Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Synchronization criteria of complex dynamical networks with impulsive effects

In this paper, we first formulate a complex dynamical network model with impulsive effects. Some criteria on impulsive synchronization for the complex dynamical networks are obtained by employing the stability theory of impulsive dynamical systems. The results show that the synchronization properties of the networks may be handled by impulsive effects even when the corresponding non-impulsive networks are non-synchronous. Example and simulation are given to verify the effectiveness of the results.
A robust quantization method using a robust Chinese remainder theorem for secret key generation

Traditional channel quantization based methods for encryption key generation usually suffer from the quantization error which may decrease the key agreement ratio between authorized users. In this paper, we make use of the reciprocity of the wireless channel in time-division duplex (TDD) mode, and adopt a closed-form robust Chinese remainder theorem (CRT) to extract the encryption key from the noisy channel estimations. The channel coefficients are regarded as the remainders in robust CRT, and the key is generated from the quotient output of the robust CRT. In addition, a remainder selection procedure is proposed to further improve its performance. Simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Persistent Brain Network Homology From the Perspective of Dendrogram

The brain network is usually constructed by estimating the connectivity matrix and thresholding it at an arbitrary level. The problem with this standard method is that we do not have any generally accepted criteria for determining a proper threshold. Thus, we propose a novel multiscale framework that models all brain networks generated over every possible threshold. Our approach is based on persistent homology and its various representations such as the Rips filtration, barcodes, and dendrograms. This new persistent homological framework enables us to quantify various persistent topological features at different scales in a coherent manner. The barcode is used to quantify and visualize the evolutionary changes of topological features such as the Betti numbers over different scales. By incorporating additional geometric information to the barcode, we obtain a single linkage dendrogram that shows the overall evolution of the network. The difference between the two networks is then measured by the Gromov-Hausdorff distance over the dendrograms. As an illustration, we modeled and differentiated the FDG-PET based functional brain networks of 24 attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder children, 26 autism spectrum disorder children, and 11 pediatric control subjects.
The ultraviolet visibility and quantitative morphology of galactic disks at low and high redshift

We have used ultraviolet (200 nm) images of the local spiral galaxies M33, M51, M81, M100, M101 to compute morphological parameters of galactic disks at this wavelength: half-light radius r hl , surface brightness distributions, asymmetries $(A)$ and concentrations ( C A ). The visibility and the evolution of the morphological parameters are studied as a function of the redshift. The main results are: local spiral galaxies would be hardly observed and classified if projected at high redshifts ($z \ge 1$) unless a strong luminosity evolution is assumed. Consequently, the non-detection of large galactic disks cannot be used without caution as a constraint on the evolution of galatic disks. Spiral galaxies observed in ultraviolet appear more irregular since the contribution from the young stellar population becomes predominent. When these galaxies are put in a (log A vs. log C A ) diagram, they move to the irregular sector defined at visible wavelengths. Moreover, the log A parameter is degenerate and cannot be used for an efficient classification of morphological ultraviolet types. The analysis of high redshift galaxies cannot be carried out in a reliable way so far and a multi-wavelength approach is required if one does not want to misinterpret the data.
A security framework for cognitive radio IP based cooperative protocols

This paper describes a new security framework that will leverage the security in cognitive radio cooperative protocols. The architecture uses the 802.1X access control mechanism and is supported by a Key Distribution Center (KDC) built upon an 802.1X Authentication Server. The KDC is used, together with a new terminal identification policy and modified DHCP servers, to provide proper resource allocation and message authentication in DHCP transactions. The KDC is also used to authenticate mappings between layer 2 and 3 addresses (ARP protocol) and to distribute session keys to neighbor cognitive radio terminals, allowing them to set up other peer-to-peer secure interactions using such session keys.
Distributed virtual machine placement based on dependability in data centers

One of primary and challenging difficulties in placing virtual machine (VM) onto physical machines in a cloud data center, is to balance the interests of both cloud service providers (CSPs) and cloud tenants, which are often expressed as minimizing the number of power-on servers and improving user experience respectively. However, the current research on VMP try to gathering the requested VMs on the fewest possible activated PMs for the purpose of reducing the number of power-on physical machines, without taking the experience of cloud tenants in to account. In this study, we define and formulate the VMP problem in cloud data center, and design a VMP strategy named Dependability based Distributed Virtual Machine Placement algorithm (D2VMP), with the placement goals of energy efficiency and dependability. To maintain the dependability of user requests D2VMP limits the number of virtual machines from the same request assigned on each physical machine. Furthermore, to ensure minimize the number of power-on physical machines, we propose to divide the data center into several clusters, and thus, different requests can reuse activated clusters. The experimental results demonstrate that proposed algorithm can effectively lower the power-on devices and maintain service-dependability.
Analysis of Self-Reported Walking for Transit in a Sprawling Urban Metropolitan Area in the Western U.S.

Walkability is associated with increased levels of physical activity and improved health and sustainability. The sprawling design of many metropolitan areas of the western U.S., such as Las Vegas, influences their walkability. The purpose of this study was to consider sprawl characteristics along with well-known correlates of walkability to determine what factors influence self-reported minutes of active transportation. Residents from four neighborhoods in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Area, targeted for their high and low walkability scores, were surveyed for their perceptions of street-connectivity, residential-density, land-use mix, and retail–floor-area ratio and sprawl characteristics including distance between crosswalks, single-entry-communities, high-speed streets, shade, and access to transit. A Poisson model provided the best estimates for minutes of active transportation and explained 11.28% of the variance. The model that included sprawl characteristics resulted in a better estimate of minutes of active transportation compared to the model without them. The results indicate that increasing walkability in urban areas such as Las Vegas requires an explicit consideration of its sprawl characteristics. Not taking such design characteristics into account may result in the underestimation of the influence of sprawl on active transportation and may result in a missed opportunity to increase walking. Understanding the correlates of walkability at the local level is important in successfully promoting walking as a means to increase active transportation and improve community health and sustainability.
Influences of Earthquake Characteristics on Seismic Performance of Anchored Sheet Pile Quay with Barrette Piles

ABSTRACT Chen, F.M. ; Tan, H.M. ; Chen, J., and Jiao, Z.B. , 2018. Influences of Earthquake Characteristics on Seismic Performance of Anchored Sheet Pile Quay with Barrette Piles. In: Shim, J.-S. ; Chun, I. , and Lim, H.S. (eds.), Proceedings from the International Coastal Symposium (ICS) 2018 (Busan, Republic of Korea). Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 85, pp. 701–705. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Earthquake waves generated along crustal faults propagate through the bedrock and the local site deposits, impacting on any structure such as coastal structures. Seismic waves acting on the foundation of a sheet pile quay cause an oscillatory motion of the quay structure, and the seismic dynamic effect and soil liquefaction can significantly affect the safety of port structures. This paper reports the dynamic behaviour of a new sheet pile quay structure under seismic loads by using finite element method, and the new anchored sheet pile quay with barrette piles is developed to satisfy the requirements of higher elevation of retained soils and smaller wall deflection in practice. Both EL-Centro wave and Kobe wave are adopted in simulation to analyze the effect of earthquake characteristics on seismic performances of structure. The numerical calculation results show that the barrette piles are still effective to carry lateral earth pressure under the earthquake loads, and the maximum bending moment of structure does not occur when earthquake acceleration reaches the peak value. With the increase of earthquake peak acceleration value, the dynamic responses of structure are all increased at different degrees, and the amplification of barrette pile bending moment is the largest. The amplification coefficients of structure response under the Kobe wave loads are greater than those under the EL-Centro wave with the same PGA value, which indicates besides the peak value of earthquake wave, the responses of structure were also affected by other earthquake characteristics, such as spectrum, wave energy density and wave total energy.
Method and algorithm of automatic color rendition quality assessment of digital aerial and space photos

Today the photographic quality assessment of aerial and space images is made visually, with a big deal of subjectivity. The main problems are the lack of parameters characterizing the photographic quality of images and the lack of methods for determining these parameters. The correctness of color rendition is one of the most important indicators of the photographic aerial and space images’ quality. Research problems included the developing methods for determining the color imbalance of digital images; developing the assessment criterion of color imbalance and a method of its calculation; as well as the experimental verification of the suggested method by correcting the color balance of an image. The article describes the algorithm for automatic color imbalance detection of a digital image that enables searching pixels as parts of gray field areas of an image; the value of a color imbalance is estimated by selected gray pixels. One of the most important indicators of the photographic quality of aerial and space images was determined, it is the color imbalance expressed numerically. The method of automatic assessment of color rendition correctness is offered, the criterion of estimation of color imbalance of the photographic image and a method of its calculation is specified, results of the experimental check of the offered method of assessment of color rendition correctness are given.
Tests of EEG localization accuracy using implanted sources in the human brain

The accuracy with which electrical sources in the brain can be localized by using electroencephalograms measured on the scalp is not well known. In this study, tests of localization accuracy were performed by using implanted dipolar sources in the human brain. These dipoles are created by passing a weak (subthreshold) current through intracerebral electrodes implanted in the brains of epileptic patients for seizure monitoring. The locations of these dipoles are accurately known from roentgenographs. First, 16 electroencephalograms produced by these dipoles were recorded, then inverse solutions were calculated for the apparent sources of these electroencephalograms. Finally, the locations of the apparent sources were compared with the known locations of the implanted dipoles to determine localization error. The average localization error for a total of 28 dipoles in 3 subjects was 1.1 cm. These results indicate that good localization accuracy for focal sources in the brain can be provided by scalp electroencephalograms.
A modified optical flow based method for registration of 4D CT data of hepatocellular carcinoma patients

This paper expanded two-dimensional optical flow registration method to three-dimensional optical flow method (3D-OFM) to deform the four-dimensional computed tomography (4D CT) images. 4D CT can investigate the effect of breathing motion to the liver tumors and track the “trajectory” of the tumors. This algorithm was applied to the fully automated registration of 4D CT data for hepatocellular carcinoma patients. According to the respiratory phase, 4D CT data was segmented into 10-series CT images which were named CT0, CT10.CT90, and CT0 is at end inspiration and CT50 is at end expiration. In particular, The iodipin was used to help define the gross target volume of HCC to improve the image contrast. In addition, The iodipin also used to improve the registration method and verify the performance of registration method as the markers. We chose the end-exhale CT as the reference image. To verify the registration performance of this method, we qualitatively compared the subtractions of floating images and reference image and the iodipin deposition regions before and after registered, and we quantificationally computed the multi-information between floating images and reference image of 8 patients. The improving proportion of multi-information between end-exhale CT and in-exhale CT is from 1.71% to 4.17%.
Multivariate Time-Series Classification Using the Hidden-Unit Logistic Model

We present a new model for multivariate time-series classification, called the hidden-unit logistic model (HULM), that uses binary stochastic hidden units to model latent structure in the data. The hidden units are connected in a chain structure that models temporal dependencies in the data. Compared with the prior models for time-series classification such as the hidden conditional random field, our model can model very complex decision boundaries, because the number of latent states grows exponentially with the number of hidden units. We demonstrate the strong performance of our model in experiments on a variety of (computer vision) tasks, including handwritten character recognition, speech recognition, facial expression, and action recognition. We also present a state-of-the-art system for facial action unit detection based on the HULM.
Security analysis of IoT protocols: A focus in CoAP

Internet of things (IoT) or Web of Things (WoT) is a wireless network between smart products or smart things connected to the internet. It is a new and fast developing market which not only connects objects and people but also billions of gadgets and smart devices. With the rapid growth of IoT, there is also a steady increase in security vulnerabilities of the linked objects. For example, a car manufacturer may want to link the systems within a car to smart home network networks to increase sales, but if all the various people involved do not embrace security the system will be exposed to security risks. As a result, there are several new published protocols of IoT, which focus on protecting critical data. However, these protocols face challenges and in this paper, numerous solutions are provided to overcome these problems. The widely used protocols such as, 802.15. 4, 6LoWPAN, and RPL are the resenting of the IoT layers PHY/MAC, Adoption and Network. While CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol) is the application layer protocol designed as replication of the HTTP to serve the small devices coming under class 1 and 2. Many implementations of CoAP has been accomplished which indicates it's crucial amd upcoming role in the future of IoT applications. This research article explored the security of CoAP over DTLS incurring many issues and proposed solutions as well as open challenges for future research.
Camera localization for augmented reality and indoor positioning: a vision-based 3D feature database approach

ABSTRACT The recent fast development in computer vision and mobile sensor technology such as mobile LiDAR and RGB-D cameras is pushing the boundary of the technology to suit the need of real-life applications in the fields of Augmented Reality (AR), robotics, indoor GIS and self-driving. Camera localization is often a key and enabling technology among these applications. In this paper, we developed a novel camera localization workflow based on a highly accurate 3D prior map optimized by our RGB-D SLAM method in conjunction with a deep learning routine trained using consecutive video frames labeled with high precision camera pose. Furthermore, an AR registration method tightly coupled with a game engine is proposed, which incorporates the proposed localization algorithm and aligns the real Kinetic camera with a virtual camera of the game engine to facilitate AR application development in an integrated manner. The experimental results show that the localization accuracy can achieve an average error of 35 cm based on a fine-tuned prior 3D feature database at 3 cm accuracy compared against the ground-truth 3D LiDAR map. The influence of the localization accuracy on the visual effect of AR overlay is also demonstrated and the alignment of the real and virtual camera streamlines the implementation of AR fire emergency response demo in a Virtual Geographic Environment.
TestEvol: A tool for analyzing test-suite evolution

Test suites, just like the applications they are testing, evolve throughout their lifetime. One of the main reasons for test-suite evolution is test obsolescence: test cases cease to work because of changes in the code and must be suitably repaired. There are several reasons why it is important to achieve a thorough understanding of how test cases evolve in practice. In particular, researchers who investigate automated test repair - an increasingly active research area - can use such understanding to develop more effective repair techniques that can be successfully applied in real-world scenarios. More generally, analyzing testsuite evolution can help testers better understand how test cases are modified during maintenance and improve the test evolution process, an extremely time consuming activity for any nontrivial test suite. Unfortunately, there are no existing tools that facilitate investigation of test evolution. To tackle this problem, we developed TestEvol, a tool that enables the systematic study of test-suite evolution for Java programs and JUnit test cases. This demonstration presents TestEvol and illustrates its usefulness and practical applicability by showing how TestEvol can be successfully used on real-world software and test suites. Demo video at http://www.cc. gatech.edu/~orso/software/testevol/.
Knowledge-Based System for Web Interface Design

(e-commerce) project and its target user group. The more theoretical knowledge, such as HCI laws and principles, was also embraced, and tag-based classification was used in the ontology to relate the guidelines to the design context, thus enhancing the explanatory component of the KBS. The results of the experimental testing suggest that the website developed with KBS's support compares favorably with existing analogues from e-commerce industry, attaining task success rate of 85.9% and receiving mildly positive user subjective impression ratings. The proposed KBS may be used not only as an expert system or in training inexperienced IT specialists, but also by skilled web and interface designers to improve the quality of their work by more wholly considering the attributes and requirements of a target user group.
U12-type Spliceosomal Introns of Insecta

Most of eukaryotic genes are interrupted by introns that need to be removed from pre-mRNAs before they can perform their function. This is done by complex machinery called spliceosome. Many eukaryotes possess two separate spliceosomal systems that process separate sets of introns. The major (U2) spliceosome removes majority of introns, while minute fraction of intron repertoire is processed by the minor (U12) spliceosome. These two populations of introns are called U2-type and U12-type, respectively. The latter fall into two subtypes based on the terminal dinucleotides. The minor spliceosomal system has been lost independently in some lineages, while in some others few U12-type introns persist. We investigated twenty insect genomes in order to better understand the evolutionary dynamics of U12-type introns. Our work confirms dramatic drop of U12-type introns in Diptera, leaving these genomes just with a handful cases. This is mostly the result of intron deletion, but in a number of dipteral cases, minor type introns were switched to a major type, as well. Insect genes that harbor U12-type introns belong to several functional categories among which proteins binding ions and nucleic acids are enriched and these few categories are also overrepresented among these genes that preserved minor type introns in Diptera.
Crowd-Enhanced Cloud Services: Issues and Directions

Cloud computing systems have emerged as a type of distributed systems in which a multitude of interconnected machines are gathered and recruited over the internet to help solve a computation or data-intensive problem. There are large numbers of cases in which Cloud techniques solely are not able to solve the job due to the nature of the tasks. To overcome this problem recently a strong inclination has emerged towards enlisting the human intelligence and wisdom of crowds a.k. a. Crowdsourcing in combination with the machine automated techniques. In this paper the authors propose a model for integrating crowds of people in the Cloud environments to enrich Cloud computing environments to be able to provide hybrid human-machine services enabling it to solve a wider variety of problems which some of them are studied here. The authors nickname these rich types of services, Crowd-enhanced Cloud services. At the end, the modality and challenges of this convergence and its future trends are explored.
Synthesis, antimicrobial and in vitro antitumor activities of a series of 1,2,3-thiadiazole and 1,2,3-selenadiazole derivatives

Three derivatives of substituted 1,2,3-thia- or 1,2,3-selenadiazole (4a–c) were prepared and characterized by different chemical techniques. These compounds were evaluated for their antimicrobial and antitumor activities. Compounds 4a (propenoxide derivative), 4b (carbaldehyde derivative), and 4c (benzene derivative) were active against the yeast-like fungi Candida albicans. Compound 4a was active against gram-negative Escherichia coli, and compound 4c was active against the gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus. For the antitumor activity, both compounds 4b and 4c were active against all tested tumor cell lines, namely, SW480, HCT116, C32, MV3, HMT3522, and MCF-7. The activity of compound 4c was greater than that of compound 4b and more than that of the reference antitumor 5-flourouracil against the SW480, HCT116, and MCF-7 tumor cell lines. In conclusion, a number of the prepared 1,2,3-thia- or 1,2,3-selenadiazole compounds showed promising antifungal, antibacterial, and in vitro antitumor activities. Further investigations are required to explore the mechanism by which active compound are inducing their cytotoxicity.