Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EpyNN: Educational python for Neural Networks

Summary Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have achieved unequaled performance for numerous problems in many areas of Science, Business, Public Policy, and more. While experts are familiar with performance-oriented software and underlying theory, ANNs are difficult to comprehend for non-experts because it requires skills in programming, background in mathematics and knowledge of terminology and concepts. In this work, we release EpyNN, an educational python resource meant for a public willing to understand key concepts and practical implementation of scalable ANN architectures from concise, homogeneous and idiomatic source code. EpyNN contains an educational Application Programming Interface (API), educational workflows from data preparation to ANN training and a documentation website setting side-by-side code, mathematics, graphical representation and text to facilitate learning and provide teaching material. Overall, EpyNN provides basics for python-fluent individuals who wish to learn, teach or develop from scratch. Availability EpyNN documentation is available at https://epynn.net and repository can be retrieved from https://github.com/synthaze/epynn. Contact Stéphanie Olivier-Van-Stichelen, solivier@mcw.edu. Supplementary Information Supplementary files and listings.
Resampling Plans and the Estimation of Prediction Error

Copyright: © 2021 by the author. Submitted to Stats for possible open access publication under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Stanford University; brad@stat.stanford. edu † Current address: Department of Statistics, Sequoia Hall, Mail Code 4065, Stanford, CA 94305 Abstract: This article was prepared for the special issue on Resampling methods for statistical inference 1
Web Sites Information Security Management Based on B/S Pattern

This paper summarizes the development of electronic records management, and due to current defects and shortcomings, discusses the more effective and reasonable information security management program. For the system security issues, the paper has done an overall security analysis of system from the application layer, network layer, and database layer to physical and management levels, and has made a system’s security strategy.
Low-profile design of dual-frequency and dual-polarised triangular microstrip antennas

A single-feed triangular microstrip patch antenna that can be operated at two distinct resonant modes is proposed. The two resonant modes can radiate an omnidirectional dipole-like pattern with linear polarisation and a broadside pattern with circular polarisation, respectively. To achieve the required frequency ratio of the two operating frequency bands, several designs of the proposed antennas with different substrate thickness and patch sizes are studied. In addition, these designs can easily obtain a 50 /spl Omega/ input impedance without any additional matching circuit. Details of the antenna design and obtained performance are presented.
The personalisation agenda: implications for the third sector

Personalisation has been identified as being ‘a cornerstone of the modernisation of public services’ (Department of Health, 2008: p. 4) and much interest in this concept has arisen recently. However, there is a high degree of confusion over what personalisation is and the types of changes that will be associated with this agenda. There are many ways in which the concept of personalisation might be interpreted, all of which have different implications for service users and service providers, particularly in terms of the mechanisms which have been introduced to try and facilitate these changes. Personalisation has a considerable history and has the potential to offer very different services to those that have been delivered in the past. Moreover, the underpinning philosophy of the personalisation movement is aligned with the types of values which a number of third sector organisations have been advocating for some time. Personalisation is more than a passing political fad and third sector organisations need to think carefully about how they will respond and shape the many changes which have already started to happen and that will increase in momentum over the coming months. This paper sets out the major features of the personalisation agenda and drawing on existing evidence sets out the key research, policy and practice implications of this for the third sector. Personalisation offers the potential for much improvement in terms of the way in which individuals with care needs are supported, but might also potentially mean significant changes for providers involved in the delivery of welfare services. It is important that third sector bodies understand these implications and are able to respond to these appropriately or else risk losing out in this change process.
Comparative Analysis of MRAC Architectures in a Unified Framework

§** In recent years, Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC) has gained enormous attention and popularity in the Aerospace community. Successful flight demonstrations starting in the mid 1990s, significant advances in the theoretical framework, particularly with respect to stability and robustness and the consensus to jointly define certification strategies and criteria for adaptive flight controllers are fueling the research efforts in the field. This leads to an overwhelming multitude of new methods and approaches appearing in publications and on conferences. As everybody represents the theories and applications in very different ways, they often seem to be far apart and different from each other although they are close together. Likewise, many modifications may seem as something radically different representing completely new philosophies. However, although they undoubtedly are of great value for both science and applications, they can still be assigned to various elements of the standard baseline MRAC architectures in many cases. The paper tries to formulate the different MRAC approaches and modifications in a consistent manner and allocates the special characteristics of the respective method to the elements concerned in the standard MRAC architectures. By presenting the different approaches in a unified manner, similarities and differences can be understood much easier. Furthermore it becomes apparent that many different methods are no exclusive alternatives but may well be combined. So dependent on the task to be accomplished, different suitable elements from the growing field of MRAC can be selected in a target-oriented manner to pursue the respective control objective in the most efficient way. Elements to be addressed are baseline MRAC architectures, plant transformations, reference dynamics, structure of the adaptive elements and update laws. The paper at hand is limited on state feedback. However, current work also includes output feedback for different relative degrees. It is planned to perform and present a metrics driven comparison of the different elements using a benchmark flight control application in subsequent publications. The paper is intended to be an overview and should have a tutorial character, giving some guidance for finding a way through the field of MRAC.
Experimenting with Collaborative zk-SNARKs: Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Distributed Secrets

A zk-SNARK is a powerful cryptographic primitive that provides a succinct and efficiently checkable argument that the prover has a witness to a public NP statement, without revealing the witness. However, in their native form, zk-SNARKs only apply to a secret witness held by a single party. In prac-tice, a collection of parties often need to prove a statement where the secret witness is distributed or shared among them. We implement and experiment with collaborative zkSNARKs : proofs over the secrets of multiple, mutually dis-trusting parties. We construct these by lifting conventional zk-SNARKs into secure protocols among N provers to jointly produce a single proof over the distributed witness. We optimize the proof generation algorithm in pairing-based zkSNARKs so that algebraic techniques for multiparty computation (MPC) yield efficient proof generation protocols. For some zk-SNARKs, optimization is more challenging. This suggests MPC “friendliness” as an additional criterion for evaluating zk-SNARKs. We implement three collaborative proofs and evaluate the concrete cost of proof generation. We find that over a 3Gb/s link, security against a malicious minority of provers can be achieved with approximately the same runtime as a single prover. Security against N − 1 malicious provers requires only a 2 × slowdown. This efficiency is unusual since most computations slow down by orders of magnitude when securely distributed. This efficiency means that most applications that can tolerate the cost of a single-prover proof should also be able to tolerate the cost of a collaborative proof.
Metamaterial multiresonances in waveguide and metasurfaces

In spite of the fact of its potential relevance for future advanced metamaterial design, split rings resonators high‐order resonances data are very limited in the literature. This article presents these co‐ and cross‐polarization high‐order resonances by means of numerical electromagnetic simulation and measurements in both monomode waveguides and free space propagation. A good agreement between simulation and experiments has been observed. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 50: 2825–2827, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.23812
Modeling and Actuation Performance Analysis of Conically-Shaped Dielectric Electroactive Polymer Actuator

Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) represent one class of electroactive polymers that have already demonstrated excellent performances and show potential applications in many fields. In this paper, we present a simplified conically-shaped dielectric elastomer actuator model to explore the effects of various preloads and actuation voltages on both the actuation displacement and force output of DEA. The strain energy potential of Yeoh is used and the viscoelasticity is also taken into account. Using the developed model, the numerical results of DEA including the actuation displacement, the distribution of the principal stretch ratios and principal stresses in the membrane and the force output can be obtained. With different preloads and actuation voltages, the actuation characteristic of conically-shaped dielectric elastomer actuator is explored experimentally and validates the results determined from the proposed model. The proposed model can be used for the design and optimization of conically-shaped dielectric elastomer actuator.
Lightening the load: Perceived partner responsiveness fosters more positive appraisals of relational sacrifices.

Romantic partners regularly sacrifice their own self-interest when partners' needs and preferences diverge. The present work examines the role of perceived partner responsiveness (PPR)-impressions that one's partner is understanding, caring, and validating-in positively shaping people's appraisals of their relational sacrifices. In Study 1, a preregistered experiment of romantically involved individuals (N = 548), we manipulated PPR (high, low, or control) in a hypothetical sacrifice scenario. In Study 2, we tracked romantic couples' (N = 126) in-lab conversations about a sacrifice (Study 2a), and their sacrifices in daily life (Study 2b). In Study 3, romantic couples (N = 111) engaged in lab conversations about a sacrifice that entailed making a change that one partner desired from the other, and reported on their progress 2 weeks later. In Study 4, we surveyed romantically involved individuals (N = 230) who recently made a life-changing sacrifice by relocating to a new city or country to support their partner's career. Across studies, results showed that higher PPR fostered more positive sacrifice appraisals (i.e., lower costs and viewing the act as less of a sacrifice, greater satisfaction, greater personal and relational benefits, lower regret) and greater sacrifice behavior (Study 3)-in part due to greater closeness with and lower negative affect toward the partner. Additionally, Study 4 suggested that PPR partly originated from the partner's efforts to fulfill fundamental psychological needs (i.e., autonomy, competence, relatedness). Thus, PPR can play a critical role in lightening the load of daily and even life-changing sacrifices. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Wasserstein Flow Meets Replicator Dynamics: A Mean-Field Analysis of Representation Learning in Actor-Critic

Actor-critic (AC) algorithms, empowered by neural networks, have had significant empirical success in recent years. However, most of the existing theoretical support for AC algorithms focuses on the case of linear function approximations, or linearized neural networks, where the feature representation is fixed throughout training. Such a limitation fails to capture the key aspect of representation learning in neural AC, which is pivotal in practical problems. In this work, we take a mean-field perspective on the evolution and convergence of feature-based neural AC. Specifically, we consider a version of AC where the actor and critic are represented by overparameterized two-layer neural networks and are updated with two-timescale learning rates. The critic is updated by temporal-difference (TD) learning with a larger stepsize while the actor is updated via proximal policy optimization (PPO) with a smaller stepsize. In the continuous-time and infinite-width limiting regime, when the timescales are properly separated, we prove that neural AC finds the globally optimal policy at a sublinear rate. Additionally, we prove that the feature representation induced by the critic network is allowed to evolve within a neighborhood of the initial one.
China's Electricity Industry at the Crossroads: New Challenges for Developing the Right Model of Regulation

China is facing important challenges stemming from increasing rates of urbanization and aging population. To pursue its “harmonious society” objective without disrupting its path to development major overhauls are necessary in education, health, social security and above all in public services, particularly in electricity. China’s electricity industry is at the crossroads. To meet the challenges, new models of regulation should be developed and applied. This paper examines the current state of the Chinese electricity industry and the burden it imposes on its public finances. It also reviews and critically examines the existing FIT (Europe) and RPS (USA) models of regulation and of promotion of renewable energies and advances on whether they are advantageous for China. It is argued that the electricity industry has already undergone important reforms but cross subsidies still exist, equivalent to 1.5% of China’s GDP. Drastic rate rebalancing policies will create sustainability problems and a deterioration of China’s public finances. To avoid such negative results, China has to further reform its electricity industry gradually and use wisely FIT-type programs to bring renewables into the grid and fulfill the Kyoto Protocol.
Enhanced output power of InGaN-GaN light-emitting diodes with high-transparency nickel-oxide-indium-tin-oxide Ohmic contacts

This study develops a highly transparent nickel-oxide (NiO/sub x/)-indium-tin-oxide (ITO) transparent Ohmic contact with excellent current spreading for p-GaN to increase the optical output power of nitride-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The NiO/sub x/-ITO transparent Ohmic contact layer was prepared by electron beam in-situ evaporation without postdeposition annealing. Notably, the transmittance of the NiO/sub x/-ITO exceeds 90% throughout the visible region of the spectrum and approaches 98% at 470 nm. Moreover, GaN LED chips with dimensions of 300 /spl times/ 300 /spl mu/m fabricated with the NiO/sub x/-ITO transparent Ohmic contact were developed and produced a low forward voltage of 3.4 V under a nominal forward current of 20 mA and a high optical output power of 6.6 mW. The experimental results indicate that NiO/sub x/-ITO bilayer Ohmic contact with excellent current spreading and high transparency is suitable for fabricating high-brightness GaN-based light-emitting devices.
N6-Methyladenosine Modifications in the Female Reproductive System: Roles in Gonad Development and Diseases

N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is the most prevalent chemical modification in eukaryotic messenger RNAs. By participating in various RNA-related bioprocesses including RNA decay, splicing, transport and translation, m6A serves as a pivotal regulator of RNA fate and plays an irreplaceable role in cellular activities. The m6A modifications of transcripts are coordinately regulated by methyltransferase “writers” and demethylase “erasers”, and produce variable effects via different m6A reading protein “readers”. There is emerging evidence that m6A modifications play a critical role in a variety of physiological and pathological processes in the female reproductive system, subsequently affecting female fertility. Here, we introduce recent advances in research on m6A regulators and their functions, then highlight the role of m6A in gonad development and female reproductive diseases, as well as the underlying mechanisms driving these processes.
Fast Algorithms for L ∞ -Constrained S-Rectangular Robust MDPs

Robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs) are a useful building block of robust reinforcement learning algorithms but can be hard to solve. This paper proposes a fast, exact algorithm for computing the Bellman operator for S-rectangular robust Markov decision processes with L ∞ -constrained rectangular ambiguity sets. The algorithm combines a novel homotopy continuation method with a bisection method to solve S-rectangular ambiguity in quasi-linear time in the number of states and actions. The algorithm improves on the cubic time required by leading general linear programming methods. Our experimental results conﬁrm the practical viability of our method and show that it outperforms a leading commercial optimization package by several orders of magnitude
KB-VLP: Knowledge Based Vision and Language Pretraining

Transformer-based pretraining techniques have achieved impressive performance on learning cross-model representations for various multi-modal tasks. However, off-the-shelf models do not take advantage of commonsense knowledge and logical reasoning that are crucial to many real-world tasks. To this end, we introduce a novel pre-training approach - K nowledge B ased V ision and L anguage P retraining (KB-VLP) - which uses knowledge graph embeddings extracted from text and detected image object tags to enhance the learning of semantically aligned and knowledge-aware representations, and improve the models generalization, and interpretability. KB-VLP is pretrained on a large image-text corpus and automatically extracted knowledge embeddings, and then ﬁnetuned on several downstream vision-language tasks. Experiments show that KB-VLP signiﬁcantly improves the performance on VQA, GQA, NLVR 2 and OKVQA tasks compared with the baselines.
Wind tunnel experiments on the optimization of distributed suction for laminar flow control

Abstract It is well known that surface suction can delay boundary layer transition from laminar to turbulent flow, thus reducing drag on the surface in question. In order for laminar flow control by means of suction to be a paying proposition on aircraft, however, it must reduce total energy consumption as well as net drag. The flow control system that will have the best chance of doing this will use the minimum amount of suction pump energy to achieve a given transition position. Previous work has shown how a steepest- descent constrained optimization algorithm in conjunction with a radial basis function gradient estimator is capable of doing this online. In this paper the control strategy is applied to a large (2 m chord, 1.6 m span) aerofoil model in a low turbulence tunnel, with variable incidence and direct force measurement. The effect of pressure gradient over the suction section on the efficacy of the suction can therefore be observed, as can the relationship between transition and drag. The system is shown to converge reliably as long as the desired transition is within its range, and to be capable of maintaining control after a change in aerodynamic conditions without needing to re-identify the gradient estimation coefficients.
Medication and Lifestyle Adherence Behaviors in Hypertensive Patients

Hypertension is a serious chronic condition that afflicts many Americans. The present study used the Common Sense Model (CSM) of Self Regulation as a theoretical framework to aid in the examination of predictors of medication and/or lifestyle adherence. Based upon the literature reviewed, the current study proposes that predictors would be different for medication and lifestyle adherence. Three hypotheses were proposed: 1. CSM-related variables (blood pressure monitoring, condition-worry hypertension duration, control beliefs, and medication beliefs items) would be correlated with medication adherence; 2. specific CSM-related variables, self assessed health (SAH) and physical functioning would significantly be correlated with lifestyle adherence; 3. If there are common predictors of medication and lifestyle adherence, the predictors would account for more of one type of adherence than the other. The current study utilized data from a larger study evaluating patients’ management of acute and chronic conditions. Results supported the three hypotheses. There was no correlation between medication and lifestyle adherence. The overall model was significant in a stepwise regression with all CSM-related predictors, including age, race and education predicting medication adherence. The stepwise regression model was significant with all CSM-related predictors, including, age, race and education predicting lifestyle adherence. Different predictors in medication (the side effect of this treatment are manageable for me”) and lifestyle adherence (“the prescribed treatment for my hypertension keeps it under good control” were found supporting hypothesized independence of the two constructs.
Characterization of phenotypes in Gstm1 -null mice by cytosolic and in vivo metabolic studies using DCNB

Glutathione S-transferase Mu 1 (GSTM1) has been regarded as one of the key enzymes involved in phase II reactions in the liver, due to its high expression level. In this study, we generated mice with disrupted glutathione S -transferase Mu 1 gene ( Gstm1 -null mice) by gene targeting, and characterized the phenotypes by cytosolic and in vivo studies. The resulting Gstm1 -null mice appeared to be normal and were fertile. Expression analyses for the Gstm1 -null mice revealed a deletion of Gstm1 mRNA and a small decrease in Gsta3 mRNA. In the enzymatic study, GST activities toward 1,2-dichloro-4-nitrobenzene (DCNB) and 1-chloro-2,4-dinitrobenzene (CDNB) in the liver and kidney cytosols were markedly lower in Gstm1 -null mice than in the wild-type control. Gstm1 -null mice had GST activities of only 6.1-21.0% of the wild-type control to DCNB and 26.0-78.6% of the wild-type control to CDNB. After a single oral administration of DCNB to Gstm1 -null mice, the plasma concentration of DCNB showed larger AUC 0-24 (5.1-5.3 times, vs. the wild-type control) and higher C max (2.1-2.2 times, vs. the wild-type control) with a correspondingly lower level of GSH-related metabolite (AUC 0-24 : 9.4-17.9% and C max : 9.7-15.6% of the wild-type control). In conclusion, Gstm1 -null mice showed markedly low ability for glutathione conjugation to DCNB in the cytosol and in vivo and would be useful as a deficient model of GSTM1 for ADME/Tox studies. Gstm1 -null mice) by gene targeting. We characterized the phenotypes by in vitro and in vivo