Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role-based control of shared application views

Collaboration often relies on all group members having a shared view of a single-user application. A common situation is a single active presenter sharing a live view of her workstation screen with a passive audience, using simple hardware-based video signal projection onto a large screen or simple bitmap-based sharing protocols. This offers simplicity and some advantages over more sophisticated software-based replication solutions, but everyone has the exact same view of the application. This conflicts with the presenter's need to keep some information and interaction details private. It also fails to recognize the needs of the passive audience, who may struggle to follow the presentation because of verbosity, display clutter or insufficient familiarity with the application.Views that cater to the different roles of the presenter and the audience can be provided by custom solutions, but these tend to be bound to a particular application. In this paper we describe a general technique and implementation details of a prototype system that allows standardized role-specific views of existing single-user applications and permits additional customization that is application-specific with no change to the application source code. Role-based policies control manipulation and display of shared windows and image buffers produced by the application, providing semi-automated privacy protection and relaxed verbosity to meet both presenter and audience needs.
A Wideband Tunable Reflection-Type Phase Shifter With Wide Relative Phase Shift

Wide bandwidth, wide tunable phase range, and a compact circuit size are always desired for the tunable phase shifter utilized in the modern wireless communication system. However, the existing reflection-type phase shifter configurations cannot satisfy all these requirements simultaneously. To resolve these problems, the reflection load consisting of two tunable capacitors and a quarter wavelength transmission line is utilized on a vertically installed planar structure to implement a new reflection-type phase shifter. For demonstration, a reflection-type phase shifter is designed, fabricated, and measured. A wide bandwidth of 66.7% defined by 10-dB return loss had been achieved. Over the same band, a wide phase shift range up to 407° can be observed. Meanwhile, the fabricated circuit occupies a compact circuit size of ${0.26\lambda _{g} *0.37\lambda _{g}}$ .
Universität Des Saarlandes Fachrichtung 6.1 – Mathematik Mathematical Foundations and Generalisations of the Census Transform for Robust Optic Flow Computation Mathematical Foundations and Generalisations of the Census Transform for Robust Optic Flow Computation

In recent years, the popularity of the census transform has grown rapidly. It provides features that are invariant under monotonically increasing intensity transformations. Therefore, it is exploited as a key ingredient of various computer vision problems, in particular for illumination-robust optic flow models. However, despite being extensively applied, its underlying mathematical foundations are not well-understood so far. The main contributions of our paper are to provide these missing insights, and in this way to generalise the concept of the census transform. To this end, we transfer the inherently discrete transform to the continuous setting and embed it into a variational framework for optic flow estimation. This uncovers two important properties: the strong reliance on local extrema and the induced anisotropy of the data term by acting along isolines. These findings open the door to generalisations of the census transform that are not obvious in the discrete formulation. To illustrate this, we introduce and analyse second-order census models that are based on thresholding the second directional derivatives. Last but not least, we constitute links of census-based approaches to established data terms such as gradient constancy, Hessian constancy, and Laplacian constancy, and we confirm our findings by means of experiments.
Temporal Thumbnails: rapid visualization of time-based viewing data

We introduce the concept of the Temporal Thumbnail, used to quickly convey information about the amount of time spent viewing specific areas of a virtual 3D model. Temporal Thumbnails allow for large amounts of time-based information collected from model viewing sessions to be rapidly visualized by collapsing the time dimension onto the space of the model, creating a characteristic impression of the overall interaction. We describe three techniques that implement the Temporal Thumbnail concept and present a study comparing these techniques to more traditional video and storyboard representations. The results suggest that Temporal Thumbnails have potential as an effective technique for quickly analyzing large amounts of viewing data. Practical and theoretical issues for visualization and representation are also discussed.
Buy Your Coffee with Bitcoin: Real-World Deployment of a Bitcoin Point of Sale Terminal

In this paper we discuss existing approaches for Bitcoin payments, as suitable for a small business for small-value transactions. We develop an evaluation framework utilizing security, usability, deployability criteria,, examine several existing systems, tools. Following a requirements engineering approach, we designed, implemented a new Point of Sale (PoS) system that satisfies an optimal set of criteria within our evaluation framework. Our open source system, Aunja PoS, has been deployed in a real world café since October 2014.
Expression of an Aedes aegypti cation‐chloride cotransporter and its Drosophila homologues

Insects maintain haemolymph homeostasis under different environmental conditions by modulating the concentrations of Na+, K+ and Cl– ions. One group of proteins involved in ion transport across cell membranes consists of cation‐chloride cotransporters that form a family of structurally similar proteins. Although much is known about these proteins in mammalian systems, our understanding of them in insects is lacking. The recent sequencing of two insect genomes, Drosophila and Anopheles, enabled us to identify globally members of the family of cation chloride cotransporters in these insects. Using RT‐PCR we monitored the transcription of members of this family in development and in several tissues. Our analyses showed that transcription of these genes differ considerably from the ubiquitously and highly expressed CG5594 gene to the almost silent gene CG31547. Comparison of Drosophila CG12773 and its Aedes homologue AaeCG12773 showed that they have similar transcript expression profiles. Immunohistochemical analysis of AaeCG1277 gene expression revealed that it is highly expressed in the gut of larvae and female adults but not in Malpighian tubules. A more detailed analysis showed that this protein is localized predominantly in the basolateral membrane of these tissues. This expression pattern confirmed the results of RT‐PCR analysis. We also created a mutant for one of the genes, CG10413, in Drosophila using P‐element excision. Analysis of this mutant showed this protein does not appear to be essential for development.
Photoluminescence Study of Gallium Nitride Thin Films Obtained by Infrared Close Space Vapor Transport

Photoluminescence (PL) studies in GaN thin films grown by infrared close space vapor transport (CSVT-IR) in vacuum are presented in this work. The growth of GaN thin films was done on a variety of substrates like silicon, sapphire and fused silica. Room temperature PL spectra of all the GaN films show near band-edge emission (NBE) and a broad blue and green luminescence (BL, GL), which can be seen with the naked eye in a bright room. The sample grown by infrared CSVT on the silicon substrate shows several emission peaks from 2.4 to 3.22 eV with a pronounced red shift with respect to the band gap energy. The sample grown on sapphire shows strong and broad ultraviolet emission peaks (UVL) centered at 3.19 eV and it exhibits a red shift of NBE. The PL spectrum of GaN films deposited on fused silica exhibited a unique and strong blue-green emission peak centered at 2.38 eV. The presence of yellow and green luminescence in all samples is related to native defects in the structure such as dislocations in GaN and/or the presence of amorphous phases. We analyze the material quality that can be obtained by CSVT-IR in vacuum, which is a high yield technique with simple equipment set-up, in terms of the PL results obtained in each case.
Grain Size and Source Apportionment of Heavy Metals in Urban Stream Sediments

K. Sekabira1, H. Oryem-Origa2, T. A. Basamba3, G. Mutumba4 and E. Kakudidi5 1Department of Environment, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Kampala International University, Kampala 2Department of Biology, School of Biological Sciences, Makerere University, Kampala 3Soil Science Department of Agricultural Production College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Makerere University, Kampala Uganda
Influences of polishing on return loss of optical fiber connectors

With Al2O3 and SiO2 as polishing medium, under different polishing conditions, e.g. with different polishing pressure, polishing time and polishing fluid, the influences of polishing treatment on the return loss of optical fiber connectors were investigated. The return loss of optical fiber connectors is 32 - 38 dB before polishing. The results show that dry polishing(i. e. no polishing fluid) with Al2O3 has less influence on return loss of optical fiber connectors, while dry polishing with SiO2 reduces return loss to about 20 dB because of the end-face of optical fiber contaminated. The wet polishing(i. e. using distilled water as polishing fluid) with Al2O3 or SiO2 can increase return loss to 45 -50 dB, but wet polishing with Al2 O3 may produce optical fiber undercut depth of 80 - 140 nm. Wet polishing with SiO2 should be preferentially selected for optical fiber connectors and polishing time should be controlled within 20 - 30 s.
Zippier ZMap: Internet-Wide Scanning at 10 Gbps

We introduce optimizations to the ZMap network scanner that achieve a 10-fold increase in maximum scan rate. By parallelizing address generation, introducing an improved blacklisting algorithm, and using zero-copy NIC access, we drive ZMap to nearly the maximum throughput of 10 gigabit Ethernet, almost 15 million probes per second. With these changes, ZMap can comprehensively scan for a single TCP port across the entire public IPv4 address space in 4.5 minutes given adequate upstream bandwidth. We consider the implications of such rapid scanning for both defenders and attackers, and we briefly discuss a range of potential applications.
Lipopolysaccharide-stimulated whole blood cytokine production does not predict the inflammatory response in human endotoxemia

A widely applied method to study the activation of the innate immune system is in vitro stimulation of whole blood using lipopolysaccharide (LPS). However, it is unclear if in vitro cytokine production relates to in vivo cytokine levels elicited during experimental endotoxemia or sepsis. To determine the correlation between in vitro cytokine production and the in vivo inflammatory response, blood was obtained from 15 healthy volunteers for in vitro incubation with Escherichia coli LPS, immediately followed by experimental E. coli endotoxemia. Correlations of in vitro and peak in vivo cytokine concentrations were determined using Pearson correlation coefficient. In stimulated whole blood, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, Interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, IL-10 and interferon (IFN)-γ were induced to 279 ± 53, 392 ± 64, 5312 ± 624, 83 ± 20 and 343 ± 85 pg/ml, respectively, whereas in vivo cytokine induction led to cytokine levels of 603 ± 123, 11 ± 1, 4999 ± 1228, 167 ± 25 and 194 ± 40 pg/ml, respectively. Correlation coefficients between the in vitro and in vivo cytokine concentrations were for TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, IL-10 and IFN-γ -0.10 (P = 0.7), 0.09 (P = 0.8), 0.36 (P = 0.2), 0.19 (P = 0.5) and 0.40 (P = 0.1), respectively. Comparison between in vitro and in vivo stimulation with LPS shows no correlation between the amount of cytokines produced. In vitro cytokine production, therefore, does not predict the in vivo inflammatory response.
“It pains me because as a woman you have to breastfeed your baby”: decision-making about infant feeding among African women living with HIV in the UK

Objectives UK guidance advises HIV-positive women to abstain from breast feeding. Although this eliminates the risk of postnatal vertical transmission of HIV, the impact of replacement feeding on mothers is often overlooked. This qualitative study examines, for the first time in the UK, decision-making about infant feeding among African women living with HIV. Methods Between 2010 and 2011, we conducted semistructured interviews with 23 HIV-positive African women who were pregnant or had recently given birth. We recruited participants from three HIV antenatal clinics in London. Results Women highlighted the cultural importance of breast feeding in African communities and the social pressure to breast feed, also describing fears that replacement feeding would signify their HIV status. Participants had significant concerns about physical and psychological effects of replacement feeding on their child and felt their identity as good mothers was compromised by not breast feeding. However, almost all chose to refrain from breast feeding, driven by the desire to minimise vertical transmission risk. Participants’ resilience was strengthened by financial assistance with replacement feeding, examples of healthy formula-fed children and support from partners, family, peers and professionals. Conclusions The decision to avoid breast feeding came at considerable emotional cost to participants. Professionals should be aware of the difficulties encountered by HIV-positive women in refraining from breast feeding, especially those from migrant African communities where breast feeding is culturally normative. Appropriate financial and emotional support increases women's capacity to adhere to their infant-feeding decisions and may reduce the emotional impact.
The Improving Techniques for Disambiguating Non-alphabet Sense Categories

Usually, there are various non-alphabet symbols (“/”, “:”, “-”, etc.) occurring in Mandarin texts. Such symbols may be pronounced more than one oral expression with respect to its sense category. In our previous works, we proposed the multi-layer decision classifier to disambiguate the sense category of non-alphabet symbols; the elementary feature is the statistical probability of token adopting the Bayesian rule. This paper adopts more features of tokens in sentences. Three techniques are further proposed to improve the performance. Experiments show that the proposed techniques can disambiguate the sense category of target symbols quite well, even with small size of data. The precision rates for inside and outside tests are upgraded to 99.6% and 96.5% by using more features of token and techniques.
Supervised defect detection on textile fabrics via optimal Gabor filter

An effective defect detection scheme for textile fabrics is designed in this article. Interestingly, this approach is particularly useful for patterned fabric. In the proposed method, firstly, Gabor filter is adjusted to match with the texture information of non-defective fabric image via genetic algorithm. Secondly, adjusted optimal Gabor filter is used for detecting defects on defective fabric images and defective fabric images to be detected have the same texture background with corresponding defect-free fabric images. The significance of the proposed approach lies in selecting Gabor filter parameters with an abundance of choices to build the optimal Gabor filter by means of genetic algorithm and achieving accurate defect detection on patterned fabric. High success rate and accuracy with little computational time online are obtained in the defect detection on fabrics, which indicate that the suggested method can be put to use in practice.
Demystifying dark matter for online experimentation

The rise of online controlled experimentation, a.k. a. A/B testing began around the turn of the millennium with the emergence of internet giants like Amazon, Bing, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Yahoo. A step towards good experimental design includes the planning for sample size, confidence level, metrics to be measured and test duration. Generally, these factors impact the quality and validity of an experiment. In practice, additional factors may also impact the validity of an experiment. One such critical factor is the discrepancy between the planned bucket size and the actual bucket size. We call this hidden gap “Experimentation Dark Matter”. Experimentation dark matter is invisible to A/A or A/B validation of experimental analysis but can impact the validity of an experiment. In this paper, we have demonstrated in detail, this gap that may cause the loss of statistical power as well as the loss of representativeness and generalizability of an experiment. We have proposed a framework to monitor experimentation dark matter that may go unnoticed in a balanced AB test. We have further discussed the remediation of a recent dark matter issue using our framework. This scalable, low-latency framework is effective and applicable to similar online controlled experimentation systems.
Distributed Algorithms for Computation of Centrality Measures in Complex Networks

This paper is concerned with distributed computation of several commonly used centrality measures in complex networks. In particular, we propose deterministic algorithms, which converge in finite time, for the distributed computation of the degree, closeness and betweenness centrality measures in directed graphs. Regarding eigenvector centrality, we consider the PageRank problem as its typical variant, and design distributed randomized algorithms to compute PageRank for both fixed and time-varying graphs. A key feature of the proposed algorithms is that they do not require to know the network size, which can be simultaneously estimated at every node, and that they are clock-free. To address the PageRank problem of time-varying graphs, we introduce the concept of persistent graph, which eliminates the effect of spamming nodes. Moreover, we prove that these algorithms converge almost surely and in the sense of $L^p$. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms is illustrated via extensive simulations using a classical benchmark.
3G-WLAN interworking: security analysis and new authentication and key agreement based on EAP-AKA

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project(3GPP) standard is developing System Architecture Evolution(SAE)/Long Term Evolution(LTE) architecture for the next generation mobile communication system. The SAE/LTE architecture provides secure service and 3G-WLAN interworking [9]. To provide secure 3G-WLAN interworking in the SAE/LTE architecture, Extensible Authentication Protocol-Authentication and Key Agreement(EAP-AKA) is used. However, EAP-AKA has several vulnerabilities such as disclosure of user identity, man-in-the-middle attack, Sequence Number(SQN) synchronization, and additional bandwidth consumption. Therefore, this paper analyzes threats and attacks in 3G-WLAN interworking and proposes a new authentication and key agreement protocol based on EAPAKA. The proposed protocol combines Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman(ECDH) with symmetric key cryptosystem to overcome these vulnerabilities. Moreover, our protocol provides Perfect Forward Secrecy(PFS) to guarantee stronger security, mutual authentication, and resistance to replay attack. Compared with previous protocols which use public key cryptosystem with certificates, our protocol can reduce computational overhead.
Sparsity level in a non-negative matrix factorization based speech strategy in cochlear implants

Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) has increasingly been used as a tool in signal processing in the last years, but it has not been used in the cochlear implants (CIs). To improve the performance of CIs in noisy environments, a novel sparse strategy is proposed by applying NMF on envelopes of 22 channels. In the new algorithm, the noisy speech is first transferred to the time-frequency domain via a 22- channel filter bank and the envelope in each frequency channel is extracted; secondly, NMF is applied to the envelope matrix (envelopegram); finally, the sparsity condition is applied to the coefficient matrix to get more sparse representation. Speech reception threshold (SRT) subjective experiment was performed in combination with five objective measurements in order to choose the proper parameters for the sparse NMF model.
Exacerbation of sleep apnoea by frequent central events in patients with the obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome at altitude: a randomised trial

Background Many patients with the obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSA) travel to the mountains for recreational and professional activities while temporarily discontinuing continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment. A study was undertaken to evaluate the hypothesis that altitude would aggravate their hypoxaemia, sleep-related breathing disturbances and impair daytime performance. Methods Thirty-four patients with OSA of median age 62 years (IQR 57–65), median apnoea/hypopnoea index (AHI) 47.5 events/h (IQR 32.4–72.8), residing at <600 m were enrolled. A crossover trial randomised for the sequence of altitude exposure was carried out: patients spent 1 day in Zurich (490 m) and 4 days in the Swiss Alps at 1860 m and 2590 m (2 days each) during which continuous positive airway pressure was discontinued. Daily evaluations included polysomnography, symptom questionnaires, physical examination and driving simulator tests. Results Polysomnography revealed median oxygen saturations at 490 m and in the first and second nights at 1860 and 2590 m, respectively, of 94%, 90%, 90%, 86% and 87% (p<0.01 between altitudes). Corresponding median AHI were 47.5, 85.1, 74.6, 90.0 and 90.9 events/h (p<0.01 between altitudes) with ratios of central to obstructive events of 0.1, 0.8, 1.0, 1.9 and 1.9 (p<0.01 between altitudes). Tracking performance during simulated driving was significantly impaired at 2590 m compared with 490 m. Systolic blood pressure and cardiac arrhythmias were increased at altitude. Conclusions Altitude exposure in untreated patients with OSA aggravates hypoxaemia, increases sleep-related breathing disturbances due to frequent central apnoeas/hypopnoeas, impairs driving simulator performance and induces cardiovascular stress. These findings have implications for counselling and treating patients with OSA planning to travel to high altitude. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT00514826.
Approximate numerical method for lubrication with Generalised Newtonian fluids

In this paper an approach is proposed to account for Generalised Newtonian lubrication flow in a lubricated bearing geometry. The approximate approach solves the lubricant viscosity accross the lubricated gap, the coefficients in the equation describing the viscosity across the gap are then solved for iteratively. This permits an approximation of the lubrication equation to be arrived at which considers the Poiseuille components of the flow as well as the Couette terms. The reduction in error of around 30–40% is observed in the bearing pressure field for the cases considered here.