Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Demand for and Assessment of Audit Quality in Private Companies

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) in the U.S. regulates auditing and seeks to promote its quality, a difficult-to-define concept. To understand how agents involved in private companies think of audit quality, we interview their CFOs, auditors, bankers, board members, bonding agencies, and some private equity investors. We find that a variety of agents demand an audit while retaining their scepticism and seeking independent corroboration of what they learn from the audited financial statements. Management selects the auditor. Audit Quality is assessed based on the degree to which the audit plan (inputs and risk assessment processes) aligns with the views of management and directors. In addition, output measures such as number of errors and the time when they are adjusted, tax advice, controls/governance advice and auditor candor are used to assess audit quality. As judged by users, quality depends on a combination of inputs, processes and outcomes of audits.
Application of OMI, SCIAMACHY, and GOME‐2 satellite SO2 retrievals for detection of large emission sources

Retrievals of sulfur dioxide (SO2) from space‐based spectrometers are in a relatively early stage of development. Factors such as interference between ozone and SO2 in the retrieval algorithms often lead to errors in the retrieved values. Measurements from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Chartography (SCIAMACHY), and Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment‐2 (GOME‐2) satellite sensors, averaged over a period of several years, were used to identify locations with elevated SO2 values and estimate their emission levels. About 30 such locations, detectable by all three sensors and linked to volcanic and anthropogenic sources, were found after applying low and high spatial frequency filtration designed to reduce noise and bias and to enhance weak signals to SO2 data from each instrument. Quantitatively, the mean amount of SO2 in the vicinity of the sources, estimated from the three instruments, is in general agreement. However, its better spatial resolution makes it possible for OMI to detect smaller sources and with additional detail as compared to the other two instruments. Over some regions of China, SCIAMACHY and GOME‐2 data show mean SO2 values that are almost 1.5 times higher than those from OMI, but the suggested spatial filtration technique largely reconciles these differences.
Assessment of Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity

Aquarius was the first NASA satellite to observe the sea surface salinity (SSS) over the global ocean. The mission successfully collected data from 25 August 2011 to 7 June 2015. The Aquarius project released its final version (Version-5) of the SSS data product in December 2017. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the validation results from the Aquarius Validation Data System (AVDS) and other statistical methods, and to provide a general view of the Aquarius SSS quality to the users. The results demonstrate that Aquarius has met the mission target measurement accuracy requirement of 0.2 psu on monthly averages on 150 km scale. From the triple point analysis using Aquarius, in situ field and Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) products, the root mean square errors of Aquarius Level-2 and Level-3 data are estimated to be 0.17 psu and 0.13 psu, respectively. It is important that caution should be exercised when using Aquarius salinity data in areas with high radio frequency interference (RFI) and heavy rainfall, close to the coast lines where leakage of land signals may significantly affect the quality of the SSS data, and at high-latitude oceans where the L-band radiometer has poor sensitivity to SSS.
Reduction in thermal boundary conductance due to proton implantation in silicon and sapphire

We measure the thermal boundary conductance across Al/Si and Al/Al2O3 interfaces that are subjected to varying doses of proton ion implantation with time domain thermoreflectance. The proton irradiation creates a major reduction in the thermal boundary conductance that is much greater than the corresponding decrease in the thermal conductivities of both the Si and Al2O3 substrates into which the ions were implanted. Specifically, the thermal boundary conductances decrease by over an order of magnitude, indicating that proton irradiation presents a unique method to systematically decrease the thermal boundary conductance at solid interfaces.
Truthful Incentive Mechanism for Nondeterministic Crowdsensing with Vehicles

In this paper, we focus on the incentive mechanism design for a vehicle-based, nondeterministic crowdsensing system. In this crowdsensing system, vehicles move along their trajectories and perform corresponding sensing tasks with different probabilities. Each task may be performed by multiple vehicles jointly so as to ensure a high probability of success. Designing an incentive mechanism for such a crowdsensing system is challenging since it contains a non-trivial set cover problem. To solve this problem, we propose a truthful, reverse-auction-based incentive mechanism that includes an approximation algorithm to select winning bids with a nearly minimum social cost and a payment algorithm to determine payments for all participants. Moreover, we extend the problem to a more complex case in which the Quality of sensing Data (QoD) of each vehicle is taken into consideration. For this problem, we propose a QoD-aware incentive mechanism, which consists of a QoD-aware winning-bid selection algorithm and a QoD-aware payment determination algorithm. We prove that the proposed incentive mechanisms have truthfulness, individual rationality, and computational efficiency. Moreover, we analyze the approximation ratios of the winning-bid selection algorithms. The simulations, based on a real vehicle trace, also demonstrate the significant performances of our incentive mechanisms.
Effect of electron-phonon coupling on energy and density of states renormalizations of dynamically screened graphene

Electronic screening strongly renormalizes the linear bands which occur near the Dirac crossing in graphene. The single bare Dirac crossing is split into two individual Dirac-like points, which are separated in energy but still at zero momentum relative to the K-point. A diamond-like structure occurs in between as a result of the formation of plasmarons. In this work we explore the combined effect of electron-electron and electron-phonon coupling on the renormalized energy dispersion, the spectral function and on the electronic density of states. We find that distinct signatures of the plasmaron structure are observable in the density of states with the split Dirac points presenting themselves as minima with quadratic dependence on energy about such points. By examining the slopes of both the density of states and the renormalized dispersion near the Fermi level, we illustrate how one can separate $k$-dependent and $\omega$-dependent renormalizations and suggest how this might allow for the isolation of the renormalization due to the electron-phonon interaction from that of the electron-electron interaction.
Thymeflow, An Open-Source Personal Knowledge Base System

The typical Internet user has data spread over several devices and across several online systems. In this paper, we introduce a novel framework for integrating a user's data from different sources into a single Knowledge Base. Our framework integrates data of different kinds into a coherent whole, starting with email messages, calendar, contacts, and location history. We show how event periods in the user's location data can be detected, how they can be aligned with events from the calendar, and how they can be linked to relevant emails. This allows users to query their personal information within and across different dimensions, and to perform analytics over their emails, events, and locations. To this end, our system extends the schema.org vocabulary and provides a SPARQL interface.
WAtER diSinfEction uSing nAnotEchnology foR SAfER iRRigAtion: A dEmonStRAtion PRojEct in SWAzilAnd

This case study assesses the feasibility of a point-of-use (POU), nanomaterial-enabled photocatalytic water treatment device for use in rural areas in Swaziland. Small reservoirs provide water for irrigation and community consumption, but this water is highly contaminated with human and animal wastes. A prototype fluidized bed photoreactor—amended with nano-sized TiO2 coated on silica beads (60 wt%) and illuminated by UV light (254 nm, 18 W cm-2)—was capable of removing 99.9% of bacteria and viruses with less than 60 seconds of contact time. However, control tests showed that the majority of the disinfection was accomplished by UV light alone, with the photocatalytic material unable to significantly add to the disinfection at such short contact times. A potential benefit of using nano-sized TiO2 photocatalyst was the removal of a model pesticide (carbaryl) whose concentration was reduced by approximately 50% (compared to controls) with a contact time of 3 minutes. This research highlights the importance of POU water treatment systems, and demonstrates the potential feasibility and limitations of using nanotechnologyenabled small reactors to help relieve high water-related disease and mortality rates in developing countries.
Special Collection: Technology for Supporting Older People at Home Qualitative study of affective identities in dementia patients for the design of cognitive assistive technologies

Our overall aim is to develop an emotionally intelligent cognitive assistant (ICA) to help older adults with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) to complete activities of daily living more independently. For improved adoption, such a system should take into account how individuals feel about who they are. This paper investigates different affective identities found in older care home residents with AD, leading to a computational characterization of these aspects and, thus, tailored prompts to each specific individual’s identity in a way that potentially ensures smoother and more effective uptake and response. We report on a set of qualitative interviews with 12 older adult care home residents and caregivers. The interview covered life domains (family, origin, occupation, etc.), and feelings related to the ICA. All interviews were transcribed and analyzed to extract a set of affective identities, coded according to the social–psychological principles of affect control theory (ACT). Preliminary results show that a set of identities can be extracted for each participant (e.g. father, husband). Furthermore, our results provide support for the proposition that, while identities grounded in memories fade as a person loses their memory, habitual aspects of identity that reflect the overall ‘‘persona’’ may persist longer, even without situational context.
A framework for the prospective analysis of super-diversity coming from high levels of immigration

Background Pressures to keep immigration rates at relatively high levels are likely to persist in most developed countries. At the same time, immigrant cohorts are becoming more and more diverse, leading host societies to become increasingly heterogeneous across multiple dimensions. For scholars who study demographic or socio-economic behaviours, the need to account for ethnocultural “super-diversity” brings new challenges and complications. Objective The main objective of this paper is to present a framework for the prospective analysis of super-diversity in several high immigration countries. Methods We developed microsimulation models that simultaneously project several population-dimensions for Canada, the United States and countries of the European Union, with the aim of studying the consequences of alternate future population and migration trends. Results The paper presents the projected progression of three indicators of diversity for Canada, the USA and the EU28: percentage of foreign-born population, percentage of the population using a non-official language at home and percentage of non-Christians under the reference scenario. Results from alternative scenarios show the potential impact of modifying the composition of migrant cohorts. The paper also examines the projected changes in the labour force for each region by education level and language. Finally, the paper proposes a new longitudinal indicator that counts the number of years lived as active and inactive over the life course for foreign- and native-born cohorts. Contribution The microsimulation models provide much more informative results than more traditional cohort-component or multi-state models to study the future effects of ethnocultural super-diversity on high immigration countries.
Supplement to : Significance-based community detection in weighted networks

n: Number of nodes in communities nb: Number of nodes in background mmax: Max community size mmin: Min community size τ1: Power-law for degree parameters τ2: Power-law for community sizes k: Mean of degree parameter power-law kmax: Maximum degree parameter se: Within-community edge signal sw: Within-community weight signal on: Number of nodes in multiple communities om: Number of memberships for overlap nodes F : Distributions of edge weights σ2: Variance parameter for P β: Power-law for strength parameters
Probing quantumness with joint continuous measurements of non-commuting qubit observables

We analyze the continuous measurement of two non-commuting observables for a qubit, and investigate whether the simultaneously observed noisy signals are consistent with the evolution of an equivalent classical system. Following the approach outlined by Leggett and Garg, we show that the readouts violate macrorealistic inequalities for arbitrarily short temporal correlations. Moreover, the derived inequalities are manifestly violated even in the absence of Hamiltonian evolution, unlike for Leggett-Garg inequalities that use a single continuous measurement. Such a violation should indicate the failure of at least one postulate of macrorealism: either physical quantities do not have well defined values at all times, or the measurement process itself disturbs what is being measured. For measurements of equal strength we are able to construct a classical stochastic model for a spin that perfectly emulates both the qubit evolution and the observed noisy signals, thus emulating the violations; interestingly, this model also requires an unphysical noise to emulate the readouts, which effectively restricts the ability of an observer to learn information about the spin.
SELF-COMPASSION SOOTHES THE SAVAGE EGO-THREAT SYSTEM: EFFECTS ON NEGATIVE AFFECT, SHAME, RUMINATION, AND DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS

Self-compassion, involving self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness, appears well-suited to soothing feelings of threat following negative events and thereby reducing depressive sequellae. Study 1 found a strong negative association between self-compassion and depressive symptoms in 335 university students and evaluated four markers of threat that potentially mediate this relation. A test of multiple mediation revealed shame as a significant mediator, along with rumination and self-esteem. In Study 2, shame-prone students recalled an experience of shame and then were randomly assigned to (1) write about it self-compassionately, (2) express their feelings about it in writing, or (3) do neither. Participants completed their assigned task three times in one week. Immediately after writing, participants in the self-compassion condition reported less state shame and negative affect than those in the expressive writing condition. At two-week follow-up, participants in the self-compassion condition alone .
Piggyback Profiling: Enhancing Query Results with Metadata

SQL-based data exploration is tedious. Any given query might be followed up by another query simply to count the number of distinct values of an interesting column or to ﬁnd out its range of values. Besides the actual query output, each result also embodies various metadata, which are not visible to the user and not (yet) determined by the DBMS. These metadata can be useful to understand the data, assess its quality, or spark interesting insights. Our approach piggybacks metadata calculation on the usual query processing with minimal overhead, by making use of speciﬁc properties of the query plan nodes. We describe our extension of an RDBMS and show that its runtime overhead is usually less than 10%.
Understanding everything NPCs can do: metrics for action similarity in non-player characters

Non-Player Characters (NPCs) have actions that allow them to reason about what they can do in a game and how they can do it. The background information about what they can do are the components of the action, and how they can do it is the form or shape of an action, which may be built up from several sub-actions. The components and shape of an action must be fully defined in a game, which can be tedious when several similar actions are needed. Furthermore, as the number of nuanced actions grows, more pressure is placed on an already constrained reasoning system. By discovering the similarities between actions an NPC can do, a given action set can be intelligently organized with similar components being generalized using an action taxonomy. To understand the similarity between actions we have developed measures of action similarity based on their constituent components and form. From this, we discover a metric to determine the generalization ability of an organization strategy for an NPC action set. We examine the use of our measures on a previously developed action set to show the nuances between those actions. Lastly, we find that intelligently organizing actions has a positive effect on virtual character reasoning abilities.
Based on Gaussian Mixture Model to Explore the General Characteristic and Make Recognition of XinTianYou

XinTianYou , a folk song style from Shannxi province in China, is considered to be a precious traditional culture heritage. Research about XinTianYou is important to the overall Chinese folk music theory and is potentially quite useful for the culture preservation and applications. In this paper, we analyze the general characteristics of XinTianYou by using the pitch, rhythm features and the combination of these two features. First, we use the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) to cluster the XinTianYou audio based on pitch and rhythm respectively, and analyze the general characteristics of XinTianYou based on the clustering result. Second, we propose an improved Features Relative Contribution Algorithm (CFRCA) to com-pare the contributions of pitch and rhythm. Third, the probability of a song being XinTianYou can be estimated based on the GMM and the cosine similarity distance. The experimental results show that XinTianYou has large pitch span and large proportion of high pitch value (about 22%). Regarding the rhythm, we find that moderato is dominated while lento-moderato keep a similar ratio as moderato-allegro. The similarity between pitch features of all XinTianYou songs is more significant than rhythm features. Additionally, the average accuracy of XinTianYou recognition reaches 92.4% based on our method
Improving Battery Management System Performance and Cost with Altera FPGAs

The purpose of this white paper is to evaluate improvements to Battery Management System (BMS) performance and cost with Altera® FPGAs. In many high-voltage battery systems, including electric vehicles, grid attached storage and industrial applications, the battery is a significant portion of the system cost, and needs to be carefully managed by a BMS to maximize battery life and to optimize charging and discharging performance. This white paper presents the BMS functional requirements for these applications and outlines existing BMS architectures. Key BMS architectural challenges are discussed and opportunities for Altera devices are identified. For each of these opportunities, the performance and cost of the existing solution are compared with Altera FPGA solutions. Altera devices provide architectural flexibility, scalability, customization, performance improvements, and system cost savings in BMS applications.
Design and Implementation of a Power-Aware System Exploiting Heterogeneous GPU–CPU Clusters

Computing has many applications inducing the deployment of numerous large computer systems, which require significant amounts of energy, affecting the sustainability of the system and the supplying power grid. Computer system exhibit sudden changes in power draw, which threaten the power-grid stability, and the high energy demand requires steady cooling, together causing great costs. Therefore, a system is presented that obeys power limits, which increases the grid stability, improves the energy efficiency, which reduces the energy demand and thus the base cost. It also considers system activity in accordance with electricity prices, which cuts operating costs. The system achieves this by exploiting heterogeneity in computer systems and purposefully delaying pending activities. Utilizing heterogeneous processors improves the energy efficiency significantly, while it allows to adapt to varying power limits. Employing activity delaying allows to shift active times from periods of expensive electricity towards cheaper periods. Heterogeneous computer systems and flexible arrangement of activities, allow more ecological and economical operation of computing infrastructure.
Effects of a particle-hole asymmetric pseudogap on Bogoliubov quasiparticles in ARPES

We show that in the presence of a pseudogap, the spectral function in the superconducting state of the underdoped cuprates exhibits additional Bogoliubov quasiparticle peaks at both positive and negative energy which are revealed by the particle-hole asymmetry of the pseudogapped energy bands. This provides direct information on the unoccupied band via measurement of the occupied states. When sufficiently close, these Bogoliubov peaks willappear to merge with existing peaks leading to the anomalous observation, seen in experiment, that the carrier spectral density broadens with reduced temperature in the superconducting state. Using the resonating valence bond (RVB) spin liquid model in conjunction with recent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) data allows for an empirical determination of the temperature dependence of the pseudogap suggesting that it opens only very gradually below the pseudogap onset temperature T � . Over the history of high temperature superconductivity in the cuprates, many fundamental questions have been posed and some have been answered. It is now known that the charge carriers form in Cooper pairs[1], with a pairing symmetry which is described as spinsinglet[2] dx2 y2-wave[3] and the mechanism might be spin fluctuations[4], although the latter issue is still a subject of considerable debate. Even the applicability of standard BCS theory has been questioned although experiments have been presented which give overwhelming evidence for a BCS description. One such experiment, which is both relevant to this paper and demonstrates the impact of the high Tc field to encourage experimental innovation and improvements in technique, has been ARPES. In ARPES, not only has the superconducting
Host Perspectives on Ethnic Minority Tourism in Northern Thailand

In recent years tourism scholarship has increasingly recognized the role and importance of host perspectives in ethnic minority tourism. The main aim of this paper is to explicate the opinions and perceptions of ethnic minority communities in Northern Thailand. By drawing on emerging concepts of the host gaze I aim to further the understanding of how local residents in the field of ethnic tourism perceive and gaze upon the various actors and dimensions of ethnic tourism. Based on a qualitative research study employing semi-structured interviews and participant observation in two minority villages with different touristic intensity, this paper uncovers local perspectives on and gazes upon different types of tourists, tour guides and tensions in ethnic tourism such as modernization versus exoticism or the question of tourism and cultural revitalization.