Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Private coresets

A coreset of a point set P is a small weighted set of points that captures some geometric properties of $P$. Coresets have found use in a vast host of geometric settings. We forge a link between coresets, and differentially private sanitizations that can answer any number of queries without compromising privacy. We define the notion of private coresets, which are simultaneously both coresets and differentially private, and show how they may be constructed. We first show that the existence of a small coreset with low generalized sensitivity (i.e., replacing a single point in the original point set slightly affects the quality of the coreset) implies (in an inefficient manner) the existence of a private coreset for the same queries. This greatly extends the works of Blum, Ligett, and Roth [STOC 2008] and McSherry and Talwar [FOCS 2007]. We also give an efficient algorithm to compute private coresets for k-median and k-mean queries in Red, immediately implying efficient differentially private sanitizations for such queries. Following McSherry and Talwar, this construction also gives efficient coalition proof (approximately dominant strategy) mechanisms for location problems. Unlike coresets which only have a multiplicative approximation factor, we prove that private coresets must have an additive error. We present a new technique for showing lower bounds on this error.
A linear GaN power amplifier using novel transistor based analog predistortion method

This paper presents a novel transistor based analog predistortion method and its application in designing a linear GaN power amplifier (PA). The proposed analog predistorter (APD) can improve the third-order intermodulation distortion (IMD3) over the whole output frequency offset range. Furthermore, this structure can evidently simplify circuits design due to no vector modulator is involved. To demonstrate the new methodology, a 10W GaN power amplifier based on the proposed APD is implemented and tested at 2.4 GHz. The simulated results of the GaN PA with proposed APD shows that significant IMD3 improvement of better than 10 dB is achieved and the output 1dB gain compression point (P1dB) is increased from 35 dBm to 38.5 dBm under the measurement with two-tone drive signals.
A Personal Ubiquitous Distributed Knowledge Pool System

Recently, owing to the fast-developing of the Internet technology, the popularity of the digital devices and the enhancement of the people’s computer ability, therefore the demand of ubiquitous personal knowledge services has gradually been mature. People can use these services to collect information, solve problems and proceed e-learning. Therefore, how to provide such service becomes a worth subject. In this paper, a personal ubiquitous Distributed Knowledge Pool System (DKPS) based on the distributed system architecture and Rich Site Summary (RSS) technology is proposed here. In addition, a collection of Cluster Tree in Vector Space Model (VSM) is used to describe the information. In particular, users can build the personalized knowledge base derived from their preference and requirements through personal information recommendation service that is the aim of this article.
FEATUR.UX: An approach to leveraging multitrack information for artistic music visualization

FEATUR.UX (Feature ous) is an audio visualisation tool, currently in the process of development, which proposes to introduce a new approach to sound visualisation using pre-mixed, independent multitracks and audio feature extraction. Sound visualisation is usually performed using a mixed mono or stereo track of audio. Audio feature extraction is commonly used in the field of music information retrieval to create search and recommendation systems for large music databases rather than generating live visualisations. Visualizing multitrack audio circumvents problems related to the source separation of mixed audio signals and presents an opportunity to examine interdependent relationships within and between separate streams of music. This novel approach to sound visualisation aims to provide an enhanced listening experience in a use case that employs non-tonal, non-notated forms of electronic music. Findings from prior research studies focused on live performance and preliminary quantitative results from a user survey have provided the basis from which to develop a prototype for an iterative design study that examines the impact of using multitrack audio and audio feature extraction within sound visualisation practice.
A Sketch of Big Data Technologies

This paper outlines the recent developed information technologies in big data. The basic principles and theories, concepts and terminologies, methods and implementations, and the status of research and development in big data are depicted. The paper also highlights the technical challenges and major difficulties. The number of key technologies required to handle big data are deliberated. They include big data acquisition, pre/post-processing, data storage and distribution, networks, and analysis and mining, etc. At last, the development trend in big data technologies is addressed for discussion.
Evidence for an association between the CSF HVA:5-HIAA ratio and aggressiveness in frontotemporal dementia but not in Alzheimer's disease.

Our preliminary results revealed an association between aggression and the CSF HVA:5-HIAA ratio in participants with FTD but not in those with AD. More refined neurochemical analyses, including the deter-mination of all catecholamines and serotonin in an extended population of FTD patients, are scheduled. These will allow further testing of the hypothesis that altered serotonergic modulation of dopaminergic neuro- transmission leads to BPSD and in particular to aggression. Meanwhile, our findings sug- gest that the association between the CSF HVA:5-HIAA ratio and aggression as observed by Soderstrom et al 1 is not limited to violent and aggressive behaviour with child- hood onset and adult expression, but may indicate an underlying pathophysiological mechanism that may be common to aggressive symptomatology in other brain disorders, such as frontotemporal lobe dementia.
Design of hybrid full adder in deep subthreshold region for ultralow power applications

This paper proposes a 10T hybrid 1-bit full adder circuit at 16-nm technology node in deep subthreshold region for ultralow-power applications. The proposed design is hybrid of MOSFET and CNFET (Carbon Nanotube Field Effect Transistor). It exhibits lower power dissipation compared to its full-CMOS version. The proposed hybrid design achieves 0.96x (1.02x), 1.06x (0.99x), 1.06x (0.99x) improvement in average power (average power variability), power-delay product (PDP variability), energy-delay product (EDP variability) respectively compared to its full-CMOS version. To verify the versatility of the proposed hybrid 1-bit full adder, we have employed it to design a 4-bit ripple carry full adder and observed that this design consumes ultralow power compared to its full CMOS version. The hybrid 4-bit adder achieves 1.05x (1.01x), 1.05x (1.01x), 1.05x (1.01x) improvement in average power (average power variability), power-delay product (PDP variability), energy-delay product (EDP variability) respectively compared to its full-CMOS version.
Chapter 1 Pavarotti : King of Second Formant Tuning

Most people with even a small interest in opera have heard of the late Luciano Pavarotti, often called the "King of the High C's. " He gained this informal title by genuine achievement, which was followed by the fame that came from well-attended performances that reached still larger audiences through broadcasts and recordings. In truth it was not so much the high C's that made him famous. For one thing, C's alone cannot do that. There are many other tenors who can reliably produce a big C5 (at 523 hertz, or cycles per second) who have failed to become famous. And although high notes were a prominent feature of Pavarotti's popular appearances, these seldom were C's. The marginally lower B-flat (466 hertz) appears far more frequently in tenor arias as a climactic note, offering ample opportunity to display power, beauty, and triumph in meeting the challenge of extended range. Clearly, the high note in an operatic aria is not simply an event like the pole vault, where the one who clears the greatest height can claim the title of king. Nonetheless, the athletic challenge of the high bar is an undeniable factor in the experience of opera, and Pavarotti, something of an athlete himself when young and slender, was adept at thrilling audiences with perfectly executed leaps to climactic heights.
Fe b 20 06 Variations on the Tait – Kneser theorem

At every point, a smooth plane curve can be approximated, to second order, by a circle; this circle is called osculating. One may think of the osculating circle as passing through three infinitesimally close points of the curve. A vertex of the curve is a point at which the osculating circle hyper-osculates: it approximates the curve to third order. Equivalently, a vertex is a critical point of the curvature function. Consider a (necessarily non-closed) curve, free from vertices. The classical Tait-Kneser theorem [13, 5] (see also [3, 10]), states that the osculating circles of the curve are pairwise disjoint, see Figure 1. This theorem is closely related to the four vertex theorem of S. Mukhopadhyaya [8] that a plane oval has at least 4 vertices (see again [3, 10]). Figure 1 illustrates the Tait-Kneser theorem: it shows an annulus foliated by osculating circles of a curve.
Efficient Lesion Segmentation using Support Vector Machines

Support Vector Machines (SVM) are a machine learning technique that has been used for segmentation and classification of medical images, including segmentation of white matter hyper-intensities (WMH). Current approaches using SVM for WMH segmentation extract features from the brain and classify these followed by complex post-processing steps to remove false positives. The method presented in this paper combines the use of domain knowledge, advanced pre-processing (based on tissue segmentation and atlas propagation) and SVM classification to obtain efficient and accurate WMH segmentation. Features generated from up to four MR modalities (T1-w, T2-w, PD and FLAIR), differing neighbourhood sizes and the use of multi-scale features were compared. We found that although using all 4 modalities gave the best overall classification (average Dice scores of 0.54 ± 0.12, 0.72 ± 0.06 and 0.82 ± 0.06 respectively for small, moderate and severe lesion loads, using 3x3x3 neighbourhood intensity features); this was not significantly different (p = 0.50) from using just T1-w and FLAIR sequences (Dice scores of 0.52 ± 0.13, 0.71 ± 0.08 and 0.81 ± 0.07 for the same lesion loads and feature type). Furthermore, there was a negligible difference between using 5x5x5 and 3x3x3 features (p = 0.93). Finally, we show that careful consideration of features and preprocessing techniques leads to more efficient classification which outperforms the one based on all features with post-processing, and also saves storage space and computation time.
Cutting Edge: Murine Cytomegalovirus Induces a Polyfunctional CD4 T Cell Response1

CD4 T lymphocytes regulate the adaptive immune response to most viruses, both by providing help to CD8 T cells and B cells as well as through direct antiviral activity. Currently, no mouse cytomegalovirus (MCMV)-specific CD4 T cell responses are known. In this study, we identify and characterize 15 I-Ab-restricted CD4 T cell responses specific for MCMV epitopes. CD4 T cells accumulate to high levels in the spleen and lungs during acute infection and produce multiple cytokines (IFN-γ, TNF, IL-2, IL-10, and IL-17). Interestingly, IL-17 and IFN-γ production within epitope-specific cells was found to be mutually exclusive. CD4 T cells recognizing a peptide derived from m09 were only detectable at later times of infection and displayed a unique cytokine production profile. In total, this study reveals that the MCMV-specific CD4 T cell response is complex and functionally diverse, highlighting its important role in controlling this persistent pathogen.
Continuous phosphatidylinositol metabolism is required for cleavage of crane fly spermatocytes

Successful cleavage of animal cells requires co-ordinated regulation of the actomyosin contractile ring and cleavage furrow ingression. Data from a variety of systems implicate phosphoinositol lipids and calcium release as potential regulators of this fundamental process. Here we examine the requirement for various steps of the phosphatidylinositol (PtdIns) cycle in dividing crane fly (Nephrotoma suturalis) spermatocytes. PtdIns cycle inhibitors were added to living cells after cleavage furrows formed and began to ingress. Inhibitors known to block PtdIns recycling (lithium), PtdIns phosphorylation (wortmannin, LY294002) or phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate [PtdIns(4,5)P2] hydrolysis [U73122 (U7)] all stopped or slowed furrowing. The effect of these drugs on cytokinesis was quite rapid (within 0-4 minutes), so continuous metabolism of PtdIns appears to be required for continued cleavage furrow ingression. U7 caused cleavage furrow regression concomitant with depletion of F-actin from the contractile ring, whereas the other inhibitors caused neither regression nor depletion of F-actin. That U7 depletes furrow-associated actin seems counterintuitive, as inhibition of phospholipase C would be expected to increase cellular levels of PtdIns(4,5)P2 and hence increase actin polymerization. Our confocal images suggest, however, that F-actin might accumulate at the poles of U7-treated cells, consistent with the idea that PtdIns(4,5)P2 hydrolysis may be required for actin filaments formed at the poles to participate in contractile ring assembly at the furrow.
A general compiler framework for speculative multithreading

Speculative multithreading (SpMT) promises to be an effective mechanism for parallelizing non-numeric programs, which tend to use irregular data structures with pointers and have complex flows of control. Proper thread formation is crucial to obtaining good speedup in an SpMT system. This paper presents a compiler framework for partitioning a sequential program into multiple threads for parallel execution in an SpMT system. This framework is very general, and supports a wide variety of threads, such as speculative threads, non-speculative threads, loop-centric threads, and out-of-order thread spawning. The compiler uses profiling, intra-procedural pointer analysis, data dependence information and control dependence information. The compiler is implemented on the SUIF-MachSUIF platform. A simulation-based evaluation of the generated threads shows that an average speedup of 3 can be obtained with 6 processing elements for non-numeric programs. This speedup reduces to 2 if we use only loop-based threads.
Spatial and temporal expression profiling of cell-wall invertase genes during early development in hybrid poplar.

Cell-wall invertase genes are spatially and temporally regulated in several plant species, including Daucus carota L. , Lycopersicon esculentum L. and Solanum tuberosum L. However, few studies of cell-wall invertase genes of trees have been conducted, despite the importance of trees as a source of lignocellulosic biopolymers. We identified three putative cell-wall invertase genes in hybrid poplar (Populus alba L. x grandidentata Michx.) that showed higher homology to each other than to cell-wall invertases of other dicotyledonous species, with two of the genes (PaxgINV2 and PaxgINV3) appearing as a genomic tandem repeat. These genes are more similar to each other than to tandemly repeated cell-wall invertases of other plants, perhaps indicating parallel evolution of a duplication event with cell-wall invertases in dicotyledons. Spatial and temporal expression analyses throughout a complete annual cycle indicated that PaxgINV1 and PaxgINV2 are highly regulated in vegetative tissues during three distinct growth phases: early growth, dormancy and post-dormancy. Expression of the third gene (PaxgINV3) appears to be tightly regulated and may represent a floral-specific cell-wall invertase. Of the two genes expressed in vegetative tissues, PaxgINV1 appears to be exclusively involved in processes related to dormancy, whereas PaxgINV2 appears to encode an enzyme involved in phloem unloading and in providing actively growing tissues, such as developing xylem, with the energy and carbon skeletons necessary for respiration and cell wall biosynthesis.
Platform independent analysis of probabilities on execution paths of multithreaded programs

A concurrent program is intuitively associated with probability. In this paper we propose a platform independent approach, called ProbPP, to analyzing the probabilities on the execution paths of the multithreaded programs. The main idea of ProbPP is to calculate the probabilities on the basis of two kinds of probabilities: Primitive Dependent Probabilities (PDPs) representing the control dependent probabilities among the program statements and Thread Execution Probabilities (TEPs) representing the probabilities of threads being scheduled to execute. We have also conducted two preliminary experiments to evaluate the effectiveness and performance of ProbPP, and the experimental results show that ProbPP can provide engineers with acceptable accuracy.
Echocardiographic Evaluation of Ventricular Function in Mice

Ventricular dysfunction remains a hallmark of most cardiac disease. The mouse has become an essential model system for cardiovascular biology, and echocardiography an established tool in the study of normal and genetically altered mice. This review describes the measurement of ventricular function, most often left ventricular function, by echocardiographic methods in mice. Technical limitations related to the small size and rapid heart rate in the mouse initially argued for the performance of echocardiography under anesthesia. More recently, higher frame rates and smaller probes operating at higher frequencies have facilitated imaging of conscious mice in some, but not all, experimental protocols and conditions. Ventricular function may be qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated under both conditions. Particular detail is provided for measurement under conscious conditions, and measurement under conscious and sedated or anesthestized conditions are contrasted. Normal values for echocardiographic indices for the common C57BL/6 strain are provided. Diastolic dysfunction is a critical pathophysiologic component of many disease states, and progress in the echocardiographic evaluation of diastolic function is discussed. Finally, echocardiography exists among several competing imaging technologies, and these alternatives are compared.
A Hybrid Approach to Private Record Matching

Real-world entities are not always represented by the same set of features in different data sets. Therefore, matching records of the same real-world entity distributed across these data sets is a challenging task. If the data sets contain private information, the problem becomes even more difficult. Existing solutions to this problem generally follow two approaches: sanitization techniques and cryptographic techniques. We propose a hybrid technique that combines these two approaches and enables users to trade off between privacy, accuracy, and cost. Our main contribution is the use of a blocking phase that operates over sanitized data to filter out in a privacy-preserving manner pairs of records that do not satisfy the matching condition. We also provide a formal definition of privacy and prove that the participants of our protocols learn nothing other than their share of the result and what can be inferred from their share of the result, their input and sanitized views of the input data sets (which are considered public information). Our method incurs considerably lower costs than cryptographic techniques and yields significantly more accurate matching results compared to sanitization techniques, even when privacy requirements are high.
Trust Model for Virtual Organizations

in human society, trust plays an important role -- it is the main factor behind most decisions. Within an organization, both real and virtual, a series of decisions on personnel management flow are made. The paper proposes a trust model of agents in a virtual organization, which can be used to decide whether it is better to start, continue, or stop working with the evaluated agent. The trust factor of an agent is summarized as a unique value based on a function which properly aggregates the agent's characteristics and the available information on agent's performance. The proposed model has the advantage of assuring simple calculations and providing an overview of the evaluated agent's performance.
Purposeful by Design? A Serious Game Design Assessment Framework

The lack of assessment tools to analyze serious games and insufficient knowledge on their impact on players is a recurring critique in the field of game and media studies, education science and psychology. Although initial empirical studies on serious games usage deliver discussable results, numerous questions remain unacknowledged. In particular, questions regarding the quality of their formal conceptual design in relation to their purpose mostly stay uncharted. In the majority of cases the designers’ good intentions justify incoherence and insufficiencies in their design. In addition, serious games are mainly assessed in terms of the quality of their content, not in terms of their intention-based design. This paper argues that analyzing a game’s formal conceptual design, its elements, and their relation to each other based on the game’s purpose is a constructive first step in assessing serious games. By outlining the background of the Serious Game Design Assessment Framework and exemplifying its use, a constructive structure to examine purpose-based games is introduced. To demonstrate how to assess the formal conceptual design of serious games we applied the SGDA Framework to the online games “Sweatshop” (2011) and “ICED” (2008).
Nerve Stimulator versus Ultrasound-Guided Femoral Nerve Block; a Randomized Clinical Trial

Introduction: Pain control is the most important issue in emergency department management of patients with femoral bone fractures. The present study aimed to compare the procedural features of ultrasonography and nerve stimulator guided femoral nerve block in this regard. Method: In this randomized clinical trial, patients with proximal femoral fractures presenting to emergency department were randomly divided into two groups of ultrasonography or nerve stimulator guided femoral block and compared regarding success rate, procedural time, block time, and need for rescue doses of morphine sulfate, using SPSS 20. Results: 50 patients were randomly divided into two groups of 25 (60% male). The mean age of studied patients was 35.14 ± 12.95 years (19 – 69). The two groups were similar regarding age (p= 0.788), sex (p = 0.564), and initial pain severity (p = 0.513). In 2 cases of nerve stimulator guided block, loss of pinprick sensation did not happen within 30 minutes of injection (success rate: 92%; p = 0.490). Ultrasonography guided nerve block cases had significantly lower procedural time (8.06 ± 1.92 vs 13.60 ± 4.56 minutes; p < 0.001) and lower need for rescue doses of opioid (2.68 ± 0.74 vs 5.28 ± 1.88 minutes; p < 0.001). Conclusion: Ultrasonography and nerve stimulator guided femoral block had the same success rate and block duration. However, the ultrasonography guided group had lower procedure time and lower need for rescue doses of morphine sulfate. Therefore, ultrasonography guided femoral block could be considered as an available, safe, rapid, and efficient method for pain management of femoral fracture in emergency department.