Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Data Mining of Web Access Logs

Analysis of web visitors access patterns can lead to benefits in a wide range of areas such as decision support and website restructuring. Data mining techniques can be used to find access patterns hidden inside huge volumes of web access data. The goal of this thesis is to determine whether there are any such patterns in the web access data for the computer science website of RMIT university. In particular, this thesis investigates whether there are any differences in access patterns between: (1) Visitors from within Australia and visitors from outside Australia. (2) Visitors from within RMIT university and visitors from outside RMIT university. (3) Visitors from within RMIT university and visitors from outside RMIT university but within Australia. (4) Visitors from educational institutions other than RMIT university and visitors from non-educational institutions. The data mining techniques of classification, association rules, clustering and attribute selection were used with four different feature sets. The entire pattern discovery process was divided into three major steps: (1) Transaction identification and feature extraction (2) Discovery of the access patterns. (3) Analysis of the discovered patterns for their interestingness. Three major patterns were discovered: (1) Visitors from Australia generally visit the root page while visitors from outside Australia do not. The most likely reason for this is that visitors from outside Australia use search engines that direct them to specific pages. However, some (2) Visitors from outside Australia visit the root page and pages about post graduate programs (such as Master of Technology). This suggests that these visitors are mostly interested in post graduate studies. (3) Visitors from other educational institutions tend to visit pages related to staff contact information while other visitors tend to access career and industry related information. During the course of the investigation, it was found that there were a significant number of long transactions. The long transactions were analysed manually and it was found that visitors in a significant number of transactions access information about different programs offered and towards the end of their visit they look for the information brochure of one program. The significance of the patterns discovered during this thesis work suggests that data mining techniques with suitable feature sets can produce very interesting patterns.
SUSY Quivers, Intersecting Branes and the Modest Hierarchy Problem

We present a class of chiral non-supersymmetric D = 4 field theories in which quadratic divergences appear only at two loops. They may be depicted as ``SUSY quivers'' in which the nodes represent a gauge group with extended e.g., N = 4 SUSY whereas links represent bifundamental matter fields which transform as chiral multiplets with respect to different N = 1 subgroups. One can obtain this type of field theories from simple D6-brane configurations on type IIA string theory compactified on a six-torus. We discuss the conditions under which this kind of structure is obtained from D6-brane intersections. We also discuss some aspects of the effective low-energy field theory. In particular we compute gauge couplings and Fayet-Iliopoulos terms from the Born-Infeld action and show how they match the field theory results. This class of theories may be of phenomenological interest in order to understand the modest hierarchy problem i.e., the stability of the hierarchy between the weak scale and a fundamental scale of order 10-100 TeV which appears e.g. in low string scale models. Specific D-brane models with the spectrum of the SUSY Standard Model and three generations are presented.
Slicing floorplans with range constraint

In floorplanning, it is important to allow users to specify placement constraints. Floorplanning with preplaced constraint was considered recently in Murata et al. (1997) and Young and Wong (1998). In this paper, we address a more general kind of placement constraint called range constraint in which a module must be placed within a given rectangular region in the floorplan. This is a more general formulation of the placement constraint problem and any preplaced constraint can be written as a range constraint. We extend the Wong-Liu algorithm (1986) to handle range constraint. Our main contribution is a novel shape curve computation which takes range constraint into consideration. Experimental results show that the extended floorplanner performs very well and, in particular, it out-performs the floorplanner proposed by Young and Wong (1998) when specialized to handle preplaced modules.
Dual Congestion Awareness scheme in On-Chip Networks

One of the main factors limiting the performance of Networks-on-Chip is congestion. Routing algorithms perform an important role in distributing the traffic load over the network by providing alternative routing paths. The major parts of research works avoid congestion by considering the traffic condition in the forward paths and delivering packets through less congested paths. However, they do not consider the impact of the router arbitration in traffic distribution. On the other hand, traditional methods usually consider the traffic at the node level rather than a region level. In this paper, we propose a method named Dual Congestion Awareness (DuCA) which involves the congestion information about forward paths in the routing decision and backward paths in the router arbitration. DuCA can efficiently use the traffic information to transmit packets through less congested areas (using congestion information about forward paths) and steer traffic from highly congested regions to low congested areas (using congestion information in backward paths). Finally, DuCA is a region-based approach, providing a wider view of the network traffic.
Yeasts in peatlands: A review of richness and roles in peat decomposition

The richness and ecological roles of yeasts in peatlands are largely unknown. This paper presents a review of the literature on yeasts in peatlands and also provides new data with species isolated from peatlands in Saskatchewan, Canada, and West Siberia, Russia. To date, 75 yeast taxa have been reported from peatlands, including 46 identified species and 29 isolates identified only to genus or not at all. This represents 5%–10% of known yeasts and about 10% of all peatland fungi. Cryptococcus, Candida, Pichia, and Rhodotorula are the most prevalent genera, accounting for 58% of known peatland yeast species. We obtained 34 isolates from western Canadian and West Siberian bog and fen peat, including 12 identified species and eight unidentified taxa. Identified taxa comprised mostly species of Candida, Cryptococcus, and Rhodotorula. Unidentified taxa were described based on physiology and morphology. Globally, more species have been reported from bogs than fens (41 vs. 13 taxa), and the species composition differs between the two peatland classes. The effect of depth within the acrotelm on yeast abundance and species composition varies among peatlands. Physiological profiling of the yeasts from our study showed that they can use (poly)saccharides (primarily D-glucose, maltotriose, n-acetyl glucosamine, trehalose, and sucrose), organic acids (primarily D-gluconic acid, fumaric acid, malic acid, and succinic acid), sugar alcohols (primarily D-arabitol, D-mannitol, and D-sorbitol), glycosides (primarily arbutin and salicin), and amino acids (primarily L-glutamic acid) as carbon and nitrogen sources. Based on these profiles, yeasts likely access simple polymers that leach from senesced and/or dead plant materials in peatlands and probably play important roles during the initial stages of organic matter decomposition.
Analysis of Mobile Phone Technology Usage in Farmer Situation: The Case of Sodo Zuria District, Wolaita Zone, Southern Nation Nationalities and Peoples’ Region, Ethiopia

The dissemination of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in developing countries provides much opportunity to transfer knowledge and information by private companies and government departments. In the last many years mobile phone coverage has spread fast in Asian, African and Latin American countries. It was indicated that more than sixty per cent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America had access to mobile phone coverage in 2009. In the past the adoption of the mobile phones was primarily by rich people residing in urban areas. Nowadays mobile phones have been adopted by rural and urban populations in developing countries who are getting a good benefit and latest information regarding weather, market and other related issues (Aker & Mbiti, 2010).
How Related Exemplars Help Complex Event Detection in Web Videos?

Compared to visual concepts such as actions, scenes and objects, complex event is a higher level abstraction of longer video sequences. For example, a "marriage proposal" event is described by multiple objects (e.g., ring, faces), scenes (e.g., in a restaurant, outdoor) and actions (e.g., kneeling down). The positive exemplars which exactly convey the precise semantic of an event are hard to obtain. It would be beneficial to utilize the related exemplars for complex event detection. However, the semantic correlations between related exemplars and the target event vary substantially as relatedness assessment is subjective. Two related exemplars can be about completely different events, e.g., in the TRECVID MED dataset, both bicycle riding and equestrianism are labeled as related to "attempting a bike trick" event. To tackle the subjectiveness of human assessment, our algorithm automatically evaluates how positive the related exemplars are for the detection of an event and uses them on an exemplar-specific basis. Experiments demonstrate that our algorithm is able to utilize related exemplars adaptively, and the algorithm gains good performance for complex event detection.
Degradation of Polybrominated Aiphenyl Ethers in a UV Advanced Reduction Process with Different Reducing Agents

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are toxic and persistent, and their efficient degradation is currently a challenge. In this study, decabromodiphenyl ether (BDE-209) was selected as the target compound and was degraded by a UV photochemical system with different reducing agent. The result showed that the optimal BDE-209 removal in 1 hour by UV/sodium sulphite (Na2SO3) was 86.87%. With the same concentration of BDE-209 and reaction time, the optimal removal rate by UV/sodium borohydride (NaBH4) was 89.25%. Kinetic analysis revealed that the degradation of BDE-209 conformed to the first-order kinetic model. The order of rate constant of different UV photochemical processes is kUV<kUV/Na2SO3<kUV/NaBH4. Debromination rate indicated that reducing agents can promote the removal of bromine during the degradation of BDE-209. As a reducing agent, sodium borohydride showed a better enhanced effect for the removal of bromines.
Prominence prediction for supersentential prosodic modeling based on a new database

Most current prosodic modeling techniques are concerned with variation within the sentence. With the improvement of local prosodic variation modeling in techniques like unit selection, we would like to address issues of wider context in producing appropriate synthetic output. A common experience found in unit selection synthesis is that a sentence that sounds natural in isolation does not sound so natural when embedded in a wider context, because it has inappropriate prosody. This work presents the careful design and creation of a speech database designed to capture significant super-sentential prosodic variation. It was designed specifically to allow our own investigations into a notion of “prominence” which we define as a hidden variable that can contribute to surface level prosodic realisation (duration, F0 and power). The background that led up to the construction of this database and our previous attempts to capture prominence are also described.
A neural network approach for contrast enhancement image

Tuberculosis infection is a serious disease which could be controlled by early diagnosis. A commonly used technique for detecting the TB bacilli is by analyzing sputum smear. Now days, image recognition systems have several applications in enormous fields. This paper uses an artificial neural network to enhance color images of Ziehl-Neelsen stained smear for the purpose of detecting TB bacilli. The first necessary step is the captured images are converted into usable format (RGB values) and pass the RGB values to neural network for training to emulate the contrast enhancement technique. The training is based on back-propagation algorithm. It is found that the proposed neural network approach could emulate contrast enhancement technique quite well.
Analytical Errors in the Determination of Inorganic and Organic Phosphorus in Waters Based on Laboratory Experiences

Phosphorus has been closely associated with eutrophication, a growing ecological problem globally. Because bacterial and algae responds to organic and inorganic nutrients differently, developing an accurate analytical method for the determination of dissolved inorganic phosphorus (DIP) and dissolved organic phosphorus (DOP) is critical for understanding eutrophication. This paper describes analytical variations observed in laboratory experiments for the determination of DIP and DOP. Several experimental parameters including phosphorus reagents’ temperature, water sample matrix, pH, and autoclave methods are investigated. With the optimization of the autoclave procedure, the recoveries of 8 model organic phosphorus compounds (i.e. adenosine-5-triphosphate di-sodium salt (ATP), phytic acid (PTA), sodium tripolyphosphate (STP), methyltriphenylphosphonium bromide (MPT), p-nitrophenyl phosphate magnesium salt (p-NPP), β-D-glucose-6-phosphate monosodium salt (G-6-P) and cocarboxylase (COCA)) are all well above 90% indicating significant analytical method improvement.
COLLABORATIVE DEFENCE FOR DISTRIBUTED ATTACKS (CASE STUDY OF PALESTINIAN INFORMATION SYSTEMS )

In this paper, we develop a comprehensive approachfor protecting national Palestinian information systems. We do not restrict our attention to protecting each individual organization, but rather focus on the entire ecosystem as a whole. Therefore, thedeveloped system will be opened for participation for all Palestinian governmental and non -governmental organizations who are interested in improving their security and protection against current threats and security attacks targeting Palestinian information systems. The results will help in raising the aware ness about information security for participating organization. The new technological trends, the need to provide a compet itive services, and the overlap in the businesses in several fields have brought about a shift from the internal organization's infrastructure to engagement in a truly global ecosystem characterized by many cross domain interactions and heterogeneous systems and data. Therefore, the dependency of several governmental and non-governmental organizations on cyber-infrastructure of critical infrastructures encounters an increasing demands and undergoes a profound technological and usage changes. However, the sophistication of cyber attacks has increased over time and tools and techniques of attacks are easy and widely spread. This comes to fact that the technical knowledge required to exploit existing vulnerabilities is decreasing. For example, organizations t hat suffer from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, know that they have been attacked, but they cannot easily distinguish the group of IP addresses that commit this attack alone , which create a big challenge for organizations to defend themselves. The perpetrators of these attacks, whether motivated by the prospect of financial gain or because they see such an attacks as means of garnering publicity or otherwise pursuing a political cause, benefit from sharing technology and other information among themselves. Therefore, protecting these infrastructures in the face of faults and malicious attacks is crucial to ensure stability, availability, and continuity of the key electronic services and individual businesses worldwide.
First Active Fault Exposure Identified along Kachchh Mainland Fault: Evidence from Trench Excavation near Lodai Village, Gujarat, Western India

We report first ldentified active fault exposure from Kachchh region along the Kachchh Mainland Fault (KMF) other than the 1819 Allah Bund earthquake. The active fault scarps striking E-W were identified near Lodai vlilage along KMF North facing scarps with height from 10-15 m are the manifestation of the displaced alluvial fan surface along this fault. Occurrence of discontinuous linear mound ranging in height from 3-5 m aligned along the strike about 100 m north of the main scarp are suggestive of younger tectonic movement and progressive shift of tectonic activity towards north along new imbricated fault. Three low to high angle reverse fault strands (F 1 , F 2 and F 3 ) displacing young Quaternary deposits (late Pleistocene-Holocene? ) classified as A to F unlts comprising gravel and sand-Silt facies were identifled in a trench excavated at the base of the linear mound along KMF. Our preliminary observations revealed occurrence of atleast two large magnitude earthquakes along the F 3 fault, and may be older events along the F 1 and F 2 . Latest event (Event-I) occurred along F 3 after the deposition of unit B registering the displacement of -33 cm, penultimate event (Event-11) occurred after the deposition of unit C with -40 cm of displacement. The maximum displacement of about 73 cm along F 3 indicates cumulative displacement accommodated during more than one event. The total displacement of -98 cm along F 2 strand displacing the E and F units is the result of more than one event, and since the F 2 probably displaced the unit C suggests that the movements occurred during penultimate (Event 11) and during the Event 111, older than penultimate. Displacement of Mesozoic succession during older events and unit B during the latest Event I along F 1 suggests repetitive movement along this fault. The fragile nature of -3-4 m wide shear zone formed in Mesozoic rocks (shale+sandstone) also point towards repetitive tectonic movement along KMF.
Timing of Excessive Pregnancy-Related Weight Gain and Offspring Adiposity at Birth

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether the timing of excessive maternal weight gain in a cohort of women following current guidelines for healthy living during pregnancy affects neonatal adiposity at birth. METHODS: One hundred seventy-two healthy women who were at least 18 years old with body mass indexes (BMIs) of at least 18.5 were recruited between 16 weeks and 20 weeks of gestation. The cohort followed healthy living guidelines during pregnancy and were retrospectively grouped according to 2009 Institute of Medicine guidelines for weight gain in the first and second halves of pregnancy: 1) appropriate gestational weight gain (ie, within Institute of Medicine recommendations) in the first and second halves of pregnancy (“overall appropriate”); 2) appropriate gestational weight gain in the first half of pregnancy and excessive gestational weight gain in the second half of pregnancy (“late excessive”); 3) excessive gestational weight gain in the first half of pregnancy and appropriate gestational weight gain in the second half of pregnancy (“early excessive”); and 4) excessive gestational weight gain throughout pregnancy (“overall excessive”). Primary measures included neonatal weight, length, BMI, and body fat at birth measured 6–18 hours after delivery. Neonatal body fat greater than 14% was considered excessive. RESULTS: Neonates of women who gained excessively in the first half of pregnancy exhibited greater heel-crown length, birth weight, and excessive body fat (“early excessive” 17.5±3.1%, “overall excessive” 18.7±3.3%) compared with those born to women who gained appropriately (“overall appropriate” 13.2±4.1%; “late excessive” 14.7±3.3%; P<.01). Neonates of women who gained excessively in the first half of pregnancy had an increased risk (odds ratio [OR] 2.64, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.35–5.17) of elevated body fat at birth compared with neonates of women with total excessive weight gain (OR 1.49, 95% CI 0.80–2.79). CONCLUSION: Timing of excessive weight gain is an important factor influencing neonatal morphometrics. Prevention of early excessive weight gain should be encouraged in the period before conception and reinforced early in pregnancy. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II
Selective dorsal rhizotomy in children with spastic hemiparesis.

OBJECT Neurological conditions including cerebral palsy, brain injury, and stroke often result in severe spasticity, which can lead to significant deformity and interfere with function. Treatments for spasticity include oral medications, intramuscular botulinum toxin type A injections, orthopedic surgeries, intrathecal baclofen pump implantation, and selective dorsal rhizotomy (SDR). Selective dorsal rhizotomy, which has been well studied in children with spastic diplegia, results in significant reduction in spasticity and improved function in children. To the authors' knowledge, there are no published outcome data for SDR in patients with spastic hemiparesis. The object of this study was to examine the effects of SDR on spastic hemiparesis. METHODS A 2-year study was undertaken including all children with spastic hemiparesis who underwent SDR at the authors' institution. The degree of spasticity, as measured by the Modified Ashworth Scale or quality of gait rated using the visual gait assessment scale, the gait parameters, and velocity were compared in patients before and after undergoing SDR. RESULTS Thirteen children (mean age 6 years 7 months) with spastic hemiparesis underwent SDR performed by the same surgeon during a 2-year period. All of the patients had a decrease in tone in the affected lower extremity after the procedure. The mean reduction in tone in 4 muscle groups (hip adductors, knee flexors, knee extensors, and ankle plantar flexors) according to the modified Ashworth scale score was 2.6 ± 1.26 (p < 0.0001). The quality of gait was assessed in 7 patients by using the visual gait assessment scale. This score improved in 6 patients and remained the same in 1. Stride length and gait velocity were measured in 4 children. Velocity increased in 3 patients and decreased in a 3-year-old child. Parents and clinicians reported an improvement in quality of gait after the procedure. Stride length increased bilaterally in 3 patients and increased on one side and decreased on the other in the other patient. CONCLUSIONS Selective dorsal rhizotomy showed efficacy in the treatment of spastic hemiparesis in children. All of the patients had decreased tone after SDR as measured by the modified Ashworth scale. The majority of patients had qualitative and quantitative improvements in gait.
Maximum likelihood estimation for filtering thresholds

Information filtering systems based on statistical retrieval models usually compute a numeric score indicating how well each document matches each profile. Documents with scores above profile-specificdissemination thresholdsare delivered. An optimal dissemination threshold is one that maximizes a given utility function based on the distributions of the scores of relevant and non-relevant documents. The parameters of the distribution can be estimated using relevance information, but relevance information obtained while filtering isbiased. This paper presents a new method of adjusting dissemination thresholds that explicitly models and compensates for this bias. The new algorithm, which is based on the Maximum Likelihood principle, jointly estimates the parameters of the density distributions for relevant and non-relevant documents and the ratio of the relevant document in the corpus. Experiments with TREC-8 and TREC-9 Filtering Track data demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm.