Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Thou Shalt Not Depend on Me: Analysing the Use of Outdated JavaScript Libraries on the Web

Web developers routinely rely on third-party Java-Script libraries such as jQuery to enhance the functionality of their sites. However, if not properly maintained, such dependencies can create attack vectors allowing a site to be compromised. In this paper, we conduct the first comprehensive study of client-side JavaScript library usage and the resulting security implications across the Web. Using data from over 133 k websites, we show that 37% of them include at least one library with a known vulnerability; the time lag behind the newest release of a library is measured in the order of years. In order to better understand why websites use so many vulnerable or outdated libraries, we track causal inclusion relationships and quantify different scenarios. We observe sites including libraries in ad hoc and often transitive ways, which can lead to different versions of the same library being loaded into the same document at the same time. Furthermore, we find that libraries included transitively, or via ad and tracking code, are more likely to be vulnerable. This demonstrates that not only website administrators, but also the dynamic architecture and developers of third-party services are to blame for the Web's poor state of library management. The results of our work underline the need for more thorough approaches to dependency management, code maintenance and third-party code inclusion on the Web.
Potential Pharmacological Resources: Natural Bioactive Compounds from Marine-Derived Fungi

In recent years, a considerable number of structurally unique metabolites with biological and pharmacological activities have been isolated from the marine-derived fungi, such as polyketides, alkaloids, peptides, lactones, terpenoids and steroids. Some of these compounds have anticancer, antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antibiotic and cytotoxic properties. This review partially summarizes the new bioactive compounds from marine-derived fungi with classification according to the sources of fungi and their biological activities. Those fungi found from 2014 to the present are discussed.
HAFT: hardware-assisted fault tolerance

Transient hardware faults during the execution of a program can cause data corruptions. We present HAFT, a fault tolerance technique using hardware extensions of commodity CPUs to protect unmodified multithreaded applications against such corruptions. HAFT utilizes instruction-level redundancy for fault detection and hardware transactional memory for fault recovery. We evaluated HAFT with Phoenix and PARSEC benchmarks. The observed normalized runtime is 2x, with 98.9% of the injected data corruptions being detected and 91.2% being corrected. To demonstrate the effectiveness of HAFT, we applied it to real-world case studies including Memcached, Apache, and SQLite.
Defective Glucagon-Like Peptide 1 Secretion in Prediabetes and Type 2 Diabetes Is Influenced by Weight and Sex. Chicken, Egg, or None of the Above?

Glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) is considered to be the primary incretin hormone, released in response to food ingestion and contributing to meal assimilation. GLP-1 is a powerful insulin secretagogue, stimulating insulin secretion and suppressing glucagon secretion in a glucose-dependent manner (1), and indeed, numerous pharmacologic agents use the GLP-1 pathway to produce effective glucose-lowering therapy (2). Given the antidiabetogenic actions of GLP-1, it is a reasonable question to wonder whether defects in GLP-1 secretion contribute to the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes. Over the years, multiple studies have examined this question. However, the evidence to suggest decreased GLP-1 secretion in prediabetes and diabetes has been mixed at best, with decreased (3–5), normal (6,7), or increased (8) GLP-1 concentrations reported in subjects with prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. Subsequently, Nauck et al. (9) undertook a meta-analysis of studies comparing active and total GLP-1 in people with diabetes and weight-matched control subjects and concluded that after an oral glucose challenge or after a mixed meal, the integrated, incremental concentrations of GLP-1 did not differ between patients with type 2 diabetes and control subjects. GLP-1 concentrations were unaffected by weight or age. In addition, we examined active and total GLP-1 concentrations in 165 …
Sudden drop in the battery level?: understanding smartphone state of charge anomaly

Battery State of Charge (SOC) estimation is a fundamental component of today's smartphones that affects the internal processes and observable behavior of the devices. This article systematically investigates and analyzes the SOC estimation techniques in smartphones. First, we discover that the voltage curve of a given smartphone implicitly captures the usable capacity of the battery while charging the mobile device. Second, we observe that today's SOC estimation techniques do not model battery capacity loss sufficiently to accurately capture the usable capacity. Finally, we report findings based on battery analytics of 2077 devices that validate the relationship between battery voltage and the usable capacity of a device. The presented results enable the development of more accurate battery gauges and metering solutions thus resulting in better power-saving decisions, recommendations for the users, and most importantly more reliable systems.
An opportunistic power control algorithm for cellular network

We propose an opportunistic power control algorithm, which exploits channel fluctuation in order to maximize system throughput. The basic idea is that it instructs a transmitter to increase its power when the channel is good and to decrease its power when the channel is bad. The transmission rate is adjusted according to the received signal-to-interference ratio. The proposed algorithm is distributed and can be applied to systems in which the transmitters are connected to different receivers. We prove that the algorithm always converge to a unique fixed point and thus is stable. Simulation results show that a tremendous increase in system capacity can be achieved, when compared with other power control algorithms. Furthermore, the algorithm works well for nonreal-time terminals when other real-time terminals employ the target-tracking power control. It can also be extended to cases where maximum power constraint is imposed and soft handoff is executed
Identification and In Vitro Antimicrobial Susceptibility of Brucella Species Isolated from Human Brucellosis

Brucellosis is a world-wide zoonotic disease with a major impact on the public health. Due to the high risk of laboratory acquired infection, limited laboratory investigations were performed on this organism, including detailed identification and susceptibility study. Brucella melitensis is the commonest aetiological agent for human brucellosis in this region. The in vitro susceptibility pattern against selected antimicrobial agents was assessed using E-test. All isolates were noted to be sensitive to all the antimicrobial agents tested except for rifampicin where elevated MIC > 1 μg/mL was noted in 30 out of 41 isolates tested.
Blade-type crawler vehicle with wings in ground effect for traversing uneven terrain at high speed

Unmanned rescue, observation and/or research vehicles with high terrain adaptability, high speed, and high reliability are needed to reach difficult locations. However, most vehicles achieve improved performance over rough terrain at the expense of low speed and/or complex mechanisms. We developed a blade-type crawler robot with a very simple and reliable mechanism, capable of traversing uneven terrain at high speed, using aerodynamic devices. As these small devices are in the low Reynolds number region, we tested a wing that made use of the ground effect. We experimentally confirmed the success of this approach in improving the traveling speed and ability to traverse uneven terrain. The robot with aerodynamic lift was climbed 1.5 times higher obstacle than without wings.
Fostering Undergraduate Spiritual Growth Through Service-Learning

Scholars and educational leaders have expressed concern that higher education is not adequately meeting students’ desire for spiritual growth within an academic context. Prior studies have demonstrated a relationship between the pedagogical method of service-learning and spiritual development. This study analyzed the relationship between specific service-learning components and the occurrence of spiritual growth in an effort to better understand how such growth can be fostered within the curriculum. Findings indicated that spiritual growth occurred when students experienced significant challenge balanced with support. Challenge was initiated when students witnessed injustice while simultaneously being exposed to new, diverse perspectives in class. Support emerged from relationships as well as the effective integration of coursework with the service experience.
Analysis of brain signals with advanced signal processing techniques to help in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most prevalent form of dementia in the world. Symptoms include progressive memory, cognitive and behavioural changes before death, caused by amyloid plaques and hyperphosphorated tau in the brain. The cause of AD is currently unknown and current interventions only slow the decline. Diagnosis is based on patient and familial history, interviews with close family and friends, cognitive, mental and physical tests. The electroencephalogram (EEG) records the electrical signals of the brain, which AD, as a cortical dementia, is known to directly affect. Non-linear signal processing has shown that these changes in the EEG can be identified with complementary findings to linear methods. This thesis aimed to explore these changes with novel univariate and bivariate methods using both synthetic signals and resting, eyes-closed EEGs recorded from 22 subjects, 11 AD patients (MMSE=13.1±5.9 (mean SD)) and 11 age-matched controls (30±0). Permutation entropy showed statistically significant increased complexity in control EEGs for electrodes at the front of the head. Bivariate analysis was novel for this EEG database so coherence was used to create a comparison results set. With the success of Lempel-Ziv Complexity (LZC), distance based bivariate forms were applied (dLZC03). Novel normalisation methods based on that for univariate LZC showed a greater representation of the signal patterns in the results. Volume conduction was shown to significantly impact the results, both of coherence and dLZC03, though this was greater with coherence. Lastly, volume conduction mitigated, bandwidth based pre filtering with dLZC03 was calculated, producing the most significant p values ever recorded with this EEG database. Thus this PhD shows increased distinction between the two subject groups with dLZC03 over LZC and increased distinction with limited but targeted bandwidths from those subject signals.
Authority, power and distributed leadership

A much greater understanding is needed of power in the practice of distributed leadership. This article explores how the concept of social authority might be helpful in achieving this. It suggests that the practice of distributed leadership is characterized by multiple authorities which are constructed in the interactions between people. Rather than there being a uniform hierarchy (relatively flat or otherwise) of formal authority, organizational members may be ‘high’ in some authorities and ‘low’ in others, and people’s positioning in relation to these authorities is dynamic and changeable. The article maps different forms of authorities, provides illustrations from educational institutions, and concludes with implications for educational leadership. A key conclusion is that everyone is involved in the ongoing production of authorities by contributing to who is accepted as or excluded from exercising authority and leadership.
Analyzing Linguistic Knowledge in Sequential Model of Sentence

Sentence modelling is a fundamental topic in computational linguistics. Recently, deep learning-based sequential models of sentence, such as recurrent neural network, have proved to be effective in dealing with the non-sequential properties of human language. However, little is known about how a recurrent neural network captures linguistic knowledge. Here we propose to correlate the neuron activation pattern of a LSTM language model with rich language features at sequential, lexical and compositional level. Qualitative visualization as well as quantitative analysis under multilingual perspective reveals the effectiveness of gate neurons and indicates that LSTM learns to allow different neurons selectively respond to linguistic knowledge at different levels. Cross-language evidence shows that the model captures different aspects of linguistic properties for different languages due to the variance of syntactic complexity. Additionally, we analyze the inﬂuence of modelling strategy on linguistic knowledge encoded implicitly in different sequential models.
Systematic evaluation of antibody-mediated siRNA delivery using an industrial platform of THIOMAB–siRNA conjugates

Delivery of siRNA is a key hurdle to realizing the therapeutic promise of RNAi. By targeting internalizing cell surface antigens, antibody–siRNA complexes provide a possible solution. However, initial reports of antibody–siRNA complexes relied on non-specific charged interactions and have not been broadly applicable. To assess and improve this delivery method, we built on an industrial platform of therapeutic antibodies called THIOMABs, engineered to enable precise covalent coupling of siRNAs. We report that such coupling generates monomeric antibody–siRNA conjugates (ARCs) that retain antibody and siRNA activities. To broadly assess this technology, we generated a battery of THIOMABs against seven targets that use multiple internalization routes, enabling systematic manipulation of multiple parameters that impact delivery. We identify ARCs that induce targeted silencing in vitro and extend tests to target prostate carcinoma cells following systemic administration in mouse models. However, optimal silencing was restricted to specific conditions and only observed using a subset of ARCs. Trafficking studies point to ARC entrapment in endocytic compartments as a limiting factor, independent of the route of antigen internalization. Our broad characterization of multiple parameters using therapeutic-grade conjugate technology provides a thorough assessment of this delivery technology, highlighting both examples of success as well as remaining challenges.
Sex differences in aging of the human frontal and temporal lobes

This study investigated effects of age and sex on regional brain structure in humans, focusing on the frontal and temporal lobes. Hemispheric volumes were obtained from magnetic resonance images (MRIs) of 96 young (53 men, 43 women; aged 18–40 years) and 34 older (17 men, 17 women; aged 41–80) healthy volunteers. Images (5 mm axial spin-echo, repetition time of 3000 msec and echo times of 30 and 80 msec) were resliced along the anterior commissure-posterior commissure (AC-PC) axis to standardize for difference in head tilt, and imported into a computer program where borders of the frontal and temporal lobes were delineated. The program calculated regional brain volumes based on slice data from which CSF was segmented out. An age x sex x hemisphere x region interaction indicated that age-related reductions in brain volume were sexually dimorphic, lateralized, and region specific. Greater decrements in brain volume occurred with age in the frontal lobe than in the temporal lobe. Age-related reductions in both regions were greater in men than in women, demonstrating that sexual dimorphisms in human neuroanatomy are not fixed, but continue to change throughout adulthood. The possibility that gonadal hormones play a role in the promotion and/or prevention of neural atrophy with aging is discussed.
MAGI-1 Modulates AMPA Receptor Synaptic Localization and Behavioral Plasticity in Response to Prior Experience

It is well established that the efficacy of synaptic connections can be rapidly modified by neural activity, yet how the environment and prior experience modulate such synaptic and behavioral plasticity is only beginning to be understood. Here we show in C. elegans that the broadly conserved scaffolding molecule MAGI-1 is required for the plasticity observed in a glutamatergic circuit. This mechanosensory circuit mediates reversals in locomotion in response to touch stimulation, and the AMPA-type receptor (AMPAR) subunits GLR-1 and GLR-2, which are required for reversal behavior, are localized to ventral cord synapses in this circuit. We find that animals modulate GLR-1 and GLR-2 localization in response to prior mechanosensory stimulation; a specific isoform of MAGI-1 (MAGI-1L) is critical for this modulation. We show that MAGI-1L interacts with AMPARs through the intracellular domain of the GLR-2 subunit, which is required for the modulation of AMPAR synaptic localization by mechanical stimulation. In addition, mutations that prevent the ubiquitination of GLR-1 prevent the decrease in AMPAR localization observed in previously stimulated magi-1 mutants. Finally, we find that previously-stimulated animals later habituate to subsequent mechanostimulation more rapidly compared to animals initially reared without mechanical stimulation; MAGI-1L, GLR-1, and GLR-2 are required for this change in habituation kinetics. Our findings demonstrate that prior experience can cause long-term alterations in both behavioral plasticity and AMPAR localization at synapses in an intact animal, and indicate a new, direct role for MAGI/S-SCAM proteins in modulating AMPAR localization and function in the wake of variable sensory experience.
Designing Project Monitoring Mechanisms for Improved Public Sector Governance and Accountability

Project management practice forms the basis of administering the activities of the public sector. Many South African government entities have embraced the projects-type of management approach in their endeavours. Officials are subjected to training in this regard, and are expected to perform their project management and administrative duties with circumspect and South Africa's public sector organisations' capacity to plan, execute, monitor and evaluate activities have improved. Yet, many current project monitoring mechanisms do not adequately address the problematic of tracking the as- planned deliverables of on-time, in-budget and required quality - the principle project management deliverable triumvirate. Practitioners confess that too many projects fail because dysfunctional monitoring mechanisms allow for some, or all of the above three imperatives not to be met. In an attempt to remedy such problems, private sector models to identify possible "best practices" may be prudent, which may assist the public sector. This paper presents in an adapted form possible private sector- derived project monitoring solutions to the public sector, given its unique political and policy backdrop. The research is of a qualitative nature and is part-based on the researcher's observations (participant observer) and experience in the respective sectors, and augmented with relevant literature.
Cone Signal Interactions in Direction-Selective Neurons in Area MT

Many experimental measurements support the hypothesis that area MT of the rhesus monkey has a central role in processing visual motion. The great majority of these studies were performed using luminance stimuli, leaving open the question of how color information is used during motion processing. We investigated the specific question of how S-cone signals, an important source of color information, interact with (L+M)-cone signals, the dominant source of luminance information. In MT, S-cone-initiated signals combine synergistically with (L+M)-cone (luminance) signals over most of the stimulus range, regardless of whether the stimuli are added or subtracted. A quantitative analysis of the responses to the combination of Sand (L+M)-cone signals shows that for a significant minority of cells, these S-cone signals are carried to MT by a color-opponent ("blue-yellow") pathway, such that in certain limited contrast ranges, a small amount of Sand (L+M)-cone cancellation is observed. Both Sand (L+M)-cone responses are direction-selective, suggesting that MT processes a wide range of motion signals, including those carried by luminance and color. To investigate this possibility further, we measured MT responses while monkeys discriminated the direction of motion of luminance and S-coneinitiated gratings. The sensitivity of single MT neurons, as well as the correlation between trial-to-trial variations in single neuron firing and perception, are similar for Sand (L+M)-cone stimuli, further supporting a role for MT in processing chromatic motion.
Recruitment of the ventral and dorsal streams in statistical graph comprehension: An fMRI study.

BACKGROUND Although many previous studies have focused on statistical graph comprehension in cognitive psychology, there is no consensus among them. OBJECTIVE Brain neuroimaging studies on the statistical graph comprehension are useful to account for the cognitive mechanism of interpreting statistical graphic information. METHODS The present study used two experimental conditions, a statistical graph (SG) and a statistical graph with text (SGT), and one control condition, a text (ST), where the ST task was a verbal description of the information from the SG, and when the SGT is a mixed graph + textual description. We used fMRI to investigate the brain activity of 36 normal subjects while they passively viewed the statistical information presented in visual forms as SG, ST or SGT. RESULTS The results showed that compared with the control tasks, both SG and SGT consistently activated ventral and dorsal streams and that compared with SGT, SG significantly activated the ventral stream but not the dorsal stream. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that the portions of the ventral and dorsal streams related to object recognition are commonly involved in statistical graph comprehension. These findings provide neuroimaging evidence for the cognitive processing of statistical graphs.
Chondroitinase ABC-Mediated Plasticity of Spinal Sensory Function

Experimental therapeutics designed to enhance recovery from spinal cord injury (SCI) primarily focus on augmenting the growth of damaged axons by elevating their intrinsic growth potential and/or by nullifying the influence of inhibitory proteins present in the mature CNS. However, these strategies may also influence the wiring of intact pathways. The direct contribution of such effects to functional restoration after injury has been mooted, but as yet not been described. Here, we provide evidence to support the hypothesis that reorganization of intact spinal circuitry enhances function after SCI. Adult rats that underwent unilateral cervical spared-root lesion (rhizotomy of C5, C6, C8, and T1, sparing C7) exhibited profound sensory deficits for 4 weeks after injury. Delivery of a focal intraspinal injection of the chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan-degrading enzyme chondroitinase ABC (ChABC) was sufficient to restore sensory function after lesion. In vivo electrophysiological recordings confirm that behavioral recovery observed in ChABC-treated rats was consequent on reorganization of intact C7 primary afferent terminals and not regeneration of rhizotomized afferents back into the spinal cord within adjacent segments. These data confirm that intact spinal circuits have a profound influence on functional restoration after SCI. Furthermore, comprehensive understanding of these targets may lead to therapeutic interventions that can be spatially tailored to specific circuitry, thereby reducing unwanted maladaptive axon growth of distal pathways.