Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clustering malware-generated spam emails with a novel fuzzy string matching algorithm

In this paper, a fuzzy-matching clustering algorithm is introduced to group subjects found in spam emails which are generated by malware. A modified scoring strategy is applied in dynamic programming to find subjects that are similar to each other. A recursive seed selection strategy allows the algorithm to detect similar patterns even when the spammer creates a variation of the original pattern. A sliding threshold based on string length helps to minimize false-positives. The algorithm proves to be effective in detecting and grouping spam emails using templates. It also helps spam investigators to collect and sort large amount of malware-generated spam more efficiently without looking at the email content.
A Multirobot System for Distributed Area Coverage and Signal Searching in Large Outdoor Scenarios *

This work presents a complete multirobot solution for signal searching tasks in large outdoor scenarios. An evaluation of two different coverage path‐planning strategies according to field size and shape is presented. A signal location system developed to simulate mines or chemical source detections is also described. The solution presented is a pioneer in evaluating multimaster robotics operative system architectures with a fleet of robots in real scenarios. This solution minimizes the use of communications bandwidth required for full operation. Finally, field results are provided, and the advantages of the implemented solution are analyzed.
Use of Hearing Aids and Functional Capacity in Middle-Aged and Elderly Individuals

Abstract Introduction Hearing loss is among the sensory changes strongly associated with loss of functional capacity. Objective It aims to determine whether the use of hearing aid contributes to the improvement of instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) for middle aged and elderly hearing-impaired individuals. Methods This is a descriptive, longitudinal, and interventional study. We evaluated 17 subjects, 13 (76.5%) female, aged between 58 and 96 years old (mean 77.1 ± 10.4 years). All were new users of hearing aids. Evaluation included social history, pure tone audiometry, and scale of IADL developed by Lawton and Brody. The subjects were presented daily life situations and were expected to respond if they could do them without assistance (3 points), partially assisted (2 points) or if they were unable to perform them (1 point). IADL was applied before the use of hearing aids adaptation and after a three- and six-month period of use. Results Data analysis revealed that before the use of hearing aids the average score obtained by the subjects was 22.94 ± 4.04 points. Three months after beginning the use the average score was 23.29 ± 4.12 and after six months the average score was 23.71 ± 3.69 points. Statistical analysis revealed a significant difference between scores obtained before the use of hearing aids and six months post-fitting (p = 0.015*) Conclusion The use of hearing aids among the subjects evaluated promoted positive changes in performing IADL, especially to using the telephone.
Author ' s personal copy The route to MB x N y C z molecular wheels : II . Results using accurate functionals and basis sets

Applying ab initio quantum chemical methods, molecular wheels composed of metal and light atoms were investigated. High quality basis sets 6-31G*, TZPV, and cc-pVTZ as well as exchange and non-local correlation functionals B3LYP, BP86 and B3P86 were used. The ground-state energy and structures of cyclic planar and pyramidal clusters TiBn (for n 1⁄4 3e10) were computed. In addition, the relative stability and electronic structures of molecular wheels TiBxNyCz (for x, y, z 1⁄4 0e10) and MBnC10 n (for n 1⁄4 2 to 5 and M 1⁄4 Sc to Zn) were determined. This paper sustains a follow-up study to the previous one of Boustani and Pandey [Solid State Sci. 14 (2012) 1591], in which the calculations were carried out at the HF-SCF/STO3G/6-31G level of theory to determine the initial stability and properties. The results show that there is a competition between the 2D planar and the 3D pyramidal TiBn clusters (for n 1⁄4 3e8). Different isomers of TiB10 clusters were also studied and a structural transition of 3D-isomer into 2Dwheel is presented. Substitution boron in TiB10 by carbon or/and nitrogen atoms enhances the stability and leads toward the most stable wheel TiB3C7. Furthermore, the computations show that Sc, Ti and V at the center of the molecular wheels are energetically favored over other transition metal atoms of the first
Resistance profile of a neutralizing anti-HIV monoclonal antibody, KD-247, that shows favourable synergism with anti-CCR5 inhibitors

Background:The high-affinity humanized monoclonal antibody (MAb) KD-247 reacts with a tip region in gp120-V3 and cross-neutralizes primary isolates with a matching neutralization sequence motif. Methods:We induced an HIV-1 variant that was resistant to KD-247 by exposing the JR-FL virus to increasing concentrations of KD-247 in PM1/CCR5 cells, which expressed high levels of CCR5 in vitro. We determined the amino acid sequence of the gp120-encoding region of the JR-FL escape mutant from KD-247. To confirm that this substitution was responsible for the KD-247-resistance, a single-round replication assay was performed. We further evaluated the anti-HIV-1 interactions between KD-247 and various CCR5 inhibitors in vitro. Results:At passage 8 of the culture in the presence of 1000 μg/ml KD-247, one amino acid substitution, Gly to Glu at position 314 (G314E), was identified in the V3-tip of gp120. A pseudotyped virus with the G314E mutation was highly resistant to KD-247. Unexpectedly, this mutant virus was sensitive to CCR5 inhibitors, RANTES, recombinant human soluble CD4 (rsCD4) and an anti-CCR5 MAb, but resistant to an anti-CD4 MAb, compared with the wild-type virus. We also found that combinations of KD-247 and CCR5 inhibitors were highly synergistic. Conclusions:The present data suggest that KD-247 has certain advantages for possible passive immunotherapy. They are: high concentrations of KD-247 are needed for viral acquisition of KD-247 resistance; the escape variants are more sensitive to CCR5 inhibitors and rsCD4; and there are high levels of synergism between KD-247 and CCR5 inhibitors at all concentrations tested.
Biology of the Invertebrates

Is there a real need for another general textbook on invertebrate zoology? I would say no. Indeed, to begin with, there is little scope for imagination in this kind of endeavor since there already exist numerous volumes saying much the same thing about essentially the same organisms. The text in general is adequate in its presentation of the various phyla and each chapter begins with a useful short breakdown of classification within the phylum under discussion. Of particular interest are the fairly extensive annotated references accompanying each chapter. However the drawings tend to be very simple, often inadequately labeled, and many of the photographs are of poor quality and thus singularly unilluminating. More drawings and fewer photographs would have better supplemented the text. The very slight treatment given to the insects is not extensive enough to be of more than passing utility. While it is true, as the author claims, that classifications used in the book are up to date, these are bound to change and in all likelihood already have, so that this gives no real, distinct advantage over existing volumes. In short, I would recommend that beginning students of invertebrate zoology look elsewhere for a general text.
Characterization of scratching responses in rats following centrally administered morphine or bombesin

The aim of this study was to characterize scratching behavior elicited by central administration of morphine or bombesin in rats, and to determine the role of opioid receptors in scratching induced by both pruritogenic agents. Central administration included intracisternal (i.c.), intrathecal (i.t.), and intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) routes. Scratching events made with hind paws were counted by observers blinded to treatment conditions. Intracisternal morphine (0.01–0.1 μg) produced dose-dependent increases in scratching; the maximum response to i.c. morphine 0.1 μg was approximately 500 scratches within a 1-hour period. Neither i.t. nor i.c. v. morphine significantly increased scratching. Bombesin (0.01−0.32 μg) elicited robust scratching following i.c. administration. The maximum response to i.c. bombesin 0.32 μg was approximately 4000 scratches within a 1-hour period. Both i.t. and i.c. v. bombesin produced profound scratching at similar doses. Antagonist studies confirmed that mu-opioid receptors selectively mediate i.c. morphine-induced scratching. However, selective mu-, kappa-, and delta-opioid antagonists did not attenuate i.c. bombesin-induced scratching. These results demonstrate that morphine and bombesin elicit scratching through different receptor mechanisms, at different central sites, and to different degrees.
A Robust In Vivo-Like Persistent Firing Supported by a Hybrid of Intracellular and Synaptic Mechanisms

Persistent firing is believed to support short-term information retention in the brain. Established hypotheses make use of the recurrent synaptic connectivity to support persistent firing. However, this mechanism is known to suffer from a lack of robustness. On the other hand, persistent firing can be supported by an intrinsic cellular mechanism in multiple brain areas. However, the consequences of having both the intrinsic and the synaptic mechanisms (a hybrid model) on persistent firing remain largely unknown. The goal of this study is to investigate whether a hybrid neural network model with these two mechanisms has advantages over a conventional recurrent network based model. Our computer simulations were based on in vitro recordings obtained from hippocampal CA3 pyramidal cells under cholinergic receptor activation. Calcium activated non-specific cationic (CAN) current supported persistent firing in the Hodgkin-Huxley style cellular models. Our results suggest that the hybrid model supports persistent firing within a physiological frequency range over a wide range of different parameters, eliminating parameter sensitivity issues generally recognized in network based persistent firing. In addition, persistent firing in the hybrid model is substantially more robust against distracting inputs, can coexist with theta frequency oscillations, and supports pattern completion.
Las FARC: fuentes de su longevidad y de la conservación de su cohesión

This article analyzes the longevity and the cohesion of the principal organization of the guerrilla in Colombia, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The text initiates with a rapid historical inventory of the FARC and realizes a presentation of significant phenomena in the different organizational phases of this guerrilla group. Ultimately, the article thinks about the strategies of war, the temporality and the relations with the political and social Colombian and international environment, environment that allowed to the FARC to continue as active organization during the last four decades.
Age Associated Differences in Prevalence of Individual Rotterdam Criteria and Metabolic Risk Factors During Reproductive Age in 446 Caucasian Women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Abstract Clinical manifestations and metabolic risk factors may differ according to age in patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Therefore, a retrospective trans-sectional study in academic tertiary-care medical center was designed. A cohort of 446 premenopausal, Caucasian women (age range 15–49 years) with PCOS were divided into 4 subgroups according to age: group 1 (15–19 years, n=42), group 2 (20–29 years, n=180), group 3 (30–39 years, n=187), group 4 (40–49 years, n=37) and underwent clinical evaluation (Ferriman-Gallwey score, BMI, waist, blood pressure), hormone analyses (sex hormones, fasting lipids, insulin, glucose), transvaginal ultrasound, oral glucose tolerance tests (OGTT) (n=234), and ACTH tests (n=201). BMI, waist, Ferriman-Gallwey score, blood pressure, and lipid profile were higher in older vs. younger age groups whereas androgen levels were lower. Measures of insulin resistance were unchanged between age groups, but glucose levels were significantly higher in older age groups. Rotterdam criteria: The prevalence of PCO and biochemical hyperandrogenism decreased in the oldest age group whereas clinical hyperandrogenism increased. Young patients are characterized by PCO and biochemical hyperandrogenism, whereas older patients are more obese with more severe hirsutism and more cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors.
Korean and US Preservice Elementary Teachers' Conceptions about Teaching Word Problem Solving

This study explored some of the factors that influence preservice elementary teachers' instructional planning in word problem solving. Interview protocols of Korean (n = 25) and US preservice teachers (n= 21) were analyzed and categorized into a set of constructs elicited from their statements regarding instructional planning and processes. Three general conceptions expressed by preservice elementary teachers in both countries were: instructional strategies, concerns about student ability, and prior learning experiences. More similarities than differences were found between the two countries. However, those differences found in each subcategory of the three general conceptions reflected participants' educational and cultural backgrounds. The need for future investigations was discussed based on the current findings.
Removing Phase Transitions from Gibbs Measures

Gibbs measures are a fundamental class of distributions for the analysis of high dimensional data. Phase transitions, which are also known as degeneracy in the network science literature, are an emergent property of these models that well describe many physical systems. However, the reach of the Gibbs measure is now far outside the realm of physical systems, and in many of these domains multiphase behavior is a nuisance. This nuisance often makes distribution fitting impossible due to failure of the MCMC sampler, and even when an MLE fit is possible, if the solution is near a phase transition point, the plausibility of the fit can be highly questionable. We introduce a modification to the Gibbs distribution that reduces the effects of phase transitions, and with properly chosen hyper-parameters, provably removes all multiphase behavior. We show that this new distribution is just as easy to fit via MCMCMLE as the Gibbs measure, and provide examples in the Ising model from statistical physics and ERGMs from network science.
Fully Bayesian tensor-based regression

N-way (or multiway) Partial Least Squares (NPLS) regression is a successful algorithm for solving ill-conditioned and high-dimensional problems. However, the selection of the latent space dimensionality, when performed manually, becomes a critical issue in the presence of irrelevant, redundant and noisy information and can lead to overfitting, and when using cross-validation one can still not guarantee a good predictive performance. We propose a fully Bayesian N-way partial least squares regression (BNPLS) with an automatic relevance determination (ARD) prior on the factor matrices so that the number of latent components can be determined automatically without requiring specific assumptions. Using synthetic data, we compare the performance of BNPLS with conventional NPLS, standard partial least squared (PLS) and state-of-the-art higher-order PLS (HOPLS). Results show that BNPLS consistently achieves a better or comparable performance.
Novel Conserved Group A Streptococcal Proteins Identified by the Antigenome Technology as Vaccine Candidates for a Non-M Protein-Based Vaccine

ABSTRACT Group A streptococci (GAS) can cause a wide variety of human infections ranging from asymptomatic colonization to life-threatening invasive diseases. Although antibiotic treatment is very effective, when left untreated, Streptococcus pyogenes infections can lead to poststreptococcal sequelae and severe disease causing significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. To aid the development of a non-M protein-based prophylactic vaccine for the prevention of group A streptococcal infections, we identified novel immunogenic proteins using genomic surface display libraries and human serum antibodies from donors exposed to or infected by S. pyogenes. Vaccine candidate antigens were further selected based on animal protection in murine lethal-sepsis models with intranasal or intravenous challenge with two different M serotype strains. The nine protective antigens identified are highly conserved; eight of them show more than 97% sequence identity in 13 published genomes as well as in approximately 50 clinical isolates tested. Since the functions of the selected vaccine candidates are largely unknown, we generated deletion mutants for three of the protective antigens and observed that deletion of the gene encoding Spy1536 drastically reduced binding of GAS cells to host extracellular matrix proteins, due to reduced surface expression of GAS proteins such as Spy0269 and M protein. The protective, highly conserved antigens identified in this study are promising candidates for the development of an M-type-independent, protein-based vaccine to prevent infection by S. pyogenes.
Injecting and Rejecting, Framing and Failing

This paper seeks to examine how female subjectivities are privileged by Canadian human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination discourse and, in turn, how homosexual male subjectivities are displaced. Employing a Critical Discourse Analysis approach, I analyze selected HPV vaccination (HPVV) promotional materials, and depict the discursive strategies which privilege and exclude gendered subjectivities. My critical analysis is influenced by feminist linguistic works that seek to uncover the discursive constructions around sexuality, gender and identity, and the discursive strategies used to communicate ideas about sexual health risks and responsible citizenship. In addition, I adopt feminist theories of knowledge and power to rethink the discursive representations of some bodies and subjectivities as normal, and Others as unintelligible within HPVV discourse in today's neoliberal time.
Towards Flexible Automatic Generation of Graph Processing Gateware

FPGAs have been demonstrated as promising platforms to accelerate graph processing applications at scale with superior energy-efficiency. However, programming FPGAs is significantly more challenging than similar software solutions. To address this productivity challenge, several graph processing frameworks for FPGA have already been proposed in recent years. These frameworks aim to lower a programmerâĂŹs burden by requiring users to provide only logic specific to the target graph algorithm, while leaving the auto generation of the rest of the hardware design to the framework. In this work, we extend the capability of the GraVF framework and improve the scale of its supported input graphs by a) making the synchronization method independent of the network structure and b) adding support for off-chip memory. The improved system accepts graph sizes an order of magnitude larger than previously reported and provides throughput in the order of 100MTEPS per processing element.
Evaluation of Position-Related Information in Multipath Components for Indoor Positioning

Location awareness is a key factor for a wealth of wireless indoor applications. Its provision requires the careful fusion of diverse information sources. For agents that use radio signals for localization, this information may either come from signal transmissions with respect to fixed anchors, from cooperative transmissions between agents, or from radar-like monostatic transmissions. Using a priori knowledge of a floor plan of the environment, specular multipath components can be exploited, based on a geometric-stochastic channel model. In this paper, a unified framework is presented for the quantification of this type of position-related information, using the concept of equivalent Fisher information. We derive analytical results for the Cramér-Rao lower bound of multipath-assisted positioning, considering bistatic transmissions between agents and fixed anchors, monostatic transmissions from agents, cooperative measurements between agents, and combinations thereof, including the effect of clock offsets. Awareness of this information enables highly accurate and robust indoor positioning. Computational results show the applicability of the framework for the characterization of the localization capabilities of a given environment, quantifying the influence of different system setups, signal parameters, and the impact of path overlap.
ACRA: escalas de estrategias de aprendizaje de los estudiantes del curso de Producción Animal I

El objetivo del trabajo fue efectuar un diagnóstico de las Estrategias de Aprendizaje más utilizadas por los estudiantes del Curso de Producción Animal I, Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias y Forestales, UNLP. Se emplearon las Escalas de Estrategias de Aprendizaje, ACRA: Adquisición, Codificación, Recuperación y Apoyo. Las estrategias más utilizadas por los estudiantes fueron la exploración, subrayado lineal y repaso mental (Estrategias de Adquisición de la información); resúmenes, esquemas, secuencias, mapas conceptuales, claves y conjuntos (E. de Codificación de la Información); planificación de respuestas, habilidades para motivar a otros compañeros, evitar conflictos, control de sentimientos de incompetencia y poca autoestima académica (E. de Recuperación de Información); autoconocimiento de las estrategias de adquisición, codificación y recuperación propias; planificación del material de estudio, reevaluación del grado de aprendizaje, rectificación de los objetivos, uso de autoinstrucciones y contra-distractoras (E. de Apoyo de la Información). Las Estrategias menos empleadas por los estudiantes fueron de adquisición y recuperación. Las estrategias de enseñanza deberán consolidar el conocimiento a través del repaso en voz alta, reiterado y recuperar la información a través del repaso escrito.
Analysis of DNS Cache Effects on Query Distribution

This paper studies the DNS cache effects that occur on query distribution at the CN top-level domain (TLD) server. We first filter out the malformed DNS queries to purify the log data pollution according to six categories. A model for DNS resolution, more specifically DNS caching, is presented. We demonstrate the presence and magnitude of DNS cache effects and the cache sharing effects on the request distribution through analytic model and simulation. CN TLD log data results are provided and analyzed based on the cache model. The approximate TTL distribution for domain name is inferred quantificationally.
In vitro potential cytogenetic and oxidative stress effects of roxithromycin

Abstract Macrolide antibiotic roxithromycin was evaluated in terms of its genotoxic, cytotoxic and oxidative stress effects. For this purpose; 25, 50, 100 and 200 μg/mL concentrations of roxithromycin were dissolved in dimethyl sulfoxide and treated to human peripheral blood lymphocytes for two different treatment periods (24 and 48 h). In chromosome aberration (CA) and micronucleus (MN) tests, roxithromycin did not show genotoxic effect. But it induced sister chromatid exchange (SCE) at the highest concentration (200 μg/mL) for the 24-h treatment period and at all concentrations (except 25 μg/mL) for the 48-h treatment period. Looking at cytotoxic effect of roxithromycin, statistically insignificant decreases on mitotic index and proliferation index were observed. Roxithromycin decreased nuclear division index (NDI) at highest two concentrations (100 and 200 μg/mL) for the 24-h treatment period and at all concentrations (expect 25 μg/mL) for the 48-h treatment period. Total oxidant values, total antioxidant values and oxidative stress index did not change with roxithromycin treatment. Eventually, roxithromycin did not have genotoxic and oxidative stress effects in human-cultured lymphocytes.