Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CHARACTERIZATION OF SLUDGE FROM THE WASTEWATER-TREATMENT PLANT OF A REFINERY

In this study, characterization of filtrated cake of sludge drying section from a petroleum refinery wastewater treatment plant in Melaka was carried out with the objective to analyze its chemical, physical and fuel characteristics. Proximate analysis, ultimate analysis and higher heating value (HHV) are very important in chemical and fuel characterization. Dielectric properties and density test were also carried out to determine it suitability as microwave thermal treatment candidate. The density was found higher compared to those reported in literature. According to proximate analysis, moisture content of sludge is very high (75.3 wt%) which would decrease the heating value. However, the higher heating value (HHV) of 20.5 MJ/kg of sludge in this study is higher than HHV in other petroleum sludge probably due to the hydrocarbon content in the sludge. It is also found that volatile matter is high at 58.6 wt% where it can be converted into valuable products via material decomposition. Relatively high content of oxygen element (39.7 wt%) contributed to the low value of HHV and possible highly oxygenated liquid product during pyrolysis. Metal content analysis revealed high content of Fe (1,850 ppm) and also significant amount of Al, Mg, Zn and Na which categorize the waste as schedule waste. The values of dielectric constant were found to follow the trend that of water because of its high moisture content at 1.24 to 20 GHz. However, the dielectric loss trend is opposite to the water at frequency below 5.0 GHz. It was found that the value of dielectric constants at frequency of 2.45 GHz, which is common in industrial processing, were 50.8 and 2.3 for wet sludge and dried sludge, respectively. While for dielectric loss, its values were 15.7 and 0.1, respectively. Hence, good penetration can be achieved by microwave energy during microwave thermal treatment process to allow material decomposition but the energy conversion will be occur fairly.
Anti SQL Injection with Statements Sequence Digest

SQL Injection (SQLI) is an attack method that is easy to achieve but often leads data leak and malicious control of the system, so anti SQLI is very important for applications using database. This paper proposes an algorithm for detecting SQLI based on statements sequence digest (SSD). Abstract SQL statement, SSD and its calculating method are defined; algorithms for building SSD and detection SQLI in application are given. For SSD is calculated from the SQL statements sequence context, the proposed algorithm is not only more reliable than filtering special characters and words, but also more exact than checking single SQL statement. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm is implementation feasible and performance efficient.
PROVIDE: Hiding from Automated Network Scans with Proofs of Identity

Network scanners are a valuable tool for researchers and administrators, however they are also used by malicious actors to identify vulnerable hosts on a network. Upon the disclosure of a security vulnerability, scans are launched within hours. These opportunistic attackers enumerate blocks of IP addresses in hope of discovering an exploitable host. Fortunately, defensive measures such as port knocking protocols (PKPs) allow a service to remain stealth to unauthorized IP addresses. The service is revealed only when a client includes a special authentication token (AT) in the IP/TCP header. However this AT is generated from a secret shared between the clients/servers and distributed manually to each endpoint. As a result, these defense measures have failed to be widely adopted by other protocols such as HTTP/S due to challenges in distributing the shared secrets. In this paper we propose a scalable solution to this problem for services accessed by domain name. We make the following observation: automated network scanners access servers by IP address, while legitimate clients access the server by name. Therefore a service should only reveal itself to clients who know its name. Based on this principal, we have created a proof of the verifier's identity (a.k.a. PROVIDE) protocol that allows a prover (legitimate user) to convince a verifier (service) that it is knowledgeable of the verifier's identity. We present a PROVIDE implementation using a PKP and DNS (PKP+DNS) that uses DNS TXT records to distribute identification tokens (IDTs) while DNS PTR records for the service's domain name are prohibited to prevent reverse DNS lookups. Clients are modified to make an additional DNS TXT query to obtain the IDT which is used by the PKP to generate an AT. The inclusion of an AT in the packet header, generated from the DNS TXT query, is proof the client knows the service's identity. We analyze the effectiveness of this mechanism with respect to brute force attempts for various strength ATs and discuss practical considerations.
Interaction with Web-based Agents for Distance Learning

Design of user interaction of web-based agent systems necessitates new approaches in relation to control, task allocation, transparency and user’s privacy protection. This paper investigates interaction of users with multiple agents with special focus on web-based learning systems. A proposed new architecture is described, which allows for adaptive agents’ participation in the educational process, while maintaining the user as the principal locus of control in user-system interaction. The issue of user modelling, the characteristics of the conceptual model of the user and the implications of the heterogeneity of resources are also discussed in the frame of an open web-based learning environment.
The development of the Problematic Series WatchingScale (PSWS)

Background and aims The goal of the present study was to create a short ProblematicSeries Watching Scale (PSWS). Methods On the basis of the six components model of Griffiths (2005), six items were identifiedcovering all components of problematic series watching. Confirmatoryfactor analyses were carried out on two independent samples (N1 = 366, N2 = 752). Results The PSWS has appropriate factor structure and reliability. Theamount of free time was not, but the series watching time was associatedwith PSWS scores. Women had higher scores than men. Discussion Before PSWS, no prior scale has been created to measure problematicseries watching. Further research is needed to properly assess itsvalidity and reliability; and for examining whether extensive serieswatching can lead to health-related and psychosocial problems. Conclusions In the increasingly digitalized world there are many motivationalforces which encourage people watching online series. In the lightof these changes, research on problematic series watching will beprogressively relevant.
Dynamic Window-Constrained Scheduling for Real-Time Media Streaming

This paper describes an algorithm for scheduling packets in real-time multimedia data streams. Common to these classes of data streams are service constraints in terms of bandwidth and delay. However, it is typical for realtime multimedia streams to tolerate bounded delay variations and, in some cases, finite losses of packets. We have therefore developed a scheduling algorithm that assumes streams have window-constraints on groups of consecutive packet deadlines. A window-constraint defines the number of packet deadlines that can be missed in a window of deadlines for consecutive packets in a stream. Our algorithm, called Dynamic Window-Constrained Scheduling (DWCS), attempts to guarantee no more than x out of a window of y deadlines are missed for consecutive packets in real-time and multimedia streams. Using DWCS, the delay of service to real-time streams is bounded even when the scheduler is overloaded. Moreover, DWCS is capable of ensuring independent delay bounds on streams, while at the same time guaranteeing minimum bandwidth utilizations over tunable and finite windows of time. We show the conditions under which the total demand for link bandwidth by a set of real-time (i.e., windowconstrained) streams can exceed 100% and still ensure all window-constraints are met. In fact, we show how it is possible to guarantee worst-case per-stream bandwidth and delay constraints while utilizing all available link capacity. Finally, we show how best-effort packets can be serviced with fast response time, in the presence of windowconstrained traffic.
Targeting Signal‐Transducer‐and‐Activator‐of‐Transcription‐3 for Prevention and Therapy of Cancer

Abstract: Recent evidence indicates a convergence of molecular targets for both prevention and therapy of cancer. Signal‐transducer‐and‐activator‐of‐transcription‐3 (STAT3), a member of a family of six different transcription factors, is closely linked with tumorigenesis. Its role in cancer is indicated by numerous avenues of evidence, including the following: STAT3 is constitutively active in tumor cells; STAT3 is activated by growth factors (e.g., EGF, TGF‐α, IL‐6, hepatocyte growth factor) and oncogenic kinases (e.g., Src); STAT3 regulates the expression of genes that mediate proliferation (e.g., c‐myc and cyclin D1), suppress apoptosis (e.g., Bcl‐xL and survivin), or promote angiogenesis (e.g, VEGF); STAT3 activation has been linked with chemoresistance and radioresistance; and chemopreventive agents have been shown to suppress STAT3 activation. Thus inhibitors of STAT3 activation have potential for both prevention and therapy of cancer. Besides small peptides and oligonucleotides, numerous small molecules have been identified as blockers of STAT3 activation, including synthetic molecules (e.g., AG 490, decoy peptides, and oligonucleotides) and plant polyphenols (e.g., curcumin, resveratrol, flavopiridol, indirubin, magnolol, piceatannol, parthenolide, EGCG, and cucurbitacin). This article discusses these aspects of STAT3 in more detail.
Sorting of an apical plasma membrane glycoprotein occurs before it reaches the cell surface in cultured epithelial cells

In Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells (a polarized epithelial cell line) infected with influenza virus, the hemagglutinin behaves as an apical plasma membrane glycoprotein. To determine biochemically the domain on the plasma membrane, apical or basolateral, where newly synthesized hemagglutinin first appears, cells were cultured on Millipore filters to make both cell surface domains independently accessible. Hemagglutinin in virus-infected cells was pulse-labeled, chased, and detected on the plasma membrane with a sensitive trypsin assay. Under all conditions tested, newly made hemagglutinin appeared simultaneously on both domains, with the bulk found in the apical membrane. When trypsin was continuously present on the basolateral surface during the chase, little hemagglutinin was cleaved relative to the amount transported apically. In addition, specific antibodies against the hemagglutinin placed basolaterally had no effect on transport to the apical domain. These observations suggested that most newly synthesized hemagglutinin does not transiently appear on the basolateral surface but rather is delivered directly to the apical surface in amounts that account for its final polarized distribution.
Incidence of complex regional pain syndrome after foot and ankle surgery.

Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is an uncommon complication of orthopedic surgery, and few investigators have considered the incidence in foot and ankle surgery. In the present retrospective cohort study of 390 patients who had undergone elective foot and/or ankle surgery in our department from January to December 2009, the incidence of postoperative CRPS was calculated and explanatory variables were analyzed. A total of 17 patients (4.36%) were identified as meeting the International Association for the Study of Pain criteria for the diagnosis of CRPS. Of the 17 patients with CRPS, the mean age was 47.2 ± 9.7 years, and 14 (82.35%) were female. All the operations were elective, and 9 (52.94%) involved the forefoot, 3 (17.65%) the hindfoot, 3 (17.65%) the ankle, and 2 (11.76%) the midfoot. Twelve patients (70.59%) had new-onset CRPS after a primary procedure, and 5 (29.41%) had developed CRPS after multiple surgeries. Three patients (17.65%) had documented nerve damage intraoperatively and thus developed new-onset CRPS type 2. Blood test results were available for 14 patients (82.35%) at a minimum of 3 months postoperatively, and none had elevated inflammatory markers. Five of the patients (29.41%) were smokers, and 8 (47.06%) had had a pre-existing diagnosis of anxiety and/or depression. From our findings, we recommend that middle-age females and those with a history of anxiety or depression, who will undergo elective foot surgery, should be counseled regarding the risk of developing CRPS during the consent process. We recommend similar studies be undertaken in other orthopedic units, and we currently are collecting data from other orthopedic departments within Scotland.
Improvements of Occupancy Grid Maps by Sonar Data Corrections

In this paper we address one of the major problems of mobile robots navigation, the creation of a map from local sensor data collected as the robot moves around an unknown environment. Map building is the problem of generating models of robot environments from sensor data and can be often referred as a concurrent mapping and localization problem. That is to build a consistent map, the mobile robot has to know its pose. We present here three approaches to create occupancy grid maps from sonar's data and suggest a simple solution to improve the mapping quality in cases of irregular disposition of the sonars. The proposed solution has been tested on the mobile robot Pioneer 2DX.
A Data-Driven Approach to Kinematic Analysis in Running Using Wearable Technology

Millions of people run. Movement scientists investigate the relationship of running kinematics to fatigue, injury, or running economy mainly using optical motion capture. It was found that running kinematics are highly individual and often cannot be summarized by single variables. We thus present a data-driven analysis of running technique using wearable technology, combining statistical features and machine learning techniques, which allows to identify non-linear, complex relationships. Wearable technology enables running kinematic analysis to a broad mass in unconstrained environments. 20 runners wore 12 sensor units during two experiments: an all out test and a fatiguing run. We used a Support Vector Machine (SVM) to distinguish skill level groups and achieved an accuracy of 76.92% with an acceleration sensor on the upper body. Sensor positions were ranked according to the movement change with fatigue using a feature selection. This ranking was consistent with visual annotations of a movement scientist. We propose a quantitative measure of movement change using a principal component analysis (PCA) and found an average correlation of 0.8369 for all runners with their perceived rating of fatigue.
Synchronous EEG brain-actuated wheelchair with automated navigation

This paper describes a new non-invasive brain-actuated wheelchair that relies on a P300 neurophysiological protocol and automated navigation. In operation, the subject faces a screen with a real-time virtual reconstruction of the scenario, and concentrates on the area of the space to reach. A visual stimulation process elicits the neurological phenomenon and the EEG signal processing detects the target area. This target area represents a location that is given to the autonomous navigation system, which drives the wheelchair to the desired place while avoiding collisions with the obstacles detected by the laser scanner. The accuracy of the brain-computer interface is above 94% and the flexibility of the sensor-based motion system allows for navigation in non-prepared and populated scenarios. The prototype has been validated with five healthy subjects in three experimental sessions: screening (an analysis of three different interfaces and its implications on the performance of the users), virtual environment driving (training and instruction of the users) and driving sessions with the wheelchair (driving tests along pre-established circuits). On the basis of the results, this paper reports a technical evaluation of the device and a variability study. All the users were able to successfully use the device with relative ease showing a great adaptation.
Minimal Resource Allocating Networks for Discrete Time Sliding Mode Control of Robotic Manipulators

This paper presents a discrete-time sliding mode control based on neural networks designed for robotic manipulators. Radial basis function neural networks are used to learn about uncertainties affecting the system. The online learning algorithm combines the growing criterion and the pruning strategy of the minimal resource allocating network technique with an adaptive extended Kalman filter to update all the parameters of the networks. A method to improve the run-time performance for the real-time implementation of the learning algorithm has been considered. The analysis of the control stability is given and the controller is evaluated on the ERICC robot arm. Experiments show that the proposed controller produces good trajectory tracking performance and it is robust in the presence of model inaccuracies, disturbances and payload perturbations.
Evidence for a Strong Genetic Influence on Carotid Plaque Characteristics: An International Twin Study

Background and Purpose— Few family studies reported moderate genetic impact on the presence and scores of carotid plaques. However, the heritability of carotid plaque characteristics remains still unclear. Twin studies more reliably estimate the relative contribution of genes to these traits in contrast to family study design. Methods— One hundred ninety-two monozygotic and 83 dizygotic adult twin pairs (age 49±15 years) from Italy, Hungary, and the United States underwent B-mode and color Doppler ultrasound of bilateral common, internal, and external carotid arteries. Results— Age-, sex-, and country-adjusted heritability was 78% for the presence of carotid plaque (95% CI, 55%–90%), 74% for plaque echogenicity (hypoechoic, hyperechoic, or mixed; 95% CI, 38%–87%), 69% for plaque size (area in mm2 in longitudinal plane; < or >50 percentile; 95% CI, 16%–86%), 74% for plaque sidedness (unilateral or bilateral; 95% CI, 25%–90%), 74% for plaque numerosity (95% CI, 26%–86%), 68% (95% CI, 40%–84%), and 66% (95% CI, 32%–90%) for the presence of plaque in carotid bulbs and proximal internal carotid arteries. No role of shared environmental factors was found. Unique environmental factors were responsible for the remaining variance (22%–34%). Controlling for relevant covariates did not change the results significantly. Conclusions— The heritability of ultrasound characteristics of carotid plaque is high. Unshared environmental effects account for a modest portion of the variance. Our findings should stimulate the search for genes responsible for these traits.
RNAseq Analysis of Endornavirus-Infected vs. Endornavirus-Free Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) Cultivar Black Turtle Soup

Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is the most important grain legume for direct human consumption worldwide and represents a rich source of protein, vitamins, minerals, and fiber (Broughton et al., 2003). The recent sequencing of the common bean genome, together with the availability of genomic and transcriptomic data have provided useful information to common bean breeders that will help in the development of genotypes with desirable characteristics (Schmutz et al., 2014; Vlasova et al., 2016). Endornaviruses are persistent viruses with a non-encapsidated RNA genome that ranges from 9.8 to 17.6 kb, infect plants, fungi, and oomycetes, are transmitted only via gametes, and do not cause apparent symptoms (Stielow et al., 2011; Fukuhara and Gibbs, 2012). Although endornaviruses have been reported in several economically important plant species, little is known about the effect they have on their hosts. One of the major obstacles to study their effect to the host is the lack of a transmission method. In plants, endornaviruses do not move from cell to cell and spread only during cell division. Recently, Khankhum et al. (2015) reported that most common bean genotypes of Mesoamerican origin are double-infected with Phaseolus vulgaris endornavirus 1 (PvEV1) and Phaseolus endornavirus 2 (PvEV2); in contrast, genotypes of Andean origin are often endornavirus-free. Black Turtle Soup (BTS), a cultivar of Mesoamerican origin has been reported to be double-infected by these two endornaviruses (Okada et al., 2013). A BTS endornavirus-free selection (BTS−), obtained from an endornavirus-infected BTS (BTS+) seed lot has been reported by Okada et al. (2013). To establish the bases for future research on the role that endornaviruses play in the common bean plant, and the effect these viruses have on the host gene expression, we conducted RNAseq on two BTS lines: one endornavirus-infected and the other endornavirus-free.
An auction-based approach for spectrum leasing in cognitive radio networks

Using the spectrum intelligently have widely been investigated in the past years. Recently, spectrum leasing has been proposed as a powerful technique for spectrum management in communication networks. In this paper, we propose an auction-based joint spectrum leasing and relay-based cooperative communication for OFDM systems. In this scenario, the primary user leases its resources to a secondary user as a remuneration for its cooperation. An iterative auction-based spectrum leasing scheme between the primary and secondary networks is assumed in this process. The amount of resources that have to be leased to the secondary users and the process of selecting the best relay for this purpose are also investigated. Numerical results show that the primary network can achieve a higher data rate by this cooperation compared to the case where no cooperation is exploited. Besides, secondary users can increase their quality of service via this cooperation process.
Placental hydroxymethylation vs methylation at the imprinting control region 2 on chromosome 11p15.5

In addition to methylated cytosines (5-mCs), hydroxymethylcytosines (5-hmCs) are present in CpG dinucleotide-enriched regions and some transcription regulator binding sites. Unlike methylation, hydroxymethylation does not result in silencing of gene expression, and the most commonly used methods to study methylation, such as techniques based on restriction enzymatic digestion and/or bisulfite modification, are unable to distinguish between them. Genomic imprinting is a process of gene regulation where only one member of an allelic pair is expressed depending on the parental origin. Chromosome 11p15.5 has an imprinting control region (ICR2) that includes a differentially methylated region (KvDMR1) that guarantees parent-specific gene expression. The objective of the present study was to determine the presence of 5-hmC at the KvDMR1 in human placentas. We analyzed 16 third-trimester normal human placentas (chorionic villi). We compared two different methods based on real-time PCR after enzymatic digestion. The first method distinguished methylation from hydroxymethylation, while the other method did not. Unlike other methylation studies, subtle variations of methylation in ICRs could represent a drastic deregulation of the expression of imprinted genes, leading to important phenotypic consequences, and the presence of hydroxymethylation could interfere with the results of many studies. We observed agreement between the results of both methods, indicating the absence of hydroxymethylation at the KvDMR1 in third-trimester placentas. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study describing the investigation of hydroxymethylation in human placenta using a genomic imprinting model.