pinecone/core-2020-05-10-deduplication huggingface dataset:
On the uniform theory of lacunary series

The theory of lacunary series starts with Weierstrass' famous example (1872) of a continuous, nondifferentiable function and now we have a wide and nearly complete theory of lacunary subsequences of classical orthogonal systems, as well as asymptotic results for thin subsequences of general function systems. However, many applications of lacunary series in harmonic analysis, orthogonal function theory, Banach space theory, etc. require uniform limit theorems for such series, i.e., theorems holding simultaneously for a class of lacunary series, and such results are much harder to prove than dealing with individual series. The purpose of this paper is to give a survey of uniformity theory of lacunary series and discuss new results in the field. In particular, we study the permutation-invariance of lacunary series and their connection with Diophantine equations, uniform limit theorems in Banach space theory, resonance phenomena for lacunary series, lacunary sequences with random gaps, and the metric discrepancy theory of lacunary sequences. © 2017. Springer International Publishing AG
Multi-rendezvous Spacecraft Trajectory Optimization with Beam P-ACO

The design of spacecraft trajectories for missions visiting multiple
celestial bodies is here framed as a multi-objective bilevel optimization
problem. A comparative study is performed to assess the performance of
different Beam Search algorithms at tackling the combinatorial problem of
finding the ideal sequence of bodies. Special focus is placed on the
development of a new hybridization between Beam Search and the Population-based
Ant Colony Optimization algorithm. An experimental evaluation shows all
algorithms achieving exceptional performance on a hard benchmark problem. It is
found that a properly tuned deterministic Beam Search always outperforms the
remaining variants. Beam P-ACO, however, demonstrates lower parameter
sensitivity, while offering superior worst-case performance. Being an anytime
algorithm, it is then found to be the preferable choice for certain practical
applications.Comment: Code available at https://github.com/lfsimoes/beam_paco__gtoc
Beyond altruism: A case for compensated surrogate motherhood

Commercial surrogacy is prohibited in many countries, and there are a number of convincing reasons why it should remain so. We accept the reasons, but argue that fairness requires that surrogates be compensated for their labour as well as the risks they undertake. It is a mistake to equate compensated surrogacy with commercial surrogacy. In order to safeguard against the risk of exploitation and other harmful and unethical practices, we propose organizing surrogacy along the lines of professions such as nursing and teaching. This would involve establishing a professional body, which will be charged with the task of regulating fees , licensing, and monitoring clinics that offer surrogacy services, and screening and registering surrogates. We think a similar model can be used in the case of live organ donation as well as gamete and embryo donation
Quasi Monte Carlo integration and kernel-based function approximation on
  Grassmannians

Numerical integration and function approximation on compact Riemannian
manifolds based on eigenfunctions of the Laplace-Beltrami operator have been
widely studied in the recent literature. The standard example in numerical
experiments is the Euclidean sphere. Here, we derive numerically feasible
expressions for the approximation schemes on the Grassmannian manifold, and we
present the associated numerical experiments on the Grassmannian. Indeed, our
experiments illustrate and match the corresponding theoretical results in the
literature
The effectiveness of integrating educational robotic activities into higher education Computer Science curricula: a case study in a developing country

In this paper, we present a case study to investigate the effects of educational robotics on a formal undergraduate Computer Science education in a developing country. The key contributions of this paper include a longitudinal study design, spanning the whole duration of one taught course, and its focus on continually assessing the effectiveness and the impact of robotic-based exercises. The study assessed the  students' motivation, engagement and level of understanding in learning general computer programming. The survey results indicate that there are benefits which can be gained from such activities and educational robotics is a promising tool in developing engaging study curricula. We hope that our experience from this study together with the free materials and data available for download will be beneficial to other practitioners working with educational robotics in different parts of the world
Duckietown: An Innovative Way to Teach Autonomy

Teaching robotics is challenging because it is a multidisciplinary, rapidly evolving and experimental discipline that integrates cutting-edge hardware and software. This paper describes the course design and first implementation of Duckietown, a vehicle autonomy class that experiments with teaching innovations in addition to leveraging modern educational theory for improving student learning. We provide a robot to every student, thanks to a minimalist platform design, to maximize active learning; and introduce a role-play aspect to increase team spirit, by modeling the entire class as a fictional start-up (Duckietown Engineering Co.). The course formulation leverages backward design by formalizing intended learning outcomes (ILOs) enabling students to appreciate the challenges of: (a) heterogeneous disciplines converging in the design of a minimal self-driving car, (b) integrating subsystems to create complex system behaviors, and (c) allocating constrained computational resources. Students learn how to assemble, program, test and operate a self-driving car (Duckiebot) in a model urban environment (Duckietown), as well as how to implement and document new features in the system. Traditional course assessment tools are complemented by a full scale demonstration to the general public. The “duckie” theme was chosen to give a gender-neutral, friendly identity to the robots so as to improve student involvement and outreach possibilities. All of the teaching materials and code is released online in the hope that other institutions will adopt the platform and continue to evolve and improve it, so to keep pace with the fast evolution of the field.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award IIS #1318392)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award #1405259
Nonsmooth maps and the fast-slow dynamics of sleep-wake regulation: Part 1

Sleep-wake regulation is an example of a system with multiple timescales, with switching between sleep and wake states occurring in minutes but the states of wake or sleep usually existing for some hours. Here we discuss some general features of models of sleep-wake regulation. We show that some typical models of sleep-wake regulation can be reduced to one-dimensional maps with discontinuities, and show that this reduction is useful in understanding some of the dynamical behaviour seen in sleep-wake models
Technical Aspects for the Evaluation of Circulating Nucleic Acids (CNAs): Circulating Tumor DNA (ctDNA) and Circulating MicroRNAs

Circulating nucleic acids (CNAs), for example, circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and circulating microRNA (miRNA), represent promising biomarkers in several diseases including cancer. They can be isolated from many body fluids, such as blood, saliva, and urine. Also ascites, cerebrospinal fluids, and pleural effusion may be considered as a source of CNAs, but with several and intrinsic limitations. Therefore, blood withdrawal represents one of the best sources for CNAs due to the very simple and minimally invasive way of sampling. Moreover, it can be repeated at different time points, giving the opportunity for a real-time monitoring of the disease
Numerical Model of Shallow Water: the Use of NVIDIA CUDA Graphics
  Processors

In the paper we discuss the main features of the software package for
numerical simulations of the surface water dynamics. We consider an
approximation of the shallow water equations together with the parallel
technologies for NVIDIA CUDA graphics processors. The numerical hydrodynamic
code is based on the combined Lagrangian-Euler method~(CSPH-TVD). We focused on
the features of the parallel implementation of Tesla line of graphics
processors: C2070, K20, K40, K80. By using hierarchical grid systems at
different spatial scales we increase the efficiency of the computing resources
usage and speed up our simulations of a various flooding problems.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure
A unified approach for learning expertise and authority in digital libraries

Managing individual expertise is a major concern within any industrial-wide organization. If previous works have extensively studied the related expertise and authority profiling issues, they assume a semantic independence of these two key concepts. In digital libraries, state-of-the-art models generally summarize the researchers' profile by using solely textual information. Consequently, authors with a large amount of publications are mechanically fostered to the detriment of less prolific ones with probably higher expertise. To overcome this drawback we propose to merge the two representations of expertise and authority and balance the results by capturing a mutual reinforcement principle between these two notions. Based on a graph representation of the library, the expert profiling task is formulated as an optimization problem where latent expertise and authority representations are learned simultaneously, unbiasing the expertise scores of individuals with a large amount of publications. The proposal is instanciated on a public scientific bibliographic dataset where researchers' publications are considered as a source of evidence of individuals' expertise and citation relations as a source of authoritative signals. Results from our experiments conducted over the Microsoft Academic Search database demonstrate significant efficiency improvement in comparison with state-of-the-art models for the expert retrieval task
Methods of tropical optimization in rating alternatives based on
  pairwise comparisons

We apply methods of tropical optimization to handle problems of rating
alternatives on the basis of the log-Chebyshev approximation of pairwise
comparison matrices. We derive a direct solution in a closed form, and
investigate the obtained solution when it is not unique. Provided the
approximation problem yields a set of score vectors, rather than a unique (up
to a constant factor) one, we find those vectors in the set, which least and
most differentiate between the alternatives with the highest and lowest scores,
and thus can be representative of the entire solution.Comment: 9 pages, presented at the Annual Intern. Conf. of the German
  Operations Research Society (GOR), Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg,
  Germany, August 30 - September 2, 201
Line planning on path networks with application to the Istanbul Metrobüs

Bus rapid transit systems in developing and newly industrialized countries often consist of a trunk with a path topology. On this trunk, several overlapping lines are operated which provide direct connections. The demand varies heavily over the day, with morning and afternoon peaks typically in reverse directions. We propose an integer programming model for this problem, derive a structural property of line plans in the static (or single period) “unimodal demand” case, and consider approaches to the solution of the multi-period version that rely on clustering the demand into peak and off-peak service periods. An application to the Metrobüs system of Istanbul is discussed
Mandelbrot's 1/f fractional renewal models of 1963-67: The non-ergodic
  missing link between change points and long range dependence

The problem of 1/f noise has been with us for about a century. Because it is
so often framed in Fourier spectral language, the most famous solutions have
tended to be the stationary long range dependent (LRD) models such as
Mandelbrot's fractional Gaussian noise. In view of the increasing importance to
physics of non-ergodic fractional renewal models, I present preliminary results
of my research into the history of Mandelbrot's very little known work in that
area from 1963-67. I speculate about how the lack of awareness of this work in
the physics and statistics communities may have affected the development of
complexity science, and I discuss the differences between the Hurst effect, 1/f
noise and LRD, concepts which are often treated as equivalent.Comment: 11 pages. Corrected and improved version of a manuscript submitted to
  ITISE 2016 meeting in Granada, Spai
A fast ILP-based Heuristic for the robust design of Body Wireless Sensor
  Networks

We consider the problem of optimally designing a body wireless sensor
network, while taking into account the uncertainty of data generation of
biosensors. Since the related min-max robustness Integer Linear Programming
(ILP) problem can be difficult to solve even for state-of-the-art commercial
optimization solvers, we propose an original heuristic for its solution. The
heuristic combines deterministic and probabilistic variable fixing strategies,
guided by the information coming from strengthened linear relaxations of the
ILP robust model, and includes a very large neighborhood search for reparation
and improvement of generated solutions, formulated as an ILP problem solved
exactly. Computational tests on realistic instances show that our heuristic
finds solutions of much higher quality than a state-of-the-art solver and than
an effective benchmark heuristic.Comment: This is the authors' final version of the paper published in G.
  Squillero and K. Sim (Eds.): EvoApplications 2017, Part I, LNCS 10199, pp.
  1-17, 2017. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-55849-3\_16. The final publication is
  available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55849-3_1
Analysis of vanilla rolling Horizon evolution parameters in general video game playing

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017. Monte Carlo Tree Search techniques have generally dominated General Video Game Playing, but recent research has started looking at Evolutionary Algorithms and their potential at matching Tree Search level of play or even outperforming these methods. Online or Rolling Horizon Evolution is one of the options available to evolve sequences of actions for planning in General Video Game Playing, but no research has been done up to date that explores the capabilities of the vanilla version of this algorithm in multiple games. This study aims to critically analyse the different configurations regarding population size and individual length in a set of 20 games from the General Video Game AI corpus. Distinctions are made between deterministic and stochastic games, and the implications of using superior time budgets are studied. Results show that there is scope for the use of these techniques, which in some configurations outperform Monte Carlo Tree Search, and also suggest that further research in these methods could boost their performance
IP3 receptor properties and function at membrane contact sites

The inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3) receptor (IP3R) is a ubiquitously expressed Ca2+-release channel localized in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). The intracellular Ca2+ signals originating from the activation of the IP3R regulate multiple cellular processes including the control of cell death versus cell survival via their action on apoptosis and autophagy. The exact role of the IP3Rs in these two processes does not only depend on their activity, which is modulated by the cytosolic composition (Ca2+, ATP, redox status, …), by regulatory proteins, including kinases and phosphatases, but also on their intracellular localization, especially at the ER-mitochondrial and ER-lysosomal interfaces. At these interfaces, Ca2+ microdomains are formed, in which the Ca2+ concentration is finely regulated by the different ER, mitochondrial and lysosomal Ca2+ transport systems and also depends on the functional and structural interactions existing between them. In this review, we therefore discuss the most recent insights in the role of Ca2+ signaling in general and of the IP3R in particular in the control of basal mitochondrial bioenergetics, apoptosis, and autophagy at the level of inter-organellar contact sites.status: publishe
The global goals: formalism foregone, contested legality and “re-imaginings” of international law

The Global Goals adopted in 2015 are the next phase in the UN’s plans to tackle poverty and the systemic causes of under-development and other global problems. As with the previous Millennium Development Goals, the Global Goals are expressly political in nature. This paper considers the function, status and role of international law in global development and, in particular, how the Global Goals might be perceived in legal terms. The paper rejects the argument that they represent customary law due to weaknesses in State practice and opinio juris, and is unpersuaded that it is helpful to categorise them as soft law as their purpose is aspirational and not regulatory. Thus, the Goals exist in an arena of contested legality. Two “re-imaginings” of international law are proposed; first, by connecting them to the non-binding Maastricht Principles on the Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and secondly, by linking them to ideas of international solidarity. The paper concludes that neither provides easy solutions. Nevertheless, what both do – in their own way – is to force us to question why international law isn’t viewed as an acceptable conduit for the advancement of global development
Blocking independent sets for H-free graphs via edge contractions and vertex deletions.

Let d and k be two given integers, and let G be a graph. Can we reduce the independence number of G by at least d via at most k graph operations from some fixed set S? This problem belongs to a class of so-called blocker problems. It is known to be co-NP-hard even if S consists of either an edge contraction or a vertex deletion. We further investigate its computational complexity under these two settings:\ud
we give a sufficient condition on a graph class for the vertex deletion variant to be co-NP-hard even if  d=k=1d=k=1 ;\ud
in addition we prove that the vertex deletion variant is co-NP-hard for triangle-free graphs even if  d=k=1d=k=1 ;\ud
we prove that the edge contraction variant is NP-hard for bipartite graphs but linear-time solvable for trees.\ud
By combining our new results with known ones we are able to give full complexity classifications for both variants restricted to H-free graphs.\ud
\ud
D. Paulusma received support from EPSRC (EP/K025090/1)
Parameterized complexity of fair deletion problems

Deletion problems are those where given a graph $G$ and a graph property
$\pi$, the goal is to find a subset of edges such that after its removal the
graph $G$ will satisfy the property $\pi$. Typically, we want to minimize the
number of elements removed. In fair deletion problems we change the objective:
we minimize the maximum number of deletions in a neighborhood of a single
vertex.
  We study the parameterized complexity of fair deletion problems with respect
to the structural parameters of the tree-width, the path-width, the size of a
minimum feedback vertex set, the neighborhood diversity, and the size of
minimum vertex cover of graph $G$. We prove the W[1]-hardness of the fair FO
vertex-deletion problem with respect to the first three parameters combined.
Moreover, we show that there is no algorithm for fair FO vertex-deletion
problem running in time $n^{o(k^{1/3})}$, where $n$ is the size of the graph
and $k$ is the sum of the first three mentioned parameters, provided that the
Exponential Time Hypothesis holds.
  On the other hand, we provide an FPT algorithm for the fair MSO edge-deletion
problem parameterized by the size of minimum vertex cover and an FPT algorithm
for the fair MSO vertex-deletion problem parameterized by the neighborhood
diversityComment: 17 pages. The hardness results from v1 were extended to FO logi
The Beginning of High Mountain Occupations in the Pyrenees. Human Settlements and Mobility from 18,000 cal BC to 2000 cal BC

During the last two decades, the archaeological research carried out in\ud
the Pyrenees challenged the traditional images of the past in this mountain area. The\ud
archaeological sequence of the range goes back and sites like Balma Margineda,\ud
treated until recently as an exception, now are seen as part of more global process.\ud
Actual data suggest that main valleys of the Pyrenean frequented by humans at the\ud
end of the last glacial period, with sites slightly over 1000 o.s.l. After the Younger\ud
Dryas, the human presence ascended to alpine and subalpine areas, in accordance\ud
with current archaeological data. The Neolisitation process was early in some\ud
hillsides, with intense remains of farming and pastoralism in many sites from dated\ud
in the second half of the 6th millennia cal BC. Human settlements like Coro Tracito,\ud
Els Trocs and El Sardo confirm the full introduction of agrarian activity in the\ud
central part of the Pyrenees between 5300 and 4600 cal BC. After 3500/3300 cal\ud
BC the indices oh sheepherding rises to alpine areas, with an abrupt increase of\ud
known archaeological sites in alpine areas, above the current timberline. This\ud
phenomena, as well as the signs of anthropic disturbance of the alpine environment\ud
in sedimentary sequences, suggests a more stable and ubiquitous human presence,\ud
probably largely associated with the development of mobile herding practices.This paper has been carried out in the frame of the GAAM/AGREST research activity. More specifically, this study is part of the projects “Análisi ecológico de la culturización del paisaje de alta montaña desde el Neolítico: los Parques Nacionales de montaña como modelo (CUL-PA)” funded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment (Spain) and directed by J. Catalán and “Modelización de los espacios prehistóricos de montaña. Un SIG del patrimonio arqueológico y los territorios pastoriles” (HAR2015-66780-P, MINECO/FEDER)\ud
funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Spain) and directed by E. Gassiot.Peer reviewe
Branhamist Kindoki : Ethnographic Notes on Connectivity, Technology and Urban Witchcraft in Contemporary Kinshasa

full access to this open access publication: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-56068-7#editorsandaffiliationsBased on an exploration of how branhamist Christians in Kinshasa represent and live with kindoki (witchcraft), this article attempts to bring science and technology in the debate about witchcraft. The branhamist community is divided among groups who jettison ICT outright, while others formulate a pedagogy of responsibility and awareness of the potentially immoral nature of ICT. The ethnographic material leads me to call for more attention to connectivity, or the accessibility to social and spiritual others, as an important mode in emic theories of witchcraft. Finally, in order to do justice to the heterogeneity of objects that can trigger witchcraft – such as ancestral objects but also ICT goods –, I propose the notion of “the witchcraft complex.”status: publishe