bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
SYNTHESIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF La-DOPED ZnO (La:ZnO) FILMS FOR PHOTODETECTORS
Authors: GOZEH BESTOON ANWER , KARABULUT ABDULKERIM , AMEEN MUDHAFFER M , YILDIZ ABDULKADIR , YAKUPHANOĞLU FAHRETTIN
Published: October 2019

In this work, the La-doped ZnO thin films were fabricated with different La concentrations by the use of sol–gel technique to synthesize the photodevice. The transparent metal oxide La-doped ZnO thin films were grown on glass and [Formula: see text]-Si substrates using spin coating technique. Optical, surface morphology and electrical characterization of the fabricated Al/[Formula: see text]-Si/La:ZnO/Al devices have been performed using [Formula: see text]–[Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]/[Formula: see text]–[Formula: see text] characteristics under dark and different illumination conditions. Herein, from [Formula: see text]–[Formula: see text] characteristics, the crucial electronic parameters such as barrier height, ideality factor and series resistance were investigated. The photodevice transient photocurrent increases with the increase of illumination intensity. The current ratios of [Formula: see text]/[Formula: see text] were calculated for the fabricated devices. Among the devices, the highest photoresponse was found to be about 2186 for the Al/[Formula: see text]-Si/La(0.5 wt.%):ZnO/Al structure. The [Formula: see text]–[Formula: see text] behavior of fabricated device confirms the presence of interface states. The obtained results and photoresponse behaviors suggested that Al/[Formula: see text]-Si/La:ZnO/Al devices can enhance the applications in optoelectronic devices such as photodetectors.
Gradient continuity estimates for the normalized p-Poisson equation
Authors: Banerjee Agnid , Munive Isidro H.
Published: October 2019

In this paper, we obtain gradient continuity estimates for viscosity solutions of [Formula: see text] in terms of the scaling critical [Formula: see text]-norm of [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is the normalized [Formula: see text]-Laplacian operator. Our main result corresponds to the borderline gradient continuity estimate in terms of the modified Riesz potential [Formula: see text]. Moreover, for [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text], we also obtain [Formula: see text] estimates. This improves one of the regularity results in [A. Attouchi, M. Parviainen and E. Ruosteenoja, [Formula: see text] regularity for the normalized [Formula: see text]-Poisson problem, J. Math. Pures Appl. (9)  108(4) (2017) 553–591], where a [Formula: see text] estimate was established depending on the [Formula: see text]-norm of [Formula: see text] under the additional restriction that [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. We also mention that differently from the approach in the above paper, which uses methods from divergence form theory and nonlinear potential theory, the method in this paper is more non-variational in nature, and it is based on separation of phases inspired by the ideas in [L. Wang, Compactness methods for certain degenerate elliptic equations, J. Differential Equations 107(2) (1994) 341–350]. Moreover, for [Formula: see text] continuous, our approach also gives a somewhat different proof of the [Formula: see text] regularity result.
High-dimensional limit theorems for random vectors in ℓpn-balls. II
Authors: Kabluchko Zakhar , Prochno Joscha , Thäle Christoph
Published: October 2019

In this paper, we prove three fundamental types of limit theorems for the [Formula: see text]-norm of random vectors chosen at random in an [Formula: see text]-ball in high dimensions. We obtain a central limit theorem, a moderate deviations as well as a large deviations principle when the underlying distribution of the random vectors belongs to a general class introduced by Barthe, Guédon, Mendelson, and Naor. It includes the normalized volume and the cone probability measure as well as projections of these measures as special cases. Two new applications to random and non-random projections of [Formula: see text]-balls to lower-dimensional subspaces are discussed as well. The text is a continuation of [Z. Kabluchko, J. Prochno and C. Thäle, High-dimensional limit theorems for random vectors in [Formula: see text]-balls, Commun. Contemp. Math. 21(1) (2019) 1750092].
Γ-convergence of non-local, non-convex functionals in one dimension
Authors: Brezis Haïm , Nguyen Hoai-Minh
Published: October 2019

We study the [Formula: see text]-convergence of a family of non-local, non-convex functionals in [Formula: see text] for [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is an open interval. We show that the limit is a multiple of the [Formula: see text] semi-norm to the power [Formula: see text] when [Formula: see text] (respectively, the [Formula: see text] semi-norm when [Formula: see text]). In dimension one, this extends earlier results which required a monotonicity condition.
Curve classes on irreducible holomorphic symplectic varieties
Authors: Mongardi Giovanni , Ottem John Christian
Published: October 2019

We prove that the integral Hodge conjecture holds for 1-cycles on irreducible holomorphic symplectic varieties of [Formula: see text]-type and of generalized Kummer type. As an application, we give a new proof of the integral Hodge conjecture for cubic fourfolds.
Energy-minimizing maps from manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature
Authors: Dibble James
Published: October 2019

The energy of any [Formula: see text] representative of a homotopy class of maps from a compact and connected Riemannian manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature into a complete Riemannian manifold with no conjugate points is bounded below by a constant determined by the asymptotic geometry of the target, with equality if and only if the original map is totally geodesic. This conclusion also holds under the weaker assumption that the domain is finitely covered by a diffeomorphic product, and its universal covering space splits isometrically as a product with a flat factor, in a commutative diagram that follows from the Cheeger–Gromoll splitting theorem.
On the stability of wavelet frames of quaternionic-valued functions
Authors: He Jianxun , Lu Zhiqin , Li Jinxia
Published: October 2019

Let [Formula: see text] be a space of square integrable quaternionic-valued functions defined on real line. In this paper, for [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], if the sequence of functions [Formula: see text] is a wavelet frame of [Formula: see text], we study the stability of the wavelet frame when the sampling [Formula: see text] or the mother wavelet [Formula: see text] has perturbation by using the theory of wavelet analysis.
Best proximity points for ψ-proximal multi-functions
Authors: Shojaat Hadi , Afshari Hojjat , Asgari Mohammad Sadegh
Published: October 2019

Best proximity point theorems for self-mappings and multi-functions were investigated with different conditions on spaces and the contractions of mappings. In this paper, we will prove best proximity point theorems for some generalized multi-functions that we call [Formula: see text]-proximal multi-functions, which are of two types, [Formula: see text]-proximal multi-functions of the first and second kind.
Maximum Balaban index and sum-Balaban index of cacti
Authors: Zuo Yang , Tang Yaqian , Wu Renfang , Deng Hanyuan
Published: October 2019

The Balaban index and the sum-Balaban index of a graph [Formula: see text] are defined as [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], respectively, where [Formula: see text] is the distance sum of vertex [Formula: see text] in [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] is the number of edges and [Formula: see text] is the cyclomatic number of [Formula: see text]. A connected graph [Formula: see text] is said to be a cactus if each of its blocks is either a cycle or an edge. In this paper, we determine the maximum values of Balaban index and sum-Balaban index and characterize the corresponding extremal graphs among all cacti with [Formula: see text] vertices and [Formula: see text] cycles.
THE EFFICIENCY OF ENSEMBLE CLASSIFIERS IN PREDICTING THE JOHANNESBURG STOCK EXCHANGE ALL-SHARE INDEX DIRECTION
Authors: MOKOALELI-MOKOTELI THABANG , RAMSUMAR SHAUN , VADAPALLI HIMA
Published: October 2019

The success of investors in obtaining huge financial rewards from the stock market depends on their ability to predict the direction of the stock market index. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of several ensemble prediction models (Boosted, RUS-Boosted, Subspace Disc, Bagged, and Subspace KNN) in predicting the daily direction of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) All-Share index compared to other commonly used machine learning techniques including support vector machines (SVM), logistic regression and [Formula: see text]-nearest neighbor (KNN). The findings in this study show that, among all ensemble models, Boosted algorithm is the best performer followed by RUS-Boosted. When compared to the other techniques, ensemble technique (represented by Boosted) outperformed these techniques, followed by KNN, logistic regression and SVM, respectively. These findings suggest that investors should include ensemble models among the index prediction models if they want to make huge profits in the stock markets. However, not all investors can benefit from this as models may suffer from alpha decay as more and more investors use them, implying that the successful algorithms have limited shelf life.
Stock Illiquidity and Firm Characteristics
Authors: Gakhar Divya Verma , Kundlia Shweta
Published: October 2019

Main objective of the study is to analyze firm characteristics which affect stock illiquidity. The paper aims to give suggestions and policy implications to corporates and investors while dealing with investments in illiquid stocks. ANOVA, chi-square tests, correlation analysis, univariate and multiple regression models are employed on Amihud (2002) (Amihud, Y., (2002). Illiquidity and Stock Returns: Cross-Section and Time-Series Effects, Journal of Financial Markets 5, 31–56) illiquidity measure and various firm characteristics. Findings of this paper suggest that firms with illiquid stocks can be characterized with low promoter’s stakes, high leverage, poor financial health, small size and low/negative profitability. The findings of the paper will be of relevance to retail investors who are at the mercy of informed investors. The results portray basic characteristics that an investor should look into before investing in any stock. The study is of value to the investors who are grieved because of the adverse selections and information asymmetry. Moreover, the basic nature of illiquid firms has never been studied.
An Automatic and a Machine-assisted Method to Clean Bilingual Corpus
Authors: Srivastava Jyoti , Sanyal Sudip , Srivastava Ashish Kumar
Published: October 2019

Two different methods of corpus cleaning are presented in this article. One is a machine-assisted technique, which is good to clean small-sized parallel corpus, and the other is an automatic method, which is suitable for cleaning large-sized parallel corpus. A baseline SMT (MOSES) system is used to evaluate these methods. The machine-assisted technique used two features: word alignment and length of the source and target language sentence. These features are used to detect mistranslations in the corpus, which are then handled by a human translator. Experiments of this method are conducted on the English-to-Indian Language Machine Translation (EILMT) corpus (English-Hindi). The Bilingual Evaluation Understudy (BLEU) score is improved by 0.47% for the clean corpus. Automatic method of corpus cleaning uses a combination of two features. One feature is length of source and target language sentence and the second feature is Viterbi alignment score generated by Hidden Markov Model for each sentence pair. Two different threshold values are used for these two features. These values are decided by using a small-sized manually annotated parallel corpus of 206 sentence pairs. Experiments of this method are conducted on the HindEnCorp corpus, released in the workshop of the Association of Computational Linguistics (ACL 2014). The BLEU score is improved by 0.6% on clean corpus. A comparison of the two methods is also presented on EILMT corpus.
Recommending New Features from Mobile App Descriptions
Authors: Jiang He , Zhang Jingxuan , Li Xiaochen , Ren Zhilei , Lo David , Wu Xindong , Luo Zhongxuan
Published: October 2019

The rapidly evolving mobile applications (apps) have brought great demand for developers to identify new features by inspecting the descriptions of similar apps and acquire missing features for their apps. Unfortunately, due to the huge number of apps, this manual process is time-consuming and unscalable. To help developers identify new features, we propose a new approach named SAFER. In this study, we first develop a tool to automatically extract features from app descriptions. Then, given an app, we leverage the topic model to identify its similar apps based on the extracted features and API names of apps. Finally, we design a feature recommendation algorithm to aggregate and recommend the features of identified similar apps to the specified app. Evaluated over a collection of 533 annotated features from 100 apps, SAFER achieves a Hit@15 score of up to 78.68% and outperforms the baseline approach KNN+ by 17.23% on average. In addition, we also compare SAFER against a typical technique of recommending features from user reviews, i.e., CLAP. Experimental results reveal that SAFER is superior to CLAP by 23.54% in terms of Hit@15.
Redirected Smooth Mappings for Multiuser Real Walking in Virtual Reality
Authors: Dong Zhi-Chao , Fu Xiao-Ming , Yang Zeshi , Liu Ligang
Published: October 2019

We propose a novel technique to provide multiuser real walking experiences with physical interactions in virtual reality (VR) applications. In our system, multiple users walk freely while navigating a large virtual environment within a smaller physical workspace. These users can interact with other real users or physical props in the same physical locations. The key of our method is a
redirected smooth mapping
that incorporates the redirected walking technique to warp the input virtual scene with small bends and low distance distortion. Users possess a wide field of view to explore the mapped virtual environment while being redirected in the real workspace. To keep multiple users away from the overlaps of the mapped virtual scenes, we present an automatic collision avoidance technique based on dynamic virtual avatars. These avatars naturally appear, move, and disappear, producing as little influence as possible on users’ walking experiences. We evaluate our multiuser real walking system through formative user studies, and demonstrate the capability and practicability of our technique in two multiuser applications.
Memory-Efficient Mixed-Precision Implementations for Robust Explicit Model Predictive Control
Authors: Salamati Mahmoud , Salvia Rocco , Darulova Eva , Soudjani Sadegh , Majumdar Rupak
Published: October 2019

We propose an optimization for space-efficient implementations of explicit model-predictive controllers (MPC) for robust control of linear time-invariant (LTI) systems on embedded platforms. We obtain an explicit-form robust model-predictive controller as a solution to a multi-parametric linear programming problem. The structure of the controller is a polyhedral decomposition of the control domain, with an affine map for each domain. While explicit MPC is suited for embedded devices with low computational power, the memory requirements for such controllers can be high. We provide an optimization algorithm for a mixed-precision implementation of the controller, where the deviation of the implemented controller from the original one is within the robustness margin of the robust control problem. The core of the mixed-precision optimization is an iterative static analysis that co-designs a robust controller and a low-bitwidth approximation that is statically guaranteed to always be within the robustness margin of the original controller. We have implemented our algorithm and show on a set of benchmarks that our optimization can reduce space requirements by up to 20.9% and on average by 12.6% compared to a minimal uniform precision implementation of the original controller.
Polar
Authors: Luo Zhengxiong , Zuo Feilong , Jiang Yu , Gao Jian , Jiao Xun , Sun Jiaguang
Published: October 2019

Industrial Control System (ICS) protocols are widely used to build communications among system components. Compared with common internet protocols, ICS protocols have more control over remote devices by carrying a specific field called “function code”, which assigns what the receive end should do. Therefore, it is of vital importance to ensure their correctness. However, traditional vulnerability detection techniques such as fuzz testing are challenged by the increasing complexity of these diverse ICS protocols.

In this paper, we present a function code aware fuzzing framework — Polar, which automatically extracts semantic information from the ICS protocol and utilizes this information to accelerate security vulnerability detection. Based on static analysis and dynamic taint analysis, Polar initiates the values of the function code field and identifies some vulnerable operations. Then, novel semantic aware mutation and selection strategies are designed to optimize the fuzzing procedure. For evaluation, we implement Polar on top of two popular fuzzers — AFL and AFLFast, and conduct experiments on several widely used ICS protocols such as Modbus, IEC104, and IEC 61850. Results show that, compared with AFL and AFLFast, Polar  achieves the same code coverage and bug detection numbers at the speed of 1.5X-12X. It also gains increase with 0%--91% more paths within 24 hours. Furthermore, Polar has exposed 10 previously unknown vulnerabilities in those protocols, 6 of which have been assigned unique CVE identifiers in the US National Vulnerability Database.
Complete monitors for gradual types
Authors: Greenman Ben , Felleisen Matthias , Dimoulas Christos
Published: October 2019

In the context of gradual typing, type soundness guarantees the safety of typed code. When untyped code fails to respect types, a runtime check finds the discrepancy. As for untyped code, type soundness makes no promises; it does not protect untyped code from mistakes in type specifications and unwarranted blame.

To address the asymmetry, this paper adapts complete monitoring from the contract world to gradual typing. Complete monitoring strengthens plain soundness into a guarantee that catches problems with faulty type specifications. Furthermore, a semantics that satisfies complete monitoring can easily pinpoint the conflict between a type specification and a value. For gradual typing systems that fail complete monitoring, the technical framework provides a source-of-truth to assess the quality of blame.
Modular verification for almost-sure termination of probabilistic programs
Authors: Huang Mingzhang , Fu Hongfei , Chatterjee Krishnendu , Goharshady Amir Kafshdar
Published: October 2019

In this work, we consider the almost-sure termination problem for probabilistic programs that asks whether a given probabilistic program terminates with probability 1. Scalable approaches for program analysis often rely on modularity as their theoretical basis. In non-probabilistic programs, the classical variant rule (V-rule) of Floyd-Hoare logic provides the foundation for modular analysis. Extension of this rule to almost-sure termination of probabilistic programs is quite tricky, and a probabilistic variant was proposed by Fioriti and Hermanns in POPL 2015. While the proposed probabilistic variant cautiously addresses the key issue of integrability, we show that the proposed modular rule is still not sound for almost-sure termination of probabilistic programs.

Besides establishing unsoundness of the previous rule, our contributions are as follows: First, we present a sound modular rule for almost-sure termination of probabilistic programs. Our approach is based on a novel notion of descent supermartingales. Second, for algorithmic approaches, we consider descent supermartingales that are linear and show that they can be synthesized in polynomial time. Finally, we present experimental results on a variety of benchmarks and several natural examples that model various types of nested while loops in probabilistic programs and demonstrate that our approach is able to efficiently prove their almost-sure termination property.
Weakening WebAssembly
Authors: Watt Conrad , Rossberg Andreas , Pichon-Pharabod Jean
Published: October 2019

WebAssembly (Wasm) is a safe, portable virtual instruction set that can be hosted in a wide range of environments, such as a Web browser. It is a low-level language whose instructions are intended to compile directly to bare hardware. While the initial version of Wasm focussed on single-threaded computation, a recent proposal extends it with low-level support for multiple threads and atomic instructions for synchronised access to shared memory. To support the correct compilation of concurrent programs, it is necessary to give a suitable specification of its memory model.

Wasm's language definition is based on a fully formalised specification that carefully avoids undefined behaviour. We present a substantial extension to this semantics, incorporating a relaxed memory model, along with a few proposed extensions. Wasm's memory model is unique in that its linear address space can be dynamically grown during execution, while all accesses are bounds-checked. This leads to the novel problem of specifying how observations about the size of the memory can propagate between threads. We argue that, considering desirable compilation schemes, we cannot give a sequentially consistent semantics to memory growth.

We show that our model provides sequential consistency for data-race-free executions (SC-DRF). However, because Wasm is to run on the Web, we must also consider interoperability of its model with that of JavaScript. We show, by counter-example, that JavaScript's memory model is not SC-DRF, in contrast to what is claimed in its specification. We propose two axiomatic conditions that should be added to the JavaScript model to correct this difference.

We also describe a prototype SMT-based litmus tool which acts as an oracle for our axiomatic model, visualising its behaviours, including memory resizing.
Weak persistency semantics from the ground up: formalising the persistency semantics of ARMv8 and transactional models
Authors: Raad Azalea , Wickerson John , Vafeiadis Viktor
Published: October 2019

Emerging non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies promise the durability of disks with the performance of volatile memory (RAM). To describe the persistency guarantees of NVM, several memory persistency models have been proposed in the literature. However, the formal persistency semantics of mainstream hardware is unexplored to date. To close this gap, we present a formal declarative framework for describing concurrency models in the NVM context, and then develop the PARMv8 persistency model as an instance of our framework, formalising the persistency semantics of the ARMv8 architecture for the first time. To facilitate correct persistent programming, we study transactions as a simple abstraction for concurrency and persistency control. We thus develop the PSER (persistent serialisability) persistency model, formalising transactional semantics in the NVM context for the first time, and demonstrate that PSER correctly compiles to PARMv8. This then enables programmers to write correct, concurrent and persistent programs, without having to understand the low-level architecture-specific persistency semantics of the underlying hardware.
Leveraging rust types for modular specification and verification
Authors: Astrauskas Vytautas , Müller Peter , Poli Federico , Summers Alexander J.
Published: October 2019

Rust's type system ensures memory safety: well-typed Rust programs are guaranteed to not exhibit problems such as dangling pointers, data races, and unexpected side effects through aliased references. Ensuring correctness properties beyond memory safety, for instance, the guaranteed absence of assertion failures or more-general functional correctness, requires static program verification. For traditional system programming languages, formal verification is notoriously difficult and requires complex specifications and logics to reason about pointers, aliasing, and side effects on mutable state. This complexity is a major obstacle to the more-widespread verification of system software.

In this paper, we present a novel verification technique that leverages Rust's type system to greatly simplify the specification and verification of system software written in Rust. We analyse information from the Rust compiler and synthesise a corresponding
core proof
for the program in a flavour of separation logic tailored to automation. To verify correctness properties beyond memory safety, users can annotate Rust programs with specifications at the abstraction level of Rust expressions; our technique weaves them into the core proof to verify modularly whether these specifications hold. Crucially, our proofs are constructed and checked automatically without exposing the underlying formal logic, allowing users to work exclusively at the level of abstraction of the programming language. As such, our work enables a new kind of verification tool, with the potential to impact a wide audience and allow the Rust community to benefit from state-of-the-art verification techniques. We have implemented our techniques for a subset of Rust; our evaluation on several thousand functions from widely-used Rust crates demonstrates its effectiveness.
Precision-preserving yet fast object-sensitive pointer analysis with partial context sensitivity
Authors: Lu Jingbo , Xue Jingling
Published: October 2019

Object-sensitivity is widely used as a context abstraction for computing the points-to information context-sensitively for object-oriented languages like Java. Due to the combinatorial explosion of contexts in large programs,
k
-object-sensitive pointer analysis (under
k
-limiting), denoted
k
-obj, is scalable only for small values of
k
, where
k
⩽2 typically. A few recent solutions attempt to improve its efficiency by instructing
k
-obj to analyze only some methods in the program context-sensitively, determined heuristically by a pre-analysis. While already effective, these heuristics-based pre-analyses do not provide precision guarantees, and consequently, are limited in the efficiency gains achieved. We introduce a radically different approach, Eagle, that makes
k
-obj run significantly faster than the prior art while maintaining its precision. The novelty of Eagle is to enable
k
-obj to analyze a method with partial context-sensitivity, i.e., context-sensitively for only some of its selected variables/allocation sites. Eagle makes these selections during a lightweight pre-analysis by reasoning about context-free-language (CFL) reachability at the level of variables/objects in the program, based on a new CFL-reachability formulation of
k
-obj. We demonstrate the advances made by Eagle by comparing it with the prior art in terms of a set of popular Java benchmarks and applications.
Generating precise error specifications for C: a zero shot learning approach
Authors: Wu Baijun , Campora III John Peter , He Yi , Schlecht Alexander , Chen Sheng
Published: October 2019

In C programs, error specifications, which specify the value range that each function returns to indicate failures, are widely used to check and propagate errors for the sake of reliability and security. Various kinds of C analyzers employ error specifications for different purposes, e.g., to detect error handling bugs, yet a general approach for generating precise specifications is still missing. This limits the applicability of those tools.

In this paper, we solve this problem by developing a machine learning-based approach named MLPEx. It generates error specifications by analyzing only the source code, and is thus general. We propose a novel machine learning paradigm based on transfer learning, enabling MLPEx to require only one-time minimal data labeling from us (as the tool developers) and zero manual labeling efforts from users. To improve the accuracy of generated error specifications, MLPEx extracts and exploits project-specific information. We evaluate MLPEx on 10 projects, including 6 libraries and 4 applications. An investigation of 3,443 functions and 17,750 paths reveals that MLPEx generates error specifications with a precision of 91% and a recall of 94%, significantly higher than those of state-of-the-art approaches. To further demonstrate the usefulness of the generated error specifications, we use them to detect 57 bugs in 5 tested projects.
Trace aware random testing for distributed systems
Authors: Ozkan Burcu Kulahcioglu , Majumdar Rupak , Oraee Simin
Published: October 2019

Distributed and concurrent applications often have subtle bugs that only get exposed under specific schedules. While these schedules may be found by systematic model checking techniques, in practice, model checkers do not scale to large systems. On the other hand, naive random exploration techniques often require a very large number of runs to find the specific interactions needed to expose a bug. In recent years, several random testing algorithms have been proposed that, on the one hand, exploit state-space reduction strategies from model checking and, on the other, provide guarantees on the probability of hitting bugs of certain kinds.

These existing techniques exploit two orthogonal strategies to reduce the state space: partial-order reduction and bug depth. Testing algorithms based on partial order techniques, such as RAPOS or POS, ensure non-redundant exploration of independent interleavings among system events by imposing an equivalence relation on schedules and ideally exploring only one schedule from each equivalence class. Techniques based on bug depth, such as PCT, exploit the empirical observation that many bugs are exposed by the clever scheduling of a small number of key events. They bias the sample space of schedules to only cover all executions of small depth, rather than the much larger space of all schedules. At this point, there is no random testing algorithm that combines the power of both approaches.

In this paper, we provide such an algorithm. Our algorithm, trace-aware PCT (taPCTCP), extends and unifies several different algorithms in the random testing literature. It samples the space of low-depth executions by constructing a schedule online, while taking dependencies among events into account. Moreover, the algorithm comes with a theoretical guarantee on the probability of sampling a trace of low depth---the probability grows exponentially with the depth but only polynomially with the number of racy events explored. We further show that the guarantee is optimal among a large class of techniques.

We empirically compare our algorithm with several state-of-the-art random testing approaches for concurrent software on two large-scale distributed systems, Zookeeper and Cassandra, and show that our approach is effective in uncovering subtle bugs and usually outperforms related random testing algorithms.
ApproxHPVM: a portable compiler IR for accuracy-aware optimizations
Authors: Sharif Hashim , Srivastava Prakalp , Huzaifa Muhammad , Kotsifakou Maria , Joshi Keyur , Sarita Yasmin , Zhao Nathan , Adve Vikram S. , Misailovic Sasa , Adve Sarita
Published: October 2019

We propose ApproxHPVM, a compiler IR and system designed to enable accuracy-aware performance and energy tuning on heterogeneous systems with multiple compute units and approximation methods. ApproxHPVM automatically translates end-to-end application-level quality metrics into accuracy requirements for individual operations. ApproxHPVM uses a hardware-agnostic accuracy-tuning phase to do this translation that provides greater portability across heterogeneous hardware platforms and enables future capabilities like accuracy-aware dynamic scheduling and design space exploration.

ApproxHPVM incorporates three main components: (a) a compiler IR with hardware-agnostic approximation metrics, (b) a hardware-agnostic accuracy-tuning phase to identify error-tolerant computations, and (c) an accuracy-aware hardware scheduler that maps error-tolerant computations to approximate hardware components. As ApproxHPVM does not incorporate any hardware-specific knowledge as part of the IR, it can serve as a portable virtual ISA that can be shipped to all kinds of hardware platforms.

We evaluate our framework on nine benchmarks from the deep learning domain and five image processing benchmarks. Our results show that our framework can offload chunks of approximable computations to special-purpose accelerators that provide significant gains in performance and energy, while staying within user-specified application-level quality metrics with high probability. Across the 14 benchmarks, we observe from 1-9x performance speedups and 1.1-11.3x energy reduction for very small reductions in accuracy.
Ventricular vortex loss analysis due to various tricuspid valve repair techniques: an ex vivo study
Authors: Nguyen Yen Ngoc , Tay Edgar Lik Wui , Kabinejadian Foad , Ong Chi Wei , Ismail Munirah , Leo Hwa Liang
Published: October 2019

The deteriorating nature of severe functional tricuspid regurgitation (FTR) has led to the heightened interest in this pathology. However, therapies are heterogeneous and an ideal technique is uncertain. The hemodynamic impact on the cardiac chamber following therapeutic repairs has not been well studied, while its analysis could be used to predict the treatment success. In this study, the hemodynamics of the right ventricle (RV) after 1) clover edge-to-edge tricuspid repair, and 2) double orifice tricuspid repair was evaluated in three right heart models using an ex vivo pulsatile platform emulating severe FTR with the aid of stereoscopic particle image velocimetry. Although all repairs substantially reduced tricuspid regurgitant area, they resulted in a more than 50% reduction in diastolic tricuspid valve (TV) opening area. Splitting the TV orifice into multiple smaller orifices by both repairs eliminated the ring-shaped vortical structure inside the RV observed in FTR cases. Postrepair RV domain was mostly occupied with irregular vortical features and isolated vortex residuals. Moreover, vortical features varied among repair samples, indicating enhanced sensitivity of RV flow to postrepair TV morphology. Compared with clover repair, double orifice subjected the RV to enhanced swirling motions and exposed more regions to vortical motions, potentially indicating better rinsing and lower risk of mural thrombus formation. Double orifice repair increased the levels of RV mean kinetic energy and viscous energy loss than those observed in clover repair, although the impact of these on the cardiac efficiency remains unclear. These preliminary insights could be used to improve future treatment design and planning.

NEW & NOTEWORTHY While clover and double orifice tricuspid repairs markedly improved leaflet coaptation, they substantially reduced diastolic tricuspid opening area. Postrepair right ventricle (RV) exhibited specific hemodynamic traits, including the loss of ring-shaped vortical structure and the enhanced sensitivity of RV flow to postrepair tricuspid valve morphology. Compared with clover technique, double orifice repair led to higher swirling motions in the RV domain, which could indicate lower risk of mural thrombus formation.
A 10 años de la adopción de las NIIF/IFRS en Chile
Authors: Borges Quintanilla Humberto Alejandro
Published: October 2019

La adopción de las Normas Internacionales de Información Financiera (NIIF o IFRS por sus siglas en inglés) significó, en el mundo de las finanzas, pasar de una cultura económica netamente normativa y poco eficiente hacia una cultura económica interconectada con la realidad dinámica de las inversiones globales. En Chile, los preparativos para el cambio de PCGA (Principios Contables Generalmente Aceptados) a NIIF comenzaron incluso desde el año 2004, pero la fecha establecida para los primeros cambios era el año 2009, donde se agregó una columna mostrando los Estados Financieros en NIIF, para compararlo con las columnas en PCGA chilenos. El año que entró en régimen la NIIF en Chile, en forma completa, fue en los Estados Financieros del año 2010.
Outcomes of Infants with Mild Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy Who Did Not Receive Therapeutic Hypothermia
Authors: Reiss Jonathan , Sinha Mridu , Gold Jeffrey , Bykowski Julie , Lawrence Shelley M.
Published: October 2019

Introduction: Accurately diagnosing and treating infants with mild forms of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) is important, as the majority of neonates with signs and symptoms of HIE after birth do not meet clinical criteria for moderate or severe disease. Emerging evidence, however, suggests that infants with mild HIE (mHIE) have an increased risk for neurodevelopmental impairment (NDI). Methods: This retrospective descriptive study examined all inborn infants ≥35 week’s gestational age at a single, level III neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in California between January 1, 2012, and December 31, 2015. International Classification of Diseases codes were used as a proxy to identify neonates with mHIE but who did not receive therapeutic hypothermia (TH). Short- and long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes were documented, including abnormal (1) brain magnetic resonance imaging within 10 days of birth suggestive of HIE, (2) electroencephalogram with electrographic seizures, (3) neurologic discharge examination, or (4) NDI following NICU discharge. Results: Over the 4-year study period, 25 infants met inclusion criteria. Eight of 25 (32%) infants demonstrated neurologic impairment, defined by an abnormality in at least one of the four categories. The remaining 17 infants were without documented evidence for adverse outcomes. Conclusion: Our results indicate that children with mHIE are at significant risk for neurologic injury and may benefit from more aggressive interventions. Further prospective studies should be completed to determine the efficacy of TH in this specific patient population.
Análise de adolescentes: imersões clínicas no reino da elasticidade da técnica
Authors: França Cassandra Pereira
Published: October 2019

O artigo apresenta uma trajetória de descoberta da riqueza das ideias ferenczianas: partindo de uma questão de manejo técnico da “identificação com o agressor” na clínica com crianças vítimas de abuso sexual, a autora se deparou com as visionárias ideias de Sándor Ferenczi em prol de uma flexibilidade na técnica analítica, com a finalidade de driblar a resistência de alguns pacientes ao método analítico ortodoxo. Tal proposta, mesmo não tendo sido estudada ou seguida pelas instituições psicanalíticas, serve, perfeitamente, para descrever o manejo da técnica analítica com adolescentes na contemporaneidade – tanto na renúncia à estrita observância da regra fundamental da associação livre, quanto na necessária disponibilidade do analista para conviver seja com o silêncio como modo de resistência do paciente, seja com suas atuações (acting out). Ao estímulo dado por Ferenczi aos analistas para prestarem atenção à força da resistência dos clientes e aos sentimentos mobilizados pela contratransferência, podem somar-se as prescrições acerca da confiança na franqueza e na sinceridade do analista diante das atitudes desconfiadas e antipáticas do paciente – recomendações que se encaixam, como uma luva, no campo minado em que se constitui o setting analítico com adolescentes, conforme será ilustrado por fragmentos de um caso clínico.
A pulsão de morte no primeiro Ferenczi: quietude, regressão e os primórdios da vida psíquica
Authors: Dal Molin Eugênio Canesin , Coelho Junior Nelson Ernesto , Cromberg Renata Udler
Published: October 2019

Este artigo procura expor e discutir o uso que Ferenczi faz da ideia de pulsão de morte, ainda na década de 1910. Apresentamos a história e o contexto da utilização da ideia entre os primeiros psicanalistas e, em seguida, argumentamos que a primeira hipótese do analista húngaro sobre a pulsão de morte procurava relacionar um estágio de onipotência incondicional, característico, a seu ver, da vida intrauterina, com um estado de quietude originário, uma tendência à regressão e uma concepção do narcisismo primitivo. Cada um desses aspectos é problematizado junto à teoria freudiana. Ao final, fazemos uma análise crítica da hipótese à luz das postulações de outros autores.
Proceedings of the Ninth HDL (High-Density Lipoprotein) Workshop
Authors: Rodriguez Annabelle , Trigatti Bernardo L. , Mineo Chieko , Knaack Darcy , Wilkins John T. , Sahoo Daisy , Asztalos Bela F. , Mora Samia , Cuchel Marina , Pownall Henry J. , Rosales Corina , Bernatchez Pascal , Ribeiro Martins da Silva Amanda , Getz Godfrey S. , Barber Jacob L. , Shearer Gregory C. , Zivkovic Angela M. , Tietge Uwe J.F. , Sacks Frank M. , Connelly Margery A. , Oda Michael N. , Davidson W. Sean , Sorci-Thomas Mary G. , Vaisar Tomas , Ruotolo Giacomo , Vickers Kasey C. , Martel Catherine
Published: October 2019

The HDL (high-density lipoprotein) Workshop was established in 2009 as a forum for candid discussions among academic basic scientists, clinical investigators, and industry researchers about the role of HDL in cardiovascular disease. This ninth HDL Workshop was held on May 16 to 17, 2019 in Boston, MA, and included outstanding oral presentations from established and emerging investigators. The Workshop featured 5 sessions with topics that tackled the role of HDL in the vasculature, its structural complexity, its role in health and disease states, and its interaction with the intestinal microbiome. The highlight of the program was awarding the Jack Oram Award to the distinguished professor emeritus G.S. Getz from the University of Chicago. The tenth HDL Workshop will be held on May 2020 in Chicago and will continue the focus on intellectually stimulating presentations by established and emerging investigators on novel roles of HDL in cardiovascular and noncardiovascular health and disease states.
Does the hα-index reinforce the Matthew effect in science? The introduction of agent-based simulations into scientometrics
Authors: Bornmann Lutz , Ganser Christian , Tekles Alexander , Leydesdorff Loet
Published: October 2019

Recently, Hirsch (2019a) proposed a new variant of the h-index called the hα-index. The hα-index was criticized by Leydesdorff, Bornmann, and Opthof (2019) . One of their most important points is that the index reinforces the Matthew effect in science. The Matthew effect was defined by Merton (1968) as follows: “the Matthew effect consists in the accruing of greater increments of recognition for particular scientific contributions to scientists of considerable repute and the withholding of such recognition from scientists who have not yet made their mark” (p. 58). We follow up on the point about the Matthew effect in the current study by using a recently developed Stata command (h_index) and R package (hindex), which can be used to simulate h-index and hα-index applications in research evaluation. The user can investigate under which conditions hα reinforces the Matthew effect. The results of our study confirm what Leydesdorff et al. (2019) expected: The hα-index reinforces the Matthew effect. This effect can be intensified if strategic behavior of the publishing scientists and cumulative advantage effects are additionally considered in the simulation.
Reaction of tomato genotypes to Meloidogyne enterolobii and effects of resistance inducing products
Authors: de O. Silva Juliana , Santana Marcus V. , Carneiro Franciele A. , da Rocha Mara R.
Published: October 2019

Meloidogyne enterolobii is characterised by its aggressiveness and ability to reproduce on plants carrying the Mi resistance gene. However, resistant cultivars and resistance induction may be alternatives to keep the pest population at levels that do not cause economic damage. The aim of this study was to evaluate the reaction of tomato genotypes to M. enterolobii and test the efficacy of resistance inducers in four tomato genotypes. Twenty-one tomato genotypes were inoculated with 2000 eggs of M. enterolobii and evaluated after 35 days of inoculation. All genotypes tested were susceptible to M. enterolobii. Four tomato genotypes were selected and the plants were treated with Bacillus subtilis, B. licheniformis + B. subtilis + Trichoderma longibrachiatum, Acibenzolar-S-methyl (ASM) and extract of Reynoutria sachalinensis. The plants treated with B. subtilis showed higher shoot and root weight. ASM reduced the reproduction factor of M. enterolobii when applied to the genotype ‘PXT 408’. All tomato genotypes tested here are susceptible to M. enterolobii, thus confirming the ability this plant-parasitic nematode to reproduce on resistant plants with the Mi gene. The resistance inducers B. subtilis, B. licheniformis + B. subtilis + T. longibrachiatum and extract of R. sachalinensis did not influence the final nematode population in any of the genotypes used; however, ASM reduces reproduction of M. enterolobii to the genotype ‘PXT 408’.
Motley Society, Plurinationalism, and the Integral State
Authors: Freeland Anne
Published: October 2019

This article examines Bolivian vice president Álvaro García Linera’s use of concepts originating in the work of Antonio Gramsci and Bolivian sociologist René Zavaleta Mercado. Zavaleta’s concept of sociedad abigarrada (usually translated as ‘motley society’) has a history of misappropriation in which García Linera participates by articulating it with the related concept of the estado aparente to claim that the merely ‘apparent’ state which does not effectively represent the heterogeneous social reality of a country like Bolivia is abolished with the official establishment of the Plurinational State in 2009. This ideologeme of the Plurinational State as one that faithfully represents Bolivia’s abigarramiento is equated with the Gramscian stato integrale, which in Gramsci refers to the state proper plus civil society where these are thoroughly integrated to function as an organic whole (the modern capitalist nation-state). Beyond merely misusing the borrowed terms of this discursive operation, García Linera gives a prescriptive value to concepts developed for an analytical purpose to validate the existing regime.
The rise of the comparative approach in Russian legal scholarship as a factor in the modernisation of civil legislation, from the Svod Zakonov of 1833 to the Draft Civil Code of 1905
Authors: Poldnikov Dmitry
Published: October 2019

In the second half of the 19th century Russian positive law underwent a rapid and profound reform. It is best illustrated by the legislation in the domain of civil law, as one compares the pre-reformed casuistic and inconsistent Svod Zakonov (Digest of Laws) of 1833 and the ‘westernised’ Draft Civil Code of 1905. This transition was largely facilitated by the emergence of a fully-fledged comparative legislation in Russia.
Lessons from the ILC’s Work on ‘Immunity of State Officials’: Melland Schill Lecture, 21 November 2017
Authors: Wood Michael
Published: October 2019

The topic Immunity of State officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction has been on the programme of work of the International Law Commission since 2007. After ten reports from two Special Rapporteurs, by June 2019 it has yet to complete a first reading, not least because the topic has proved highly contentious both within the Commission and among States. The Commission could only adopt a central provision (on exceptions to immunity ratione materiae), exceptionally, having recourse to voting. There are several lessons to be learnt from the handling of the topic over the last twelve years, including for such crucial aspects of the Commission’s working methods as the choice of topics; the need for a clear view of the Commission’s aim in taking up a topic; the need for rigour in assessing the current state of international law; the importance of dialogue, within the Commission and between the Commission and States; and the utility or otherwise of voting.