Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Embracing Mobile App Evolution via Continuous Ecosystem Mining and Characterization

While an indicator of its vibrancy, the rapid evolution of a mobile ecosystem also causes challenges to mobile software engineers in developing and maintaining quality products, and to users concerning the usability and security of resulting apps. In this context, it is crucially important to arm mobile software engineers with effective and practical tool support that is informed and enabled by a comprehensive understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of this ecosystem. Targeting Android, we envision to build an infrastructure that is capable of systematically and continuously mining a mobile software ecosystem. Using this infrastructure, we then perform large-scale longitudinal characterization studies of the ecosystem to understand its evolutionary dynamics with a focus on the behavioral evolution patterns of, and ecological interaction among, three ecosystem elements: the mobile platforms, user apps built on the platforms, and users associated with the apps (including end users and developers). Further, the characterization results enable proactive app quality and sustainable app security. We also report our current progress in this effort with initial results, and discuss risks and next steps.
DEVELOPEMENT AND METHOD VALIDATION OF RP-HPLC METHOD FOR SIMULTANEOUS ESTIMATION AND FORCED DEGRADATION OF SORAFENIB TOSYLATE IN BULK AND PHARMACEUTICAL DOSAGE FORM

The present work describes development and validation of a specific, sensitive, precise and force degradation high performance liquid chromatographic method of analysis of sorafenib tosylate, as bulk drug and marketed formulation. The separation was achieved by using a mobile phase of methanol: water (80:20 v/v) on a thermo BDS hypersil C18 column (250 × 4.6 mm i.d.5 μm) at ambient temperature at flow rate of 1.0 ml/min. The detection was done at 268 nm. The retention time of sorafenib tosylate was 4.515 min. This method was successively applied to pharmaceutical dosage form of sorafenib tosylate was subjected to stress conditions of hydrolysis, oxidation, alkaline and acidic degradation. The degraded products were well resolved from the pure drug with significantly different retention time values. Linearity was found to be in the range of 20-100μg/ml with significantly high value of correlation coefficient. The method was validated for precision, robustness and recovery. The limits of detection and quantitation were 0. 48μg/ml and 0. 4466μg/ml respectively.
Fast Intra Mode Decision based on Relative SATD in HEVC

High efficiency video coding shows significantly improved compression performance with huge computational complexity compared to previous standards. To reduce the computational complexity through a fast intra prediction mode decision, a modified Bayesian classification is proposed. The classifier selects a small number of candidate modes to be evaluated by a rate-distortion optimization process using the sum of absolute Hadamard transformed difference. The proposed method shows average encoding run-time by 84.27% with average BD-rate coding loss by 0.16%.
Assessment of γH2AX nuclear foci number and size in normal and repair-deficient cells irradiated with low and high linear energy transfer radiation

The aim of this study was to evaluate the DNA damage induced by low and high linear energy transfer radiation in two related cell lines with different radiation sensitivity, CHO10B2 and irs-20 cells (defective in DNA-PKcs). Double-strand breaks were assessed by the detection of phosphorylated histone H2AX foci (γH2AX). The number of foci increased as a function of dose for both cell lines and types of radiation. However, irs-20 cells showed a higher number of foci than the parental CHO10B2. An increase in the foci size was observed for both cell lines after lithium irradiation. This could be attributed to clusters of DNA damage. Moreover, the number of lithium-induced larger foci per nuclei increased with dose and fitted with the expected number of hits per nucleus. Concluding, γH2AX foci size provides a potential tool to characterise the intrinsic radiosensitivity of cells related to DNA damage and to compare the effects of different quality radiations.
End-user Beneﬁts of LTE Dual Connectivity in Heterogeneous Networks

In response to the ever increasing trafﬁc demand in mobile communication networks, e.g. LTE, features for radio resource aggregation are discussed. LTE Dual Connectivity (DC), standardized in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 12, is envisaged to improve the end-user performance by increasing the user throughput. This is achieved by aggregating resources from two separate eNBs operating on different carrier frequencies. In a heterogeneous network these eNBs are typically a Macro eNB providing large scale coverage, and a Pico eNB to boost capacity locally. The serving eNB can directly transmit a part of the buffered packets to the User Equipment (UE) while a second part is ofﬂoaded to a second eNB for transmission to the UE from there. We evaluate the end-user beneﬁts of LTE DC in a realistic heterogeneous network deployment considering typical internet trafﬁc types of today, e.g. webpage downloads. Our results show gains for the end-users with DC depending on the trafﬁc type. This indicates that not only the achievable user throughput, but also the amount of data buffered in the eNBs and the latency dependency of the considered trafﬁc determine the end-user experience. This work shows that DC is mostly beneﬁcial when buffering in the eNBs occurs. Furthermore, for the worst users in the system, i.e. the cell edge users, DC enables to signiﬁcantly reduce the webpage download times especially at medium system load. Therefore, DC can be considered an interesting feature to be added to LTE networks to cope with the increasing trafﬁc demand of the upcoming years.
Spectral study of coumarin-3-carboxylic acid interaction with human and bovine serum albumins

AbstractFluorescence spectroscopy and circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy were used to investigate the interaction of coumarin-3-carboxylic acid with human serum albumin (HSA) and bovine serum albumin (BSA) under physiological conditions in a buffer solution of pH 7.4. Quenching constants were determined using the Lineweaver-Burk equation to provide a measure of the binding affinity of coumarin-3-carboxylic acid to HSA/BSA. Binding studies concerning the number of binding sites, n, and apparent binding constant, K, were performed by a fluorescence quenching method at different temperatures (298, 303 and 310 K). The thermodynamic parameters, enthalpy change (ΔH0) and entropy change (ΔS0) as calculated according to the van’t Hoff equation, indicated that hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces play a major role in coumarin-3-carboxylic acid-HSA association whereas electrostatic interactions dominate in coumarin-3-carboxylic acid-BSA association. The distance, r, between the donor (HSA/BSA) and acceptor (coumarin-3-carboxylic acid) has been estimated using Förster’s equation, on the basis of resonance energy transfer. Furthermore, CD spectra were used to investigate the α-helix changes of the HSA and BSA molecules upon addition of coumarin-3-carboxylic acid.
How do Extended Benefits and Early Retirement Rules affect Unemployment Duration? A Regression Discontinuity Approach

This paper studies a program that extends the maximum duration of unemployment benefits from 30 weeks to 209 weeks. Interestingly, this program is targeted to individuals aged 50 years or older, living in certain eligible regions in Austria. In the evaluation, I use sharp discontinuities in treatment assignment at age 50 and at the border between eligible regions and control regions to identify the effect of extended benefits on unemployment duration. Results indicate that the duration of job search is prolonged by at least . 08 weeks per additional week of benefits among men, whereas unemployment duration increases by at least . 28 weeks per additional week of benefits among women. The salient differences between men and women are consistent with the lower minimum age for early retirement applying to women. JEL-Classification: C41, J64, J65
Environmental Sustainability: Universal and Non‐Negotiable

After deploring the mystification of the term sustainability and tendencies to conflate it with society's desiderata, we desegregate three types of sustainability: social, economic, and environmental. After clarifying these three linked and overlapping concepts, and construing them with sustainable development, we distinguish quantitative throughput growth from qualitative development, and mention intergenerational equity and scarcity of natural capital that together lead to the definition of environmental sustainability by the output/input rule, i.e., keep wastes within assimilative capacities; harvest within regenerative capacities of renewable resources; deplete non-renewables at the rate at which renewable substitutes are developed. After distinguishing development from sustainability and from growth, the paper describes the concept of natural capital and uses the concept to present four alternative definitions of environmental sustainability. Next, the paper presents criteria for analyzing environmental sustainability and uses the Ehrlich-Holdren framework in which Population," Pffluence, and Technology are examined separately. The paper then nuances the I = PAT identity and starts to disaggregate the components of sustainability into more dynamic formulations. The final section describes how one large development agency, the World Bank, is endeavoring to incorporate these new principles into its operations.
The Effects of Land Use on the Structure of Ground‐Foraging Ant Communities in the Argentine Chaco

We examined the responses of a ground-foraging ant community to a gradient of land-use intensity in a grazing agroecosystem in the Chaco of northern Argentina. The gradient extended from a highly degraded condition characteristic of traditional grazing practices, through an area of less severe disturbance where grazing was less concentrated, to two areas in which grazing had been managed for 3 and 18 yr, respectively. Ground cover changed along this gradient from bare to litter-covered, ground-layer vegetation changed from sparse to a structurally complex mixture of grasses and forbs, and canopy cover increased in areas of intermediate grazing intensity and then decreased. Community diversity varied among the sites depending on both season and scale of analysis. Site-scale ant species richness was slightly higher in sites of intermediate disturbance in the summer- wet season but was much greater in the least disturbed site in the winter-dry season. The same dry-season pattern was evident in both species richness and diversity at the scale of transects within sites, whereas species richness at the scale of individual traps within transects was significantly lower at sites of intermediate disturbance than at either highly restored or highly degraded sites. Abundances of individual ant species and functional groups also changed along the land-use gradient. Litter-inhabiting cryptic species and spe- cialized predators responded positively to grazing management, whereas opportunists and the hot-climate specialist Forelius nigriventris were prevalent in highly disturbed areas. Other functional groups exhibited redundancy and species turnover along the gradient. Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) revealed that the ant faunas at the extremes of the land-use gradient were more similar than expected. We hypothesize that the interaction of local-scale habitat features with historical and biogeographic influences may determine the responses of this ant community to land use, and that highly degraded areas may have conservation value because they are regional sources of arid-adapted ants.
Study of Mechanical Properties of Natural Fiber Reinforced Hybrid Polymer Composites

With the urge to develop materials considering economical, energy efficient and environmental factors, natural fibers composites are increasingly replacing traditional synthetic such as glass fiber composites. In the present study various hybrid composites were developed from luffa fiber, bagasse and coconut coir dust making use of different forms of reinforcements such as luffa in mat form, bagasse as short fibers and coir dust as particulate form of reinforcement. The mechanical properties (tensile strength, flexural strength, impact strength) were determined and studied.
FOLIC ACID AS A DIETARY FACTOR AFFECTING THE WING MORPH OF THE PLANTHOPPER, LAODELPHAX STRIATELLUS (HEMIPTERA, DELPHACIDAE)

A factor effecting the production of brachypterous adults in Laodelphax striatellus was studied by comparing a diet on which brachypterous adults sometimes developed and a diet on which they never developed. By substituting components distinctive of the latter diet into the former, or by varying the concentration of certain components of the latter diet, the production of brachypterous adults was found to vary with the concentration of a vitamin, folic acid. Brachypterous adults were produced only when the diet contained folic acid at concentrations between 0.5 mg/1 and 7.5 mg/1.
CORRELATION BETWEEN THERMAL TREATMENT AND TETRAGONAL/MONOCLINIC NANOSTRUCTURED ZIRCONIA POWDER OBTAINED BY SOL–GEL PROCESS

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the correlation between thermal treatment and tetragonal/monoclinic nanostructured zirconia powders obtained by sol–gel process. The originality of this work is in the evaluation of the temperature influence on the preparation of nanostructured zirconia powders. The structure of the zirconia produced is amorphous when the samples are heated below 400 °C. The zirconia powders were prepared using zirconium n-propoxide diluted in n-propanol under stirring and refluxed under controlled temperature at pH=5. The resulting gel was air-dried and annealed under air atmosphere at temperatures up to 800 °C for 12 h. The zirconia powders were characterized by means of differential thermal analysis, thermogravimetric analysis, X-ray diffraction, size distribution by laser diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and scanning and transmission electron microscopy. Crystallite size was calculated by single-line technique using the mathematical function Pearson VII. The presence of the tetragonal phase was observed at a temperature higher than 400 °C. The monoclinic phase was formed at 600 °C, which resulted in a lowering of the content of tetragonal phase. At 800 °C, the particle showed D50=11.54 μm. The crystallite size was calculated using X-ray diffraction-single line and measured by TEM, both approximately 30 nm.
Incorporating Field-aware Deep Embedding Networks and Gradient Boosting Decision Trees for Music Recommendation The 1st Place Music Recommender System at WSDM Cup 2018

On-line music streaming services, like KKBOX, is bringing great convenience for users to get access to all kinds of music, while the hierarchical data describing the songs and the random interests of users still make it a challenge for algorithms to make accurate recommendations, especially without enough historical data. In the WSDM - KKBOX’s Music Recommendation Challenge, WSDM and KKBOX were challenging people to predict the chances of a user listening to a song repetitively, under the condition that many users/songs are cold-started. In this paper, we describe our solution to the task. Our solution comprised an ensemble of diﬀerent models, including Field-aware Deep Embed-ding Networks and Gradient Boosting Decision Trees. We achieved an AUC score of 0.74787 on the Private Leader-board, and ﬁnished the ﬁrst place in the competition.
Mechanisms for Network Creation

We introduce and analyze the possibilities of a new model for network creation by autonomous selfish agents: Unlike in typical network formation games such as the well-known model of Fabrikant et al. [25], the final network is not directly shaped by the players of a game. Instead, we design mechanisms that take edge preferences of agents as input for a social choice function and return a network that respects those preferences. In addition, it caters for compliance with global restrictions on the network topology and tries to establish several properties, such as global efficiency, maximizing the individual utility of agents, and building stable networks, especially in comparison to the result of an anarchic network formation. The mechanism also aims to produce Nash equilibria and encourages agents to honestly declare their preferences instead of playing strategically. Specifically, we suggest three social choice functions for unweighted and one for weighted tree creation. We analyze them with regard to the introduced properties in the context of four different utility functions. Highlighting the power of the new model, we conclude with a mechanism for bounded-degree networks that performs considerably better than an uncoordinated network formation. The mechanism approach is a true superset of both centralized network design and uncoordinated network creation games. To the best of our knowledge this is the first attempt to explore the realm inbetween those extremes. As our work is highly explorative, we do not yet attempt to find a perfect mechanism for all properties and network types, but lay out several suggestions for future work on this new model for network creation.
Estimating the effect of lifelong learning on women’s earnings using a switching model

This paper examines the effect of lifelong learning on women’s employment and wages in the United Kingdom. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, a variant of the mover-stayer model is developed in which hourly wages are either taken from a stationary distribution (movers) or are closely related to the hourly wage one year earlier (stayers). The model allows for individualspecific effects through the inclusions of a fixed number of discrete mass points and also addresses the potential endogeneity of lifelong learning decisions. Once employment effects are taken into account, all forms of lifelong learning show substantial returns. JEL Codes: C33, C35, I20, J24, J31, J63
Contamination of the biological compartment in the Seine estuary by Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn

A study of contamination of the biological compartment of the Seine estuary was carried out by measuring the concentrations of cadmium (Cd), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), and zinc (Zn) in 29 estuarine and marine species belonging to 6 phyla. Species came from three main biological zones of the estuary: the Seine channel (copepods, mysids, shrimps, and fish), the intertidal mudflats (Macoma balthica community), and the subtidal mudflats (Abra alba community). Two fish species, the bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and the flounder (Platichthys flesus), were also selected for analyses. A comparison of metal concentrations in estuarine species of the Seine with those found in the same species collected on contaminated and non-contaminated sites showed a contamination of the estuary by Cu, Zn, and Pb. For Cd, the contamination is mainly observed in bivalves, although the concentrations observed were low and less than 2 μg g−1 d.w. High concentrations of Cu were found in copepods, shrimps, and fish. Pb contamination was mainly found in species living in the Seine channel where the copepodEurytemora affinis shows an average concentration of 22 μg g−1 d.w. High concentrations of Pb (>10 μg g−1 d.w.) were found in deposit-feeders benthic invertebrates. Elevated levels of Zn were seen in all species collected in the Seine estuary, including fish and in particular small flounder. The concentrations of Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn found in edible estuarine species (shrimp and fish) were in the same order of magnitude than those found in fish and shrimps fished along the French coast.
The Economic Impacts of Critical Habitat Designation

Among environmental regulations, the Endangered Species Act has the most potential to alarm landowners and developers who fear its ability to slow or thwart implementation of their plans. In general, the requirements that the Act places on property owners are absolute and there is no role for economic analysis or a balancing of competing social objectives. One exception, however, is in the designation of critical habitat—an issue of great concern in California since literally millions of acres in the state have been so designated. When the government deems that a species is endangered or threatened, it is also supposed to designate critical habitat, which includes the areas presently occupied by the species and other areas that are “essential to the conservation of the species” and which may require special management or protection. As Table 1 indicates, there are a large number of endangered species listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) so that the critical habitat designation process has the potential to affect a significantly large number of landowners. Section 4 of the Endangered Species Act requires economic analysis of the impacts of critical habitat designation and authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to take these impacts into account when deciding whether to exclude land from critical habitat. In a recent study conducted with David Zilberman, I developed a framework for measuring such impacts that draws on stylized facts about project development and land conversion, and compared this method to the one used currently by the USFWS. The most obvious economic effects of critical habitat designation (CHD) are to increase the cost of development by making it more difficult to obtain necessary permits and to reduce the size of individual projects (e.g., number of single-family housing units, office spaces, etc.). However, the economic effects of CHD go well beyond these costs. The process of land development is complex and conditioned by numerous factors. If land is set aside or if the scale of projects is reduced by CHD, there may well be market and regional effects from this designation. Other land cannot necessarily be brought into production to make up for losses due to designation, and even if it can, it may be in a suboptimal location. CHD also delays the development process, which imposes additional costs on developers, consumers and others in the affected region.
Succinctness of two-way probabilistic and quantum finite automata

We introduce a new model of two-way finite automaton, which is endowed with the capability of resetting the position of the tape head to the left end of the tape in a single move during the computation. Several variants of this model are examined, with the following results: The weakest known model of computation where quantum computers recognize more languages with bounded error than their classical counterparts is identified. We prove that two-way probabilistic and quantum finite automata (2PFAs and 2QFAs) can be considerably more concise than both their one-way versions (1PFAs and 1QFAs), and two-way nondeterministic finite automata (2NFAs). For this purpose, we demonstrate several infinite families of regular languages which can be recognized with some fixed probability greater than 1 2 by just tuning the transition amplitudes of a 2QFA (and, in one case, a 2PFA) with a constant number of states, whereas the sizes of the corresponding 1PFAs, 1QFAs and 2NFAs grow without bound. We also show that 2QFAs with mixed states can support highly efficient probability amplification.