Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantification of Microorganisms Involved in Cemented Layer Formation in Sulfidic Mine Waste Tailings (Freiberg, Saxony, Germany)

Cemented layers predominantly consisting of gels/poorly crystalline mineral phases have been formed as a consequence of mineral weathering in sulfidic tailings near Freiberg, Saxony, Germany. These layers function as natural attenuation barrier for toxic compounds and reduce oxidation and erosion processes of tailings surfaces. Quantitative molecular biological and cultivation methods were applied to investigate the role of microorganisms for mineral weathering and cemented layer formation. High resolution depth profiles of numbers of microorganisms showed maximal cell numbers in the oxidation zone where cemented layers had been formed. Highest total cell numbers of >109 cells g-1 dry weight (dw) were detected by SybrGreen direct counting. Using quantitative real-time PCR (Q-PCR) between 107 and 109 Bacteria g-1 dw and up to 108 Archaea g-1 dw were determined. As well high numbers of cultivable and living Bacteria could be detected by MPN (most probable number) for Fe(II)- and S-oxidizers and CARD-FISH (catalyzed reporter deposition - fluorescence in situ hybridization). Overall, the high numbers of microorganisms determined with various quantification techniques argue for a significant role of microorganisms in cemented layer formation due to microbial mineral weathering. It is hypothesized that EPS (extracellular polymeric substances) mediate the formation of secondary mineral phases.
Ordered minimum distance bag-of-words approach for aerial object identification

Detecting potential aerial threats like drones with computer vision is at the paramount of interest for the protection of critical locations. This type of a system should prevent efficiently the false alarms caused by non-malign objects such as birds, which intrude the image plane. In this paper, we propose an improved version of a previously presented Speeded-up Robust Feature Transform (SURF) based algorithm, referred as Ordered Minimum Distance Bag-of-Words (omidBoW) to discriminate drones, birds and background from the patches, using an extended histogram set. We show that a SURF based object recognition can be well integrated to this context and this improved algorithm can increase accuracy up to 16% compared to regular bag-of-words approach.
Verifiable data streaming

In a verifiable data streaming protocol, the client streams a long string to the server who stores it in its database. The stream is verifiable in the sense that the server can neither change the order of the elements nor manipulate them. The client may also retrieve data from the database and update them. The content of the database is publicly verifiable such that any party in possession of some value $s$ and a proof Ö can check that s is indeed in the database. We introduce the notion of verifiable data streaming and present an efficient instantiation that supports an exponential number of values based on general assumptions. Our main technique is an authentication tree in which the leaves are not fixed in advanced such that the user, knowing some trapdoor, can authenticate a new element on demand without pre- or re-computing all other leaves. We call this data structure chameleon authentication tree (CAT). We instantiate our scheme with primitives that are secure under the discrete logarithm assumption. The algebraic properties of this assumption allow us to obtain a very efficient verification algorithm. As a second application of CATs, we present a new transformation from any one-time to many-time signature scheme that is more efficient than previously known solutions.
A Secure Web Email System Based on IBC

Email clients supporting encryption and signature are mostly based on the PKI (public key infrastructure) system, and users need their own digital certificates to send secure mails. This leads to a series of complicated operation problems with digital certificates. IBC (Identity-based cryptography) is an asymmetric algorithm, with the user's unique identity information and a set of public parameters combined as a public key. It avoids the problems with PKI and is a good substitute for PKI. However, current standard applications including email clients do not support IBC algorithm. In this work, we use pseudo-RSA digital certificate technology to bridge the gap. The technology stores an IBC key in an RSA certificate structure, generates secure email in SMIME format, making the resulted email compatible with SMIME enabled software. The focus of this work is on secure web email. To achieve cross-platform applicability, non-plug-ins technology is employed for the proposed secure web email system.
High Performance Stencil Code Generation with Lift

Stencil computations are widely used from physical simulations to machine-learning. They are embarrassingly parallel and perfectly fit modern hardware such as Graphic Processing Units. Although stencil computations have been extensively studied, optimizing them for increasingly diverse hardware remains challenging. Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) have raised the programming abstraction and offer good performance. However, this places the burden on DSL implementers who have to write almost full-fledged parallelizing compilers and optimizers. Lift has recently emerged as a promising approach to achieve performance portability and is based on a small set of reusable parallel primitives that DSL or library writers can build upon. Lift’s key novelty is in its encoding of optimizations as a system of extensible rewrite rules which are used to explore the optimization space. However, Lift has mostly focused on linear algebra operations and it remains to be seen whether this approach is applicable for other domains. This paper demonstrates how complex multidimensional stencil code and optimizations such as tiling are expressible using compositions of simple 1D Lift primitives. By leveraging existing Lift primitives and optimizations, we only require the addition of two primitives and one rewrite rule to do so. Our results show that this approach outperforms existing compiler approaches and hand-tuned codes. CCS Concepts • Software and its engineering → Parallel programming languages; Compilers; Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. CGO’18, February 24–28, 2018, Vienna, Austria © 2018 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to Association for Computing Machinery. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5617-6/18/02. $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3168824
Isothermal crystallization and spherulite structure of partially miscible polypropylene–linear low-density polyethylene blends

Polypropylene (PP) was blended with a linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE, containing 5% hexene comonomer) over a composition range of 10-90% of PP. The crystallization and morphology of the PP-LLDPE blends were studied by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), polarized optical microscopy with a hot stage (HSOM), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). In particular, the isothermal crystallization of PP in molten LLDPE was investigated. It was observed that the crystallization and melting behavior of PP and LLDPE changed in the blends, indicating that there was some degree of miscibility between the PP and the LLDPE. A depression of the equilibrium melting temperature (T) of PP in the blends with no more than 15% of PP confirmed that PP was miscible with LLDPE at and below 15% of PP. In addition, a drastic decrease in T from the 25% PP blend to the 20% blend led us to conclude that the miscible behavior between PP and LLDPE became favorable at a PP concentration of 20%. The optical microscopic images showed that, in the blends with 10 and 15% of PP, the PP crystallized as open-armed diffuse spherulites, similar to those in the miscible blends. In contrast, the PP crystallized in a phase-separated matrix or droplets with more than 25% of PP, when obvious phase separation occurred. The SEM image revealed that the PP lamella was able to penetrate the PP and LLDPE phase boundary and grow in the LLDPE phase. The above results displayed that the PP dissolved in the LLDPE, and, particularly, when the PP concentration was below 20%, the dissolution was substantial.
Learning from the crowd: An evolutionary mutual reinforcement model for analyzing events

Social media is inarguably a powerful medium for mobilizing support for various real-life events be it for social, political, or economic transformation. Further, in contrast to the generic information obtained from the mainstream media, novel and specific information available at social media sites makes them valuable sources for event analysis. However, due to the power law distribution of the Internet, these overwhelmingly large number of sources are buried in the Long Tail making it extremely challenging to identify the quality sources among them. In this research, we propose an evolutionary mutual reinforcement model to confront these challenges. Due to absence of ground truth, a novel evaluation strategy is introduced. The results indicate tremendous potential. 25% to 130% information gain is obtained with the proposed approach when compared against the state-of-the-art baselines, viz. Google blog search and Icerocket blog search. Further, our ranking methodology is capable of identifying the highly informative sources much earlier than the aforementioned baselines. The proposed model affords an apparatus for micro and macro event analysis.
Secure Database Outsourcing to the Cloud: Side-Channels, Counter-Measures and Trusted Execution

Outsourcing data processing and storage to the cloud is a persistent trend in the last years. Cloud computing offers many advantages like flexibility in resource allocation, cost reduction and high availability. However, when sensitive information is handed to a third party, security questions are raised since the cloud provider and his employees are not fully trusted. Standard security mechanisms like transport encryption and regular audits alone cannot solve the issue of insider attacks. Additional cryptographic techniques are required. In this paper, we build upon an existing proxy for secure database outsourcing. We address potential side-channels and weaknesses, which are later analyzed and mitigated. Furthermore, we take a look at trusted execution environments (TEEs) like Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) and show how they can be applied to allow for secure execution in the secure database outsourcing case.
Successful one way data communication probability of energy harvesting cognitive relay network with spatially random primary users

In this work, we study the performance of a decode and forward relay assisted secondary user pair co-existing with a primary network under wireless energy harvesting scenario. The locations of primary transmitters and receivers are modeled using two independent Poisson point processes (PPPs). In this network model, we consider that the secondary transmitter scavenges energy from primary transmitters and transmits its data towards secondary destination via a secondary relay. The direct link between the secondary transmitter and secondary destination is assumed to be unavailable. We find an analytical expression for the probability of successful one way data communication between the secondary transmitter and secondary destination through the secondary relay considering, (i) maximum interference power constraint imposed by primary receivers, (ii) interference from primary transmitters and (iii) additive white gaussian noise. Trade-off between the benefit of energy harvesting at secondary transmitter and the adverse interference effect (both at secondary relay and destination) due to primary transmission is shown through numerical analysis. The analytical expression is validated through computer simulation.
Effect of processing conditions on the dispersion, electrical, and mechanical properties of carbon nanotube/polypropylene nanocomposites

Carbon nanotube (CNT)/polypropylene nanocomposites with different levels of CNT dispersion were created by melt mixing in order to reveal the influence of nanofiller state of dispersion on the nanocomposites electrical and mechanical properties. Optical microscopy and transmission electron microscopy were used to analyze the microstructure of the nanocomposite. Melt mixing energy, melt viscosity, and shear stress were analyzed to understand the influence of processing conditions on the microstructure and electrical properties. CNT dispersion in the polypropylene matrix was enhanced by increasing the melt mixing time and/or rotation speed. The electrical conductivity was found to be very sensitive to the changes in the CNT level of dispersion, while the tensile strength and secant modulus did not show any significant response to the enhancement in the nanofiller state of dispersion.
Influence of machining parameters on surface roughness in Nd:YAG laser micro-cutting of alumina-aluminium interpenetrating phase composite

Pulsed laser sources are extensively used in recent years for micro-processing of composite materials for structuring and patterning of surfaces. Alumina-aluminium (Al2O3? Al) Interpenetrating Phase Composites (IPCs) have increasingly widened their use in structural application in aircraft and space stations owing to their superior qualities. In this research, pulsed Nd:YAG laser micro-cutting on alumina-aluminium IPC have been carried out to investigate the influence of laser machining parameters such as lamp current, Q-switched pulse frequency and cutting speed on surface roughness. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) based optimal parametric analysis has been performed for achieving minimum surface roughness (Ra) of the micro-cut surface.
Consensus control of a class of nonlinear systems

This paper deals with consensus control of a class nonlinear systems with Lipschitz nonlinearities. Certain features of the Laplacian matrix are further explored to identify conditions for global consensus control. Under the identified conditions, consensus control and stability of the proposed control are analyzed in time-domain through Lyapunov functions. The proposed control uses relative state information of the system. A simulation study is included to demonstrate the proposed control designs with some simulation results shown.
Generalized SINR analysis for device-to-device communications

This paper provides an analytically tractable framework for investigating a fading model-free statistical distribution of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise power ratio (SINR) in Poison distributed cellular networks subject to device-to-device (D2D) transmissions. Our main finding show that a closed-form SINR distribution may be obtained for any fading scenario in which the per-link power gain follows the product of two Fox's H-function probability density function thereby subsuming most of the coverage probability expressions previously presented for all the known simple and composite fading models.
Enhancing physical layer security of OFDM systems using channel shortening

This work presents a simple, spectral and power efficient scheme for providing secure OFDM communication system using channel shortening. The basic concept is to utilize a channel shortening technique, whose design is based on the channel of the legitimate user (Bob), in such a way that the length of the effective channel is made equal to or less than the cyclic prefix (CP) at Bob only, while the length of the effective channel at the illegitimate receiver (Eve) is greater than CP. Thus, this causes inter-symbol-interference (ISI), loss of orthogonality, and overall performance degradation at Eve. The simulation results show that the presented technique can provide a significant BER performance gap between Bob and Eve, and can provide Quality of Service (QoS) based security. The design is shown to be robust against channel imperfections and can provide spectral and power efficiency beside enhancing security.
Polymer-networked liquid crystal cell for omni-directional viewing-angle switching

A novel method for switching the viewing-angle of a liquid crystal display is proposed by using a polymernetworked liquid crystal cell in combination with a collimated backlight system. The bright state for a wide viewing-angle is obtained aligning liquid crystals randomly in polymer-networked structure, which diffuses a collimated backlight. The liquid crystals homogeneous-aligned by in-plane switching are operated as the bright state for a narrow viewing-angle since a collimated backlight passes through the liquid crystal layer intactly. It is demonstrated experimentally that the viewing-angle can be controlled omni-directionally without an additional panel or an additional backlight system.
FDoF: Enhancing Channel Utilization for 802.11ac

Multi-user multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) enables a multi-antenna access point to serve multiple users simultaneously, and has been adopted as the IEEE 802.11ac standard. While several PHY-MAC designs have recently been proposed to improve the throughput performance of a MU-MIMO WLAN, they, however, usually assume that all the concurrent streams are of roughly equal length. In reality, users usually have frames with heterogeneous lengths even after aggregation, leading to different lengths of a transmission time. Hence, the concurrent transmission opportunities might not always be fully utilized when some streams finish earlier than the others in a transmission opportunity. To resolve this inefficiency, this paper presents full degree-of-freedom (FDoF), a PHY-MAC design that exploits a novel power allocation scheme to reduce the idle channel time and further leverages frame padding to better utilize the spatial multiplexing gain. Unlike traditional MIMO power allocation, which aims at maximizing the theoretical sum-rate, FDoF’s power allocation explicitly considers heterogeneous frame lengths and minimizes the channel time required to finish concurrent frames, as a result improving the effective throughput. FDoF’s padding protocol then identifies proper users to reuse the remaining idle channel time, while preventing this padding from harming all the ongoing streams. Our evaluation via large-scale trace-driven simulations demonstrates that FDoF’s improves the throughput by up to <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.83\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula>, or by <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.36\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> on average, as compared to the conventional 802.11ac. By combining FDoF’s power allocation with frame padding, the average throughput gain can be further increased to <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.75\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula>.
ATF: A Generic Auto-Tuning Framework

We describe the Auto-Tuning Framework (ATF) -- a simple-to-use, generic framework for automatic program optimization by choosing the most suitable values of program parameters, such as number of parallel threads, tile sizes, etc. ATF combines four major advantages over the state-of-the-art auto-tuners: i) it is generic regarding the programming language, application domain, tuning objective, and search technique; ii) it can auto-tune a broader class of applications by allowing tuning parameters to be interdependent, e.g., when a parameter is divisible by another parameter; iii) it allows tuning parameters to have substantially larger ranges by implementing an optimized search space generation process; and iv) it is arguably simpler to use: the ATF user prepares an application for auto-tuning by annotating its source code with simple tuning directives. Our experimental results demonstrate that ATF shows significantly better tuning results as compared to the state-of-the-art auto-tuners OpenTuner and CLTune.
Rare deleterious variants in GRHL3 are associated with human spina bifida

Neural tube defects, including spina bifida, are among the most common birth defects caused by failure of neural tube closure during development. They have a complex etiology involving largely undetermined environmental and genetic factors. Previous studies in mouse models have implicated the transcription factor Grhl3 as an important factor in the pathogenesis of spina bifida. In the present study, we conducted a resequencing analysis of GRHL3 in a cohort of 233 familial and sporadic cases of spina bifida. We identified two novel truncating variants: one homozygous frameshift variant, p.Asp16Aspfs*10, in two affected siblings and one heterozygous intronic splicing variant, p.Ala318Glyfs*26. We also identified five missense variants, one of which was demonstrated to reduce the activation of gene targets in a luciferase reporter assay. With the previously identified p.Arg391Cys variant, eight variants were found in GRHL3. Comparison of the variant rate between our cohort and the ExAC database identified a significant enrichment of deleterious variants in GRHL3 in the whole gene and the transactivation region in spina bifida patients. These data provide strong evidence for a role of GRHL3 as a predisposing factor to spina bifida and will help dissect the complex etiology and pathogenic mechanisms of these malformations.
Factors Associated with Hospital Admission after Outpatient Surgery in the Veterans Health Administration

OBJECTIVE To examine factors associated with 0- to 7-day admission after outpatient surgery in high-volume specialties: general surgery, orthopedics, urology, ear/nose/throat, and podiatry. STUDY DESIGN We calculated rates and assessed diagnosis codes for 0- to 7-day admission after outpatient surgery for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Veterans Health Administration (VA) dually enrolled patients age 65 and older. We also estimated separate multilevel logistic regression models to compare patient, procedure, and facility characteristics associated with postoperative admission. DATA COLLECTION 2011-2013 surgical encounter data from the VA Corporate Data Warehouse; geographic data from the Area Health Resources File; CMS enrollment and hospital admission data. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Among 63,585 outpatient surgeries in 124 facilities, 0- to 7-day admission rates ranged from 5 percent (podiatry) to 28 percent (urology); nearly 66 percent of the admissions occurred on the day of surgery. Only 97 admissions were detected in the CMS data (1 percent). Surgical complications were diagnosed in 4 percent of admissions. Procedure complexity, measured by relative value units or anesthesia risk score, was associated with admission across all specialties. CONCLUSION As many as 20 percent of VA outpatient surgeries result in an admission. Complex procedures are more likely to be followed by admission, but more evidence is required to determine how many of these reflect potential safety or quality problems.