Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fuzzy Extractors and Cryptography, or How to Use Your Fingerprints

We provide formal definitions and efficient secure techniques for • turning biometric information into keys usable for any cryptographic application, and • reliably and securely authenticating biometric data. Our techniques apply not just to biometric information, but to any keying material that, unlike traditional cryptographic keys, is (1) not reproducible precisely and (2) not distributed uniformly. We propose two primitives: a fuzzy extractor extracts nearly uniform randomness R from its biometric input; the extraction is error-tolerant in the sense that R will be the same even if the input changes, as long as it remains reasonably close to the original. Thus, R can be used as a key in any cryptographic application. A fuzzy fingerprint produces public information about its biometric input w that does not reveal w, and yet allows exact recovery of w given another value that is close to w. Thus, it can be used to reliably reproduce error-prone biometric inputs without incurring the security risk inherent in storing them. In addition to formally introducing our new primitives, we provide nearly optimal constructions of both primitives for various measures of “closeness” of input data, such as Hamming distance, edit distance, and set difference.
Ontology-driven Association Rules Extraction: a Case of Study

This paper proposes an integrated framework for extracting Constraint-based Multi-level Association Rules with an ontology support. The system permits the definition of a set of domain-specific constraints on a specific domain ontology, and to query the ontology for filtering the instances used in the association rule mining process. This method can improve the quality of the extracted associations rules in terms of relevance and understandability.
Review of International Economics Commodity Prices and the Terms of Trade Rrh: Commodity Prices and the Terms of Trade

Combining national terms of trade data for developing countries with world prices of internationally traded primary commodities we . nd that variation in the world prices of three or fewer key exported commodities account for 50% or more of the annual variation in the terms of trade of a typical developing country. We also . nd that a considerable fraction of the variation is speci.c to a particular commodity and given that the overall importance of primary commodities di¤ers across developing countries, we can account for much of the heterogeneity across them. We conclude that commodity price ‡uctuations should be central features of two related literatures: studies of business cycle transmission across developing and industrialized nations and empirical work aimed at constructing perpetual claims on developing country incomes as suggested by Shiller (1995). ¤Bidarkota: Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506-4001. Crucini: Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN, 37235-1541. We thank participants in the macroeconomics luncheon seminar at The Ohio State University for helpful comments, especially Masao Ogaki. All errors that remain are the joint responsibility of the authors. JEL Classi.cation Numbers: F1, F4, O1. Abbreviations: LMIC, CRRA, CTPT, CPI, DW, ADF. Number of Figures: 1 Number of Tables: 7 Date: February 8, 2000. Address of Contact Author: Mario J. Crucini, Vanderbilt University, P.O. Box 351541, Station B, Nashville TN, 37235-1541. Phone: 615322-7357. Fax: 615-343-8495. E-mail: mario.j.crucini@vanderbilt.edu.
The personal vote and legislative party switching

How do electoral rules affect the occurrence of legislative party switching? Existing research addressing this question is limited and does not reach a consistent conclusion. This article argues that electoral systems that encourage politicians to cultivate a personal vote dampen parties’ ability to retain members. The greater incentives to cultivate a personal vote in candidate-centred electoral systems result in politicians relying more on local supporters and less on party label for their re-election. In such systems, compared to party-centred systems, I expect that only parties that suffer electoral setbacks to be more likely to witness switching, as their candidates are less concerned with party labels, and local supporters might follow them to the new party, thus reducing switching costs. Drawing on data from 17 European democracies over the period 1990–2013, I find support for my hypothesis. While there is no direct effect of electoral rules on switching, the results suggest that this effect hinges upon parties’ ability to deliver seats: losing parties are more likely to witness switching in candidate-centred systems than in party-centred systems. Further findings also demonstrate how this effect is especially significant when district magnitude is large and the next election is approaching.
Rapid Material Appearance Acquisition Using Consumer Hardware

A photo-realistic representation of material appearance can be achieved by means of bidirectional texture function (BTF) capturing a material’s appearance for varying illumination, viewing directions, and spatial pixel coordinates. BTF captures many non-local effects in material structure such as inter-reflections, occlusions, shadowing, or scattering. The acquisition of BTF data is usually time and resource-intensive due to the high dimensionality of BTF data. This results in expensive, complex measurement setups and/or excessively long measurement times. We propose an approximate BTF acquisition setup based on a simple, affordable mechanical gantry containing a consumer camera and two LED lights. It captures a very limited subset of material surface images by shooting several video sequences. A psychophysical study comparing captured and reconstructed data with the reference BTFs of seven tested materials revealed that results of our method show a promising visual quality. Speed of the setup has been demonstrated on measurement of human skin and measurement and modeling of a glue dessication time-varying process. As it allows for fast, inexpensive, acquisition of approximate BTFs, this method can be beneficial to visualization applications demanding less accuracy, where BTF utilization has previously been limited.
A Novel Similarity Measure for Clustering Categorical Data Sets

similarity between two data objects is a more challenging problem for data mining and knowledge disc overy tasks. The traditional clustering algorithms have been mainly stressed on numerical data, the implicit property of which can be exploited to define distance function between the data points to define similarity measure. The problem of similarity beco mes more complex when the data is categorical which do not have a natural ordering of values or can be called as non geometrical attributes. Clustering on relational data sets when majority of its attributes are of categorical types makes interesting facts . No earlier work has been done on clustering categorical attributes of relational data set types making use of the property of functional dependency as parameter to measure similarity. This paper is an extension of earlier work on clustering relational da ta sets where domains are unique and similarity is context based and introduces a new notion of similarity based on dependency of an attribute on other attributes prevalent in the relational data set. This paper also gives a brief overview of popular simil arity measures of categorical attributes. This novel similarity measure can be used to apply on tuples and their respective values. The important property of categorical domain is that they have smaller number of attribute values. The similarity measure of relational data sets then can be applied to the smaller data sets for efficient results.
Peripheral Deafferentation-Driven Functional Somatosensory Map Shifts Are Associated with Local, Not Large-Scale Dendritic Structural Plasticity

Long-term peripheral deafferentation induces representational map changes in the somatosensory cortex. It has been suggested that dendrites and axons structurally rearrange in such paradigms. However, the extent and process of this plasticity remains elusive. To more precisely quantify deafferentation-induced structural plasticity of excitatory cells we repeatedly imaged GFP-expressing L2/3 and L5 pyramidal dendrites in the mouse barrel cortex over months after the removal of a subset of the whisker follicles (FR), a procedure that completely and permanently removes whisker-sensory input. In the same mice we imaged whisker-evoked intrinsic optical signals (IOS) to assess functional cortical map changes. FR triggered the expansion of spared whisker IOS responses, whereas they remained unchanged over months in controls. The gross structure and orientation of apical dendrite tufts remained stable over a two-month period, both in controls and after deprivation. However, terminal branch tip dynamics were slightly reduced after FR, and the formation of new dendritic spines was increased in a cell-type and location-dependent manner. Together, our data suggest that peripheral nerve lesion-induced cortical map shifts do not depend on the large scale restructuring of dendritic arbors but are rather associated with local cell-type and position-dependent changes in dendritic synaptic connectivity.
The role of subjective factors in the information search process

We investigated the role of subjective factors in the information search process. Forty-eight participants each conducted six Web searches in a controlled setting. We examined relationships between subjective factors (happiness levels, satisfaction with and confidence in the search results, feeling lost during search, familiarity with and interest in the search topic, estimation of task difficulty) and objective factors (search behavior, search outcomes, and search-task characteristics). Data analysis was conducted using a multivariate statistical test (canonical correlations analysis). The findings confirmed existence of several relationships suggested by prior research, including relationships between objective search task difficulty and the perception of task difficulty, and between subjective states and search behaviors and outcomes. One of the original findings suggests that higher happiness levels before and during the search correlate with better feelings after the search, but also correlate with worse search outcomes and lower satisfaction, suggesting that, perhaps, it pays off to feel some “pain” during the search to “gain” quality outcomes.
Felicidade no Trabalho: estudo em duas entidades do Setor Público

Happiness has emerged as an issue in many scientific fields, particularly in the field of human resources management, linked to the concept of well-being at work. We sought in this investigation to know the perceptions of the two public sector entities workers. We’ve used an instrument Happiness at work that measures eight dimensions: internal environment, trust and confidence, personal development, compensation, enjoying the job, sustainability and innovation, involvement in the leadership and organization and, finally, work-personal life balance. It is a quantitative study, of descriptive and correlational nature, where 293 employees were surveyed. We’ve found different degrees of satisfaction between municipality and school workers, taking into account the difference of both institutions. The group of school professionals presented worse outcomes, with higher levels of stress, frustration and less satisfaction. This is because either the intensity and the degradation of working conditions was more pronounced in the field of education. One of the factors that proved most important was the good relationships with managers, these may contribute to the overall level of satisfaction, offsetting the lower satisfaction with salaries.
Context-Aware Support for Stress Self-Management: From Theory to Practice

In my research I investigated how new technologies, like sensors and apps, can be used to help people cope better with stress. I found that the computer can recognize whether someone works under stress by looking at facial expressions and body posture. By combining literature from several fields, I made an overview of how someone can best be supported by means of technology: The computer can make your work easier (e.g. by filtering emails, or finding relevant information), it can help you cope better with acute stress (e.g. provide you a relaxation exercise, encourage you to seek support from colleagues), or it can motivate you to recover after work (e.g. by working out, or getting enough sleep). I also put much effort into users and their needs and concerns, e.g. regarding privacy.Proefschrift
Serious Games for Dementia

With the current phenomenon of aging populations in most parts of the world, there are corresponding increases in age-related conditions associated with impaired cognitive status, such as dementia and delirium. Cognitive status is a key component in carrying out activities of daily living such as walking and bathing, and departures from normal cognitive status may be indicators of acute (e.g., delirium) or chronic (e.g., dementia) conditions. Individuals with cognitive impairments may benefit from playing serious games, which are games designed for a primary purpose other than entertainment. Serious games can potentially assess a variety of factors associated with cognitive decline in dementia, while keeping individuals active and stimulated, thereby potentially slowing down or furthering cognitive decline. In this workshop paper, we discuss the development and use of serious games focusing on cognitive functions that are affected by the progression of dementia.
Phenotypic and Genotypic Characteristics of Vibrio Harveyi Isolated from Black Tiger Shrimp (Penaeus Monodon)

In the present study, a total of 30 luminous bacteria were successfully isolated from the hepatopancreas of tiger shrimp (Penaeus monodon) in Kedah, Terengganu and Johore. Based on the Baumann and Schubert (12) scheme, all isolates were identified as V. harveyi. Thirty biochemical and physiological tests were carried out to reveal the similarity and differentiatial phenotypes among the isolates. Although the isolates were obtained from different locations, they showed similar biochemical and physiological characteristics except for colony morphology, colony color on TCBS and salt tolerance test. Based on luminous activity and the ability to hemolyse against horse red blood cells, all isolates were considered virulent. The percentage of similarity among the isolates from Kedah was ranging from 50 to 100% whilst genetic distance was ranged from 0 to 0.5. The isolates from Terengganu were recorded the lowest ranging of percentage of similarity and genetic distance, from 66.7 to 100% and 0 to 0.333, respectively. Whilst, the isolates from Johore performed the highest ranging percentage of similarity and genetic distance; there were 12.5 to 90% and 0.1 to 0.875 respectively. The percentage of similarity between isolates from Kedah compared to isolates from Terengganu and Johore were ranged from 14.3 to 66.7% and 0 to 88.9% respectively. On the other hand, comparison between isolates from Terengganu and isolates from Johore has shown a quite high percentage of similarity ranging from 18.2 to 93.3%. The susceptibility of antibiotic to the bacterial strains was reported in 173 cases (82.4%). 10 cases (4.7%) were determined as the intermediate sensitive and 27 cases (12.9%) were resistance to certain antibiotics. The isolates were mostly resistant to ampicillin (90%) followed by sulphamethoxazole (40%). However, 96.7% of the isolates in the present study were demonstrated sensitive to chloramphenicol, tetracycline and furazolidone. Furthermore, the isolates were sensitive to nalidixic acid (93.4%), kanamycin (80%), sulphamethoxazole (56.7%) and ampicilin (10%). Intermediate sensitive was observed among of the isolates for kanamycin (20%) and nalidixic acid (6.6%).
Verified Validation of Program Slicing

Program slicing is a well-known program transformation which simplifies a program wrt a given criterion while preserving its semantics. Since the seminal paper published by Weiser in 1981, program slicing is still widely used in various application domains. State of the art program slicers operate over program dependence graphs (PDG), a sophisticated data structure combining data and control dependences. In this paper, we follow the a posteriori validation approach to formally verify (in Coq) a general program slicer. Our validator for program slicing is efficient and validates the results of a run of an unverified program slicer. Program slicing is interesting for a posteriori validation because the correctness proof of program slicing requires to compute new supplementary information from the PDG, thus decoupling the slicing algorithm from its proof. Our semantics-preserving program slicer is integrated into the CompCert formally verified compiler. It operates over an intermediate language of the compiler having the same expressiveness as C. Our experiments show that our formally verified validator scales on large realistic programs.
Parallel Data List Processing on Multicore-GPU Platforms

Multicore-GPU platforms are now common and affordable, yet capitalising on their parallel processing capability is not straightforward. Existing sequential an d parallel software must be tuned, or designed anew, to efficiently capitalise on these platforms. This paper presents the design of parallel data list processing in multicore-GPU platforms, wherein application data is organised into various lists, one list for each core and GPU device, for the purpose of balancing the workload through work (data items) stealing. A novel aspect of our design is the processing of new data dynamically generated within GPUs. We present experimental results for three applications with different granularities and acces s patterns. Overall the use of GPUs can significantly improve performance, but using them profitably may not be simple.
Design and implementation of an adaptive dispatching controller for elevator systems during uppeak traffic

We design a dispatching controller for elevator systems during uppeak passenger traffic with the ability to adapt to changing operating conditions. The design of this controller is motivated by our previous paper (1997) where we proved that for a queuing model of the uppeak dispatching problem a threshold policy is optimal (in the sense of minimizing the average passenger waiting time) with threshold parameters that depend on the passenger arrival rate. The controller, which we call the concurrent estimation dispatching algorithm (CEDA), uses concurrent estimation techniques for discrete-event systems. The CEDA allows us to observe the elevator system while it operates under some arbitrary thresholds, and concurrently estimate, in an unobtrusive way, what the waiting time would have been had the system operated under a set of different thresholds. These concurrently estimated waiting times are used to adapt the operating thresholds to match the elevator service rate to a changing passenger arrival rate. Implementation issues relating to the limited state information provided by actual elevator systems are resolved in a way that maintains modest computational requirements and avoids the need for supplemental sensors beyond those already typically provided. Numerical performance results show the advantages of the CEDA over currently used dispatching algorithms for uppeak.
Three-Dimensional Matrix-Induced Autologous Chondrocytes Implantation for Osteochondral Lesions of the Talus: Midterm Results

Introduction. We evaluate the midterm results of thirty patients who underwent autologous chondrocytes implantation for talus osteochondral lesions treatment. Materials and Methods. From 2002 to 2009, 30 ankles with a mean lesion size of 2,36 cm2 were treated. We evaluated patients using American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Surgery and Coughlin score, Van Dijk scale, recovering time, and Musculoskeletal Outcomes Data Evaluation and Management System. Results. The mean AOFAS score varied from 36.9 to 83.9 at follow-up. Average of Van Dijk scale was 141.1. Coughlin score was excellent/good in 24 patients. MOCART score varied from 6.3 to 3.8. Discussion. This matrix is easy to handle conformable to the lesion and apply by arthroscopy. No correlation between MRI imaging and clinical results is found. Conclusions. Our results, compared with those reported in literature with other surgical procedures, show no superiority evidence for our technique compared to the others regarding the size of the lesions.
Application of reduced-order controller to turbulent flows for drag reduction

A reduced-order linear feedback controller is designed and applied to turbulent channel flow for drag reduction. From the linearized two-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations a distributed feedback controller, which produces blowing/suction at the wall based on the measured turbulent streamwise wall-shear stress, is derived using model reduction techniques and linearquadratic-Gaussian/loop-transfer-recovery control synthesis. The quadratic cost criterion used for synthesis is composed of the streamwise wall-shear stress, which includes the control effort of blowing/suction. This distributed two-dimensional controller developed from a linear system theory is shown to reduce the skin friction by 10% in direct numerical simulations of a low-Reynolds number turbulent nonlinear channel flow. Spanwise shear-stress variation, not captured by the distributed two-dimensional controller, is suppressed by augmentation of a simple spanwise ad hoc control scheme. This augmented three-dimensional controller, which requir.
Logic Programming and Software engineering—implications for Software design

Abstract Logic programming is a programming paradigm with potential to contribute to software engineering. This paper is concerned with one dimension of that potential, the impact that experience with developing logic programs can have on software design. We present a logic programming perspective on programming patterns, systematic program development, design for provability, and the paradigm of meta-programming.
Combining clusterings with different detail levels

In this study we address the problem of recovering a clustering of a dataset based on several clusterings provided by different experts. These experts provide clusterings on different levels (coarser or finer than the others). We present an automatic algorithm that combines the information provided by the experts into a single clustering that can be viewed as the average point of the input clusterings. We formulate the problem as an instance of correlation clustering and apply integer linear programming to obtain the average clustering. As a byproduct, we also obtain for each expert its reliability and the detail level encoded in its clustering. We apply the proposed algorithm to the task of averaging several image segmentations. The average segmentation is efficiently computed by first grouping the image into superpixels and then applying the proposed algorithm on the superpixel map. The performance of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated on manually annotated images from the Berkeley segmentation dataset.