Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differential Geometry of Ice Flow

Flowlines on ice sheets and glaciers form complex patterns. To explore their role in ice routing and extend the language for studying such patterns, we develop a theory of flow convergence and curvature in plan view. These geometric quantities respectively equal the negative divergence of the vector field of ice-flow direction and the curl of this field. From the first of these two fundamental results, we show that flow in individual catchments of an ice sheet can converge (despite its overall spreading) because ice divides are loci of strong divergence, and that a sign bifurcation in convergence occurs during ice-sheet 'symmetry breaking' (the transition from near-radial spreading to spreading with substantial azimuthal velocities) and during the formation of ice-stream tributary networks. We also uncover the topological control behind balance-flux distributions across ice masses. Notably, convergence participates in mass conservation along flowlines to amplify ice flux via a positive feedback; thus the convergence field governs the form of ice-stream networks simulated by balance-velocity models. The theory provides a roadmap for understanding the tower-shaped plot of flow speed versus convergence for the Antarctic Ice Sheet.
RCanopus: Making Canopus Resilient to Failures and Byzantine Faults

Distributed consensus is a key enabler for many distributed systems including distributed databases and blockchains. Canopus is a scalable distributed consensus protocol that ensures that live nodes in a system agree on an ordered sequence of operations (called transactions). Unlike most prior consensus protocols, Canopus does not rely on a single leader. Instead, it uses a virtual tree overlay for message dissemination to limit network traffic across oversubscribed links. It leverages hardware redundancies, both within a rack and inside the network fabric, to reduce both protocol complexity and communication overhead. These design decisions enable Canopus to support large deployments without significant performance degradation. The existing Canopus protocol is resilient in the face of node and communication failures, but its focus is primarily on performance, so does not respond well to other types of failures. For example, the failure of a single rack of servers causes all live nodes to stall. The protocol is also open to attack by Byzantine nodes, which can cause different live nodes to conclude the protocol with different transaction orders. In this paper, we describe RCanopus (`resilent Canopus') which extends Canopus to add liveness, that is, allowing live nodes to make progress, when possible, despite many types of failures. This requires RCanopus to accurately detect and recover from failure despite using unreliable failure detectors, and tolerance of Byzantine attacks. Second, RCanopus guarantees safety, that is, agreement amongst live nodes of transaction order, in the presence of Byzantine attacks and network partitioning.
Learning Personas from Dialogue with Attentive Memory Networks

The ability to infer persona from dialogue can have applications in areas ranging from computational narrative analysis to personalized dialogue generation. We introduce neural models to learn persona embeddings in a supervised character trope classification task. The models encode dialogue snippets from IMDB into representations that can capture the various categories of film characters. The best-performing models use a multi-level attention mechanism over a set of utterances. We also utilize prior knowledge in the form of textual descriptions of the different tropes. We apply the learned embeddings to find similar characters across different movies, and cluster movies according to the distribution of the embeddings. The use of short conversational text as input, and the ability to learn from prior knowledge using memory, suggests these methods could be applied to other domains.
Differential Subjective Experiences in Learners and Non-learners in Frontal Alpha Neurofeedback: Piloting a Mixed-Method Approach

In a neurofeedback paradigm, trainees learn to willfully control their brain dynamics. How this is realized remains an open question. We evaluate the hypothesis that learning success is associated with a specific phenomenology. To address this proposal, we combined quantitative and qualitative analyses of a short neurofeedback training (NFT) session during which participants enhanced mid-frontal alpha power and were then subsequently interviewed about their experiences. We analyzed the electrophysiological data to determine learning success and classify trainees as learners and non-learners. The subjective experiences differed between the two groups and are best described along a trying-sensing continuum, with non-learners engaging effortfully with the task (e.g., “I will it [the bar] to move”) whereas learners reported more sensing of their inner (e.g., “Something inside my stomach”) and outer environment (e.g., “I was aware of the sound of the beeps”). In the process of piloting this mixed-method approach, we developed a classification system for the verbal reports. This system provides an explicit analytic framework which might guide future studies that aim to investigate the association between subjective experiences and NFT protocols.
An Exploration of Agile Project Management & Technical Debt

Concerns about technical debt have risen with the adoption of agile project management. The relationship between technical debt and agile techniques is still unclear (Kruchten, 2012). Cunningham (1992) describes technical debt as immature code that works fine and is acceptable to the customer but needs to be rewritten before negative outcomes will occur. The negative outcomes of technical debt occur in two major areas in software development; issues of evolvability and maintainability (Kruchten, 2012). Kruchten notes technical debt can be visible (e.g., additional time to generate new features, the number of defects, low external quality) and invisible (e.g., low internal quality, documentation debt, architectural debt). Some debt will be measurable and quantifiable where other debt is hard to assess and qualitative, e.g. software engineers will discuss code smells for code that is not quite right. Many methods fall under the agile project management umbrella, including Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP). Agile methods generally follow an iterative and incremental approach to product development where software is frequently delivered (Beck, 2001). Scrum has little to no effect the engineering of the software code directly but is more project management focused. XP includes both engineering practices and management practices and attempts to address technical debt through refactoring, specifically refactoring mercilessly, the application code. The extent to which agile methods discourage or encourage debt is unclear (Holvitie, 2014). Technical debt is in the software code, and software engineers are responsible for generating the technical debt. But technical debt is both a software problem and a management problem. Management and engineering are responsible for management of the debt. How might technical debt concerns be addressed from the perspective that management and engineering share responsibility? What would technical debt look like from an ideal perspective? Who drives technical debt, the software engineers, management, both? Technical debt has some positive aspects like the ability to speed-up the short-term delivery of working software and negative aspects slowing down the longerterm delivery, or susceptibility to bugs. What is the role of engineering, who creates the debt, in the elimination of the debt? How can management be informed of both the quantifiable concerns and the qualitative concerns of technical debt?
Methods and Metrics for Estimating and Planning Agile Software Projects

Trabalho financiado pelo Edital DPI / DPG - UnB n° 02/2018 (Apoio a Publicacao de Artigos em Anais de Eventos, resultantes de Pesquisa Cientifica, Tecnologica e de Inovacao de servidores do Quadro da Universidade de Brasilia).
Stochastic Gradient MCMC for State Space Models

State space models (SSMs) are a flexible approach to modeling complex time series. However, inference in SSMs is often computationally prohibitive for long time series. Stochastic gradient MCMC (SGMCMC) is a popular method for scalable Bayesian inference for large independent data. Unfortunately when applied to dependent data, such as in SSMs, SGMCMC's stochastic gradient estimates are biased as they break crucial temporal dependencies. To alleviate this, we propose stochastic gradient estimators that control this bias by performing additional computation in a `buffer' to reduce breaking dependencies. Furthermore, we derive error bounds for this bias and show a geometric decay under mild conditions. Using these estimators, we develop novel SGMCMC samplers for discrete, continuous and mixed-type SSMs with analytic message passing. Our experiments on real and synthetic data demonstrate the effectiveness of our SGMCMC algorithms compared to batch MCMC, allowing us to scale inference to long time series with millions of time points.
Large-Scale Agile Methodology Acceptance

The software industry is still trying to achieve the twin goals of agility and discipline, which were proposed by Boehm and Turner (2004). The Agile Manifesto (Fowler & Highsmith, 2001) spawned agile methodologies, which have delivered agility but not discipline; conversely, the traditional methodologies had delivered discipline but not agility (Nerur & Balijepally, 2007). A survey of agile development literature (Dybå & Dingsøyr, 2008) revealed that agile development had found success only in small projects. The step toward achieving the twin goals has come from the agile practitioners, who have proposed large-scale agile methodologies (LSAM), e.g., see (Knaster & Leffingwell, 2017; Larman & Vodde, 2016). According to a VersionOne 2016 survey, the agile methodology has become the preferred software development approach while the large-scale agile methodology (LSAM) approach has lower but steadily increasing adoption. However, recent studies such as (Dikert, Paasivaara, & Lassenius, 2016) have reported some challenges in employing large-scale agile methods. Vijyasarathy and Turk (2012) studied the adoption of the agile methods (but not LSAM) and found that subjective norm was the dominant construct. In a study of structured methodologies, Riemenschneider, Hardgrave, and Davis (2002) found that perceived usefulness, mandatoriness, compatibility, and subjective norms jointly contributed to the adoption. LSAM is closer to agile but still has aspects of structured methodologies. The inconsistency and the lack of knowledge point to the need for research. The literature gap raises two research questions: 1) what are the key factors that affect adoption of largescale agile methodologies (LSAM)? And 2) what are the antecedents to these key mediating factors? A structural model will be evaluated using the PLS method. The mediating factors are subjective norm, perceived usefulness, and mandatoriness. Two potential antecedent factors are external behavioral support and compatibility. The researcher expects to collect and analyze data and present key results. A large agile project will be defined as an agile project that has more than 20 engaged members. The essential purpose of the study is to compare the relative effects of three constructs: perceived usefulness and mandatoriness from the Riemenschneider et al. (2002) study on structured methodologies and subjective norm from the Vijayasarathy and Turk (2012) study on agile methodologies. It is hypothesized that because of the larger size in LSAM projects, perceived usefulness will have a stronger relationship than subjective norm, while mandatoriness will have the weakest relationship due to its conflict with agile values.
Normal World DBStore Manager SQL Engine Secure World DBStore Mobile Device Client Application DBStore Lib Remote Client OS Mobile Application DBStore Lib ARM TrustZone Hardware Rich OS DBStore

ARM TrustZone technology has been widely use to enhance the security of mobile devices by allowing for the creation of Trusted Execution Environments (TEE). However, existing TEE solutions tend to struggle with a trade-off between security and functionality: they either expose a larger attack surface to favor dynamic code loading inside the TEE, or depend on the static deployment of trusted services inside the TEE which is more cumbersome and error-prone to maintain. This paper proposes the deployment of a trusted service which aims to serve a broad range of applications by offering secure database storage capability inside the TEE. We present DBStore, a TrustZone-backed database management system for mobile applications. Applications can create and operate DBStore databases inside a TEE that provides confidentiality and integrity protection of databases and respective SQL queries without depending on the integrity of the mobile OS. We present a case study where DBStore is used in order to thwart existing attacks in HCE-based mobile ticketing applications.
Series Economic Freedom and Economic Growth Across U . S . States : A Spatial Panel Data Analysis

There is a substantial literature estimating the effect of economic freedom on economic growth. Most studies examine the relationship between freedom and growth for countries, while a few examine the relationship for U.S. states. Absent in the state–level literature is consideration of the presence of spatial spillovers affecting the freedom–growth relationship. Neglecting to account for spatial autocorrelation can bias estimation results and therefore inferences drawn. We find evidence of a spatial pattern in real per-capita GSP that affects non-spatial estimates of the freedom–growth relationship. Taking into account the direct and indirect effects of economic freedom on GSP, we find a 10 percent increase in economic freedom is associated with a 4.2 percent increase in GSP.
Prevalence of Pulmonary Tuberculosis and Associated Factors among Prisoners in Wolaita Zone, Southern Ethiopia: Cross-sectional Study

Background: prisoners are at a disproportionately high risk and neglected reservoirs and susceptible population for TB. Objective: To determine prevalence of pulmonary tuberculosis and associated factors among prisoners in Wolaita Zone, Southern Ethiopia. Methods: A cross-sectional study design was performed on 302 study participants to assess the prevalence and risk factors of pulmonary tuberculosis among prisoners in Wolaita Zone, Southern Ethiopia, from March01/2015 to April 01/2015. Prisoners with a history of cough of ⩾2 weeks were screened for PTB using direct smear microscopy. Structured questionnaire was used to collect data on risk factors of pulmonary tuberculosis. Bivariate and multivariable binary Logistic regression was used to identify predictors of pulmonary tuberculosis. Result: A total of 302 prisoners were included in the study. Among those, 15 (4.97%) prisoners were found to have TB giving a point prevalence of 966 per 100,000 populations of pulmonary TB among the study participants. Pulmonary tuberculosis was significantly associated with cigarette smoking (AOR=5.42, 95%CI= (1.21, 24.25), having history of contact with known TB patients at home (AOR=7.01, 95%CI= (1.54, 31.90), Sharing a cell with a known TB patient (AOR=7.09, 95%CI= (1.59, 31.64), stay greater than 24 months in current prison (AOR=0.09, 95%CI= (0.02,0.47). and BMI Conclusions and recommendation : There is high prevalence of TB among Prisoners in Wolaita Zone with possible active transmission of TB within the prison than general community. Strong cooperation between prison authorities and the national tuberculosis control programmers is urgently required to develop locally appropriate interventions to reduce transmission.
Unraveling Nanoscale Magnetic Ordering in Fe3O4 Nanoparticle Assemblies via X-rays

Understanding the correlations between magnetic nanoparticles is important for nanotechnologies, such as high-density magnetic recording and biomedical applications, where functionalized magnetic particles are used as contrast agents and for drug delivery. The ability to control the magnetic state of individual particles depends on the good knowledge of the magnetic correlations between particles when assembled. Inaccessible via standard magnetometry techniques, nanoscale magnetic ordering in self-assemblies of Fe3O4 nanoparticles is here unveiled via X-ray resonant magnetic scattering (XRMS). Measured throughout the magnetization process, the XRMS signal reveals size-dependent inter-particle magnetic correlations. Smaller (5 nm) particles show little magnetic correlations, even when packed close together, yielding to magnetic disorder in the absence of an external field, i.e., superparamagnetism. In contrast, larger (11 nm) particles tend to be more strongly correlated, yielding a mix of magnetic orders including ferromagnetic and anti-ferromagnetic orders. These magnetic correlations are present even when the particles are sparsely distributed.
Baetopus tenellus in Slovakia ( Ephemeroptera : Baetidae )

Baetopus tenellus (ALBARDA, 1878) was originally described in the genus Centroptilum EATON from Arnheim, Netherlands (ALBARDA 1878). MÜLLER-LIEBENAU (1978) described a new genus and species Raptobaetopus orientalis from Malaysia. She placed Centroptilum tenellum ALBARDA, 1878, Baetis ? niger described by LESTAGE (1918) and Baetopus balticus KAZLAUSKAS ET SANWAJTITE, 1962 to the genus Raptobaetopus and classified as Raptobaetopus tenellus (ALBARDA, 1878) comb.nov. According to MÜLLERLIEBENAU (1978), this new genus is closely related to the genus Baetopus KEFFERMÜLLER, 1960, described by KEFFERMÜLLER (1960) from the Warta river (Central Poland). TSHERNOVA et al. (1986) placed it again in the genus Baetopus. B. tenellus is a mysterious species with very low densities at all known localities and little known biology. It has wide area: Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Poland, Latvia, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and the European part of Russia. Nymphs are carnivorous, ingest Chirognomidae larvae and Oligochaeta (FONTAINE 1980, FONTAINE & PERRIN 1981), and inhabit streams and rivers of different types: from small submontane rivers (e.g. SOLDÁN 1978) to lowland rivers (e.g. KOVÁCS et al. 2003). It is considered a rare and geographically restricted species (MALZACHER et al. 1998). Nymphs are rarely captured because of low densities at study localities, however the occurrence is probably more common than we believed. Recently it was found at numerous localities in Hungary (KOVÁCS & BAUERNFEIND 2003). In Slovakia, only one nymph was captured in the Ulíčka river; Ulič, NE Slovakia (SOLDÁN 1978). KOVÁCS et al. (2003) reported one nymph from the Ipoly (Ipeľ) river in Ipolydamásd. This locality can be considered common for Hungary and Slovakia, because the river forms a border between Slovakia and Hungary at that place. One nymph was recently captured in the Morava river in Moravský Sv. Ján on 7 September 2003, T. Derka det. (SW Slovakia, 145 m a.s.l.), where the river forms a border between Slovakia and Austria. This work was supported by the Slovak Grand Agency VEGA, projects No. 1/1291/04 and 1/1292/04. References
Öğretmenlerin Mesleki Tükenmişlikleri ile Yaşam Doyumları Arasındaki İlişki

Bu arastirmada ogretmenlerin mesleki tukenmislikleri ile yasam doyumlari arasindaki iliski incelenmistir. Ayrica arastirmada ogretmenlerin mesleki tukenmislikleri ve yasam doyumlari, demografik degiskenler acisindan da incelenmistir. Arastirmanin evrenini Mersin Ili merkez ilcelerinde (Toroslar, Akdeniz, Yenisehir, Mezitli) gorev yapan 9.942 ilkokul, ortaokul ve lise ogretmeni olusturmaktadir. Arastirmanin orneklemini ise bu evrenden seckisiz ornekleme yontemi ile belirlenen 296 ogretmen olusturmaktadir. Arastirma, nedensel karsilastirmali ve korelasyonel arastirma turleri bir arada kullanilarak modellenmistir. Arastirma sonunda ogretmenlerin mesleki tukenmislik duzeylerinin hizmet surelerine ve gorev yaptiklari okul turune gore anlamli bir sekilde farklilastigi, cinsiyete gore anlamli farklilik gostermedigi; yasam doyumlarinda ise sadece cinsiyete gore erkekler lehine anlamli bir farkliligin oldugu gorulmustur. Ayrica ogretmenlerin mesleki tukenmisliklerinin yasam doyumlarini negatif yonde anlamli duzeyde yordadigi, ogretmenlerin yasam doyumlarindaki varyansin yaklasik %32’sinin mesleki tukenmislikleriyle aciklanabildigi tespit edilmistir.
Organizational Change and Dealing with Employees' Resistance

One of the biggest challenges in implementing change is to cope up with the resistance that evolves during incorporation of change in organizations. The intensity of resistance depends upon the type of change being introduced and the way it is being introduced. This article gives a deep insight on organizational change, forces that trigger change, resistance to change that raises as an outcome and certain ways to deal with this change. The article also provides a comparative analysis on different approaches towards organizational change (guided, planned and directed) and the causes of resistance for this change. Overcoming employee resistance to change is a challenge towards effective change management. ADKAR model can be used as a tool towards effective change management. Leaders and managers are key contributors towards overcoming resistance
Phase-Lead Compensator to Improve the Transient Performance of Comb Actuators

The transient performance of electrostatic actuators is important in high-frequency switching operation of MEMS devices [1]. Optimization of the transient behavior of a simple actuator without introduction of controller network or modification of actuator shape has been studied recently [2, 3]. However, it is desirable to further improve the transient performance by electrical or mechanical means. For this purpose, we present a simple electrical phaselead compensator and a novel shape design of the comb drive (a mechanical phase-lead compensator). Both of them will increase the modulation force impulse to the actuator at the initial stage with little influence on the behavior at the later (settling) stage. Numerical simulation is carried out to show that the rise time can be reduced.
Production and decay of viruses in aquatic environments

The quantitative significance of aquatic viruses in coastal and in lake water was investigated. The number of viruses in marine surface waters was found to change on a diurnal basis along with changes in number of bacteria and bacterial activity. By inhibiting the production of viruses, we were able to measure viral decay rates up to 1.1 h-' in marine systems, and up to 0.6 h-' in a freshwater lake, for the majority of the viral population. A minor fraction (4 to 40 %) of the viral population was found to have decay rates lower than 0.05 h-' The fraction of bacteria containing mature virus particles ranged from 2 to 16 %, and the number of viruses released from these bacteria was on average about 50 [range 10 to 300). From these results we eshmate that phages may lyse 2 to 24 % of the bacterial population per hour. Phages may thus be a major cause of bacterial mortality in aquatic ecosystems and may have a significant impact on the carbon and nutrient flow in aquatic food webs.