Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
As the net churns: Fast-flux botnet observations

While botnets themselves provide a rich platform for financial gain for the botnet master, the use of the infected hosts as webservers can provide an additional botnet use. Botnet herders often use fast-flux DNS techniques to host unwanted or illegal content within a botnet. These techniques change the mapping of the domain name to different bots within the botnet with constant shifting, while the bots simply relay content back to a central server. This can give the attackers additional stepping stones to thwart takedown and can obscure their true origins. Evidence suggests that more attackers are adopting fast-flux techniques, but very little data has been gathered to discover what these botnets are being used for. To address this gap in understanding, we have been mining live traffic to discover new fast-flux domains and then tracking those botnets with active measurements for several months. We identified over 900 fast-flux domain names from early to mid 2008 and monitored their use across the Internet to discern fast-flux botnet behaviors. We found that the active lifetimes of fast-flux botnets vary from less than one day to months, domains that are used in fast-flux operations are often registered but dormant for months prior to activation, that these botnets are associated with a broad range of online fraud and crime activities, and that we can identify distinct botnets across multiple domain names. We support our findings through an in-depth examination of an Internet-scale data continuously collected for hundreds of domain names over several months.
Deletion of the ectodomain unleashes the transforming, invasive, and tumorigenic potential of the MET oncogene

The c‐MET proto‐oncogene, encoding the p190 hepatocyte growth factor tyrosine kinase receptor, can acquire oncogenic potential by multiple mechanisms, such as gene rearrangement, amplification and overexpression, point mutation, and ectopic expression, all resulting in its constitutive activation. Hepatocyte growth factor receptor truncated forms are generated by post‐translational cleavage: p140 and p130 lack the kinase domain and are inactive. Their C‐terminal remnant fragments are generally undetectable in normal cells, but a membrane‐associated truncated form is recognized by anti‐C‐terminus antibodies in some human tumors, suggesting that a hepatocyte growth factor receptor lacking the ectodomain, but retaining the transmembrane and intracellular domains (Met‐EC−), could acquire oncogenic properties. Herein we show that NIH‐3T3 cells transduced with MET‐EC− expressed a membrane‐associated constitutively tyrosine‐phosphorylated 60‐kDa protein and, similarly to NIH‐3T3 cells expressing the cytosolic oncoprotein Tpr‐Met, showed activated extracellular regulated kinase 1/2 mitogen‐activated protein kinase and Akt downstream transducers. Compared to control NIH‐3T3 cells, NIH‐3T3‐Met‐EC− cells grew faster and showed anchorage‐independent growth and invasive properties in all aspects similar to cells expressing the transforming TPR‐MET. Nude female mice injected subcutaneously with NIH‐3T3‐Met‐EC− cells developed visible tumors, displaying the typical morphology of carcinomas with polygonal cells, in contrast to sarcomas with spindle‐shaped cells induced by the injection of NIH‐3T3‐Tpr‐Met cells. It is suggested that the different subcellular localization of the oncoproteins, more than differences in signal transduction, could be responsible for the tumor phenotype. All together, these data show that deletion of the ectodomain activates the hepatocyte growth factor receptor and its downstream signaling pathways, unleashing its transforming, invasive, and tumorigenic potential. (Cancer Sci 2009; 100: 633–638)
One reporter for in-cell activity profiling of majority of protein kinase oncogenes

In-cell profiling enables the evaluation of receptor tyrosine activity in a complex environment of regulatory networks that affect signal initiation, propagation and feedback. We used FGF-receptor signaling to identify EGR1 as a locus that strongly responds to the activation of a majority of the recognized protein kinase oncogenes, including 30 receptor tyrosine kinases and 154 of their disease-associated mutants. The EGR1 promoter was engineered to enhance trans-activation capacity and optimized for simple screening assays with luciferase or fluorescent reporters. The efficacy of the developed, fully synthetic reporters was demonstrated by the identification of novel targets for two clinically used tyrosine kinase inhibitors, nilotinib and osimertinib. A universal reporter system for in-cell protein kinase profiling will facilitate repurposing of existing anti-cancer drugs and identification of novel inhibitors in high-throughput screening studies. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.21536. 001
Proceedings of the workshop on "The Rise and Rise of the Declarative Datacentre"

Various hardware and software technologies are transforming datacentre management into a programming problem. Network booting and virtualization allow dynamic allocation of hardware resources. Virtual machine mobility helps to optimize hardware utilization, to support maintenance, and to minimize power consumption. Virtual networking isolates mutually distrustful workloads, and allows test to proceed concurrently with production. These technologies reduce the need for human intervention – indeed, virtual machines can even be rented by the hour over the web, eliminating physical configuration altogether. These hardware and software trends support the abstraction that a datacentre (or even a collection of datacentres) is a single programmable computer, made up of many individual servers managed in software. Going by different names – compute fabric, grid, utility computing, autonomous computing, dynamic systems, cloud – this abstraction has arisen in different research communities, albeit with varying emphases. To help identify discussion topics at the workshop we invited participants to contribute short (unrefereed) position papers about their insights into the problems of managing this kind of system. This elicited an exciting response from a wide range of disciplines – covering, amongst other topics, practical experiences working with today’s datacentres, foundational aspects of security and service design, technology trends, and performance modelling.
Comparing Cost-Utility Estimates: Does the Choice of EQ-5D or SF-6D Matter?

Background:A number of different measures can be used within cost-utility analyses, we compared results according to both the EQ-5D and SF-6D. Methods:A randomized trial was conducted to compare 4 options for people with knee pain. Over the 2 year trial period, the change in cost to health-service was estimated, and both the EQ-5D and SF-6D were used to estimate the change in quality-adjusted life years (QALYs). Using a complete case analysis, the cost-utility (incremental cost-effectiveness ratio [ICER]) of each option, according to both the EQ-5D and SF-6D, was calculated and assessed in relation to the cost-effectiveness threshold of £20,000 per QALY. Results:Of the 389 participants, 247 had complete cost, EQ-5D and SF-6D data. According to the EQ-5D, option 1 had an estimated ICER of £10,815 (compared with option 4), option 2 was dominated by option 1, and option 3 was subject to extended dominance. Conversely, according to the SF-6D, option 3 had an ICER of £9999 (compared with option 4), option 2 had an ICER of £36,883 (compared with option 3), and option 1 was subject to extended dominance. Conclusion:The EQ-5D and SF-6D estimated that different options (1 and 3, respectively) were cost-effective at the £20,000 per QALY threshold, demonstrating that the choice of measure does matter.
Modular Multilevel Converter with tuned filter: Operational possibility and simple control

The Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) is an emerging topology which is being used over a range of applications. There are a number of attractive features of the converter compared to other converter topologies currently available. But, the charge balance in the floating capacitor is achieved at fundamental frequency. This is a challenge if the converter is to be used in low frequency application or DC to DC conversion. To overcome this problem, injection of a high frequency common mode voltage has been studied. These methods result in high circulating currents which increase losses in the switches. An alternative method based on the principle of orthogonal power flow theory has also been proposed. This paper gives operational possibility and simple control of such a converter.
Adding tuples to Java: a study in lightweight data structures

Java classes are very flexible, but this comes at a price. The main cost is that every class instance must be dynamically allocated. Also, their access by reference introduces pointer de‐references and complicates program analysis. These costs are particularly burdensome for small, ubiquitous data structures such as coordinates and state vectors. For such data structures a lightweight representation is desirable, allowing such data to be handled directly, similar to primitive types. A number of proposals introduce restricted or mutated variants of standard Java classes that could serve as lightweight representation, but the impact of these proposals has never been studied. Since we have implemented a Java compiler with lightweight data structures we are in a good position to do this evaluation. Our lightweight data structures are tuples. As we will show, using tuples can result in significant performance gains: for a number of existing benchmark programs we gain more than 50% in performance relative to our own compiler, and more than 20% relative to Sun's Hotspot 1.4 compiler. We expect similar performance gains for other implementations of lightweight data structures. With respect to the expressiveness of Java, lightweight variants of standard Java classes have little impact. In contrast, tuples add a different language construct that, as we will show, can lead to substantially more concise program code. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Termination Problem of the APO Algorithm

Asynchronous Partial Overlay (APO) is a search algorithm that uses cooperative mediation to solve Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problems (DisCSPs). The algorithm partitions the search into diﬀerent subproblems of the DisCSP. The proof of completeness of the APO algorithm is based on the growth of the size of the subproblems. The present paper presents an example DisCSP and a detailed run of APO on the example. In the resulting scenario, the run of the algorithm enters an inﬁnite loop. The presented example and scenario contradict the termination and consequently the completeness of the APO algo-rithm. A correction to the problem that prevents the inﬁnite loop in our example is proposed. A reference to the problematic part in the proof of APO’s completeness is also given.
The impact of Tween 20 on repeatability of amyloid β and tau measurements in cerebrospinal fluid

*Corresponding author: Jamie Toombs, Institute of Neurology, Department of Molecular Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK, Phone: + 44 20 34483553, E-mail: j.toombs@ucl.ac. uk Ross W. Paterson and Jonathan M. Schott: Institute of Neurology, Department of Neurodegeneration, Dementia Research Centre, London, UK Jennifer M. Nicholas: Department of Medical Statistics, London; and School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK. http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6023-0391 Axel Petzold: Institute of Neurology, Department of Molecular Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK Henrik Zetterberg: Institute of Neurology, Department of Molecular Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK; Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry, The Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden Letter to the Editor
Code generation from specifications in higher-order logic

Code generation denotes the translation of an abstract formal specification into a corresponding executable program. The aim of this thesis is to present a code generator framework for the interactive proof assistant Isabelle/HOL, an implementation of higher-order logic. It comes with two substantial novelties: a general but lightweight concept for datatype abstraction and support for Isabelle type classes in the manner of Haskell type classes. Code can be generated for functional programming languages supporting pattern matching, concrete instances for SML, OCaml and Haskell are presented.
Condition Monitoring of Hydroelectric Power Plants

Much research can be found on condition monitoring for many industries. There are, however, very little research on the use of condition monitoring in hydroelectric power plants. A literature search investigates this field, and it is found that support vector machines and neural networks have been successfully used for condition monitoring of known failure modes. Most of the existing research involves methods that require both normal and abnormal data, and need abnormal data for all failure modes that one want to monitor. As most hydroelectric power plants are operating normally for the majority of their lifetime, it is not trivial to sample data from all known failure modes. Anomaly detection is presented as it enables the detection of anomalies in the process data with only normal process data available. Three different methods for anomaly detection are presented, support vector machines, kernel density estimation and long short term neural networks. In addition, different techniques for feature and dimensionality reduction are presented. A data set containing data from 27 power plants is analyzed, and a reported incident with operational problems for the needles of a Pelton turbine is extracted for analysis. Data from two different plants and three different turbines are included in the analysis to investigate cross plant performance. An artificial error replicating the operational problems for the reported incident is created to verify how early the anomaly detection techniques can detect system degradation. In addition, two Pelton turbine start failures are included in the analysis to verify that the methods correctly detect abnormal system data. All three methods are shown able to detect the operational problems for the Pelton
Influence of soil–water content on CO2 efflux within the elevation transect heavily impacted by erosion

This study focused on the effects of organic carbon contents and soil hydraulic conditions on CO2 efflux. Samples were collected at 5 positions (summit, shoulder, backslope, footslope, and toeslope) of the elevation transect affected by erosion and the parent material (loess). Initially, air‐dried soil samples were placed on top of a clay tank, and the samples were wetted by capillary rise to soil saturation, and soil CO2 efflux was measured. Numerical inversions of the measured cumulative capillary rise and evaporation data using the HYDRUS‐1D program were applied to simulate the water regime in the columns and estimate the soil hydraulic parameters. In all cases, the net CO2 efflux (NCER) rapidly increased at the beginning of the wetting. NCER decreased with increasing soil–water content (summit, shoulder, backslope, and loess) or remained relatively stable (footslope and toeslope). The average soil–water content values at the maximal values of NCER (maxNCER) for the summit, shoulder, and footslope were similar. Lower average soil–water contents at maxNCER were simulated for the backslope, toeslope, and loess, which were attributed to the high contents of loess substrate in topsoil samples. The maxNCER measured on topsoils were closely related to the organic carbon contents (R = 0.94) and the maxNCER obtained on all samples correlated with the parameters αRES (R = 0.856) and nRES (R = −0.876) of the soil–water retention curves and saturated hydraulic conductivity (R = 0.856).
Chronic Administration of Benzo(a)pyrene Induces Memory Impairment and Anxiety-Like Behavior and Increases of NR2B DNA Methylation

Background Recently, an increasing number of human and animal studies have reported that exposure to benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) induces neurological abnormalities and is also associated with adverse effects, such as tumor formation, immunosuppression, teratogenicity, and hormonal disorders. However, the exact mechanisms underlying BaP-induced impairment of neurological function remain unclear. The aim of this study was to examine the regulating mechanisms underlying the impact of chronic BaP exposure on neurobehavioral performance. Methods C57BL mice received either BaP in different doses (1.0, 2.5, 6.25 mg/kg) or olive oil twice a week for 90 days. Memory and emotional behaviors were evaluated using Y-maze and open-field tests, respectively. Furthermore, levels of mRNA expression were measured by using qPCR, and DNA methylation of NMDA receptor 2B subunit (NR2B) was examined using bisulfate pyrosequencing in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. Results Compared to controls, mice that received BaP (2.5, 6.25 mg/kg) showed deficits in short-term memory and an anxiety-like behavior. These behavioral alterations were associated with a down-regulation of the NR2B gene and a concomitant increase in the level of DNA methylation in the NR2B promoter in the two brain regions. Conclusions Chronic BaP exposure induces an increase in DNA methylation in the NR2B gene promoter and down-regulates NR2B expression, which may contribute to its neurotoxic effects on behavioral performance. The results suggest that NR2B vulnerability represents a target for environmental toxicants in the brain.
Afterpotentials and Triggered Activity in Hypertrophied Myocardium from Rats with Renal Hypertension

We have found that afterpotentials can be induced selectively in hypertrophied myocardium from rats with renal hypertension. Three kinds of afterpotentials were recorded by standard microelectrode techniques: early afterdepolarizations, delayed afterdepolarizations, and early after- hyperpolarizations. The first two kinds of afterpotentials could give rise to triggered spontaneous activity, whereas the last kind did not. Delayed afterdepolarizations were induced in hypertrophied fibers exposed to Tyrode's solution containing high extracellular calcium ([Ca2+]o = 7.2–12 mM) and early afterdepolarizations occurred in hypertrophied fibers exposed to Tyrode's solution containing tetraethylammonium (TEA = 10–30 mM). Neither of these treatments produced afterpotentials in normal myocardium. We found that delayed afterdepolarizations became larger when the stimulation frequency, number of preceding driven beats, or [Ca*+]o was increased. The coupling interval from the upstroke of the last driven action potential to the peak of the delayed afterdepolarization decreased when the stimulation frequency or number of preceding driven beats increased. Hypertrophied fibers treated with high [Ca2+]o that gave rise to triggered activity showed a characteristic relationship between delayed afterpotential magnitude and drive cycle length. In hypertrophied muscles treated with TEA, triggered activity developed from an early afterdepolarizations but terminated with a delayed afterdepolarization. The occurrence of afterpotentials in hypertrophied, but not in normal myocardium, appears to reflect the development of an important electrophysiological alteration that may predispose hypertrophied fibers to develop arrhythmias.
Chosen-Ciphertext Security via Correlated Products

We initiate the study of one-wayness under correlated products . We are interested in identifying necessary and sufficient conditions for a function f and a distribution on inputs (x 1 , ., x k ), so that the function (f (x 1 ), . , f (x k )) is one-way. The main motivation of this study is the construction of public-key encryption schemes that are secure against chosen-ciphertext attacks (CCA). We show that any collection of injective trapdoor functions that is secure under a very natural correlated product can be used to construct a CCA-secure encryption scheme. The construction is simple, black-box, and admits a direct proof of security. We provide evidence that security under correlated products is achievable by demonstrating that lossy trapdoor functions (Peikert and Waters, STOC '08) yield injective trapdoor functions that are secure under the above mentioned correlated product. Although we currently base security under correlated products on existing constructions of lossy trapdoor functions, we argue that the former notion is potentially weaker as a general assumption. Specifically, there is no fully-black-box construction of lossy trapdoor functions from trapdoor functions that are secure under correlated products.
IRCI free range reconstruction for co-located MIMO-OFDM radar

A MIMO-OFDM range reconstruction method based on cyclic prefix (CP) and its corresponding MIMO-OFDM waveform design for co-located MIMO radar systems are proposed. Our proposed MIMO-OFDM waveform design achieves the maximum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain after the range reconstruction and its peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) in the discrete time domain is also optimal, i.e., 0dB, when Zadoff-Chu sequences are used in the discrete frequency domain as the weighting coefficients for the subcarriers. Finally, simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Weeds in wheat - response to fallow frequency, legume green manure, and wheat class

Producers in the semiarid Mixed Grassland ecoregion have traditionally produced spring wheat in fallow-based rotations; however, frequent use of fallow negatively impacts on soil quality. An ongoing experiment was established at Swift Current in 1987 to evaluate management methods and wheat types that may offer wheat producers opportunities to enhance economic returns, while improving environmental sustainability (Zentner et al. 2003). This paper compares the effect of these strategies on weed populations from 1991 to 2002 (12 years).
Sum-Rate Maximization for Multiuser MIMO Wireless Powered Communication Networks

This paper investigates multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) wireless powered communication networks where a multiantenna hybrid access point (H-AP) transfers wireless energy to multiantenna users in a downlink phase, and the users utilize the harvested energy for their information transmission to the H-AP in an uplink phase. By employing space-division multiple-access techniques, we propose an optimal algorithm that jointly computes the downlink energy precoding matrices, the uplink information precoding matrices, and time allocation between the downlink and the uplink phases for maximizing the uplink sum-rate performance. To this end, we first obtain the optimal energy and information transmit covariance matrices with given time allocation. Then, the optimal time allocation can be efficiently identified by a simple line search method. Simulation results verify that the proposed joint optimal algorithm significantly improves the average sum-rate performance, compared with a conventional scheme that determines time allocation and precoding matrices separately.