Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Improved Method on Static Binary Analysis to Enhance the Context-Sensitive Control Flow Integrity

— Control Flow Integrity (CFI) is one of the most promising technique to defend Code-Reuse Attacks (CRAs). Traditional CFI Systems and recent Context-Sensitive CFI use coarse control ﬂow graphs (CFGs) to analyze whether the control ﬂow hijack occurs, left vast space for attackers at indirect call-sites. Coarse CFGs make it difﬁcult to decide which target to execute at indirect control-ﬂow transfers, and weaken the existing CFI systems actually. It is an unsolved problem to extract CFGs precisely and perfectly from binaries now. In this paper, we present an algorithm to get a more precise CFG from binaries. Parameters are analyzed at indirect call-sites and functions ﬁrstly. By comparing counts of parameters prepared before call-sites and consumed by functions, targets of indirect calls are reduced. Then the control ﬂow would be more constrained at indirect call-sites in runtime. Combined with CCFI, we implement our policy. Experimental results on some popular programs show that our approach is efﬁcient. Further analysis show that it can mitigate COOP and other advanced attacks.
Privacy Indexes: A Survey of Westin's Studies

Since the late 1970’s Dr. Alan Westin has conducted over 30 privacy surveys. For each of his surveys, Westin has created one or more Privacy Indexes to summarize his results and to show trends in privacy concerns. Many privacy researchers are interested in using these privacy indexes as benchmarks to which they can compare their own survey results. However, the details of how the indexes were calculated have not been reported except in the original survey reports. These reports were originally distributed in paper form, and many are no longer readily available. We obtained paper copies of five of these survey reports and found a sixth report online. We also found summaries of eight additional reports online. Here we report on the methodology used each year to calculate the privacy indexes and draw some conclusions about which indexes can be used to infer privacy trends.
1H-Nuclear magnetic resonance pattern recognition studies with N-phenylanthranilic acid in the rat: time- and dose-related metabolic effects

N-Phenylanthranilic acid (NPAA) causes renal papillary necrosis (RPN) in the rat following repeated oral dosing. Non-invasive early detection of RPN is difficult, but a number of potential biomarkers have been investigated, including phospholipid and uronic acid excretion. This study used 1H-nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic analysis of urine to investigate urinary metabolic perturbations occurring in the rat following exposure to NPAA. Male Alderley Park rats received NPAA (300, 500 or 700 mg kg−1 day−1 orally) for 7 days, and urine was collected on days 7–8, 14–15, 21–22 and 28–29. In a separate study, urine was collected on days 1–2, 3–4, 5–6 and 7–8 from rats receiving 500 mg kg−1 day−1. Samples were analysed by 1H NMR spectroscopy combined with multivariate data analysis and clinical chemistry. Histopathology and clinical chemistry analysis of terminal blood samples was carried out following termination on days 4, 6, 8 and 29 (4 week time course) and days 2, 4, 6 and 8 (8 day study). Urine analysis revealed a marked, though variable, excretion of β-hydroxybutyrate, acetoacetate and acetone (ketone bodies) seen on days 3–4, 5–6 and 7–8 of the study. It is postulated that the ketonuria might be secondary to an alteration in fatty acid metabolism due to inhibition of prostaglandin synthesis. In addition, an elevation in urinary ascorbate was observed during the first 8 days of the study. Ascorbate is considered to be a biomarker of hepatic response, probably reflecting an increased hepatic activity due to glucuronidation of NPAA.
A SURVEY ON OPINION MINING APPROACHES

Opinion mining tasks involve opinion word identification, classification (positive, negative or neutral) and identifying strength of opinion (positive (strong or weak), negative (strong or weak)), target identification on which opinion is given, opinion source identification and opinion summarization. Hence, Opinion Mining tasks require techniques from the field of natural language processing, information retrieval (IR), and text mining. The main concern is how to automatically identify opinion components from unstructured text and summarize the opinion about an entity from a huge volume of unstructured text. This study presents a systematic literature survey that contains a comprehensive overview of different approaches of opinion mining. The aim of this study is to provide researchers and students access to the works in opinion mining as they frame new ideas and further develop the practice.
Next-Generation Entrepreneurs and Succession: An Exploratory Study of Modes and Means of Managing Social Capital

Relationships and connectivity play an enhanced role in most models of the new economy. For many firms, strategic advantage resides in the social capital (or relational wealth) they are able to nourish and maintain. This important asset is accumulated over time and not easily traded or transferred. For family firms with long-term continuity goals, the transfer and management of this largely intangible asset are a most significant activity. This research is based on interviews of next-generation entrepreneurs in 18 different firms. It contributes to the family business and more general management literature by identifying different ways in which relational wealth is transferred, created, and managed. Four different modes of transferring social capital emerged from the data: unplanned, sudden succession; rushed succession; natural immersion; and planned succession and deliberate transfer of social capital. Additionally, seven means of managing social capital emerged: deciphering existing network structures, deciphering the transactional content of network relationships, determining criticalities, attaining legitimacy, clarifying optimal role, managing ties through delegation and division of labor, and striving for optimal network configuration and reconstituting network structure and content. This paper concludes with a series of propositions for further research.
APPLICATION OF GAME THEORY TO HORTICULTURAL CROPS IN SOUTH-WEST NIGERIA

Agricultural production is susceptible to a number of risks such as climatic condition, price variation, pest and diseases infestation to mention a few. The study utilized game theory to determine vegetables and fruits which maximize net profit of farmers under risks, based on different characteristics of the farmers. Data on vegetables production (input and output) were collected from a random sample of 60 farmers cultivating each of the selected vegetables and fruits (50 farmers) from Oyo and Ondo state. The games were constructed based on the net profit obtained from each of the vegetables and fruits. Maximax, Maximin, Regret, Utility and Laplace criteria of game theory were used in the analysis. The Maximax and Laplace criteria showed that the best vegetable and fruit to cultivate by farmers were Tomato (Net profit of N 526,000/ha) and Pineapple (Net profit of N 1398,200/ha). The results of the Maximim and Utility criteria indicated that Amaranthus (net profit of N 272,920) and Pineapple (Net profit of N 1398,200/ha) were the best options. With regret criteria, Pepper (net profit of N 490,000/ha) and Plantain (net profit of N 1348,625.8/ha) were the best options for the farmers. It is recommended for optimistic farmers to produce Tomato and Pineapple while Amaranthus is recommended for pessimistic farmers.
Roles of the Periplasmic Domain of Escherichia coliFtsH (HflB) in Protein Interactions and Activity Modulation*

FtsH is a membrane-bound and ATP-dependent protease of Escherichia coli, known to degrade SecY, a membrane protein for protein translocation, and CII, a soluble transcription factor for lysis/lysogeny decision of phage λ. FtsH forms a homo-oligomeric complex as well as a hetero-oligomeric complex with HflKC, a putative modulator of FtsH. Although FtsH has a small periplasmic region, HflKC is mostly exposed to the periplasmic space. We studied the roles of the periplasmic region of FtsH by engineering mutations in this protein. FtsHΔ236, lacking most of the periplasmic region, retained the in vivo ability to degrade SecY but not CII, resulting in high frequency lysogenization of λ. Several insertion mutations in the periplasmic region of FtsH also differentially affected the proteolytic activities of FtsH. Interestingly, purified and detergent-solubilized FtsHΔ236 was as active as the wild-type enzyme in degrading SecY and CII, although its ATPase activity was lowered 5-fold. Affinity chromatography using histidine-tagged derivatives showed that the periplasmic domain-deleted FtsH no longer interacted with FtsH or HflKC. Although FtsHΔ236-His6-Myc lost the static FtsH-FtsH interaction, it retained the ability to change its conformation in an ATP-dependent manner at 37 °C, leading to a limited oligomerization. These results suggest that the periplasmic region of FtsH has crucial roles in the protein-protein interactions of this complex and in the modulation of its proteolytic functions against different substrates.
Education as advertisement

The paper perceives education as a type of money burning activity, much like advertisement, and examines its effect on social welfare. In a model where the employer's job assignment also functions as a signal a la Waldman (1984), there exists a separating equilibrium in which education credibly conveys information even when the single-crossing property fails to hold. Moreover, we also show that education as advertisement can actually be welfare-improving. This result indicates that education can be meaningful and even socially desirable even if its sole role is simply to waste resources.
Clinical outcomes in psoriatic arthritis: A systematic literature review

Many outcomes have been proposed in the assessment of psoriatic arthritis (PsA). The Outcome Measures in Rheumatology (OMERACT) core set for PsA evaluation comprises 6 domains: joints, skin, function, pain, patient's global assessment, and quality of life. The objective of this work was to assess reporting of outcomes in PsA, including patient‐reported outcomes (PROs) in recent publications.
Handling the inter-vehicular communications challenge - a survey

Inter-vehicle ad-hoc (IVC) networks are highly volatile due to high mobility rates of vehicles and varying driver behavior. A significant challenge in IVC networks would be the implementation of suitable routing protocols so as to ensure successful data packet delivery and lower packet delivery delay. IVC networks are subject to several limitations such as fragmentation of the network due to low deployment of ITS in-vehicle systems and low vehicle density. The rapidly changing topology would cause links between vehicles to be less reliable than those in traditional mobile ad hoc networks. This paper frames the issues and then surveys recent work done in this field, including routing protocol studies and research on network architectures making use of fixed roadside gateways
Quality, Race, and the Urban Education Marketplace

A key issue in urban education policy is the potential impact of market-based reforms. Using a data set encompassing 50 urban school systems, the authors investigate the market reform hypothesis by assessing the impact of perceived school performance, race, and religion on private school enrollment. Previous work in this vein has relied on statewide data, generating findings that may not generalize to the urban districts at the center of the school choice debate. The authors find some evidence that perceived public school quality may affect enrollment, consistent with claims that competition spurs improvement. Consistent with previous work, the results also suggest that religious and racial considerations influence school selection.
Effect of opposite side electrodes in organic field-effect transistor structure

For nanoscale devices, the source and drain electrodes in organic filed effect transistor (OFET) are usually placed on the opposite side of the insulator and gate electrode. While the conventional model to describe FET was extracted from the planar structure with all electrodes laid in the same side. Therefore the effect of the opposite side electrode OFET structure was investigated by using two-dimensional numerical simulation and then comparing to the current-voltage characteristic of fabricated top-contact bottom-gate OFET structures based on pentacene. For this type of structure, a layer of organic semiconductor with a few hundred nanometers thick was employed as active layer and the thickness of this layer has an influence on the saturated current characteristic. The ratio between the saturated drain current and the organic layer thickness becomes approximately constant in some range of the film thickness. In addition the effect of various channel lengths (defined by the distance between edge of source and drain electrodes instead of the heavy doped regions) was examined and the linear dependence part was determined. The effect of insulator thickness dependence can also be demonstrated by modification of electric field from the gate voltage. This model was applied to fabricate the device and verify the effect of electric field from the opposite side of gate electrode.
Equilibrium and Optimal Fertility with Increasing Returns to Population and Endogenous Fertility

We present a general equilibrium dynamic model that characterizes the gap between optimal and equilibrium fertility and investment in human capital. In the model, the aggregate production function exhibits increasing returns to population arising from specialization but households face the standard quantity-quality trade-off when deciding how many children they have and how much education these children receive. In the benchmark model, we solve for the equilibrium and optimal levels of fertility and investment per child and show that competitive fertility is too low and investment per child too high. We next introduce mortality of young adults in the model and assume that households have a precautionary demand for children. Human capital investment raises the likelihood that a child survives to the next generation. In this setup, the model endogenously generates a demographic transition but, since households do not internalize the positive effects of a larger population on productivity and the negative effects of human capital on mortality, both the industrial revolution and the demographic transition take place much later than it would have been optimal. Our model can be interpreted as a bridge between the literature on endogenous demographic transitions and papers that study welfare issues associated with fertility and human capital decisions.
Interview with Edmund S. Phelps

Edmund S. Phelps has been McVickar Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University in New York City, New York, since 1982 and director of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University's Earth Institute since 2001. In 2006, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science "for his analysis of intertemporal tradeoffs in macroeconomic policy. " We interviewed Professor Phelps at his hotel in San Francisco, on January 3, 2009, while attending the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations.
Emergency care practitioners' barriers to mental health assessment, treatment, and referral of post-injury patients.

OBJECTIVE Nearly half of all severely injured patients suffer some form of post-trauma mental stress, but little is known about factors that influence emergency care practitioners' decisions to refer injured patients to mental health care services. This study aimed to: (1) advance our understanding of the practice barriers that hinder mental health assessment, treatment, and referral of injured patients in emergency care settings, and (2) determine the preferred learning format of emergency care practitioners who desire to gain knowledge about mental health problems after injury. METHODS Using a mail survey research design, data were collected from a random sample of emergency medicine physicians and nurses in Wisconsin and New York. RESULTS Data was provided by 108 respondents with an average of 16 years of emergency care experience. More than half indicated they never refer trauma patients for mental health follow-up. Primary reasons for not dealing with trauma-related mental health issues were insufficient time and lack of symptoms. Providers who were most satisfied with their hospital's capacity to support mental health care were significantly more likely to refer patients. The top preference for receiving additional training related to mental health needs of trauma patients was on-site lectures. CONCLUSION Injured patients rely on emergency care practitioners to provide multidimensional care. However, few practitioners facilitate mental health referrals for post-trauma victims, despite their known value.
Comparison of formalin-free tissue fixatives: a proteomic study testing their application for routine pathology and research.

CONTEXT Formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue is the routine processing method for diagnostics practiced in pathology departments worldwide. OBJECTIVE To determine the potential value of non-cross-linking, formalin-free tissue fixation for diagnostics in pathology and proteomic investigations. DESIGN We tested 3 commercially available, formalin-free tissue fixatives-FineFIX, RCL2, and HOPE-in lung cancer specimens from 10 patients. The fixatives were evaluated for their effects on tissue morphology, protein recovery, and immunoreactivity for a selected panel of proteins differently expressed in lung cancer, using immunohistochemistry and Western blotting. RESULTS Tumor-cell analysis with hematoxylin-eosin worked equally well for all tested fixatives when compared with the standard formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded procedure. Movat pentachrome stains showed comparable results for the different matrices and cellular proteins analyzed. The RCL2 (P = .01) and HOPE fixatives (P = .03) improved protein recovery when compared with formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded or frozen tissues. Our data clearly show that the fixatives evaluated influenced immunoreactivity to matched, formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded lung cancer tissue. In particular, membrane-bound proteins, such as epidermal growth factor receptor EGFR, can be detected more efficiently by immunohistochemistry and Western blotting. CONCLUSION We have demonstrated that formalin-free fixatives have the potential in routine pathology and research to replace formalin in histomorphology and protein preservation.
THE SOCIAL LEGITIMACY OF GOLF TOURISM: AN APPLICATION TO THE GOLF COURSES OF ANDALUSIA

Today, respect for the natural environmental is a variable that plays an important role when it comes to configuring a tourist destination or product, particularly since this is an industry for which the location is irrevocably fixed. Andalusia, in particular, has become well-established as a major golf tourism destination. It has more golf courses than any other of the 17 Spanish Autonomous Regions. This has stimulated a debate on the environmental impacts of sporting facilities of this type, with attention consequently focused on the need of these tourism companies to achieve and maintain social legitimacy. In the work described here, the Partial Least Squares (PLS) technique is applied to analyse the impact of the institutional context on the implementation of environmental practices and the achievement of social legitimacy by these organisations.
A New Method for Cross-Normalization and Multitemporal Visualization of SAR Images for the Detection of Flooded Areas

Whenever multitemporal synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images are available, precise calibration and perfect spatial registration are required to obtain a useful image for displaying changes that have occurred. SAR calibration is a very complex and sensitive problem; some errors may persist after calibration that interfere with subsequent steps in the data fusion and visualization process. Because of the strong histogram asymmetry of SAR images, due to the well-known non-Gaussian model of radar backscattering, traditional image preprocessing procedures cannot be used here. A novel specific preprocessing phase, the so-called “cross-calibration/normalization,” is proposed to solve this problem. This, in turn, facilitates image enhancement and the numerical comparison of different image takes together with data fusion and visualization processes. The proposed processing chain includes filtering, histogram truncation, and equalization steps applied in an adaptive way to the images in question. The design of the method and the experimental procedure is based on images from the Italian Cosmo/Skymed mission. Both Stripmap and Spotlight images are taken into account to test the algorithms at different spatial resolutions. This paper also presents an example application: the generation of a single flood picture, the so-called “fast-ready flood map,” from multitemporal SAR images. The maps are very quickly and automatically generated without user interaction to support the authorities in providing first aid to a population. Toward this end, RGB composition is used: pre-flood and post-flood images are combined into a color image to better identify the flooded areas in comparison with permanent water and other classes.
The Perils of Popularity

The iPhone's worldwide success would seem to be an unqualified win‐win for Apple and the mobile operators that sell it. Not so, explain Marco Bertini and Ricardo Cabornero, as mobile operators must maintain a delicate balance between winning new customers and retaining existing ones. This task is made more difficult when their own brands can actually be diminished by selling the iPhone.
Optimal switching integrity attacks in cyber-physical systems

In this paper, an optimal switching data integrity attack schedule method is presented. It is assumed that an attacker is able to inject false data to partial actuators of a healthy system at each instant. Optimal switching attack represents a growing class of cyber-physical attacks that aim to damage a target system via a controlled switching of attacked units. A feedback attack law is proposed to maximize a weighted quadratic performance. Two switching conditions are designed to obtain the optimal sequence of the attacked actuators via the Maximum Principle. Finally, numerical results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.