Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
S2Net: Preserving Privacy in Smart Home Routers

At present, wireless home routers are becoming increasingly smart. While these smart routers provide rich functionalities to users, they also raise security concerns. Although the existing end-to-end encryption techniques can be applied to protect personal data, such rich functionalities become unavailable due to the encrypted payloads. On the other hand, if the smart home routers are allowed to process and store the personal data of users, once compromised, the users’ sensitive data will be exposed. As a consequence, users face a difficult trade-off between the benefits of the rich functionalities and potential privacy risks. To deal with this dilemma, we propose a novel system named Secure and Smart Network (S2Net) for home routers. For S2Net, we propose a secure OS that can distinguish and manage multiple sessions belonging to different users. The secure OS and all the router applications are placed in the secure world using the ARM TrustZone technology. In S2Net, we also confine the router applications in sandboxes provided by the proposed secure OS to prevent data leakage. As a result, S2Net can provide rich functionalities for users while preserving strong privacy for home routers. In addition, we develop a crypto-worker model that provides an abstraction layer of cryptographic tasks performed by a heterogeneous multi-core system. The other important role of crypto-worker is to parallelize the computations in order to resolve the high computation cost of cryptographic functions. We report the system design of S2Net and the details of our implementation. Experimental results with benchmarks and real applications demonstrate that our implementation is capable of achieving high performance in terms of throughput while mitigating the overhead of S2Net design.
Biophysical Properties of DNA Minor Groove Binding by Heterocyclic Cations of Varying Structures

Small heterocyclic cations that bind to DNA are interesting systems to study due to their structural diversity, pharmaceutical potential, and characteristic target recognition patterns. Clinically, such compounds offer an attractive therapeutic approach as inhibitors of protein-DNA interactions implicated in disease. Due to their typical intrinsic fluorescence, these compounds also have potential as convenient biotechnological probes for studying DNA. Finally, from a biophysics perspective, an intricate understanding of the factors driving DNA binding by these compounds can extend our understanding of DNA targeting more broadly. In this thesis, the electrostatics and hydration properties of DNA binding by eight of these heterocyclic cations in complex with various DNA sequences are investigated. INDEX WORDS: DNA minor groove, preferential hydration, polyelectrolyte theory, heterocyclic cations, fluorescence polarization, small compounds BIOPHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF DNA MINOR GROOVE BINDING BY HETEROCYCLIC CATIONS OF VARYING STRUCTURES
Depression symptoms level among thyroid disorders patients at central region of Peninsular Malaysia

Background of Study: Patients with thyroid disorders were found to have continued to experience symptoms of depression despite the great of treatment has been given to the patient to balance the thyroid hormones. Objective: The aim of this study is to determine the level of depression symptoms among various types of thyroid disorders patients. Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out at one of the government hospital at central region of Peninsular Malaysia from August to October 2016. Patients were diagnosed as thyroid disorders, Malaysian citizen, above 18 years old and did not have any psychiatric disorders were included in this study.Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-42 (DASS-42) was selected to determine the severity of depression symptoms and interpreted as follow: less than 9-no depression, between 10 and 13-mild depression, between 14-20-moderate depression, between 21 and 27- severe depression and more than 28-extreme severe depression. Descriptive statistic was analysed by IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.0. Results: About 15% (23) out of 153 thyroid patients had varies degree of depression symptoms from mild to severe extremely depression. Patients who had hyperthyroid were found to have more depressed, followed by hypothyroid and thyroid cancer group. Conclusion: These findings would suggest that the depression score was higher in the patients who have hyperthyroid. A more detail and thorough study is recommended to be done, in order to confirm these findings. Please click PDF below to download the full paper.
An Integrated Approach for Understanding Health Behavior: The I-Change Model as an Example

This paper discusses challenges in utilizing findings and constructs from different (health behavior) theories. There is a multitude of theories that can be used, but the question is what to do with so many theories. As a result there is debate about the need for integrating health behavior theories. Opponents of integrating theories suggest that this may lead to a theory of everything without adding anything. Supporters, however, see advantages of such an approach. Integration is more than simply combining theories. Combining theories implies using a simple additive model. Integration, however, implies critical testing of these constructs, and constructs will only be added if they have supplementary value theoretically and empirically and will lead to developing and testing new hypotheses. This paper outlines what the advantages of critical testing and integration of theories could be, using the Integrated-Change Model as an example.
Ephemeral relevance and user activities in a search session

We study relevance judgment and user activities in a search session. We focus on ephemeral relevance—a contextual measurement regarding the amount of useful information a searcher acquired from a clicked result at a particular time—and two primary types of search activities—query reformulation and click. The purpose of the study is both explanatory and practical. First, we examine the influence of different factors on ephemeral relevance and user activities in a search session. Second, we leverage short-term search history and implicit feedback in a session to predict ephemeral relevance and future search activities. The main findings include: 1. As a contextual usefulness measurement, ephemeral relevance differs from both topical relevance judgment and context-independent usefulness assessment. We show ephemeral relevance significantly relates to a wide range of factors, including topical relevance, novelty, understandability, reliability, effort spent, and search task. The difference between ephemeral relevance and context-independent usefulness assessment is linked to judgment criteria, novelty, effort spent, and changes in user’s perceptions of a search result. 2. Ephemeral relevance can be predicted accurately using implicit feedback signals without any manual explicit judgments. We generalize existing implicit feedback methods from using information related to a single result to those based on user activities in a whole session, achieving a correlation as high as 0.5 between the predicted and real judgments. 3. We show choices of word changes in query reformulation and click decisions significantly relate to recent search history, such as the contents and effectiveness of previous search queries, the contents of the results viewed and clicked in previous searches, etc. 4. Leveraging short-term search history in a session and other information, we can predict word changes in query reformulation and click decisions with different levels of accuracies. These findings help disclose and explain the dynamics of relevance and user activities in a search session. The developed techniques provide effective support for developing interactive IR systems.
EXTENSION-TWIST COUPLING OPTIMIZATION IN COMPOSITE ROTOR BLADES

In a tiltrotor aircraft the difference in the inflow and the rotor speeds between hover and forward flight modes necessitates different blade twist and chord distributions. A passive blade twist control design, referred to as The Sliding Mass Concept (SMC), has been previously proposed by the authors for performance improvement of a tiltrotor aircraft. In this paper a multibody dynamics code, DYMORE, together with a cross-sectional analysis tool, SVABS, have been used to accurately model the proposed system. The performance improvement envelopes determined through the multibody dynamics process predict approximately 6% reduction in hover power requirement with no significant improvement in forward flight performance. An optimization process based on the Simulated Annealing method was utilized to improve the hover performance of the XV15 baseline design by maximizing extension-twist coupling of the structure with constraints on the airfoil geometry and torsional stiffness. The analysis resulted in 4.4% improvement in hover performance for 1.0 kg/m sliding mass value without any additional weight penalty compared to the baseline design. The results demonstrate the feasibility of the concept and show the additional flexibility the sliding mass provides for performance improvement of the vehicle.
Using ultrasound for improving hydration and debittering of Andean lupin grains

This article presents results about the potential use of ultrasound technology on the hydration and debittering process of Andean lupin grains (Lupinus albus Sweet). The hydration process was conducted conventionally and also assisted by ultrasound technology (ultrasonic water bath, 25 kHz, 41 W/L). Further than the hydration kinetics, the alkaloid content was evaluated. As results, the hydration kinetics of this grain showed a sigmoidal behavior, which was accelerated almost 40% using ultrasound. The lag phase was reduced about 13%, and the equilibrium moisture content was increased about 14%. Finally, by using ultrasound during hydration process, the alkaloid extraction was also improved, extracting 21% more compared to the conventional process. It was concluded that ultrasound technology accelerates not only the hydration process but also the extraction of alkaloids. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Andean lupin is a pulse with potential importance for human and animal alimentation due to its high quantity of proteins. However, this pulse has a considerable quantity of undesirable alkaloids that are bitter and toxic. Therefore, a debittering process is required. Further, before debittering, hydration of the grains is required, which is a long and batch process. This work demonstrated that both the hydration and the debittering processes can be enhanced by ultrasound. Consequently, ultrasound technology would have a double application during hydration process of Andean lupin grains.
Improvement in the dispersion of TiO2 particles inside Chitosan-Methyl cellulose films by the use of silane coupling agent

Abstract. This work is focused on obtaining composite films based on biopolymer of chitosan and on TiO2 superficially modified through a silanization method, using (3-aminopropyl)-trimethoxysilane (APTMS). This method helped solve specific problems of titanium dioxide, such as the formation of agglomerates, since modified films have a better dispersion. The inclusion of particles in the biopolymer films helped to improve color properties, obtaining luminescence results up to 20% higher than the unmodified particles, which indicates a better dispersion of particles. In addition, there were improvements in the electrostatic repulsion, studied as Z potential, with values of 10 mV for TiO2 and 27 mV for S-TiO2. Finally, better results were obtained in the mechanical properties of the silanized particles, with an improvement of around 28% in low percentages, rising the percentage by increasing S-TiO2. Resumen. Este trabajo está enfocado en obtener películas compuestas basadas en el biopopolímero quitosan y en TiO2 modificado superficialmente mediante un método de silanización, utilizando (3-aminopropil) trimetoxisilano (APTMS). Este método ayudó a resolver problemas particulares del dióxido de titanio, como lo son la formación de aglomerados, ya que las películas modificadas tienen una mejor dispersión. La inclusión de partículas en las películas de biopolímeros ayudó a mejorar las propiedades de color, obteniendo resultados de luminiscencia hasta en un 20% mayor que las partículas no modificadas, lo cual es indicador de una mejor dispersión de partículas. También se tuvieron mejoras en la repulsión electrostática, estudiada como potencial Z, con valores desde 10 mV para TiO2 a 27 mV para S-TiO2. Finalmente, también se tuvieron mejores resultados en las propiedades mecánicas de las partículas silanizadas, con una mejora de alrededor del 28% a bajos porcentajes, incrementando valores al aumentar el porcentaje de S-TiO2.
Leveraging Rule-Based Machine Translation Knowledge for Under-Resourced Neural Machine Translation Models

This publication has emanated from research supported in part by a research grant from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) under Grant Number SFI/12/RC/2289, co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund, and the Enterprise Ireland (EI) Innovation Partnership Programme under grant agreement No IP20180729, NURS – Neural Machine Translation for Under-Resourced Scenarios
Coherent multi-dimensional segmentation of multiview images using a variational framework and applications to image based rendering

Image Based Rendering (IBR) and in particular light field rendering has attracted a lot of attention for interpolating new viewpoints from a set of multiview images. New images of a scene are interpolated directly from nearby available ones, thus enabling a photorealistic rendering. Sampling theory for light fields has shown that exact geometric information in the scene is often unnecessary for rendering new views. Indeed, the band of the function is approximately limited and new views can be rendered using classical interpolation methods. However, IBR using undersampled light fields suffers from aliasing effects and is difficult particularly when the scene has large depth variations and occlusions. In order to deal with these cases, we study two approaches: New sampling schemes have recently emerged that are able to perfectly reconstruct certain classes of parametric signals that are not bandlimited but characterized by a finite number of parameters. In this context, we derive novel sampling schemes for piecewise sinusoidal and polynomial signals. In particular, we show that a piecewise sinusoidal signal with arbitrarily high frequencies can be exactly recovered given certain conditions. These results are applied to parametric multiview data that are not bandlimited. We also focus on the problem of extracting regions (or layers) in multiview images that can be individually rendered free of aliasing. The problem is posed in a multidimensional variational framework using region competition. In extension to previous methods, layers are considered as multi-dimensional hypervolumes. Therefore the segmentation is done jointly over all the images and coherence is imposed throughout the data. However, instead of propagating active hypersurfaces, we derive a semi-parametric methodology that takes into account the constraints imposed by the camera setup and the occlusion ordering. The resulting framework is a global multi-dimensional region compe-
Marker compounds contents of Salvia miltiorrhiza Radix depending on the cultivation regions

Salvia miltiorrhiza Radix is cultivated in Korea and China and is traditionally used to treat cardiovascular diseases. In this study, we developed and validated a quantitative analysis method for S. miltiorrhiza Radix using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Identification was performed using ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. For quantitative analysis, we used seven marker compounds. Separation conditions for HPLC were optimized using an ODS column with gradient conditions of 1% formic acid in distilled water and 1% formic acid in acetonitrile, with a flow rate of 0.8 mL/min and a detection wavelength of 280 nm. This method showed good linearity (R=0.9998), precision (relative standard deviation ≤3.3%), accuracy (recovery of 94.16-102.89%), limit of detection (7.53 μg/mL), and limit of quantification (23.71 μg/mL). This approach successfully quantified marker compounds in S. miltiorrhiza Radix. The individual marker compounds were identified by comparing the molecular masses and retention times with does standard compounds. Marker compound contents of S. miltiorrhiza Radix were investigated with different cultivation regions. Seven marker compounds were detected and quantified in all samples. Among them, salvianolic acid B showed the highest contents and it ranged from 4.13 to 7.15%. The salvianolic acid B content (7.15%) of marker compound was the highest in Bonghwa, and the tanshinone IIA content (1.90%) was the highest in Pohang. The results of marker compounds and developed method were intended to provide a favorable reference for the study of S. miltiorrhiza Radix from different regions of Korea.
Adaptive control of robot manipulators based on passivity

A new adaptation algorithm is presented for adaptive control of robot manipulators. The passivity property of the proposed algorithm is first established, then the stability is proved based on the passivity properties of the plant and those of the proposed algorithm. Because of the use of the past information and averaging effect, this algorithm gives a smoother tracking and parameter error in the presence of disturbances, and a parameter convergence under a weaker excitation condition. Computer simulations are presented to illustrate this effect. <<ETX>>
Validation of wearable activity monitors for real-time cadence

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to establish evidence of validity for wearable activity monitors providing real-time cadence against a criterion measure. Thirty-six healthy adults, aged 18–65 years, participated in the study. Four activity monitors including 2 watch-based monitors and 2 cadence sensors attaching to shoelaces were tested. Each participant completed the study protocol consisting of 2 distinct components: (1) treadmill protocol and (2) overground protocol. Lin’s concordance correlation and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) were calculated for the comparisons between the criterion and measures of the monitors. Bland–Altman analysis was performed to determine the mean bias and 95% limits of agreement. All activity monitors showed high correlations with the criterion measures (p < .01). Lower correlations were observed at slow walking speeds in the watch-based monitors. In contrast, consistent and strong correlations were found with both cadence sensors regardless of walking speeds (p < .01). Similar patterns were observed in the MAPE scores. Greater than 90% of the participants were able to maintain prescribed walking intensity using real-time cadence. The results suggest that the wearable activity monitors are an acceptable measure of real-time cadence and provide the potential to improve intensity-based prescription of physical activity using the monitors.
ZIF-8 as a Catalyst in Ethylene Oxide and Propylene Oxide Reaction with CO2 to Cyclic Organic Carbonates

CO2 is an important by-product in epoxides synthesis, accounting for 0.02% of worldwide greenhouse emissions. The CO2 cycloaddition to ethylene and propylene oxides is an important class of reactions due to the versatile nature of the corresponding organic carbonates as chemical feedstocks. We report that these reactions can be catalyzed by ZIF-8 (Zeolitic Imidazole Framework-8) in the absence of solvent or co-catalyst and in mild conditions (40 °C and 750 mbar). In situ infrared spectroscopy places the onset time for ethylene and propylene carbonate formation to 80 and 30 min, respectively. Although there is low catalytic activity, these findings suggest the possibility to cut the CO2 emissions from epoxides production through their direct conversion to these highly valuable chemical intermediates, eliminating de facto energetically demanding steps as the CO2 capture and storage.
Students’ Alternative Conceptions Associated With Application of Redox Reactions in Everyday Life

The study explored chemistry students’ alternative conceptions associated with application of the processes of oxidation and reduction in real life context. As part of a design-based research approach, a case-study design was followed. Purposive and convenient sampling procedures were employed to select 213 senior high school students to respond to a diagnostic test. Data obtained were analysed using item difficult index, percentages, and themes. The results showed that alternative conceptions existed as preconceived notions, conceptual misunderstanding, and factual misconceptions. It is recommended that chemistry educators should select most appropriate instructional strategies to unearth and address alternative conceptions students may bring to the classroom.
Study-work-life balance of international students in the context of temporal boundaries

The goal of this qualitative study was to examine the experience of study-work-life balance among international students who were separated from their family both geographically and temporally. Using 10 semi-structured interviews with postgraduate students and thematic analysis, several themes were identified. These included boundary management shifts due to study/work demands and time zone differences. In addition, students reported social and personal challenges (in terms of family’s expectations, relationships maintenance, socialization in host country). Temporal boundaries contributed to social withdrawal and isolation among students, many of which were heavily reliant on their own family network for support. The findings strengthen the argument that time difference impacts the boundary management and social experience of international students.
A Thermodynamic Study of Rice Husk (Oryza Sativa) Pyrolysis

Rice (Oryza sativa) is one of the major agricultural products of tropical West Africa in general and Nigeria in particular. In this study ASPEN plus V8.8 was used to develop a thermodynamic model for the pyrolysis of rice husk. The model was validated and found to be accurate especially on the domain of oil and gas yields. It was used to study the effect of temperature on the product yield and oil composition. The fluid products increase with temperature and an optimum of 60% can be obtained from rice husk. The optimum oil yield was 44.2% obtained at 400°C. The synthesis gas was composed basically of hydrogen gas, methane and traces of higher hydrocarbons, the char consisted of carbon and silicon oxide ash while the oil was made-up of acidic organic compounds, aldehydes, pyrolytic water and others. At 600°C, the predictions revealed an oil composition of 84.7% acids, 7.9% pyrolytic water, 7.42% aldehyde and traces of alcohol and other compounds. The results from the thermodynamic predictions showed that rice husk is an excellent feedstock for the biofuels production via the thermo-chemical energy conversion route. The study has provided a useful framework for proper comparisons of the energy potential between different biomass feedstock.