Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A large-scale comprehensive evaluation of single-slice ring oscillator and PicoPUF bit cells on 28-nm Xilinx FPGAs

Lightweight implementation of security primitives, e.g., physical unclonable functions (PUFs) and true random number generator, in field programmable gate array (FPGA) is crucial replacement of the conventional decryption key stored in battery-backed random access memory or E-Fuses for the protection of field reconfigurable assets. A slice is the smallest reconfigurable logic block in an Xilinx FPGA. The entropy exploitable from each slice of an FPGA is an important factor for the design of security primitives. Previous research has shown that the locations of slices can impact the quality of delay-based PUF designs implemented on FPGAs. To investigate the effect of the placement of each single-bit PUF cell free from the routing resource constraint between slices, single-bit ring oscillator (RO) and identity-based PUF design (Pi-coPUF) cells that can each be fully fitted into a single slice are evaluated. To accurately evaluate their statistical performance, data from a large number of devices are required. To this end, 217 Xilinx Artix-7 FPGAs has been employed to provide a large-scale comprehensive analysis for the two designs. This is the first time single-slice disorder-based security entities have been investigated and compared on 28-nm Xilinx FPGA. Uniqueness, uniformity, correlation, reliability, bit-aliasing and min-entropy of each type of cell are evaluated for four different types of cell placement. Our experimental results corroborate that the location of both cell types in the FPGA affects their performances. For both cell types, the lower the correlation between devices, the higher the min-entropy and uniqueness. Overall, the min-entropy, correlation and uniqueness of PicoPUF are slightly higher than those of RO. Otherwise, the uniformity, bit-aliasing and reliability of the PicoPUF are slightly lower than those of the RO. Comparing the resource usage and metrics of the PicoPUF, ring oscillator PUF and some existing memory-based PUF implementations, PicoPUF stands out as a lightweight FPGA-based weak PUF design. The raw data for the PicoPUF design are made publicly available to enable the research community to use them for benchmarking and/or validation.
Gene Expression Difference Between Primary and Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma Using Patient-Derived Xenografts

Metastasis is the leading cause of cancer-related death. A small proportion of tumor cells can spread to other tissues through the lymph system or bloodstream and colonize in a new microenvironment. However, not all tumors from the primary site can metastasize. What is the difference between metastatic and primary tumors? Can such difference be preserved in widely used patient-derived xenografts (PDX)? To answer these questions, we analyzed the single-cell gene expression profiles of 36 cells from PDX of metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC), 47 cells from PDX of primary RCC (pRCC), and 35 cells from parental mRCC (pt-mRCC). First, the gene expression patterns of PDX-mRCC and PDX-pRCC were compared, and the PDX-mRCC signatures were generated. Such signatures reflected the difference between metastatic and primary tumors. Second, the pt-mRCC were tested on whether they can be correctly classified into the PDX-mRCC class rather than PDX-pRCC. We found that pt-mRCC were very similar with PDX-mRCC. Our results prove that the PDX is a great research model for metastatic tumors since it preserved the essences for tumor metastasis. Our results justify the applications of PDX in metastatic tumor studies.
Statistical Disclosure Control via Information Theory

Differential privacy is a strong privacy model based on indistinguishability of statistical outputs of two neighboring datasets, which represent two states that an individual's information is within or without a dataset. However, when the informations of different individuals are dependent, the representation would lose its foundation. In order to remedy the drawback of differential privacy, we revisit the Dalenius' paper [1] that motivates differential privacy, and introduce a new privacy model to control individual's information disclosure. The rationality of the privacy model is based on the information theory, i.e., the mutual information of one individual's information and the statistical outputs is upper bounded by a small value. The new privacy model accurately captures the weakness of differential privacy when dealing with dependent informations. Furthermore, the new privacy model gets on well with differential privacy. When the informations of individuals are independent, we prove that a mechanism that satisfies $\epsilon$-differential privacy would ensure to satisfy the new privacy model. When the informations of individuals are dependent, we prove that the group privacy method to achieve differential privacy in dependent case can be used to achieve the new privacy model. When the dependence extents of the informations of individuals are weak, we find differentially private mechanism which can satisfy the new privacy model with noise magnitude far less than the mechanism based on the group privacy based method. These results imply that the new model inherits (almost) all of the mechanisms of differential privacy.
IoTorch: Reliable LED-to-Camera Communication Against Inter-Frame Gaps and Frame Drops

LED-to-camera communication for smartphones promises to enable low-cost, small-size, and intuitive data access to Internet-of-things (IoT) devices. However, for fast and reliable communication under the rolling shutter effect, the packet losses caused by inter-frame gaps and frame drops must be dealt with. In this paper, we introduce LED-to-camera communication between a commercial smartphone and an IoT device with LED flashlight, where the user can intuitively acquire the desired data transmitted from the IoT device to the smartphone. Specifically, we present IoTorch, a fast and reliable LED-to-camera communication that efficiently prevents the packet losses. IoTorch consists of two core mechanisms: 1) a minimum-repetition one-way reliable transmission focusing on the periodicity of inter-frame gaps and 2) an acknowledgement mechanism to overcome frame drops by using a smartphone's built-in flash focusing on its delay characteristics. Additionally, we propose an optimization method to increase the throughput up to 2.92 kbps (i.e., 2.43 times faster than that of the state-of-the-art method that overcomes the inter-frame gaps). Furthermore, we realize a remote wake-up function by using the smartphone's flash as the data transmission trigger. To demonstrate the benefit of IoTorch, we present a sensor data viewer using Arduino and a smartphone console system on TelosB.
Uncovering the language of wine experts

Abstract Talking about odors and flavors is difficult for most people, yet experts appear to be able to convey critical information about wines in their reviews. This seems to be a contradiction, and wine expert descriptions are frequently received with criticism. Here, we propose a method for probing the language of wine reviews, and thus offer a means to enhance current vocabularies, and as a by-product question the general assumption that wine reviews are gibberish. By means of two different quantitative analyses—support vector machines for classification and Termhood analysis—on a corpus of online wine reviews, we tested whether wine reviews are written in a consistent manner, and thus may be considered informative; and whether reviews feature domain-specific language. First, a classification paradigm was trained on wine reviews from one set of authors for which the color, grape variety, and origin of a wine were known, and subsequently tested on data from a new author. This analysis revealed that, regardless of individual differences in vocabulary preferences, color and grape variety were predicted with high accuracy. Second, using Termhood as a measure of how words are used in wine reviews in a domain-specific manner compared to other genres in English, a list of 146 wine-specific terms was uncovered. These words were compared to existing lists of wine vocabulary that are currently used to train experts. Some overlap was observed, but there were also gaps revealed in the extant lists, suggesting these lists could be improved by our automatic analysis.
Advanced Adaptive Decoder Using Fulcrum Network Codes

Reliable and effective forward error correction is challenging, especially in a heterogeneous transmission environment, due to the differences in computation capabilities of end devices. Using a complex code to achieve reliable communication leads to high computation costs and long decoding delay at devices with low computing power. Fulcrum codes, a variation of random linear network coding (RLNC), addresses that problem by combining two codes of large and small Galois field sizes. Thus, a Fulcrum decoder can decode using either field size. However, state-of-the-art Fulcrum decoders select and operate on a predetermined Galois field throughout the transmission session regardless of current states of received packets. We propose an inclusive and adaptive decoding process that decide when to operate on which Galois field in accordance with the computational capabilities and varying channel environments. Our comprehensive evaluation shows that the proposed adaptive decoding significantly reduces the computation complexity at end devices while simultaneously maintaining a high decoding probability with substantially low overhead and decoding delay.
Identifying control structure of multi-joint coordination in dart throwing: the effect of distance constraint

Background: This study used the uncontrolled manifold (UCM) approach to study joint coordination underlying the control of task-related variables important for success at dart throwing skill. Success at a task can be achieved, in principle, by always adopting a particular joint combination. In contrast, we adopt a more selective control strategy: variations of the joint configuration that leave the values of essential task variables unchanged are predicted to be less controlled (i.e., stabilized to a lesser degree) than joint configuration changes that shift the values of the task variables. Objectives: How this abundance of motor solutions is managed by the nervous system and whether and how the throwing in different distances affects the solution to joint coordination was investigated in this study. Methods: Our experimental task involved dart throwing to a target under three conditions (standard, short and long distance) that it performed by fifteen dart professional and semiprofessional athletes. The four joint angles of the arm were obtained from the recorded positions of markers on the limb segments. The variability of joint configurations was decomposed into components lying parallel to those sets and components lying in their complement with respect to control of the path of the arm’s center of mass and spatial position of the hand. Results: When performing the task in all three different conditions, fluctuations of joint configuration that affected arm’s center of mass and spatial position variables were much reduced compared with fluctuations that did not affect these variables. The UCM principle applied to arm’s center of mass and spatial position thus captures the structure of the motor control system across different parts of joint configuration space as the movement evolves in time. Moreover, constraints representing an invariant arm’s center of mass or the spatial position structured joint configuration variability in the early and mid-portion of the movement trajectory, but not at the time of throwing. This specific control strategy indicate a target can be hit successfully also by controlling irrelevant directions in joint space equally to relevant ones. Conclusion: The results suggests a specific control strategy in which changes of joint configuration that are irrelevant to success at the task are selectively released from control. As a result, the method can be successfully used to determine the structure of coordination in joint space that underlies the control of the essential variables for a given task.
The Effects of Kinesio™ Taping on Proprioception at the Ankle

It has been demonstrated that resistance exercises may improve chronic heart failure (CHF) patients' functional ability and quality of life, however, physicians do not recommend this form of exercise because of a concern for reported increases in afterload and blood pressure (BP) during the exercise. This study compared the heart rate (HR), BP and rate pressure product (RPP) of CHF patients for a Balke incremental test and a maximal strength test (MS). Fifteen men diagnosed with CHF participated in the study. All subjects performed both a Balke incremental test and MS test for eight different resistance exercises. The subjects' HR and BP were monitored during the incremental test and immediately after each resistance exercise. HR, systolic BP and RPP were significantly lower during the MS test than during both the peak Balke incremental test and during exercise at 80% of peak VO2 (p 0.05). The physiological responses in this study were less severe during a MS test than those reported during an incremental Balke treadmill test. Also the finding suggests that MS tests may be an acceptable method to assess the maximal strength of patients with moderate heart failure.
An Application for Routing Ambulance via ACO in Home Healthcare

In this study, rovers of ambulances were identified and determined quickly and practically via ant colony optimization. Non-intuitive methods can also be used to determine the routing, but when the number of nodes is large, and the number of operations is very large, the heuristic methods are more practical. The purpose of this work is to use ant colony optimization via C# for ambulance routing. The patients were served as soon as possible thanks to ambulance routing. In this the effectiveness of the ambulance has been increased. In this study, 12 nodes were selected as an application. The nodes were used to determine the route of the ambulance in-home health care.
Living under occupation: Palestinian teachers’ experiences and their digital responses

Research in Learning Technology 2019. © 2019 J. Traxler et al. Research in Learning Technology is the journal of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT), a UK-based professional and scholarly society and membership organisation. ALT is registered charity number 1063519. http://www.alt. ac.uk/. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.
ASR corrective feedback on pronunciation: Does it really work?

We studied a group of immigrants who were following regular, teacher-fronted Dutch classes, and who were assigned to three groups using either a) Dutch CAPT, an ASR-based Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training (CAPT) system that provides feedback on a number of Dutch speech sounds that are problematic for L2 learners b) a CAPT system without feedback c) no CAPT system. Participants were tested before and after the training. The results show that the ASR-based feedback was effective in correcting the errors addressed in the training. Index Terms: CALL, CAPT, pronunciation, feedback, ASR
Exploring Learners Experience of Gamified Practicing: For Learning or for Fun?

Gamification in education primarily aims at increasing learners’ motivation to engage in given learning activities and thereby promote desired learning behaviors. Despite its potential and the increasing number of gamified systems their success is still limited due to the fact that gamifying learning is a challenging process. Part of the challenge stems from an insufficient understanding of the motivational mechanisms of gamification on learners’ experience and from the insufficient attention to factors contributing to gameful experiences and promoting sustainable engagement. In addition, there is limited empirical evidence on motivational influences driving students to participate in gamified learning activities. Another factor slowing down the progress of successfully gamified applications is the scarcity of tools that would enable instructors to design and implement gamified activities as part of their instructional strategy. In an attempt to address these challenges, the present paper examines the difficulties inherent in the gamification of educational activities and how the OneUp gamification platform can support instructors in overcoming them with the mechanisms it provides for affording gameful experiences and sustainable engagement. To add to the understanding of the motivational influences towards gamified learning activities, the paper presents a preliminary study of student motivation to use OneUp for out-of-class practicing in a gamified Data Structures course. The outcomes of this study are based on data collected through a focus group, survey data, and system logs.
Enhancing Security Management at Software-Defined Exchange Points

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks continue to escalate in size and scale, and there is growing need for security management at network-level that can restrict a service to a geography (aka geo-blocking) and prevent the victim’s IP address from being faked (aka IP-spoof protection). The former reduces the attack surface on the victim, while the latter reduces liability on the organization from which the attack originates. Unfortunately, these solutions are hard to implement in today’s networks, requiring expensive hardware appliances and/or manual configuration. This was exemplified in the recent attack on the Australian government census website, which had to be brought down for weeks in order for security configurations to be applied. In this paper, we first argue that an Internet Exchange Point (IXP) is an appropriate place for managing security of an enterprise, and then design, implement, and evaluate a geo-blocking and IP-spoofing protection solution for a Software Defined IXP. Our first contribution is to define a grammar for operators to specify their high-level security intents, and a compiler that automatically synthesizes these to low-level flow rules for insertion to the interconnect fabric. Our second contribution is to develop a mixed integer linear program optimization framework for distributing flow rules across switches with limited table size, while minimizing carriage costs of malicious and extraneous traffic. Finally, we evaluate the cost benefits of our scheme via simulation of a large IXP network, and demonstrate its practical utility in blocking attacks via implementation over the open-source ONOS controller and experimentation in an SDN testbed.
Multi-Biometric Watermarking Scheme Based on Interactive Segmentation Process

Iris-based security systems are highly recommended because of their security and ease of use. Different watermarking techniques have been presented to provide security while exchanging or storing iris images. The previous iris image watermarking techniques have successfully reached their aims, however, they suffer from some limitations such as the distortions that are presented in the iris region because of the watermark embedding process, the limited embedding capacity, and the lack of robustness against unintentional attacks. On the other hand, nowadays, the biometric-based security systems have directed their interest towards multi-biometric techniques in order to improve the performance of the individual’s recognition process. This paper presents a new multi-biometric watermarking (MBW) scheme in which the features of the fingerprint image and some personal information are embedded in the iris image. To avoid the abovementioned limitations, the proposed scheme presents an interactive segmentation algorithm (ISA) and a Slantlet transform based watermark embedding method. The proposed ISA prevents any distortion in the iris region which is a beneficial feature for the iris image recognition process. The experimental results proved the efficiency of the proposed ISA in comparison with the Hough transform based methods in terms of accuracy, embedding capacity, and execution time. The proposed MBW scheme performs better in comparison with the state-of-the-art methods in terms of the intactness of the iris region, the robustness against unintentional attacks, and the watermark embedding capacity.
Optimization of linear functions on a cyclic permutation. Based on the random search

For creating adequate mathematical models of combinatorial problems of constructing optimal cyclic routes, mathematical modeling and solving a number of planning and control tasks solutions of optimization problems on the set of cyclic permutations are required. Review of the publications on combinatorial optimization demonstrates that the optimization problem on the cyclic permutations have not been studied sufficiently. This paper is devoted to solving optimization problem of a linear function with linear constraints on the set of cyclic permutations. For solving problems of this class using of known methods, taking into account the properties of a combinatorial set of cyclic permutations, is proposed. For this purpose we propose a method based on the ideology of random search. Heuristic method based on the strategy of the branch and bound algorithm is proposed to solve auxiliary optimization problem of a linear function without constraints on the set of cyclic permutations. Since application of the branch and bound algorithm immediately leads to an exponential growth of the complexity with increasing the dimension of the problem a number of modifications are suggested. Modifications allow reducing computational expenses for solving higher dimension problems. The effectiveness of the proposed improvements is demonstrated by computational experiments.
The “Anatomy Colored Cards Game” – An alternative, inexpensive and accessible teaching tool for anatomy students

The aim of this research was to create, use and evaluate an alternative tool to audience response system (ARS) without the use of electronic equipment’s, fast internet connection and Wi-Fi network, with a very low cost. The students’ outcome in the tests and their perception of the activity was also evaluated. The “Anatomy Colored Cards Game” was created, and was used one week before the final anatomy test, in order to review basic concepts of anatomy. Each student received four colored cards made of paperboard (yellow, blue, green and red). After the distribution of the cards, the teacher showed a Power Point presentation with multiple choice questions, where each response corresponded to one color of the colored card. The students had 30 seconds to choose the correct answer and were asked to raise the colored card correspondent to their response. At the end of the activity, students were invited to blindly express their satisfaction with the activity. The outcomes of the students in the final exams were compared with the outcomes of students from the classes of the two previous years of the same course, which had the same lectures and laboratory classes with the same teachers. The students referred to the game as amusing, stimulant, useful and interesting. The final grades were improved and the failure rates decreased in the class that used the game as a learning tool. The “Anatomy Color Cards Game” proved to be a simple and inexpensive active methodology important as an auxiliary anatomy teaching resource.