice, statistical testing is employed to gather evidence that a generator indeed produces numbers that appear to be random. In this paper, we reports on the studies that were conducted on the compressed data using 8 compression algorithms or compressors. The test results suggest that the output of compression algorithms or compressors has bad randomness, the compression algorithms or compressors are not suitable as random number generator. We also found that, for the same compression algorithm, there exists positive correlation relationship between compression ratio and randomness, increasing the compression ratio increases randomness of compressed data. As time permits, additional randomness testing efforts will be conducted.
Feature-Enhanced Imaging With Compressed / Fractional SAR Systems Inverse Problem Formalism and 2 1 Structured Descriptive Regularization Framework

We address a new technique for feature-enhanced radar imaging with compressed/fractional SAR data that unifies the descriptive experiment design regularization (DEDR) framework with the total variation (TV) image enhancement paradigm and the sparsity preserving regularizing projections onto convex solution sets (POCS). The new framework incorporates the 1  metric structured TV regularization into the 2  metric structured DEDR data agreement objective function and solves the overall reconstructive imaging inverse problem employing the POCD-DEDR-TV-restructured MVDR strategy. Keywords– compressed sensing; fractional SAR; regularization
Children Voice their Kindergarten Experiences: A Cross-Cultural Exploratory Study in Korea and the US

DRAWN FROM HOFSTEDE'S (2001) cultural dimension, this study aims to understand how culture plays a role in young children's views of their kindergarten experiences and communication styles in South Korea and the United States. Due to the large power distance between adults and children, children in Korea were hesitant to express critical views about kindergarten. They neutralised their dislikes and verbalised the expected group norms in order to be a ‘good’ child. Critiquing universal approaches to addressing child participation rights, we argue that being responsive to cultural differences in social relationships may enable children to more freely share their perspectives. It also discusses ways to improve the quality of children's lived experiences in kindergarten by listening to children's challenges and desires in each country.
Cover-ability: Consistent versioning in asynchronous, fail-prone, message-passing environments

An object type characterizes the domain space and the operations that can be invoked on an object of that type. In this paper we introduce a new property for concurrent objects, we call coverability, that aims to provide precise guarantees on the consistent evolution of the version (and thus value) of an object. This new property is suitable for a variety of distributed objects, including concurrent file objects, that demand operations to manipulate the latest version of the object. To preserve the order of versions, traditional approaches use locking, compare-and-swap (CAS), or linked-load/conditional-store (LL/SC) primitives to allow a single modification at a time on such objects. Such primitives however can be used to solve consensus, and thus are impossible to be implemented in an asynchronous, message-passing environment with failures. Coverability, relaxes the strong requirements imposed by stronger primitives, and allows us to define and implement consistent versioning in the aforementioned adversarial environment. In particular, coverability allows multiple operations to modify the same version of an object concurrently, leading to a set of different versions. Given an order of operations, coverability properties specify a single version in that set that any subsequent operation may modify, preserving this way the consistent evolution of the object. We first define versioned objects and then provide the specification of coverability. We then combine coverability with atomic guarantees to yield coverable atomic read/write registers; we show that coverable registers cannot be implemented by similar types of registers, such as ranked-registers. Next, we show how coverable registers may be implemented by modifying an existing MWMR atomic register implementation, and we continue by showing that coverable registers may be used to implement basic (weak) read-modify-write and file objects.
Learning 1 . 1-Deficient Mice with Impaired β After-Hyperpolarization in Kv Channel Inactivation , Spike Broadening , and + Reduced K

A-type K channels are known to regulate neuronal firing, but their role in repetitive firing and learning in mammals is not well characterized. To determine the contribution of the auxiliary K channel subunit Kvb1.1 to A-type K currents and to study the physiological role of A-type K channels in repetitive firing and learning, we deleted the Kvb1.1 gene in mice. The loss of Kvb1.1 resulted in a reduced K current inactivation in hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons. Furthermore, in the mutant neurons, frequency-dependent spike broadening and the slow afterhyperpolarization (sAHP) were reduced. This suggests that Kvb1.1-dependent A-type K channels contribute to frequency-dependent spike broadening and may regulate the sAHP by controlling Ca influx during action potentials. The Kvb1.1-deficient mice showed normal synaptic plasticity but were impaired in the learning of a water maze test and in the social transmission of food preference task, indicating that the Kvb1.1 subunit contributes to certain types of learning and memory. Introduction Fast-inactivating voltage-gated K channels (Atype K channels) are prominent in neurons throughout the animal kingdom (for review, see Rudy 1988). A-type K (IA) currents contribute to repolarization of the action potential (Storm 1987; Bardoni and Belluzzi 1993), and because of their characteristic fast inactivation, they can be central regulators for neuronal firing. For example, IA currents gate action-potential propagation in axons (Debanne et al. 1997) and back propagation in dendrites (Hoffman et al. 1997). In addition, it was suggested that the inactivation of IA currents contributes to spike broadening during repetitive firing (frequency-dependent spike broadening; Ma and Koester 1996; for review, see Roeper and Pongs 1996). A-type K channel function has also been implicated in learning and memory. Thus, in Hermissenda, conditioning of phototactic behavior correlates with a reduction of IA currents in photoreceptors, and the effect was found to be mediated by neuromodulator-activated secondmessenger systems (for review, see Alkon 1984; Crow 1988). In Drosophila, a genetic alteration of Shaker A-type K channel inactivation behavior resulted in learning impairments in olfactory conditioning (Cowan and Siegel 1986). In addition to A-type K channels, other K channels have been implicated in learning in invertebrates (for review, see Byrne et al. 1991) and mammals (Woody et al. 1991; Meiri et al. 1997). Shaker-related voltage-gated K (Kv) channels Corresponding author. LEARNING & MEMORY 5:257–273 © 1998 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press ISSN1072-0502/98 $5.00 & L E A R N I N G M E M O R Y 257 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press on May 1, 2014 Published by learnmem.cshlp. org Downloaded from
Rotating electric machine thermal study

This paper presents a mathematical model and numerical simulation results for heat transfer analysis that takes place at the frame level of a rotating electric machines provided with longitudinal cooling fins. For this purpose a relatively complex three-dimensional model is used, numerical treatable with affordable hardware and software resources. The frameenvironment convective heat transfer process is considered. The frame is cooled by forced convection in two cases: the thermal radiation heat transfer is taken into account and without considering it. Numerical simulation results reveal the heat transfer pathways from the frame to the environment, and allow assessment of important parameters in designing the machine's cooling.
Does Atrazine Influence Larval Development and Sexual Differentiation in Xenopus laevis?

Debate and controversy exists concerning the potential for the herbicide atrazine to cause gonadal malformations in developing Xenopus laevis. Following review of the existing literature the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency required a rigorous investigation conducted under standardized procedures. X. laevis tadpoles were exposed to atrazine at concentrations of 0.01, 0.1, 1, 25, or 100 μg/l from day 8 postfertilization (dpf) until completion of metamorphosis or dpf 83, whichever came first. Nearly identical experiments were performed in two independent laboratories: experiment 1 at Wildlife International, Ltd. and experiment 2 at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB). Both experiments employed optimized animal husbandry procedures and environmental conditions in validated flow-through exposure systems. The two experiments demonstrated consistent survival, growth, and development of X. laevis tadpoles, and all measured parameters were within the expected ranges and were comparable in negative control and atrazine-treated groups. Atrazine, at concentrations up to 100 μg/l, had no effect in either experiment on the percentage of males or the incidence of mixed sex as determined by histological evaluation. In contrast, exposure of larval X. laevis to 0.2 μg 17β-estradiol/l as the positive control resulted in gonadal feminization. Instead of an even distribution of male and female phenotypes, percentages of males:females:mixed sex were 19:75:6 and 22:60:18 in experiments 1 and 2, respectively. These studies demonstrate that long-term exposure of larval X. laevis to atrazine at concentrations ranging from 0.01 to 100 μg/l does not affect growth, larval development, or sexual differentiation.
Complex Site Response : Does One-Dimensional Site Response Work ?

Blind prediction experiments have consistently shown that dynamic soil models rarely reproduce observed behavior. We hypothesize that a common reason for the poor performance of existing site response models is that the standard assumptions (one-dimensional vertically-propagating plane shear waves in layered media (SH1D)) do not adequately represent the complexity of site response behavior in many cases. We use weak motions from vertical seismic arrays to characterize sites in terms of the complexity of the site response. We compare empirical and theoretical SH1D transfer functions at sites from a broad range of geologic environments. We identify complexity from inter-event variability and misfit to the SH1D response. For simple SH1D sites, we examine nonlinear soil behavior. For complex sites, we illustrate how site complexities such as soil profile uncertainty, spatial heterogeneity, and soil nonlinearity can explain the observed deviations from the SH1D model. Through examples drawn from the Kiban-Kyoshin network (KiK-net) in Japan, we identify sites that follow the SH1D assumptions and are therefore ideal for calibrating nonlinear constitutive models in a SH1D framework, as well as sites that are better for investigating complex site effects.
Tri-Axial Dynamic Acceleration as a Proxy for Animal Energy Expenditure; Should We Be Summing Values or Calculating the Vector?

Dynamic body acceleration (DBA) has been used as a proxy for energy expenditure in logger-equipped animals, with researchers summing the acceleration (overall dynamic body acceleration - ODBA) from the three orthogonal axes of devices. The vector of the dynamic body acceleration (VeDBA) may be a better proxy so this study compared ODBA and VeDBA as proxies for rate of oxygen consumption using humans and 6 other species. Twenty-one humans on a treadmill ran at different speeds while equipped with two loggers, one in a straight orientation and the other skewed, while rate of oxygen consumption () was recorded. Similar data were obtained from animals but using only one (straight) logger. In humans, both ODBA and VeDBA were good proxies for with all r2 values exceeding 0.88, although ODBA accounted for slightly but significantly more of the variation in than did VeDBA (P<0.03). There were no significant differences between ODBA and VeDBA in terms of the change in estimated by the acceleration data in a simulated situation of the logger being mounted straight but then becoming skewed (P = 0.744). In the animal study, ODBA and VeDBA were again good proxies for with all r2 values exceeding 0.70 although, again, ODBA accounted for slightly, but significantly, more of the variation in than did VeDBA (P<0.03). The simultaneous contraction of muscles, inserted variously for limb stability, may produce muscle oxygen use that at least partially equates with summing components to derive DBA. Thus, a vectorial summation to derive DBA cannot be assumed to be the more ‘correct’ calculation. However, although within the limitations of our simple study, ODBA appears a marginally better proxy for . In the unusual situation where researchers are unable to guarantee at least reasonably consistent device orientation, they should use VeDBA as a proxy for .
Controlling Security Policies in a Distributed Environment

This paper presents a type system to control the migration of code between nodes in a concurrent distributed framework, using Dπ. We express resource policies with types and enforce them via a type system. Sites are organised hierarchically in subnetworks that share the same security policies, statically specified by a network administrator. The type system guarantees that, at runtime, there are no security policies violations.
? Amigo o Enemigo ? : Context, attitudes, and Anglo public opinion toward immigration

This article examines the effects of racial and ethnic context and various attitudinal and demographic variables on Anglo public opinion toward immigration. The authors use ordered probit to analyze nationwide survey and census data relating to immigration. Anglo living in close proximity to large Asian populations are more likely than racially and ethnically isolated Anglos to favor increased immigration. Likewise, Anglos who have more positive impressions of Asians and Hispanics and their potential impact on society favor more liberal immigration policies than do other Anglos. They also find that the Californian people favor more restrictive immigration policies than do other American. The authors' findings demonstrate that Anglo public opinion on immigration has prominent racial and ethnic components. Although the policy implications of these findings are rather unclear, it is obvious that one can no longer ignore the impact of racial and ethnic context on public opinion toward immigration
Regulating leukotriene synthesis: The role of nuclear 5‐lipoxygenase

Leukotrienes are lipid messengers involved in autocrine and paracrine cellular signaling. They are synthesized from arachidonic acid by the 5‐lipoxygenase pathway. Current models of this enzymatic pathway recognize that a key step in initiating leukotriene synthesis is the calcium‐mediated movement of enzymes, including 5‐lipoxygenase, to intracellular membranes. However, 5‐lipoxygenase can be imported into or exported from the nucleus before calcium activation. As a result, its subcellular localization will affect its ability to be activated by calcium, as well as the membrane to which it binds and its interaction with other enzymes. This commentary focuses on the role of 5‐lipoxygenase compartmentation in determining its regulation and, ultimately, leukotriene synthesis. J. Cell. Biochem. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Cognitive Side Effects of Antiepileptic Drugs

Abstract: All of the established antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) can produce cognitive side effects, which are increased with polypharmacy and with increasing dosage and anticonvulsant blood levels. However, cognitive side effects are usually modest for AED monotherapy with anticonvulsant blood levels within the standard therapeutic ranges. Further, these effects are offset in part by reduced seizure activity. Controversy exists regarding possible differential cognitive effects of AEDs. A large portion of the literature examining the comparative cognitive effects of AEDs is limited by inadequate study designs. When these design flaws are considered, there is no convincing evidence of clinically significant differences in cognitive side effects of AEDs except possibly for bromide, phenobarbital and benzodiazepines. The role of cognitive side effects should be kept in proper perspective when choosing AED therapy. The cognitive side effects of anticonvulsant drugs may be overt but many times are rather subtle. It is important though to be able to recognize these effects and to put them into perspective as to how they affect our patients.
Long wavelength iteration of Einstein's equations near a spacetime singularity.

We clarify the links between a recently developped long wavelength iteration scheme of Einstein's equations, the Belinski Khalatnikov Lifchitz (BKL) general solution near a singularity and the antinewtonian scheme of Tomita's. We determine the regimes when the long wavelength or antinewtonian scheme is directly applicable and show how it can otherwise be implemented to yield the BKL oscillatory approach to a spacetime singularity. When directly applicable we obtain the generic solution of the scheme at first iteration (third order in the gradients) for matter a perfect fluid. Specializing to spherical symmetry for simplicity and to clarify gauge issues, we then show how the metric behaves near a singularity when gradient effects are taken into account.
Advanced Pedometer for Smartphone-based Activity Tracking

This paper describes the design of an advanced smartphone pedometer developed as part of a larger solution aimed at encouraging a healthier lifestyle through regular physical activity, called Move2Play. Move2Play provides several motivational methods to promote exercise, some of which are based on the use of points derived from tracked activity. While current pedometers are easily tricked into counting steps by shaking the device, our advanced pedometer uses a neural network to detect and prevent this kind of cheating. In this paper, we discuss both the method for counting steps and our innovative approach to the recognition of cheating.