Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Half-Baked Cookies: Hardening Cookie-Based Authentication for the Modern Web

Modern websites use multiple authentication cookies to allow visitors to the site different levels of access. The complexity of modern web applications can make it difficult for a web application programmer to ensure that the use of authentication cookies does not introduce vulnerabilities. Even when a programmer has access to all of the source code, this analysis can be challenging; the problem becomes even more vexing when web programmers cobble together off-the-shelf libraries to implement authentication. We have assembled a checklist for modern web programmers to verify that the cookie based authentication mechanism is securely implemented. Then, we developed a tool, Newton, to help a web application programmer to identify authentication cookies for specific parts of the website and to verify that they are securely implemented according to the checklist. We used Newton to analyze 149 sites, including the Alexa top-200 and many other popular sites across a range of categories including search, shopping, and finance. We found that 113 of them---including high-profile sites such as Yahoo, Amazon, and Fidelity---were vulnerable to hijacking attacks. Many websites have already acknowledged and fixed the vulnerabilities that we found using Newton and reported to them.
Interaction of Dendrimers (Artificial Proteins) with Biological Hydroxyapatite Crystals

This investigation sets out to mimic protein-crystal interaction during biomineralization with the use of artificial proteins (dendrimers). It is hypothesized that these interactions depend on the surface charge of hydroxyapatite crystals. This was investigated with the use of dendrimers with capped surfaces of different charges to probe the surface. We used AFM images of crystal-bound dendrimers to determine the distribution of the surface charge, and its magnitude was correlated to the binding capacity of the dendrimers to the surface. The binding capacity of the dendrimers in ascending order at pH 7.4 was: acetamide-capped, -NHC(O)CH3, neutral charge; carboxylic-acid-capped, -COOH, negative charge; and amine-capped, -NH2, positive charge. AFM images of the crystals showed dendrimers spaced equally along the crystal. The results suggest that the crystal surface has alternating bands of positive and negative charge or a differential charge array, i.e., alternating bands of either more or less positive or negative charge.
Immunohistochemistry to identify EGFR mutations or ALK rearrangements in patients with lung adenocarcinoma.

BACKGROUND Immunohistochemistry has been proposed as a specific and sensitive method to identify EGFR mutations or ALK rearrangements in lung tumours. PATIENTS AND METHODS We assessed EGFR and KRAS by direct sequencing in 154 patients with lung adenocarcinoma. ALK rearrangements were assayed by FISH and RT-PCR. Immunohistochemistry was carried out and evaluated closely following published methods using recommended monoclonal rabbit or mouse antibodies. RESULTS Thirteen of 36 exon 19 EGFR-mutated tumours (36%)-including 12 of 22 with p.Glu746_Ala750del (55%)-were positive with the 6B6 antibody that was raised against p.Glu746_Ala750del. One hundred eleven of 114 EGFR exon 19 wild-type tumours (97%) were negative with 6B6. Four of 21 exon 21 EGFR-mutated tumours (19%)-including 4 of 17 with p.Leu858Arg (24%)-were positive with the 43B2 antibody that was raised against p.Leu858Arg. One hundred twenty-two of 124 (98%) EGFR exon 21 wild-type tumours were negative with 43B2. Two of four ALK rearrangements-including two of three with ELM4-ALK fusion transcripts-were identified with the 5A4 antibody. Eleven of 13 tumours without ALK rearrangement (85%) were negative with 5A4. CONCLUSIONS Immunohistochemistry is a specific means for identification of EGFR mutations and ALK rearrangements. It suffers, however, from poor sensitivity.
Decomposing Fundamental Indexation

This article compares fundamental index strategies with strategies that start with the market index and then tilt towards high fundamental-to-price ratio stocks. The authors find that the tilt strategies have similar return, volatility, and turnover as the corresponding fundamental index but have higher information ratios and lower tracking error. Using the same methodology, they also show that a modified index strategy that incorporates multiple distinct quantitative factors generates much higher information ratios with similar turnover.
Experimental Investigation of a Multicylinder Unmodified Diesel Engine Performance, Emission, and Heat Loss Characteristics Using Different Biodiesel Blends: Rollout of B10 in Malaysia

This paper deals with the performance and emission analysis of a multicylinder diesel engine using biodiesel along with an in-depth analysis of the engine heat losses in different subsystems followed by the energy balance of all the energy flows from the engine. Energy balance analysis allows the designer to appraise the internal energy variations of a thermodynamic system as a function of ‘‘energy flows” across the control volume as work or heat and also the enthalpies associated with the energy flows which are passing through these boundaries. Palm and coconut are the two most potential biodiesel feed stocks in this part of the world. The investigation was conducted in a four-cylinder diesel engine fuelled with 10% and 20% blends of palm and coconut biodiesels and compared with B5 at full load condition and in the speed range of 1000 to 4000 RPM. Among the all tested blends, palm blends seemed more promising in terms of engine performance, emission, and heat losses. The influence of heat losses on engine performance and emission has been discussed thoroughly in this paper.
Inorganic Mercury and Methylmercury Inhibit the Cav3.1 Channel Expressed in Human Embryonic Kidney 293 Cells by Different Mechanisms

Part of the neurotoxic effects of inorganic mercury (Hg2+) and methylmercury (MeHg) was attributed to their interaction with voltage-activated calcium channels. Effects of mercury on T-type calcium channels are controversial. Therefore, we investigated effects of Hg2+ and MeHg on neuronal Cav3.1 (T-type) calcium channel stably expressed in the human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cell line. Hg2+ acutely inhibited current through the Cav3.1 calcium channel in concentrations 10 nM and higher with an IC50 of 0.63 ± 0.11 μM and a Hill coefficient of 0.73 ± 0.08. Inhibition was accompanied by strong deceleration of current activation, inactivation, and deactivation. The current-voltage relation was broadened, and its peak was shifted to a more depolarized membrane potentials by 1 μM Hg2+. MeHg in concentrations between 10 nM and 100 μM inhibited the current through the Cav3.1 calcium channel with an IC50 of 13.0 ± 5.0 μM and a Hill coefficient of 0.47 ± 0.09. Low concentration of MeHg (10 pM to 1 nM) had both positive and negative effects on the current amplitude. Micromolar concentrations of MeHg reduced the speed of current activation and accelerated current inactivation and deactivation. The current-voltage relation was not affected. Up to 72 h of exposure to 10 nM MeHg had no significant effect on current amplitude, whereas 72-h-long exposure to 1 nM MeHg increased significantly current density. Acute treatment with Hg2+ or MeHg did not affect HEK 293 cell viability. In conclusion, interaction with the Cav3.1 calcium channel may significantly contribute to neuronal symptoms of mercury poisoning during both acute poisoning and long-term environmental exposure.
Investigating the Impact of Deployment Configuration and User Demand on a Social Network Application in the Amazon EC2 Cloud

One of the main challenges faced by current users of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) clouds are the difficulties to estimate cloud resources according to their application needs. Even though cloud platforms are elastic and provide fast means to acquire or release resources it is important to understand the best ways to do that considering a diversity of providers with many different resource types and prices. This work reports on an experimental investigation conducted on a popular cloud benchmark based on a social network application running on top of the Amazon EC2 cloud. Our experiments aim at finding cost-effective ways to select the different EC2 resource types and deployment configurations based on the demand imposed to the application (measured in number of simultaneous users) and identify the configuration that gives the best return in terms of its cost per user.
A Growth Type Explanation for Persistence in Retained Earnings and Propensity to Pay Dividends

We show that while firms that typically pay dividends already have high ratios of retained-earnings-to-total-equity (RE/TE) and high propensities to pay (PTP) early on, firms that typically do not pay dividends have persistently low RE/TE and low PTP even after 20 years of growth. This non-ergodic phenomenon goes beyond a lifecycle explanation. We propose a growth type view, in which low growth type can accommodate the popular distribution-retention tradeoff argument in the lifecycle explanation for high RE/TE and PTP, but high growth type is responsible for persistently low RE/TE and PTP. The growth type view can explain why low RE/TE and PTP can be surprisingly long-lived, and suggests that typical non-payers deliberately do not pay dividends even when they can, because doing so may confuse the market.
Aggregation and model construction for volatility models

In this paper we will rigourously study some of the properties of continuous time stochastic volatility models. We have five main results, including: the stochastic volatility class can be linked to Cox process based models of tick-by-tick financial data; we characterise the moments, autocorrelation function and spectrum of squared returns; based only on discrete time returns, we give a simple consistent and asymptotically normally distributed estimator of continuous time volatility models without any simulation or discretisation error.
Technology and community-engaged research

Abstract The purpose of this case study and discussion is to demonstrate how technology can be harnessed to enhance the performance of research teams involved in community-engaged research. Case examples from an interdisciplinary, community-engaged research project in a midsize city in the southern United States are presented to demonstrate the applicability of certain technology tools. This study examined how researchers used technology in the field to manage the project and facilitate effective communication, enhance data collection, and engage community members. Lessons learned from the field and implications for future research are discussed.
Hydrolysis of extracellular ATP and immune suppression: humans versus mice.

To the editor: We read with interest the recent article by Borsellino and colleagues on the role of CD39 and CD73 for the suppressor activity of Foxp3+ regulatory T cells (T regs). [1][1] Because the major sources of extracellular ATP are injured cells leaking cytoplasmic content, degranulating
Keeping Control of Terrorists Without Losing Control of Constitutionalism

The anticipatory risk of mass terrorism casualties or even the nightmare of the use of weapons of mass destruction conduces towards interventions which are preemptive or preventative. The threat of terrorism to life and liberty cannot be addressed simply by ex post facto rectification for the sake of justice. An inevitable consequence of this risk dynamic will be an intelligence-led approach, that is, governmental net-casting for information and for potential assailants on a wide and prescient scale. Several measures in U.K. law could be considered as test cases of counter-terrorism control measures. Probably the most appropriate are the eponymous control orders under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005. The system imposed by the Act encompasses both operative dynamics: the imperative to respond to anticipatory risk and the need to extend action to the "neighbor" terrorist. Foremost in the inquiry will be the following questions: what circumstances gave rise to the policy of control orders; what are the main elements of the policy and how is it implemented; is it possible to maintain constitutionalism when dealing with a non-criminal justice mechanism of this kind; and, what lessons can be derived for future policy?
The Merger History of Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxies

The ubiquity of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the centers of nearby luminous galaxies can arise from the multiple mergers experienced by dark matter halos in hierarchical structure formation models, even if only a small fraction of these galaxies harbor SMBHs at high redshifts. We illustrate this possibility using cosmological Monte Carlo simulations of the merger history of dark matter halos and their associated SMBHs. In our most extreme models, in order to populate nearly every bright galaxy with an SMBH at z = 0, only a few percent of the halos with virial temperatures above 104 K are required to harbor an SMBH at high redshift. This possibility must be included in studies of the luminosity function and the clustering properties of quasars. We predict the number of SMBH merger events that are detectable by the gravitational wave experiment Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), as a function of redshift, out to z = 5. Although the event rates can be significantly reduced in scenarios with rare SMBHs, a minimum of ~10 detectable merger events per year is predicted if SMBH binaries coalesce efficiently. The observed distribution of events with redshift could yield valuable information on the SMBH formation process. If SMBH binaries do not coalesce, we find that at least several SMBH slingshot ejections probably occurred from z = 5 to the present in each galaxy more massive than ~1011 M☉ at z = 0. Although our results are sensitive to the minimum cooling mass assumed for the formation of SMBHs, we expect the qualitative predictions of our models to be robust.
Evolving Information Needs among Colon, Breast, and Prostate Cancer Survivors: Results from a Longitudinal Mixed-Effects Analysis

Background: This study describes how cancer survivors' information needs about recurrence, late effects, and family risks of cancer evolve over the course of their survivorship period. Methods: Three annual surveys were conducted from 2006 to 2008 in a cohort of Pennsylvania cancer survivors diagnosed with colon, breast, or prostate cancer in 2005 (round 1, N = 2,013; round 2, N = 1,293; round 3, N = 1,128). Outcomes were information seeking about five survivorship topics. Key predictors were survey round, cancer diagnosis, and the interaction between these variables. Mixed-effects logistic regression analyses were performed to predict information seeking about each topic, adjusting for demographic variables, clinical characteristics, and clustering of repeated observations within individuals. Results: Information seeking about reducing risks of cancer recurrence was the most frequently reported topic across survivors and over time. Breast cancer survivors were more likely to seek about survivorship topics at round 1 compared with other survivors. In general, information seeking declined over time, but cancer-specific patterns emerged: the decline was sharpest for breast cancer survivors, whereas in later years female colon cancer survivors actually sought more information (about how to reduce the risk of family members getting colon cancer or a different cancer). Conclusion: Cancer survivors' information needs varied over time depending on the topic, and these trends differed by cancer type. Impact: Clinicians may need to intervene at distinct points during the survivorship period with information to address concerns about cancer recurrence, late effects, and family members' risks. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 24(7); 1071–8. ©2015 AACR.
Reclaiming Memory for Lock-Free Data Structures: There has to be a Better Way

Memory reclamation for sequential or lock-based data structures is typically easy. However, memory reclamation for lock-free data structures is a significant challenge. Automatic techniques such as garbage collection are inefficient or use locks, and non-automatic techniques either have high overhead, or do not work for many reasonably simple data structures. For example, subtle problems can arise when hazard pointers, one of the most common non-automatic techniques, are applied to many natural lock-free data structures. Epoch based reclamation (EBR), which is by far the most efficient non-automatic technique, allows the number of unreclaimed objects to grow without bound, because one slow or crashed process can prevent all other processes from reclaiming memory. We develop a more efficient, distributed variant of EBR that solves this problem. It is based on signaling, which is provided by many operating systems, such as Linux and UNIX. Our new scheme takes O(1) amortized steps per high-level operation on the lock-free data structure and O(1) steps in the worst case each time an object is removed from the data structure. At any point, O(mn2) objects are waiting to be freed, where $n$ is the number of processes and m is a small constant for most data structures. Experiments show that our scheme has very low overhead: on average 10%, and at worst 28%, for a balanced binary search tree over many thread counts, operation mixes and contention levels. Our scheme also outperforms a highly efficient implementation of hazard pointers by an average of 75%. Typically, memory reclamation code is tightly woven into lock-free data structure code. To improve modularity and facilitate the comparison of different memory reclamation schemes, we also introduce a highly flexible abstraction. It allows a programmer to easily interchange schemes for reclamation, object pooling, allocation and deallocation with virtually no overhead, by changing a single line of code.
Essays in Household Finance and Housing Economics

With the wake of the United States financial crisis in 2008, policymakers and academics have begun to reevaluate the nature and impact of household financial decisions. While standard economic theory assumes individuals are fully rational, the devastation of the crisis suggests households may be subject to systematic biases that can have significant effects on the economy. Chapter 1 asks whether consumer sentiment has an impact on asset prices, particularly during the boom and bust of housing prices that instigated the most recent financial crisis. Empirically identifying a link between sentiment and prices is challenging, however, as measures of investor beliefs are difficult to construct. This paper develops the first measures of sentiment across local housing markets by quantifying the tone in local housing newspaper articles. The sentiment index forecasts both the boom and bust of housing prices by more than two years, and can predict over 70 percent of the variation in national housing prices above and beyond economic fundamentals. Chapter 2 then asks whether households can time the own versus rent decision successfully and generate profitable savings. Using 29 years of historical data, this essay creates robust measures of the costs of owning and renting and evaluates whether owning or renting was less expensive ex-post across 39 metropolitan areas in the United States. We find that households can potentially time their homeownership profitably and can save as much as 50 percent of annual rent costs using a few simple trading rules. Chapter 3 addresses whether the lack of household financial literacy has significant consequences for household wealth. We find that an overwhelming majority of households lack basic financial skills and that financial literacy appears to have a significant effect on wealth above and beyond other observed factors. Our results suggest that improving financial literacy could have large positive effects on wealth accumulation. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Applied Economics First Advisor Olivia S. Mitchell
A multivariate search for pollination syndromes among penstemons

The seeming ubiquity of spatio-temporal variation in pollination regime suggests that flowers ought to be adapted to a wide range of pollinators, yet many comparative biologists perceive that in groups with complex flowers there is considerable specialization onto pollination syndromes. Statistical documentation of such syndromes has been presented for very few groups of flowers. Accordingly, we measured, for 49 species of Penstemon and close relatives, both the morphology of the flowers and visitation by pollinators. We describe the mechanics of pollination for representative species. Ordinations show a distinct difference between hummingbird-pollinated species and hymenopteran-pollinated species. Flower color is particularly good at separating hummingbird- from hymenopteran-flowers. Other characters are also correlated with this dichotomy. Within the hymenopteran-pollinated species, there are additional relationships between floral morphology and the size of the principal pollinators. Flowers frequented by large bees, such as Xylocopa, have large open vestibules and relatively short floral tubes. Flowers frequented by smaller bees, such as Osmia, have long narrow floral tubes. Unlike nectar-collecting bees, pollen-collecting bees tend to be attracted to flowers of the hummingbird syndrome. The overarching pattern was that syndrome characterizations were successful at predicting pollination by hummingbirds versus Hymenoptera, two types of animals that are profoundly different, but less successful at predicting visitation by one kind of bee versus another.
Social cognition in schizophrenia: Cognitive and affective factors

Introduction. Social cognition refers to how people conceive, perceive, and draw inferences about mental and emotional states of others in the social world. Previous studies suggest that the concept of social cognition involves several abilities, including those related to affect and cognition. The present study analyses the deficits of individuals with schizophrenia in two areas of social cognition: Theory of Mind (ToM) and emotion recognition and processing. Examining the impairment of these abilities in patients with schizophrenia has the potential to elucidate the neurophysiological regions involved in social cognition and may also have the potential to aid rehabilitation. Methods. Two experiments were conducted. Both included the same five tasks: first- and second-level false-belief ToM tasks, emotion inferencing, understanding of irony, and matrix reasoning (a WAIS-R subtest). The matrix reasoning task was administered to evaluate and control for the association of the other tasks with analytic reasoning skills. Experiment 1 involved factor analysis of the task performance of 75 healthy participants. Experiment 2 compared 30 patients with schizophrenia to an equal number of matched controls. Results. (1) The five tasks were clearly divided into two factors corresponding to the two areas of social cognition, ToM and emotion recognition and processing. (2) Schizophrenics’ performance was impaired on all tasks, particularly on those loading heavily on the analytic component (matrix reasoning and second-order ToM). (3) Matrix reasoning, second-level ToM (ToM2), and irony were found to distinguish patients from controls, even when all other tasks that revealed significant impairment in the patients’ performance were taken into account. Conclusions. The two areas of social cognition examined are related to distinct factors. The mechanism for answering ToM questions (especially ToM2) depends on analytic reasoning capabilities, but the difficulties they present to individuals with schizophrenia are due to other components as well. The impairment in social cognition in schizophrenia stems from deficiencies in several mechanisms, including the ability to think analytically and to process emotion information and cues.