Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A secure method for transferring active packet using digital signature schemes

Active networks represent a new approach to network architecture. Active networks provide a much more flexible network infrastructure than traditional networks do. Flexibility is a powerful merit of active networks, but it can raise considerable security problems. Current active network researches have applied diverse techniques to solve them. Cryptography is one way of protecting active networks. However it should not be applied conventionally, since the active network paradigm is different from the traditional one. It means that, in active network environments, active packets containing programmable codes should perform computations at intermediate-nodes as well as end-nodes. That is, since the packet sending-node does not know the intermediate receiving-node, it cannot apply traditional cryptographic techniques that can process each other only between end-nodes. The paper proposes a secure method for transferring active packets and performing computations using a transformed digital signature schemes with message recovery, in an active network environment in which intermediate packet receiving-nodes are not fixed. The proposed scheme uses a modified public key digital signature scheme in which signing/verifying key pairs have almost the same bit length and the verification-key storing server plays the role of key management server.
Probing the Density in the Galactic Center Region: Wind-blown Bubbles and High-Energy Proton Constraints

Recent observations of the Galactic center in high-energy γ-rays (above 0.1 TeV) have opened up new ways to study this region, from understanding the emission source of these high-energy photons to constraining the environment in which they are formed. We present a revised theoretical density model of the inner 5 pc surrounding Sgr A* based on the fact that the underlying structure of this region is dominated by the winds from the Wolf-Rayet stars orbiting Sgr A*. The high-energy γ-ray emission is an ideal probe and application of this density structure. We assume a proton scattering model for the production of these γ-rays and then determine, first, whether such a model is consistent with the observations and, second, whether we can use these observations to further constrain the density distribution in the Galactic center.
Performability evaluation of networked storage systems using N-SPEK

This paper introduces a new benchmark tool for evaluating performance and availability (performability) of networked storage systems, specifically storage area network (SAN) that is intended for providing block-level data storage with high performance and availability. The new benchmark tool, named N-SPEK (Networked-Storage Performability Evaluation Kernel module), consists of a controller, several workers, one or more probers, and several fault injection modules. N-SPEK is highly accurate and efficient since it runs at kernel level and eliminates skews and overheads caused by file systems. It allows a SAN architect to generate configurable storage workloads to the SAN under test and to inject different faults into various SAN components such as network devices, storage devices, and controllers. Available performances under different workloads and failure conditions are dynamically collected and recorded in the N-SPEK over a spectrum of time. To demonstrate its functionality, we apply N-SPEK to evaluate the performability of a specific iSCSI-based SAN under Linux environment. Our experiments show that N-SPEK not only efficiently generates quantitative performability results but also reveals a few optimization opportunities for future iSCSI implementations.
A MODEL INTEGRATED FRAMEWORK FOR DESIGNING AND OPTIMIZATION OF SELF-MANAGING COMPUTING SYSTEMS

Thesis under the direction of Professor Sherif Abdelwahed This thesis addresses the problem of managing computing systems using an integration of model-based control techniques and efficient AI search strategies. The proposed control approach uses the system model to forecast all future system behavior up to a certain horizon and then searches for the best path for the system based on a given utility function. In practical computing systems, however, the large number of control (tuning) options directly affects the computational overhead of the control module which executes in the background at run-time, and ultimately slows down the overall system. To handle this problem, several search algorithms are introduced to improve the controller's performance. This thesis also presents a model integrated framework, referred to as the Automatic Control Modeling Environment (ACME), to facilitate the use of control-based technology for self-management in computation systems. Control-theoretic concepts like above have been investigated and applied successfully to automate the management of computation systems of the control technology. ACME is a domain-specific graphical modeling environment with automated synthesis tools. The framework allows domain engineers to develop models for general computation systems and to capture their performance requirements and operational constraints. The framework can automatically generates executable codes for the controllers based on the given system model and specifications. A case study of an online processor power management is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new search techniques for the model-based control approach as well as the application of the ACME. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The work contained in this thesis could not have been accomplished without the help and support of numerous individuals. First and foremost, my advisor, Professor Sherif Abdelwahed, has been an invaluable resource. I offer Professor Abdelwahed special thanks for not only giving me sage advice, but for leading me to the way of scientific research. revisions were made through our discussions, and I genuinely appreciate your friendship. Thanks to those all who have kept my spirits high while I was completing this research. Most importantly, I would like to thank my parents for their love and support from the other side of the Pacific ocean. All my successes are due to the opportunities you have provided me, and I am forever grateful.
Antiproliferative and metabolic effects of metformin in a preoperative window clinical trial for endometrial cancer

We conducted a preoperative window study of metformin in endometrial cancer (EC) patients and evaluated its antiproliferative, molecular and metabolic effects. Twenty obese women with endometrioid EC were treated with metformin (850 mg) daily for up to 4 weeks prior to surgical staging. Expression of the proliferation marker Ki‐67, estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), adenosine monophosphate‐activated protein kinase (AMPK), and downstream targets of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway were measured by immunohistochemistry. Global, untargeted metabolomics analysis of serum pre‐ and postmetformin treatment, and matched tumor, was performed. Metformin reduced proliferation by 11.75% (P = 0.008) based on the comparison of pre‐ and posttreatment endometrial tumors. A total of 65% of patients responded to metformin as defined by a decrease in Ki‐67 staining in their endometrial tumors post‐treatment. Metformin decreased expression of phosphorylated (p)‐AMPK (P = 0.00001), p‐Akt (P = 0.0002), p‐S6 (51.2%, P = 0.0002), p‐4E‐BP‐1 (P = 0.001), and ER (P = 0.0002) but not PR expression. Metabolomic profiling of serum indicated that responders versus nonresponders to treatment were more sensitive to metformin's effects on induction of lipolysis, which correlated with increased fatty acid oxidation and glycogen metabolism in matched tumors. In conclusion, metformin reduced tumor proliferation in a pre‐operative window study in obese EC patients, with dramatic effects on inhibition of the mTOR pathway. Metformin induced a shift in lipid and glycogen metabolism that was more pronounced in the serum and tumors of responders versus nonresponders to treatment.This study provides support for therapeutic clinical trials of metformin in obese patients with EC.
Rate of degradation of centralized optimization solutions and its application to high performance domain formation in ad hoc networks

Future military systems such a FCS and WIN-T require a robust and flexible network that supports thousands of ad hoc nodes; therefore, we must ensure the scalability of networking protocols (e.g., routing, security and QoS). The use of hierarchy is a powerful solution to the scaling problem, since it allows networking protocols to operate on a limited number of nodes, as opposed to the entire network. We have proposed an automated solution to dynamically create and maintain such hierarchy based on a combination of global optimization algorithms (K. Manousakis et al., 2004) and local distributed maintenance protocols (R. Morera et al., October 2003). Global optimization clearly improves performance in a static network but it is unclear how effective it is in a dynamic ad hoc environment. In this paper, we analyze how the hierarchy created deteriorates from the optimal as network conditions change. We show that the fragility of the optimization depends on the particular cost function and the number of metrics that change. More important, we show, for the first time, that global optimization can remain effective for long periods with good cost functions, even in large dynamic ad hoc networks (where metrics may change rapidly due to node mobility and links making and breaking). This result shows that, with fast optimization algorithms such as modified simulated annealing (K. Manousakis et al., 2004), future military systems can use global optimization to autoconfigure domains to significantly improve performance. We also show that local maintenance protocols support the global optimization mechanisms by extending the time the hierarchy remains feasible.
Predictors of Metabolic Syndrome in the Iranian Population: Waist Circumference, Body Mass Index, or Waist to Hip Ratio?

This study aimed to investigate whether body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), or waist to hip ratio (WHR) could be a better predictor of metabolic syndrome and, if so, what would be the cutoff points for these surrogates to appropriately differentiate metabolic syndrome in different age and sex subgroups. Methods. The present cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of Isfahan Cohort Study (ICS). In total, 468 individuals (194 with and 274 subjects without metabolic syndrome) according to the National Cholesterol Education Program's Adult Treatment Panel III (ATP-III) criteria were selected. Anthropometric indices were measured and plotted using receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results. According to ROC curve analysis, WC and WHR parameters were better indicators of metabolic syndrome compared to BMI in women, whereas in men WHR had a lower discriminating value compared to the other two parameters. Among these three anthropometric parameters, BMI had a lower sensitivity and WC and WHR both had a higher sensitivity for predicting metabolic syndrome in women compared with in men. The cut points for WC were nearly equal in men and women, 90.3 versus 90.0, respectively. Women had higher cut points for BMI (28.5 kg/m2) compared to men (26.0 kg/m2). Our results showed the highest sensitivity and specificity for WC cut points specially in women. To predict metabolic syndrome, we looked into optimal age-specific cut points for BMI, WC, and WHR. The results indicated that WC had the highest discriminating value compared to other indicators in the different age subgroups. The optimal cut points for all three parameters gradually increased with age. Conclusion. Our results demonstrated that regardless of gender and age variables, WC could be a preferred parameter for predicting metabolic syndrome compared to BMI and WHR in Iranian population.
A miniaturized implantable PIFA antenna for indoor wireless telemetry

An implantable, compact, planar inverted F-antenna (PIFA), designed for a wireless telemetry system operating in the Australian 900MHz ISM band (915-928 MHz), is described in this paper. The antenna has been designed to operate well when it is positioned inside the body of a rat. The overall dimensions of the antenna are 12×12×4mm3. The predicted bandwidth of the antenna is found to be 8.5% (from 880 MHz to 960 MHz) at 10dB return loss. The sensitivity of antenna impedance matching to variations in the rat's body material is investigated. It is found that the antenna should operate well in the ISM band even when the body tissue parameters change within a significant range.
Competition and Competition Policy in Emerging Markets: International and Developmental Dimensions

This valuable and engaging new book bears eloquent testimony to A.P. Thirlwall’s substantial contribution to economics over the last 40 years. The volume does not attempt to provide a comprehensive review of such a prolific figure, but rather demonstrates the considerable influence that his work on economic theory has had on his contemporaries, and the profession as a whole.
Light-energy processing and freezing-tolerance traits in red spruce and black spruce: species and seed-source variation.

Red spruce (Picea rubens Sarg.) and black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) B.S.P.) are genetically and morphologically similar but ecologically distinct species. We determined intraspecific seed-source and interspecific variation of red spruce and black spruce, from across the near-northern margins of their ranges, for several light-energy processing and freezing-tolerance adaptive traits. Before exposure to low temperature, red spruce had variable fluorescence (Fv) similar to black spruce, but higher photochemical efficiency (Fv/Fm), lower quantum yield, lower chlorophyll fluorescence (%), and higher thermal dissipation efficiency (qN), although the seed-source effect and the seed-source x species interaction were significant only for Fv/Fm. After low-temperature exposure (-40 degrees C), red spruce had significantly lower Fv/Fm, quantum yield and qN than black spruce, but higher chlorophyll fluorescence and relative fluorescence. Species, seed-source effect, and seed-source x species interaction were consistent with predictions based on genetic (e.g., geographic) origins. Multi-temperature exposures (5, -20 and -40 degrees C) often produced significant species and temperature effects, and species x temperature interactions as a result of species-specific responses to temperature exposures. The inherent physiological species-specific adaptations of red spruce and black spruce were largely consistent with a shade-tolerant, late-successional species and an early successional species, respectively. Species differences in physiological adaptations conform to a biological trade-off, probably as a result of natural selection pressure in response to light availability and prevailing temperature gradients.
Survey on soft contact lens care in female students of KSU

Purpose: This cross sectional study was conducted to find out the awareness and practice of soft contact lens wear and care among female students of King Saud University. Method: The data was collected from the soft contact lens users through a structured questionnaire distributed to 100 female students of King Saud University, Riyadh. This survey was based on the basic practice care in soft contact lens that is related to the replacement frequency, steps in hygiene and storage case of the soft contact lens. Results: The female students of age range 19-25 years participated in this study. It was found that out of 100 female students, 68% were using cosmetic soft contact lens. 73% of subjects reported to renew soft contact lenses after every 3 months. Only 59% students used to wash their hands before wearing soft contact lens and only 52% used to clean their lens with the solution before inserting and storing. Only 31 participants reported that they clean their lens case weekly. The students have awareness regarding contact lens hygiene but little awareness toward lens case hygiene was found. Conclusion: The majority of participants were aware about the cleaning and hygienic steps of contact lens care but most of them were unaware of contact lens case cleaning.
Searching segments of interest in single story web-videos

This paper presents a method for predicting the parts of a video that could be marked as “interesting” by an user. Our approach consists in considering the three competing crite-ria: salience, expressivity and significativity and to automatically combine the three corresponding function-of-interest. We evaluate this system on an user-annotated test set. Results demonstrate that, in spite of the intrinsic subjectivity of user choices, the system succeeds in finding about 51% of interesting segments.
Summarization Based on Embedding Distributions

In this study, we consider a summarization method using the document level similarity based on embeddings, or distributed representations of words, where we assume that an embedding of each word can represent its “meaning. ” We formalize our task as the problem of maximizing a submodular function defined by the negative summation of the nearest neighbors’ distances on embedding distributions, each of which represents a set of word embeddings in a document. We proved the submodularity of our objective function and that our problem is asymptotically related to the KL-divergence between the probability density functions that correspond to a document and its summary in a continuous space. An experiment using a real dataset demonstrated that our method performed better than the existing method based on sentence-level similarity.
Cationic Antimicrobial Peptides Promote Microbial Mutagenesis and Pathoadaptation in Chronic Infections

Acquisition of adaptive mutations is essential for microbial persistence during chronic infections. This is particularly evident during chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa lung infections in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. Thus far, mutagenesis has been attributed to the generation of reactive species by polymorphonucleocytes (PMN) and antibiotic treatment. However, our current studies of mutagenesis leading to P. aeruginosa mucoid conversion have revealed a potential new mutagen. Our findings confirmed the current view that reactive oxygen species can promote mucoidy in vitro, but revealed PMNs are proficient at inducing mucoid conversion in the absence of an oxidative burst. This led to the discovery that cationic antimicrobial peptides can be mutagenic and promote mucoidy. Of specific interest was the human cathelicidin LL-37, canonically known to disrupt bacterial membranes leading to cell death. An alternative role was revealed at sub-inhibitory concentrations, where LL-37 was found to induce mutations within the mucA gene encoding a negative regulator of mucoidy and to promote rifampin resistance in both P. aeruginosa and Escherichia coli. The mechanism of mutagenesis was found to be dependent upon sub-inhibitory concentrations of LL-37 entering the bacterial cytosol and binding to DNA. LL-37/DNA interactions then promote translesion DNA synthesis by the polymerase DinB, whose error-prone replication potentiates the mutations. A model of LL-37 bound to DNA was generated, which reveals amino termini α-helices of dimerized LL-37 bind the major groove of DNA, with numerous DNA contacts made by LL-37 basic residues. This demonstrates a mutagenic role for antimicrobials previously thought to be insusceptible to resistance by mutation, highlighting a need to further investigate their role in evolution and pathoadaptation in chronic infections.
The rnhB gene encoding RNase HII of Streptococcus pneumoniae and evidence of conserved motifs in eucaryotic genes

A single RNase H enzyme was detected in extracts of Streptococcus pneumoniae. The gene encoding this enzyme was cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli, as demonstrated by its ability to complement a double-mutant rnhA recC strain. Sequence analysis of the cloned DNA revealed an open reading frame of 290 codons that encodes a polypeptide of 31.9 kDa. The predicted protein exhibits a low level of homology (19% identity of amino acid residues) to RNase HII encoded by rnhB of E. coli. Identification of the S. pneumoniae RNase HII translation start site by amino-terminal sequencing of the protein and of mRNA start sites by primer extension with reverse transcriptase showed that the major transcript encoding rnhB begins at the protein start site. Comparison of the S. pneumoniae and E. coli RNase HII sequences and sequences of other, putative bacterial rnhB gene products surmised from sequencing data revealed three conserved motifs. Use of these motifs to search for homologous genes in eucaryotes demonstrated the presence of rnhB genes in a yeast and a roundworm. Partial rnhB gene sequences were detected among expressed sequences of mouse and human cells. From these data, it appears that RNase HII is universally present in living cells.
The role of emotions in organizational join decisions : A formal modeling framework 1

The study of emotions and emotional behavior of groups in organizational contexts has been gaining relevance in the last two decades into the organizational studies literature (Fineman, 1996; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). The importance of studying emotion in workgroups settings derive from the evidence that members’ behavior in an organization varies according to their emotional condition. Indeed, as Weiss and Cropanzano (1996) argue, workplace experiences comprise a succession of work events that can be either pleasing and suitable, or stressful and frustrating. These events affect the way in which a member feels and behaves at work. These have as consequence functional or dysfunctional effects in the specific roll within her/him workgroup. There are also evidence that emotional traits, such as negative affectivity (Watson & Clark, 1984), are mechanisms that affect behavior and decision making in the workplace context, e.g. emotional intelligence (Salovey & Mayer, 1990) and emotional labor (Fineman, 1996:554).
Three constructions of Frobenius manifolds: A comparative study

The paper studies three classes of Frobenius manifolds: Quantum Cohomology (topological sigma-models), unfolding spaces of singularities (K. Saito's theory, Landau-Ginzburg models), and the recent Barannikov-Kontsevich construction starting with the Dolbeault complex of a Calabi-Yau manifold and conjecturally producing the B--side of the Mirror Conjecture in arbitrary dimension. Each known construction provides the relevant Frobenius manifold with an extra structure which can be thought of as a version of ``non-linear cohomology''. The comparison of thesestructures sheds some light on the general Mirror Problem: establishing isomorphisms between Frobenius manifolds of different classes. Another theme is the study of tensor products of Frobenius manifolds, corresponding respectively to the K\"unneth formula in Quantum Cohomology, direct sum of singularities in Saito's theory, and presumably, the tensor product of the differential Gerstenhaber-Batalin-Vilkovisky algebras. We extend the initial Gepner's construction of mirrors to the context of Frobenius manifolds and formulate the relevant mathematical conjecture.