Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Insecurity of Voice Solution VoLTE in LTE Mobile Networks

VoLTE (Voice-over-LTE) is the designated voice solution to the LTE mobile network, and its worldwide deployment is underway. It reshapes call services from the traditional circuit-switched telecom telephony to the packet-switched Internet VoIP. In this work, we conduct the first study on VoLTE security before its full rollout. We discover several vulnerabilities in both its control-plane and data-plane functions, which can be exploited to disrupt both data and voice in operational networks. In particular, we find that the adversary can easily gain free data access, shut down continuing data access, or subdue an ongoing call, etc. We validate these proof-of-concept attacks using commodity smartphones (rooted and unrooted) in two Tier-1 US mobile carriers. Our analysis reveals that, the problems stem from both the device and the network. The device OS and chipset fail to prohibit non-VoLTE apps from accessing and injecting packets into VoLTE control and data planes. The network infrastructure also lacks proper access control and runtime check.
Diffuse Light in the Virgo Cluster

We present deep optical imaging of the inner ~1. °5 × 1. °5 of the Virgo Cluster to search for diffuse intracluster light (ICL). Our image reaches a 1 σ depth of μV = 28.5 mag arcsec-2, which is 1.5 mag arcsec-2 deeper than previous surveys, and reveals an intricate web of diffuse ICL. We see several long (>100 kpc) tidal streamers, as well as a myriad of smaller scale tidal tails and bridges between galaxies. The diffuse halo of M87 is traced out to nearly 200 kpc, appearing very irregular on these scales, while significant diffuse light is also detected around the M84/M86 pair. Several galaxies in the core are embedded in common envelopes, suggesting they are true physical subgroups. The complex substructure of Virgo's diffuse ICL reflects the hierarchical nature of cluster assembly, rather than being the product of smooth accretion around a central galaxy.
Solar-forced shifts of the Southern Hemisphere Westerlies during the Holocene

Abstract. The Southern Hemisphere Westerly Winds (SWW) constitute an important zonal circulation that influences large-scale precipitation patterns and ocean circulation. Variations in their intensity and latitudinal position have been suggested to exert a strong influence on the CO2 budget in the Southern Ocean, thus making them a potential factor affecting the global climate. In the present study, the possible influence of solar forcing on SWW variability during the Holocene is addressed. It is shown that a high-resolution iron record from the Chilean continental slope (41° S), which is interpreted to reflect changes in the position of the SWW, is significantly correlated with reconstructed solar activity during the past 3000 years. In addition, solar sensitivity experiments with a comprehensive global climate model (CCSM3) were carried out to study the response of SWW to solar variability. Taken together, the proxy and model results suggest that centennial-scale periods of lower (higher) solar activity caused equatorward (southward) shifts of the annual mean SWW.
Bmc Medical Informatics and Decision Making a Systematic Review of the Diagnostic Accuracy of Physical Examination for the Detection of Cirrhosis

Background: We conducted a review of the diagnostic accuracy of clinical examination for the diagnosis of cirrhosis. The objectives were: to identify studies assessing the accuracy of clinical examination in the detection of cirrhosis; to summarize the diagnostic accuracy of reported physical examination findings; and to define the effects of study characteristics on estimates of diagnostic accuracy.
Corporate Tax Reform for a New Century

The US budget outlook has the makings of a fiscal disaster, but it is the beginning of economic challenges, not the end. Among other challenges, a tax system that discourages business and erodes American competitiveness ranks high. The United States lags well behind other advanced countries, not to mention China, in reforming its corporate tax regime. Instead, over past decades, the United States has sought to make up through a high statutory tax rate, especially on multinational corporations (MNCs), what has been lost though a host of exemptions, deductions, and credits. The combination of a high corporate tax rate and its worldwide reach makes the United States—despite all its positive attributes—one of the least favored locations from the standpoint of business taxation. Unlike all other major economies, which limit corporate taxation to income earned with the national boundaries (territorial taxation), the United States hobbles its MNCs by taxing their worldwide income. Hufbauer and Wong caution that solutions to the looming fiscal crisis could make a bad corporate tax system even worse. To forestall this outcome, they advocate four measures: (1) meaningful caps on the growth of entitlement spending (Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security); (2) a national consumption tax to narrow the federal budget deficit to around 2.2 percent of GDP and to arrest the rise of public debt at about 88 percent of GDP; (3) a deep cut in the statutory corporate tax rate to 20 percent or lower, coupled with the elimination of exemptions, deductions and credits so as to broaden the tax base; and (4) the explicit adoption of a territorial system for taxing business income. The authors recognize that a national consumption tax is deeply unpopular with many Americans. However, the United States remains the only OECD country (and one of the very few countries in the world) that has not implemented a national consumption tax to fund its ambitious social programs and military commitments. Unless these programs and commitments can be downsized to a degree seldom seen in history, circumstances may compel the United States to choose between a competitive economy and a national consumption tax.
The appropriateness of colonoscopy: a multi-center, international, observational study.

OBJECTIVE To examine the appropriateness and necessity of colonoscopy across Europe. DESIGN Prospective observational study. SETTING A total of 21 gastrointestinal centers from 11 countries. PARTICIPANTS Consecutive patients referred for colonoscopy at each center. INTERVENTION Appropriateness criteria developed by the European Panel on the Appropriateness of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, using the RAND appropriateness method, were used to assess the appropriateness of colonoscopy. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Appropriateness of colonoscopy. RESULTS A total of 5213 of 6004 (86.8%) patients who underwent diagnostic colonoscopy and had an appropriateness rating were included in this study. According to the criteria, 20, 26, 27, or 27% of colonoscopies were judged to be necessary, appropriate, uncertain, or inappropriate, respectively. Older patients and those with a major illness were more likely to have an appropriate or necessary indication for colonoscopy as compared to healthy patients or patients who were 45-54 years old. As compared to screening patients, patients who underwent colonoscopy for iron-deficiency anemia [OR: 30.84, 95% CI: 19.79-48.06] or change in bowel habits [OR: 3.69, 95% CI: 2.74-4.96] were more likely to have an appropriate or necessary indication, whereas patients who underwent colonoscopy for abdominal pain [OR: 0.64, 95% CI: 0.49-0.83] or chronic diarrhea [OR: 0.54, 95% CI: 0.40-0.75] were less likely to have an appropriate or necessary indication. CONCLUSIONS This study identified significant proportions of inappropriate colonoscopies. Prospective use of the criteria by physicians referring for or performing colonoscopies may improve appropriateness and quality of care, especially in younger patients and in patients with nonspecific symptoms.
Hybrid Tactile/Tangible Interaction for 3D Data Exploration

We present the design and evaluation of an interface that combines tactile and tangible paradigms for 3D visualization. While studies have demonstrated that both tactile and tangible input can be efficient for a subset of 3D manipulation tasks, we reflect here on the possibility to combine the two complementary input types. Based on a field study and follow-up interviews, we present a conceptual framework of the use of these different interaction modalities for visualization both separately and combined-focusing on free exploration as well as precise control. We present a prototypical application of a subset of these combined mappings for fluid dynamics data visualization using a portable, position-aware device which offers both tactile input and tangible sensing. We evaluate our approach with domain experts and report on their qualitative feedback.
Nature versus nurture in bicuspid aortic valve aortopathy: more evidence that altered hemodynamics may play a role.

> There is no disease more conducive to clinical humility than aneurysm of the aorta.1 > > — William Osler Bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) is a common congenital cardiac malformation affecting 1 to 2% of the population with a predilection for males.2 Although patients with BAV often develop aortic aneurysms requiring surgical intervention,3,4 the formation of aortic aneurysms is variable and there are currently no good predictors of aneurysm formation. Although studies have shown that patients with BAV have genetically inherited aortic disorders that predispose them to aneurysm development,5,6 there is ongoing controversy concerning the degree to which altered hemodynamics (nurture) and genetics (nature) interact. The study by Mahadevia et al7 in this issue of Circulation provides important additional support for the argument that altered flow patterns attributable to abnormal valve architecture do indeed play a role in BAV aortopathy. Article see p 673 Phase contrast MRI has been used to measure changes in blood velocity and flow with standard techniques measuring these parameters in 2 dimensions, or through plane. Four-dimensional (4D) MRI allows the speed and direction of aortic flow to be visualized and measured over time in all 3 dimensions, thereby providing not only informative images but an improved tool for the study of flow disturbances. One of the more active areas of research using 4D MRI has been in BAV aortopathy with the hope that understanding flow disturbances will give new insight into BAV-associated aneurysm formation. Prior studies8–10 using 4D MRI have demonstrated altered ascending aortic wall sheer stress (WSS) in patients with BAV and have suggested a mechanistic link between the alteration in aortic outflow caused by the fusion of BAV cusps and the development of ascending aortic aneurysms.8–13 However, these studies have focused …
Synchronous rectified Soft-Switched Phase-Shift Full-Bridge converter with primary energy storage inductor

This paper presents a synchronous rectified Soft-switched Phase-Shift (PS) Full-bridge (FB) converter with primary-side energy storage inductor, which can be utilized in low output voltage and high output current applications. This converter can be operated in CCM, BCM and DCM respectively based on different designs. However, optimum design consideration indicates that the BCM and DCM operation modes are much more suitable for this converter. Primary-side energy storage inductor can help leading leg switches achieve ZVS condition easily. DCM and BCM operation modes can make primary-side lagging leg switches and secondary-side synchronous rectifiers (SR) achieve ZCS condition. Slow di/dt of triangular current at secondary-side also lead to little reverse recovery loss of SRs' body diodes. The voltage stress across SRs can be clamped by output voltage and the low break-down voltage SRs are utilized to reduce conduction loss. Finally, a high efficiency 300 Watts 100 kHz prototype is built up to verify the theoretical analysis and design.
Word encoding during sleep is suggested by correlations between word-evoked up-states and post-sleep semantic priming

To test whether humans can encode words during sleep we played everyday words to men while they were napping and assessed priming from sleep-played words following waking. Words were presented during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. Priming was assessed using a semantic and a perceptual priming test. These tests measured differences in the processing of words that had been or had not been played during sleep. Synonyms to sleep-played words were the targets in the semantic priming test that tapped the meaning of sleep-played words. All men responded to sleep-played words by producing up-states in their electroencephalogram. Up-states are NREM sleep-specific phases of briefly increased neuronal excitability. The word-evoked up-states might have promoted word processing during sleep. Yet, the mean performance in the priming tests administered following sleep was at chance level, which suggests that participants as a group failed to show priming following sleep. However, performance in the two priming tests was positively correlated to each other and to the magnitude of the word-evoked up-states. Hence, the larger a participant's word-evoked up-states, the larger his perceptual and semantic priming. Those participants who scored high on all variables must have encoded words during sleep. We conclude that some humans are able to encode words during sleep, but more research is needed to pin down the factors that modulate this ability.
Open Access Research Article Genetic Polymorphisms in Tnf Genes and Tuberculosis in North Indians

Background: Pulmonary tuberculosis, the most common clinical form of mycobacterial diseases, is a granulomatous disease of the lungs caused by Mycobaterium tuberculosis. A number of genes have been identified in studies of diverse origins to be important in tuberculosis. Of these, both tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) and lymphotoxin α (LT-α) play important immunoregulatory roles. Methods: To investigate the association of TNF polymorphisms with tuberculosis in the Asian Indians, we genotyped five potentially functional promoter polymorphisms in the TNFA gene and a LTA_NcoI polymorphism (+252 position) of the LTA gene in a clinically well-defined cohort of North-Indian patients with tuberculosis (N = 185) and their regional controls (N = 155). Serum TNF-α (sTNF-α) levels were measured and correlated with genotypes and haplotypes. Results: The comparison of the allele frequencies for the various loci investigated revealed no significant differences between the tuberculosis patients and controls. Also, when the patients were sub-grouped into minimal, moderately advanced and far advanced disease on the basis of chest radiographs, TST and the presence/absence of cavitary lesions, none of the polymorphisms showed a significant association with any of the patient subgroups. Although a significant difference was observed in the serum TNF-α levels in the patients and the controls, none of the investigated polymorphisms were found to affect the sTNF-α levels. Interestingly, it was observed that patients with minimal severity were associated with lower log sTNF-α levels when compared to the patients with moderately advanced and far advanced severity. However, none of these differences were found to be statistically significant. Furthermore, when haplotypes were analyzed, no significant difference was observed. Conclusions: Thus, our findings exclude the TNF genes as major risk factor for tuberculosis in the North Indians. Background Mycobacterial diseases are a major health concern, with an estimate of approximately one-third of the world's population being affected by them [1,2]. Pulmonary tuberculosis, the most common clinical form of the disease , is a granulomatous disease of the lungs caused by Mycobaterium tuberculosis. However, only 5-10% of the infected people ever develop the disease. The genetic contribution of the host plays a significant role in determining susceptibility to developing the active form of the disease, the severity of infection and the health outcome of the patient [3,4]. A number of genes have been identified in studies of diverse origins to be important in tuberculosis [5-7].
Engineered Anopheles Immunity to Plasmodium Infection

A causative agent of human malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, is transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes. The malaria parasite is under intensive attack from the mosquito's innate immune system during its sporogonic development. We have used genetic engineering to create immune-enhanced Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes through blood meal-inducible expression of a transgene encoding the IMD pathway-controlled NF-kB Rel2 transcription factor in the midgut and fat-body tissue. Transgenic mosquitoes showed greater resistance to Plasmodium and microbial infection as a result of timely concerted tissue-specific immune attacks involving multiple effectors. The relatively weak impact of this genetic modification on mosquito fitness under laboratory conditions encourages further investigation of this approach for malaria control.
Prospective Memory, Personality, and Individual Differences

A number of studies investigating the relationship between personality and prospective memory (ProM) have appeared during the last decade. However, a review of these studies reveals little consistency in their findings and conclusions. To clarify the relationship between ProM and personality, we conducted two studies: a meta-analysis of prior research investigating the relationships between ProM and personality, and a study with 378 participants examining the relationships between ProM, personality, verbal intelligence, and retrospective memory. Our review of prior research revealed great variability in the measures used to assess ProM, and in the methodological quality of prior research; these two factors may partially explain inconsistent findings in the literature. Overall, the meta-analysis revealed very weak correlations (rs ranging from 0.09 to 0.10) between ProM and three of the Big Five factors: Openness, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness. Our experimental study showed that ProM performance was related to individual differences such as verbal intelligence as well as to personality factors and that the relationship between ProM and personality factors depends on the ProM subdomain. In combination, the two studies suggest that ProM performance is relatively weakly related to personality factors and more strongly related to individual differences in cognitive factors.
Skin texture analysis for medical diagnosis

This paper proposes an automated system for recognizing disease conditions of human skin in context to health informatics. The disease conditions are recognized by analyzing skin texture images using a set of normalized symmetrical Grey Level Co-occurrence Matrices (GLCM). Directional GLCMs are computed along four directions viz. horizontal, vertical, right diagonal, left diagonal, and a set of features viz. Contrast, Homogeneity, Mean, Variance and Energy computed from each, are averaged to provide an estimation of the texture class. The system is tested on a set of medical images displaying three dermatological skin conditions viz. Acne, Eczema, and Urticaria. The features are considered in various combinations viz. individually, and in joint 2-D feature spaces, using L1 and L2 metrics as well as neural network classifiers, to study which combination produces best recognition accuracies.
Self-regulation and the executive function: The self as controlling agent.

A man squanders his money on gambling. A woman beats her child. A drunk driver causes a crash that destroys three cars and injures several people. A student postpones studying until the night before the test and gets a bad grade. A young couple engages in unprotected sex and creates an unwanted pregnancy. A delinquent shoots an acquaintance during an argument. A dieter eats seven donuts and a pint of ice cream at one sitting. An athlete trains off and on for a year without any improvement in performance. A girl breaks a promise and betrays a friend's confidence. An old man again neglects to take his daily dose of insulin and goes into diabetic shock. What these disparate events have in common is failure of self-regulation. When self-regulation works well, it enables people to alter their behavior so as to conform to rules, plans, promises, ideals, and other standards. When it fails, any one of a broad range of human problems and misfortunes can arise. Self-regulation is thus a key to success in human life and, when it falls short, a contributing cause that helps explain many forms of human suffering. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the psychology of self-regulation. We shall review what it is, its importance, how it functions, how it fits into the broader context of human psychological functioning, and what some of its principal applications are. To appreciate the importance of self-regulation, it is necessary to consider both practical and theoretical implications. The practical ones were anticipated in the opening paragraph of this chapter, but they can be stated more systematically as follows: Most of the social and personal problems that afflict people in modern western society have some element of self-regulatory failure at their root. This is not to say that better self-regulation would alone solve all society's problems — but it would probably go a long way toward that end. Perhaps the problems that most obviously revolve around self-control failure are those of impulse control. Drug and alcohol addiction has multiple determinants, but to Self-regulation and executive function 3 the extent that people can regulate their consumption of these problematic substances, they will be less vulnerable to addiction. Many of the problems associated with sexual behavior are fully preventable, if only people would control themselves sufficiently to minimize risks. These include the paradoxical epidemic of unwanted and out-of-wedlock pregnancy (paradoxical …
Molecular cloud and thin CNM sheet formation

We analyze the scenario of molecular cloud formation by large-scale compressions in the diffuse warm neutral medium (WNM). The early stages of the process can be studied analytically, while the later stages require numerical simulation. The compressed gas is subject to the thermal instability, producing a thin, cold gas layer inside the thicker shocked slab after a time of the order of the cooling time. The analytical model and high-resolution one-dimensional simulations predict that in cases where the the inflow Mach number M1,r is transonic (M1,r ∼ 1), the thin cold layer after ∼ 1 Myr of evolution has column density ∼ 2.5×10 cm, thickness ∼ 0.03 pc, temperature ∼ 25 K and pressure ∼ 6650 K cm. In our simulations, at somewhat later times, when the sheets are well resolved, they have line profiles with a central line of width ∼ 0.5 km s and broad wings of width ∼ 1 km s. However, these linewidths do not correspond to turbulent motions in the layer, but rather to the inflowing speed of the gas, and therefore do not imply excessively short lifetimes for the sheets. These sheets are reminiscent of those recently observed by Heiles and coworkers.