Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Implementation and analysis of the generalised new Mersenne number transforms for encryption

Encryption is very much a vast subject covering myriad techniques to conceal and safeguard data and communications. Of the techniques that are available, methodologies that incorporate the number theoretic transforms (NTTs) have gained recognition, specifically the new Mersenne number transform (NMNT). Recently, two new transforms have been introduced that extend the NMNT to a new generalised suite of transforms referred to as the generalised NMNT (GNMNT). These two new transforms are termed the odd NMNT (ONMNT) and the odd-squared NMNT (O2NMNT). Being based on the Mersenne numbers, the GNMNTs are extremely versatile with respect to vector lengths. The GNMNTs are also capable of being implemented using fast algorithms, employing multiple and combinational radices over one or more dimensions. Algorithms for both the decimation-in-time (DIT) and -frequency (DIF) methodologies using radix-2, radix-4 and split-radix are presented, including their respective complexity and performance analyses. Whilst the original NMNT has seen a significant amount of research applied to it with respect to encryption, the ONMNT and O2NMNT can utilise similar techniques that are proven to show stronger characteristics when measured using established methodologies defining diffusion. Analyses in diffusion using a small but reasonably sized vector-space with the GNMNTs will be exhaustively assessed and a comparison with the Rijndael cipher, the current advanced encryption standard (AES) algorithm, will be presented that will confirm strong diffusion characteristics. Implementation techniques using general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) have been applied, which are further assessed and discussed. Focus is drawn upon the future of cryptography and in particular cryptology, as a consequence of the emergence and rapid progress of GPGPU and consumer based parallel processing.
Koala: Towards Lazy and Locality-Aware Overlays for Decentralized Clouds

Current cloud computing infrastructures and their management are highly centralized, and therefore they suffer from limitations in terms of network latency, energy consumption, and possible legal restrictions. Decentralizing the Cloud has been recently proposed as an alternative. However, the efficient management of a geographically dispersed platform brings new challenges related to service localization, network utilization and locality-awareness. We here consider a cloud topology composed of many small datacenters geographically dispersed within the backbone network. In this paper, we present the design, development and experimental validation of Koala, a novel overlay network that specifically targets such a geographically distributed cloud platform. The three key characteristics of Koala are laziness, latency-awareness and topology-awareness. By using application traffic, Koala maintains the overlay lazily while it takes locality into account in each routing decision. Although Koala's performance depends on application traffic, through simulation experiments we show that for a uniformly distributed traffic, Koala delivers similar routing complexity and reduced latency compared to a traditional proactive protocol, such as Chord. Additionally, we show that despite its passive maintenance, Koala can appropriately deal with churn by keeping the number of routing failures low, without significantly degrading the routing performance. Finally, we show how such an overlay adapts to a decentralized cloud composed of multiple small datacenters.
SCO-spondin oligopeptide inhibits angiogenesis in glioblastoma

Angiogenesis plays a critical role in glioblastoma growth and progression. We therefore aimed at evaluating the anti-angiogenic properties of an oligopeptide originating from SCO-spondin (NX) on a model of human glioblastoma. To this end, we studied the impact of NX treatment on human brain endothelial cells (HBMECs) alone or co-cultured with glioblastoma cells (U87-MG) on apoptosis, proliferation, migration and release of angiogenic factors. We further investigated the anti-angiogenic potential of NX on human glioblastoma cells grown on chorio-allantoic membrane (CAM) or in glioblastoma xenografts. The results of our experiments showed that NX treatment impaired the microvascular network and induced a decrease in cell proliferation, vascularization and tumor growth in the CAM model as well as in xenotransplants. Interestingly, our in vitro experiments showed that NX impairs HBMECs migration but also regulates the release of angiogenic factors from U87-MG. These results are confirmed by the profiling of NX-treated U87-MG grown on CAM that highlighted modifications of several genes involved in angiogenesis. In conclusion, NX inhibits tumorigenesis by impairing the ability of glioblastoma cells to induce angiogenesis and by inhibiting endothelial cell migration. This molecule might therefore be an interesting candidate for future cancer therapies.
Effects of elevated CO2, increased nitrogen deposition, and plant diversity on aboveground litter and root decomposition.

Global change-induced litter decomposition strongly affects the carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics in grassland ecosystems. However, few studies show the interactive effects of global change factors on litter and root decomposition. We conducted a four-year grassland field experiment to examine the quality and decomposition of litter and root in a three-factorial experiment with elevated CO2, increased N deposition, and plant species richness. We found that elevated CO2 decreased the litter N content and root lignin content. N addition increased the root N content and decreased the litter lignin content. Increasing plant richness decreased the N and lignin contents in litter and root. In contrast to the quality changes, elevated CO2 had no effect on decomposition of litter and root. N addition increased the C loss of the litter by 4.8%, but did not affect C and N loss in root. Increasing plant richness affected the C and N loss in litter and root. ANCOVAs showed that tissue quality and root biomass affected the C and N loss in litter and root, and soil C and N affected the N loss of litter and root. However, changes in tissue quality, biomass, and soil as covariates did not significantly change the effects of CO2, N, and plant richness on decomposition. The structural equation model showed that elevated CO2 indirectly decreased litter N loss and increased root N loss, while N addition indirectly increased the C and N loss in litter and root, via their effects on tissue quality. Increasing plant richness increased litter C and N loss, but indirectly decreased root C and N loss. N deposition can accelerate litter and root decomposition, thus modifying the limitation of elevated CO2 on soil N availability. Biodiversity loss greatly alters litter and root decomposition, potentially driving any changes in C and N cycling. Our study clearly demonstrates a relative certainty of a predicted increase in the C loss and N release in litter and root decomposition with increased N deposition, whereas the effects of elevated CO2 and plant diversity changes on decomposition strongly differ between litter and root in grassland ecosystems.
Review of the Australian curriculum final report

There is little as controversial in education as determining what it is that young people should be able to know, understand and be able to do following their time at school. As Chapter Three explains, Australia has wrestled for over 30 years with the issue of what every student should study at school as defined by a more nationally consistent curriculum framework. Only in recent years has there been substantial progress towards developing a national curriculum for Australia. Prior to that, while there have been attempts at cross-jurisdictional cooperation to achieve greater consensus on school curriculums across the country, most curriculum development was still happening unilaterally at the state and territory level. In 2008, with the establishment of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), it appeared that critical momentum had finally been achieved to develop a truly national curriculum. Commencing with English, mathematics, science and history, ACARA began the task of creating the Australian Curriculum. Other learning areas were soon added to that list: geography, languages and the arts followed in a second phase of development, with the Australian Curriculum to be completed by technologies, economics and business, civics and citizenship and health and physical education in a third phase. It is clear that desire for a national curriculum has waxed and waned across the country. While the Ministerial Council of Education Ministers determined that the first four subjects were required to be ‘substantially implemented’ in Foundation to Year 10 by 2013, no timelines were applied to geography or the arts – the only other curriculum subjects that have been endorsed by ministers to date. The senior secondary curriculum appears to be mired in uncertainty as to whether it needs to (or should) be implemented. At all stages there have been concerns expressed at the development of the curriculum. It was too rushed. It lacked a conceptual framework. Were the cross-curriculum priorities mandatory? By far, the greatest concern was the content load expected to be delivered at primary school. Many of these concerns remain and have been raised during this Review. Other concerns have been brought to the Reviewers’ attention, including those about the pedagogical and epistemological assumptions and beliefs underlying the Australian Curriculum. This Report brings these concerns to the attention of ministers, policy makers and educators with recommendations for actions to address them.
Insulin resistance and cardiometabolic risk factors in obese children and adolescents: a hierarchical approach

Abstract Background: This study aims to globally assess the network of insulin resistance (IR)-related factors in a sample of overweight and obese Greek youths. Methods: A total of 185 subjects were examined, and IR was quantified by homeostasis model assessment (HOMA-IR). Multivariate hierarchical approach was performed, and five distinct levels were recognized, namely, immutable demographic features and early life parameters, current anthropometric measures, IR, unfavorable clinical conditions, and social parameters. Two analyses were performed based on HOMA-IR cut-off values (3.16 and, as an alternative, 3.99). Results: Obesity was associated with IR (adjusted OR=3.19, 95% CI: 1.12–9.09). IR steadily predicted low HDL (adjusted OR=5.75, 95% CI: 1.58–20.87), hypertriglyceridemia (adjusted OR=10.28, 95% CI: 1.18–89.55), and systolic hypertension. At the alternative analysis, IR was also associated with older age, older age at menarche, hyperuricemia, and low school grades. Conclusion: Emerging on the grounds of obesity, IR confers risks for dyslipidemia and hypertension at a relatively early age. Along with weight loss, interventions targeted at IR are required to prevent cardiometabolic risk in adolescence.
Micro-Hotspots of Risk in Urban Cholera Epidemics

Targeted interventions have been delivered to neighbors of cholera cases in epidemic responses in Haiti and Africa despite little evidence supporting impact. Using data from urban epidemics in Chad and D.R. Congo we estimate the size and extent of spatiotemporal zones of increased cholera risk around cases. In both cities, we found zones of increased risk of at least 200-meters during the 5-days immediately following case presentation to a clinic. Risk was highest for those living closest to cases and diminished in time and space similarly across settings. These results provide a rational basis for targeting interventions, if delivered rapidly.
A Hierarchical Approach to Neural Context-Aware Modeling

We present a new recurrent neural network topology to enhance state-of-the-art machine learning systems by incorporating a broader context. Our approach overcomes recent limitations with extended narratives through a multi-layered computational approach to generate an abstract context representation. Therefore, the developed system captures the narrative on word-level, sentence-level, and context-level. Through the hierarchical set-up, our proposed model summarizes the most salient information on each level and creates an abstract representation of the extended context. We subsequently use this representation to enhance neural language processing systems on the task of semantic error detection. To show the potential of the newly introduced topology, we compare the approach against a context-agnostic set-up including a standard neural language model and a supervised binary classification network. The performance measures on the error detection task show the advantage of the hierarchical context-aware topologies, improving the baseline by 12.75% relative for unsupervised models and 20.37% relative for supervised models.
Moral Foundations, Political Orientation and Religiosity In Italy

Background: This study investigates the role of political orientation and religiosity in Italy for moral foundations endorsement, in light of Haidt and Graham’s Moral Foundations Theory. This theory hypothesizes that moral systems are based on five dimensions (i.e., Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity) that, in turn, can be grouped into two broader dimensions (Binding and Individualizing). Objective: We aim to explore and extend the moral foundation assumptions to the Italian context predicting greater endorsement of binding values among Italian Right-wingers as compared with Left-wingers. Given that the relations between politics and Catholic Church have always been intertwined in modern Italy, we also extend this line of inquiry by examining the role of religiosity. Method: Two hundred and forty-eight Italian participants filled out a self-report measure including the Moral Foundations Questionnaires. Results: Individuals attach considerable relevance to individualizing moral foundations rather than to binding moral foundations; conservatives and regular religious attenders attach more relevance to binding moral foundations as compared with individuals with a Left-wing political orientation and less religious people. Conclusions: Our results show that the Italians’ political orientation emerges as a significant element in the differential adoption of moral foundations. Furthermore, considering the historical and fundamental role of the Catholic religion in the Italian society and political life, our results confirm that binding values are particularly valued in groups such as practicing Catholic, where institutions, families, and authorities are valued.
Pore‐Scale Hydrodynamics in a Progressively Bioclogged Three‐Dimensional Porous Medium: 3‐D Particle Tracking Experiments and Stochastic Transport Modeling

Biofilms are ubiquitous bacterial communities that grow in various porous media including soils, trickling, and sand filters. In these environments, they play a central role in services ranging from degradation of pollutants to water purification. Biofilms dynamically change the pore structure of the medium through selective clogging of pores, a process known as bioclogging. This affects how solutes are transported and spread through the porous matrix, but the temporal changes to transport behavior during bioclogging are not well understood. To address this uncertainty, we experimentally study the hydrodynamic changes of a transparent 3‐D porous medium as it experiences progressive bioclogging. Statistical analyses of the system's hydrodynamics at four time points of bioclogging (0, 24, 36, and 48 h in the exponential growth phase) reveal exponential increases in both average and variance of the flow velocity, as well as its correlation length. Measurements for spreading, as mean‐squared displacements, are found to be non‐Fickian and more intensely superdiffusive with progressive bioclogging, indicating the formation of preferential flow pathways and stagnation zones. A gamma distribution describes well the Lagrangian velocity distributions and provides parameters that quantify changes to the flow, which evolves from a parallel pore arrangement under unclogged conditions, toward a more serial arrangement with increasing clogging. Exponentially evolving hydrodynamic metrics agree with an exponential bacterial growth phase and are used to parameterize a correlated continuous time random walk model with a stochastic velocity relaxation. The model accurately reproduces transport observations and can be used to resolve transport behavior at intermediate time points within the exponential growth phase considered.
Crystal structures of Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus endonuclease domain complexed with diketo-acid ligands

Crystal structures of the endonuclease domain of Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) in complex with two diketo-acid (DKA) compounds were determined. Based on these data and activity assays, two new DKAs with good affinity for the LCMV endonuclease domain were synthesized.
Transmission Electron Microscopy of Plagioclase-Rich Itokawa Grains: Space Weathering Effects and Solar Flare Track Exposure Ages

Introduction Limited samples are available for the study of space weathering effects on airless bodies. The grains returned by the Hayabusa mission to asteroid 25143 Itokawa provide the only samples currently available to study space weathering of ordinary chondrite regolith. We have previously studied olivine-rich Itokawa grains and documented their surface alteration and exposure ages based on the observed density of solar flare particle tracks. Here we focus on the rarer Itokawa plagioclase grains, in order to allow comparisons between Itokawa and lunar soil plagioclase grains for which an extensive data set exists [1].
Copolymers of ε-caprolactone and quaternized ε-caprolactone as gene carriers

New copolymers of ε-caprolactone (CL) and γ-bromo-ε-caprolactone quaternized by pyridine (Py+CL) were investigated as non-viral vectors for gene delivery. Copolymers with two molar compositions (50 Py+CL/50 CL and 80 Py+CL/20 CL), each with a diblock or a random structure, were used to prepare nanoparticulate complexes with DNA. Average size and surface charge of the complexes and extent of the complexation were measured. The DNA condensation by the copolymers was analysed by a gel retardation assay. Cytotoxicity and transfection efficiency of the copolymers were also evaluated in HeLa cells and compared with polyethylenimine 50 kDa. The size of the polyplexes was approximately 200 nm. The zeta potential first increased with the copolymer/DNA charge ratio and became positive for charge ratios in the 2–4 range depending on the type of copolymer. DNAwas completely condensed within the nanoparticles and the degree of interaction was very high. Cytotoxicity and transfection efficiency were found to be comparable to polyethylenimine 50 kDa. The experimental results suggest that the novel copolymers can be used as novel gene delivery vectors. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Avatar: Large Scale Entity Resolution of Heterogeneous User Profiles

Entity Resolution (ER), also known as record linkage or de-duplication, has been a long-standing problem in the data management space. Though an ER system follows an established pipeline involving the Blocking -> Matching -> Clustering components, the Matching forms the core element of an ER system. At CareerBuilder, we perform de-duplication of massive datasets of people profiles collected from disparate sources with varying informational content. In this paper, we discuss the challenges of de-duplicating inherently heterogeneous data and illustrate the end-to-end process of building a functional and scalable machine learning-based matching platform. We also provide an incremental framework to enable differential ER assimilation for continuous de-duplication workflows.
Quantitative analysis of a conceptual system dynamics maintenance performance model using multi-objective optimisation

Abstract This paper presents a quantitative analysis of a conceptual, system dynamics (SD) model by the application of multi-objective optimisation (MOO). The SD model investigates the strategic development of maintenance performance, using a system view of maintenance costs, while the execution of MOO evaluates multiple simulation runs, seeking the simultaneous trade-off solutions of the three conflicting objectives: maximise availability, minimise maintenance costs, and minimise maintenance consequential costs. The study explores three scenarios that represent companies at different states of developed maintenance performance. The application of this integrated, simulation-based optimisation approach reveals multiple analyses of system behaviour of the SD model, which are presented in a compact format to a decision-maker. Actually, notwithstanding the application to a conceptual model, the study results make explicit the nonlinearity between invested maintenance cost and its consequent effects. Furthermore, the approach demonstrates the contribution to the process of strengthening the usefulness of the conceptual maintenance performance model.
Paradiopatra (Annelida: Onuphidae) from eastern Australian waters, with the description of six new species.

This study recognises eight species of Paradiopatra from eastern Australian waters, of which only one, Paradiopatra ehlersi, had been previously recorded. Six species are newly described: P. acirrata n. sp. , P. imajimai n. sp. , P. longicappa n. sp. , P. piccola n. sp. , P. spinosa n. sp. , P. variabilis n. sp. , and one species is reported as P. cf. papillata. Descriptions of all species (with the exception of P. ehlersi) are given, accompanied by detailed illustrations, including scanning electron micrographs and drawings. A key to all 32 species of the genus is included plus a table summarising specific diagnostic characters of the Australian representatives.
Preconception health 2 Origins of lifetime health around the time of conception : causes and consequences

Parental environmental factors, including diet, body composition, metabolism, and stress, affect the health and chronic disease risk of people throughout their lives, as captured in the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease concept. Research across the epidemiological, clinical, and basic science fields has identified the period around conception as being crucial for the processes mediating parental influences on the health of the next generation. During this time, from the maturation of gametes through to early embryonic development, parental lifestyle can adversely influence longterm risks of offspring cardiovascular, metabolic, immune, and neurological morbidities, often termed developmental programming. We review periconceptional induction of disease risk from four broad exposures: maternal overnutrition and obesity; maternal undernutrition; related paternal factors; and the use of assisted reproductive treatment. Studies in both humans and animal models have demonstrated the underlying biological mechanisms, including epigenetic, cellular, physiological, and metabolic processes. We also present a meta-analysis of mouse paternal and maternal protein undernutrition that suggests distinct parental periconceptional contributions to postnatal outcomes. We propose that the evidence for periconceptional effects on lifetime health is now so compelling that it calls for new guidance on parental preparation for pregnancy, beginning before conception, to protect the health of offspring.