Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding Service Integration of Online Social Networks: A Data-Driven Study

The cross-site linking function is widely adopted by online social networks (OSNs). This function allows a user to link her account on one OSN to her accounts on other OSNs. Thus, users are able to sign in with the linked accounts, share contents among these accounts and import friends from them. It leads to the service integration of different OSNs. This integration not only provides convenience for users to manage accounts of different OSNs, but also introduces usefulness to OSNs that adopt the cross-site linking function. In this paper, we investigate this usefulness based on users’ data collected from a popular OSN called Medium. We conduct a thorough analysis on its social graph, and find that the service integration brought by the crosssite linking function is able to change Medium’s social graph structure and attract a large number of new users. However, almost none of the new users would become high PageRank users (PageRank is used to measure a user’s influence in an OSN). To solve this problem, we build a machine-learning-based model to predict high PageRank users in Medium based on their Twitter data only. This model achieves a high F1-score of 0.942 and a high area under the curve (AUC) of 0.986. Based on it, we design a system to assist new OSNs to identify and attract high PageRank users from other well-established OSNs through the cross-site linking function.
Domain-independent genotype to phenotype mapping through XML rules

This paper discusses an innovative approach to mapping Genotypes to Phenotypes through XML rules. Specifically, it concentrates on the mapping process using two very different domains – Regular Expressions (REs) and Software Program Statements. The paper shows that our Genotype-Phenotype system can be applied to any domain that requires the use of REs and it can be adapted to work for any other domain with minimum effort.
Intracellular monitoring of target protein production in Staphylococcus aureus by peptide tag‐induced reporter fluorescence

An intracellular approach for monitoring protein production in Staphylococcus aureus is described. mCherry, fused to the dodecapeptide Tip, was capable of inducing tetracycline repressor (TetR). Time‐ and concentration‐dependent production of mCherry could be correlated to TetR‐controlled GFPmut2 activity. This approach can potentially be extended to native S. aureus proteins.
Therapy of prostate cancer using a novel cancer terminator virus and a small molecule BH-3 mimetic

Despite recent advances, treatment options for advanced prostate cancer (CaP) remain limited. We are pioneering approaches to treat advanced CaP that employ conditionally replication-competent oncolytic adenoviruses that simultaneously produce a systemically active cancer-specific therapeutic cytokine, mda-7/IL-24, Cancer Terminator Viruses (CTV). A truncated version of the CCN1/CYR61 gene promoter, tCCN1-Prom, was more active than progression elevated gene-3 promoter (PEG-Prom) in regulating transformation-selective transgene expression in CaP and oncogene-transformed rat embryo cells. Accordingly, we developed a new CTV, Ad.tCCN1-CTV-m7, which displayed dose-dependent killing of CaP without harming normal prostate epithelial cells in vitro with significant anti-cancer activity in vivo in both nude mouse CaP xenograft and transgenic Hi-Myc mice (using ultrasound-targeted microbubble (MB)-destruction, UTMD, with decorated MBs). Resistance to mda-7/IL-24-induced cell deathcorrelated with overexpression of Bcl-2 family proteins. Inhibiting Mcl-1 using an enhanced BH3 mimetic, BI-97D6, sensitized CaP cell lines to mda-7/IL-24-induced apoptosis. Combining BI-97D6 with Ads expressing mda-7/IL-24promoted ER stress, decreased anti-apoptotic Mcl-1 expression and enhanced mda-7/IL-24expression through mRNA stabilization selectively in CaP cells. In Hi-myc mice, the combination induced enhanced apoptosis and tumor growth suppression. These studies highlight therapeutic efficacy of combining a BH3 mimetic with a novel CTV, supporting potential clinical applications for treating advanced CaP.
A Usability Study and Critique of Two Password Managers

We present a usability study of two recent password manager proposals: PwdHash (Ross et al., 2005) and Password Multiplier (Halderman et al., 2005). Both papers considered usability issues in greater than typical detail, the former briefly reporting on a small usability study; both also provided implementations for download. Our study involving 26 users found that both proposals suffer from major usability problems. Some of these are not "simply" usability issues, but rather lead directly to security exposures. Not surprisingly, we found the most significant problems arose from users having inaccurate or incomplete mental models of the software. Our study revealed many interesting misunderstandings D for example, users reporting a task as easy even when unsuccessful at completing that task; and believing their passwords were being strengthened when in fact they had failed to engage the appropriate protection mechanism. Our findings also suggested that ordinary users would be reluctant to optin to using these managers: users were uncomfortable with "relinquishing control" of their passwords to a manager, did not feel that they needed the password managers, or that the managers provided greater security.
Bidirectional power management in hybrid AC-DC islanded microgrid system

This paper addresses the interconnection of two ac and dc subgrids via a voltage source converter (VSC) to facilitate a bidirectional power exchange and increase the system reliability. The control of the interfacing VSC is achieved by two schemes; autonomous and communication-based. The autonomous control might fail to operate in a large scale islanded hybrid system due to the variations in the generation characteristics of the individual distributed generation (DG) units (such as droop coefficients or set points variations, loss/connection of units, etc.). A centralized power management controller is therefore proposed to achieve an accurate, efficient and minimized power exchange. The proposed method can be generalized to large scale hybrid systems. Small signal stability analysis has been conducted to investigate the influence of the communication delays on the system stability. Time domain simulations are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed technique.
Antimutagenic Effects of Vitamin E on Oncology and Non Oncology Hospital Nurses by Comet Assay

Abstract Vitamin E is a natural antioxidant and its most common biologically active form is α-tocopherol. The antiproliferative effects of α-tocopherol have been previously demonstrated. In this study the antimutagenic effects of vitamin E on oncology and non oncology hospital nurses was investigated. A total of 138 female nurses from oncology and non oncology hospitals participated in the study. They received 200 mg/day vitamin E for 2 weeks. The urine samples before and after intake of vitamin E were collected and the nucleus of urothelial cells were evaluated with comet assay. The length of epithelial cells nuclei correlated with increased fracture rate of DNA. Nucleolus length of urine epithelial cells of all nursing staff before and after vitamin E treatment were measured and the data were evaluated by student t-test and SPSS. Our study showed that 20% of nursing staff have apoptosis and DNA fracture in the nucleolus of their urine epithelial cells and DNA damage in the urothelial cells of exposed nurses was significantly higher than the control group (P<0.05). The antimutagenic activity of vitamin E had significant effects on oncology hospital nurses effectively in repairing DNA damage and decreasing their nucleus length in urine epithelial cells. We propose that the higher therapeutic doses of vitamin E and increasing the length of treatment period will be effective against DNA strand breakage and may have more effect on oncology nurses.
Joint estimation of water/fat images and field inhomogeneity map

Water/fat separation in the presence of B0 field inhomogeneity is a problem of considerable practical importance in MRI. This article describes two complementary methods for estimating the water/fat images and the field inhomogeneity map from Dixon‐type acquisitions. One is based on variable projection (VARPRO) and the other on linear prediction (LP). The VARPRO method is very robust and can be used in low signal‐to‐noise ratio conditions because of its ability to achieve the maximum‐likelihood solution. The LP method is computationally more efficient, and is shown to perform well under moderate levels of noise and field inhomogeneity. These methods have been extended to handle multicoil acquisitions by jointly solving the estimation problem for all the coils. Both methods are analyzed and compared and results from several experiments are included to demonstrate their performance. Magn Reson Med 59:571–580, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Low power synthesis of finite state machines with mixed D and T flip-flops

This paper presents a state assignment technique to reduce dynamic power consumption in finite state machines (FSM). The key idea is to decompose the state machine into a set of cycles that are collectively equivalent to the original FSM, and perform state assignment based on the cycle realization of the state machine using Gray codes. A new implementation of state machines by using a combination of D and T flip-flops is thereby proposed, which in conjunction with the proposed encoding algorithm, reduces power consumption by an average of 15%.
Single fault reliability analysis in FPGA implemented circuits

Reliability analysis in FPGA implementation of logic circuits is an important issue in designing fault tolerant systems for faulty environments. In this paper an analytical method is developed for analyzing such systems. This method is based on signal probability propagation of faults from the location of appearance to final outputs of circuit. Single fault model is used for the faults occurred in routes and LUTs. In addition reconvergent fan-outs are handled using 16 correlation coefficients propagation approach. Experimental results show a good agreement between this method and Monte Carlo method for reliability analysis of MCNC benchmarks.
Effects of High-Definition Anodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Applied Simultaneously to Both Primary Motor Cortices on Bimanual Sensorimotor Performance

Many daily activities, such as tying one’s shoe laces, opening a jar of jam or performing a free throw in basketball, require the skillful coordinated use of both hands. Even though the non-invasive method of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been repeatedly shown to improve unimanual motor performance, little is known about its effects on bimanual motor performance. More knowledge about how tDCS may improve bimanual behavior would be relevant to motor recovery, e.g., in persons with bilateral impairment of hand function. We therefore examined the impact of high-definition anodal tDCS (HD-atDCS) on the performance of a bimanual sequential sensorimotor task. Thirty-two volunteers (age M = 24.25; SD = 2.75; 14 females) participated in this double-blind study and performed sport stacking in six experimental sessions. In sport stacking, 12 specially designed cups must be stacked (stacked up) and dismantled (stacked down) in predefined patterns as fast as possible. During a pretest, posttest and follow-up test, two sport stacking formations (3-6-3 stack and 1-10-1 stack) were performed. Between the pretest and posttest, all participants were trained in sport stacking with concurrent brain stimulation for three consecutive days. The experimental group (STIM-M1) received HD-atDCS over both primary motor cortices (M1), while the control group received a sham stimulation (SHAM). Three-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant main effect of TIME and a significant interaction of TIME × GROUP. No significant effects were found for GROUP, nor for the three-way interaction of TIME × GROUP × FORMATION. Further two-way ANOVAs showed a significant main effect of TIME and a non-significant main effect for GROUP in both sport stacking formations. A significant interaction between TIME × GROUP was found only for the 3-6-3 formation, indicating superior performance gains for the experimental group (STIM-M1). To account and control for baseline influences on the outcome measurements, ANCOVAs treating pretest scores as covariates revealed a significant effect of the stimulation. From this, we conclude that bilateral HD-atDCS over both M1 improves motor performance in a bimanual sequential sensorimotor task. These results may indicate a beneficial use of tDCS for learning and recovery of bimanual motor skills.
Proton radiation in the management of localized cancer

Proton radiation therapy has been available for decades. However, until recently it was only applied to a small number of patients at approximately 20 centers worldwide. Increased clinical experience with protons, as well as extensive research in the physics, biology and clinical aspects of proton therapy, have recently led to a huge interest in proton therapy among radiation oncologists. In addition, the cost for facilities is expected to decrease. Many proton therapy facilities are currently being built and planned worldwide. It is expected that the number of patients treated with protons will increase substantially in the near future. This article summarizes the rationale for (proton) radiation therapy and addresses the promises and challenges of proton-beam therapy in the management of localized cancer.
RGB ratios based skin detection

Many different applications like face/people detection, image content interpretation, de-identification for privacy protection in multimedia content, etc. requires skin detection as a pre-processing step. There is no a perfect solution for skin detection, since this process is a compromise on speed, simplicity and precision (detection quality). There are many different techniques for skin detection modeling ranging from simple models based on one or several thresholds to advanced models based on neural network, Bayesian classifier, maximum entropy, k-means clustering, etc. This paper proposes a simple model, based on ratios of red, green and blue components of the RGB color model. It describes how to make a compromise in a skin detection modeling by using three levels of rules. Data analysis that supports conclusions is performed on the dataset from Universidad de Chile (UChile, dbskin2 - complete set) that contains 103 images and their annotations.
Investigation of SSR Characteristics of SSSC With GA Based Voltage Controller

In this paper, investigation of subsynchronous resonance (SSR) characteristics of a hybrid series compensated system and the design of voltage controller for three level 24-pulse Voltage Source Converter based Static Synchronous Series Compensator (SSSC) is presented. Hybrid compensation consists of series fixed capacitor and SSSC which is a active series FACTS controller. The design of voltage controller for SSSC is based on damping torque analysis, and Genetic Algorithm (GA) is adopted for tuning the controller parameters. The SSR Characteristics of SSSC with constant reactive voltage control modes has been investigated. The results show that the constant reactive voltage control of SSSC has the effect of reducing the electrical resonance frequency, which detunes the SSR.The analysis of SSR with SSSC is carried out based on frequency domain method, eigenvalue analysis and transient simulation. While the eigenvalue and damping torque analysis are based on D-Q model of SSSC, the transient simulation considers both D-Q and detailed three phase nonlinear system model using switching functions. Keywords— FACTS, SSR, SSSC, damping torque, GA.
Mobiscopes for Human Spaces

Mobiscopes extend the traditional sensor network model, introducing challenges in data management and integrity, privacy, and network system design. Researchers need an architecture and general methodology for designing future mobiscopes. A mobiscope is a federation of distributed mobile sensors into a taskable sensing system that achieves high-density sampling coverage over a wide area through mobility.
Developers are Not the Enemy!: The Need for Usable Security APIs

Rather than recognizing software engineers' limitations, modern security practice has created an adversarial relationship between security software designers and the developers who use their software to construct applications. Using the example of cryptographic APIs, the authors show that developers aren't the enemy and that, to strengthen security systems across the board, security professionals must focus on creating developer-friendly and developer-centric approaches.
A Dynamic Sampling Framework for Multi-class Imbalanced Data

In this paper we present a Dynamic Sampling Framework for use with multi-class imbalanced data containing any number of classes. The framework makes use of existing sampling techniques such as RUS, ROS, and SMOTE and ties the classification algorithm into the sampling process in a wrapper like manner. In doing so the framework is able to search for a desirably sampled training set, thus eliminating the need to specify a target distribution and automatically tuning the training set distribution to the classification algorithm's learning preferences. This is important when re-sampling multi-class data where manually searching for an appropriate target distribution would be a daunting task. We test both our Dynamic Sampling approach and traditional Static Sampling using RUS, ROS, SMOTE, ROS+RUS, and SMOTE+RUS with several classification algorithms on a four class, highly imbalanced data set. We compare the results of Static Sampling and Dynamic Sampling and find that overall both techniques are able to raise Recall for the highest minority classes, but Dynamic Sampling is also able to maintain or raise Recall for the majority classes. Also, Dynamic Sampling is overall more robust and resilient, and is better able to sustain classifier Accuracy and to raise G-Mean and Minimum F-Measures.
Bilateral Speech Comprehension Reflects Differential Sensitivity to Spectral and Temporal Features

Speech comprehension has been shown to be a strikingly bilateral process, but the differential contributions of the subfields of left and right auditory cortices have remained elusive. The hypothesis that left auditory areas engage predominantly in decoding fast temporal perturbations of a signal whereas the right areas are relatively more driven by changes of the frequency spectrum has not been directly tested in speech or music. This brain-imaging study independently manipulated the speech signal itself along the spectral and the temporal domain using noise-band vocoding. In a parametric design with five temporal and five spectral degradation levels in word comprehension, a functional distinction of the left and right auditory association cortices emerged: increases in the temporal detail of the signal were most effective in driving brain activation of the left anterolateral superior temporal sulcus (STS), whereas the right homolog areas exhibited stronger sensitivity to the variations in spectral detail. In accordance with behavioral measures of speech comprehension acquired in parallel, change of spectral detail exhibited a stronger coupling with the STS BOLD signal. The relative pattern of lateralization (quantified using lateralization quotients) proved reliable in a jack-knifed iterative reanalysis of the group functional magnetic resonance imaging model. This study supplies direct evidence to the often implied functional distinction of the two cerebral hemispheres in speech processing. Applying direct manipulations to the speech signal rather than to low-level surrogates, the results lend plausibility to the notion of complementary roles for the left and right superior temporal sulci in comprehending the speech signal.
Primal–dual first-order methods for a class of cone programming

In this paper, we study primal–dual first-order methods for a class of cone programming problems. In particular, we first present four natural primal–dual smooth convex minimization reformulations for them and then discuss a first-order method, that is, a variant of Nesterov's smooth (VNS) method [A. Auslender and M. Teboulle, Interior gradient and proximal methods for convex and conic optimization, SIAM J. Optim. 16(3) (2006), pp. 697–725], for solving these reformulations. The associated worst-case major arithmetic operation costs of the VNS method are estimated and compared. We conclude that the VNS method based on the last reformulation generally outperforms the others. Finally, we justify our theoretical prediction on the behaviour of the VNS method by conducting numerical experiments on Dantzig selector, basis pursuit de-noising, MAXCUT SDP relaxation and Lovász capacity problems.
Solving Sudoku Puzzles Using Improved Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

Sudoku puzzles belong to a set of hard problems called NP-Complete problems. A Sudoku puzzle is a logic-based combinatorial puzzle with rules that are relatively simple. Various algorithms have been applied to solve this combinatorial problem. A relatively new algorithm called Artificial Bee Colony algorithm was developed in 2005. The algorithm mimics the way bees forage for food and has been successfully applied to a wide array of NP-Complete problems. This paper explores the possibility of using an improved variant of the Artificial Bee Colony algorithm in solving Sudoku Puzzles. The results obtained support the conclusion that the algorithm can be used to solve Sudoku Puzzles efficiently and effectively.
Detection and estimation in sensor arrays using weighted subspace fitting

The problem of signal parameter estimation of narrowband emitter signals impinging on an array of sensors is addressed. A multidimensional estimation procedure that applies to arbitrary array structures and signal correlation is proposed. The method is based on the recently introduced weighted subspace fitting (WSF) criterion and includes schemes for both detecting the number of sources and estimating the signal parameters. A Gauss-Newton-type method is presented for solving the multidimensional WSF and maximum-likelihood optimization problems. The global and local properties of the search procedure are investigated through computer simulations. Most methods require knowledge of the number of coherent/noncoherent signals present. A scheme for consistently estimating this is proposed based on an asymptotic analysis of the WSF cost function. The performance of the detection scheme is also investigated through simulations. >