Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Anonymous topology discovery for multihop wireless sensor networks

Topology discovery in wireless sensor networks typically starts by transmitting a special beacon signal from the sink. This method, although simple and efficient, reveals the location of the sink within the network. We propose an anonymous topology discovery protocol based on a different and distributed approach, where all nodes are allowed to broadcast route discovery messages. This way, the sink is able to obtain a global view of the network without disclosing its own location. It can then calculate and securely establish a route for each sensor, a process that is the topic of another one of our papers. For situations where the secrecy of the entire topology is important, we extend our basic protocol to hide the identity of individual sensors during topology discovery from all other internal and external entities, except the sink.
Genetic diversity in natural and anthropogenic inland populations of salt‐tolerant plants: random amplified polymorphic DNA analyses of Aster tripolium L. (Compositae) and Salicornia ramosissima Woods (Chenopodiaceae)

Eight populations of Aster tripolium (Compositae) and six of Salicornia ramosissima (Chenopodiaceae) from inland, naturally salt‐contaminated habitats and anthropogenic salt‐polluted sites in central Germany (Thuringia, Anhalt‐Saxony) were analysed using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers to investigate the patterns of genetic variation. In both species, the genetic diversity observed in the younger, anthropogenic sites caused by potash mines during the last century was found to be not significantly lower than in the older, naturally salt‐contaminated habitats. Therefore, it is speculated that the loss of genetic diversity caused by founder effects on the anthropogenic habitats was balanced by successive colonization events, actual gene flow between populations, or the rapid growth of populations on the secondary habitats after colonization. Analyses of molecular variance (amova) of the RAPD markers, neighbour‐joining clustering of populations based on Reynolds’ co‐ancestry distances, and Mantel tests indicate that: (i) anthropogenic habitats were colonized independently; (ii) genetic differentiation among populations of S. ramosissima is more pronounced than in A. tripolium, which is considered to be mainly due to biological differences between the two species; and (iii) the geographical pattern of genetic diversity was considerably modulated by historical events and/or population genetic effects.
Including structural factors into the metrics-based code smells detection

Code smells help to discover and describe deeper problems in software design. Several automated methods of smell detection are based the analysis of a combination of code-related metrics relevant for a given flaw. However, some smells reflect more complex issues and require a holistic perspective that woudl cover a number of different sources of data. In this paper we experimentally verify the usefulness of including structural factors into a metrics-based detection of God Class and Brain Class code smells.
Angiogenesis in Nervous System Disorders

ANGIOGENESIS IS A crucial requirement for embryonal development and new vessel formation during adult life. Various disease processes such as cancer, ischemia, vascular malformations, and inflammatory processes also depend on pathological angiogenesis. A better understanding of the complex and coordinated interactions among various angiogenic pathways involved in pathological angiogenesis is necessary to improve our therapeutic approaches to the various disease processes observed in the central nervous system. This review summarizes the current understanding of the role of principal angiogenic factors relevant to neurosurgical abnormalities.
p47phox Is Required for Afferent Arteriolar Contractile Responses to Angiotensin II and Perfusion Pressure in Mice

Myogenic and angiotensin contractions of afferent arterioles generate reactive oxygen species. Resistance vessels express neutrophil oxidase-2 and -4. Angiotensin II activates p47phox/neutrophil oxidase-2, whereas it downregulates NOX-4. Therefore, we tested the hypothesis that p47phox enhances afferent arteriolar angiotensin contractions. Angiotensin II infusion in p47phox +/+ but not −/− mice increased renal cortical NADPH oxidase activity (7±1–12±1 [P<0.01] versus 5±1–7±1 103 · RLU · min−1 · &mgr;g protein−1 [P value not significant]), mean arterial pressure (77±2–91±2 [P<0.005] versus 74±2–77±1 mm Hg [P value not significant]), and renal vascular resistance (7.5±0.4–10.1±0.7 [P<0.01] versus 7.9±0.4–8.3±0.4 mm Hg/mL · min−1 · gram kidney weight−1 [P value not significant]). Afferent arterioles from p47phox −/− mice had a lesser myogenic response (3.1±0.4 versus 1.4±0.2 dynes · cm−1 · mm Hg−1; P<0.02) and a lesser (P<0.05) contraction to 10−6 M angiotensin II (diameter change +/+: 9.3±0.2–3.4±0.6 &mgr;m versus −/−: 9.9±0.6–7.5±0.4 &mgr;m). Angiotensin and increased perfusion pressure generated significantly (P<0.05) more reactive oxygen species in p47phox +/+ than −/− arterioles. Angiotensin II infusion increased the maximum responsiveness of afferent arterioles from p47phox +/+ mice to 10−6 M angiotensin II yet decreased the response in p47phox −/− mice. The angiotensin infusion increased the sensitivity to angiotensin II only in p47phox +/+ mice. We conclude that p47phox is required to enhance renal NADPH oxidase activity and basal afferent arteriolar myogenic and angiotensin II contractions and to switch afferent arteriolar tachyphylaxis to sensitization to angiotensin during a prolonged angiotensin infusion. These effects likely contribute to hypertension and renal vasoconstriction during infusion of angiotensin II.
Distributed Controllers for Multi-Agent Coordination Via Gradient-Flow Approach

This paper provides a unified solution for a general distributed control problem of multi-agent systems based on the gradient-flow approach. First, a generalized coordination is presented as a control objective which represents a wide range of coordination tasks (e.g., consensus, formation and pattern decision) in a unified manner. Second, a necessary and sufficient condition for the gradient-based controllers to be distributed is derived. It turns out that the notion of clique (i.e., complete subgraph) plays a crucial role to obtain any distributed controllers. Furthermore, all such controllers are explicitly characterized with free design parameters. Third, it is shown how to choose an optimal controller in a systematic way among all distributed ones, where an optimality measure is introduced for the generalized coordination. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through simulations, where a distributed pattern decision is discussed as an example of the generalized coordination.
Related Key Chosen IV Attack on Stream Cipher Espresso Variant

The stream cipher Espresso was proposed by Elena Dubrova and Martin Hell in Cryptography and Communications in 2015, which employs the nonlinear feedback shift register (NLFSR) of Galois configuration as a main building block. This Galois configuration of NLFSR is transformed into its equivalent Fibonacci configuration, and then stream cipher Espresso is changed into the stream cipher Espresso variant denoted by Espresso-a. The structures of both Grain and Espresso-a are similar. Therefore, by virtue of slide attack used in the analysis of Grain, Related key chosen IV attack on the stream cipher Espresso-a is mounted. It is shown that the attack on Espresso-a recovers the 128-bit secret key with only two pairs of related key-IVs, no more than 242 chosen IVs and 264 computational complexity. Thus stream cipher Espresso is not secure for 128-bit secret key.
Making Sense of Part-Time Students' Transition into Higher Education: Recognising the Self, Family and Work

This paper argues that it is essential to make sense of working adults’ transition into the university, more so, there needs to be clarity about the dominant understanding of transition when dealing with working students. The University of the Western Cape (UWC) has since its inception in 1960 offered evening classes to working students. This offering is currently under threat and the Division for Lifelong learning (DLL) has engaged in an action research process to investigate teaching and learning opportunities that are conceptualised and provided in flexible ways. Located in one of the three pilot sites of the action research, this paper explores the transition of a sample of Political Studies students as shared in interviews and other data collected. It considers the roles and influence of the contextual domains of work, family and self and examines the implications for mature students, their workplaces and the university. A sense-making approach is used to highlight discontinuities or gaps experienced by the students and the initial analysis reveals that attempts to support students may be constrained by prevailing conceptions of the trajectories of part-time students. Instead of the traditional, linear transition into higher education – normally associated with younger students – trajectories for mature students are less linear, more complex and include stop-outs and discontinuities within transitions.
20-HETE and Furosemide-Induced Natriuresis in Salt-Sensitive Essential Hypertension

Abstract—Cyclooxygenase metabolites of arachidonic acid modulate the natriuretic effect of furosemide. It is not known whether 20-HETE, a monooxygenase metabolite of arachidonic acid that also inhibits sodium transport, participates in the action of furosemide. We measured urine sodium (UNaV) and 20-HETE during furosemide diuresis (40 mg three times over 12 hours) in 12 salt-sensitive (SS) and 11 salt-resistant (SR), salt-replete hypertensive subjects (126±24 mmol/24 hours positive sodium balance produced by 160-mmol-sodium diet and 2 L saline infusion). Individual systolic blood pressure decreases from the salt-replete to the salt-depleted state were the index of salt-sensitivity. SS had low plasma renin with blunted responses to changes in salt balance, inappropriate plasma aldosterone, and an increased aldosterone/renin ratio. UNaV by furosemide was less in SS (263±25 mmol/12 hours) than in SR (351±25 mmol/12 hours, P <0.02) patients. 20-HETE was not different between SS and SR patients before (1.92±0.38 versus 1.37±0.34 &mgr;g/h) or after furosemide (1.52±0.27 versus 2.01±0.40 &mgr;g/h), but furosemide changed 20-HETE excretion in opposite direction in SR (0.63±0.26) versus SS (−0.40±0.17, P <0.005) patients. In all patients together, %&Dgr;20-HETE by furosemide correlated with %&Dgr;UNaV (r =0.56, P <0.01) and negatively with salt-sensitivity of blood pressure (r =−0.55, P <0.01). In SS, &Dgr;20-HETE by furosemide correlated with &Dgr;aldosterone/renin ratio (r =0.60, P <0.05), whereas 20-HETE during furosemide had a negative correlation with body mass index (r =−0.73, P <0.01). Our data suggest that 20-HETE modulates the natriuretic response to furosemide, and impaired natriuresis of SS involves a mechanism that alters the 20-HETE response to furosemide and is linked to salt-sensitivity of blood pressure.
Scalar Costa scheme for information embedding

Research on information embedding, particularly information hiding techniques, has received considerable attention within the last years due to its potential application in multimedia security. Digital watermarking, which is an information hiding technique where the embedded information is robust against malicious or accidental attacks, might offer new possibilities to enforce the copyrights of multimedia data. In this paper, the specific case of information embedding into independent identically distributed (IID) data and attacks by additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) is considered. The original data is not available to the decoder. For Gaussian data, in 1983, Costa proposed a scheme that theoretically achieves the capacity of this communication scenario. However, Costa's scheme is not practical. Thus, several research groups have proposed suboptimal practical communication schemes based on Costa's idea. The goal of this paper is to give a complete performance analysis of the scalar Costa scheme (SCS), which is a suboptimal technique using scalar embedding and reception functions. Information theoretic bounds and simulation results with state-of-the-art coding techniques are compared. Further, reception after amplitude scaling attacks and the invertibility of SCS embedding are investigated.
Parameter-Passing and the Lambda CalculusErik Crank

The choice of a parameter-passing technique is an important decision in the design of a high-level programming language. To clarify some of the semantic aspects of the decision, we develop, analyze, and compare modiications of the-calculus for the most common parameter-passing techniques, i.e., call-by-value and call-by-name combined with pass-by-worth and pass-by-reference, respectively. More speciically, for each parameter-passing technique we provide 1. a program rewriting semantics for a language with side-eeects and rst-class procedures based on the respective parameter-passing technique; 2. an equational theory that is derived from the rewriting semantics in a uniform manner; 3. a formal analysis of the correspondence between the calculus and the semantics; and 4. a strong normalization theorem for the imperative fragment of the theory (when applicable). A comparison of the various systems reveals that Algol's call-by-name indeed satisses the well-known rule of the original-calculus, but at the cost of complicated axioms for the imperative part of the theory. The simplest and most appealing axiom system appears to be the one for a call-by-value/pass-by-worth language with reference cells as rst-class values.ental del Uruguay generously provided facilities for preparing the nal version of the paper. The choice of a parameter-passing technique is an important element in the design of a high-level programming language. The wide variety of techniques in modern languages, e.g., call-by-value, call-by-name, pass-by-reference, suggests a lack of consensus about the advantages and disadvantages of the various techniques. In this paper we analyze the most common techniques by studying and comparing equational theories for each of them. Plotkin 20] was the rst to consider equational theories for the analysis of parameter-passing techniques. Starting from the folklore that Church's-calculus captures the essence of call-by-name in a functional language , he developed a variant of the calculus, the v-calculus, to formalize the notion of call-by-value in a simple framework comparable to the-calculus. More importantly, he used these two examples, call-by-name and call-by-value, to analyze the formal relationship between programming languages and calculi. Both the-calculus and the v-calculus satisfy general correspondence conditions with respect to the appropriate semantics: (1) the calculi are suuciently strong to evaluate a program to its answer and (2) they are sound in the sense that the equality of terms in the calculus implies their interchangeability in all program contexts. Recently, Felleisen with Friedman 9] and Hieb 10] extended Plotkin's work to call-by-value programming languages with imperative constructs like assignments and jumps. Their result …
Generation of Replication-Proficient Influenza Virus NS1 Point Mutants with Interferon-Hyperinducer Phenotype

The NS1 protein of influenza A viruses is the dedicated viral interferon (IFN)-antagonist. Viruses lacking NS1 protein expression cannot multiply in normal cells but are viable in cells deficient in their ability to produce or respond to IFN. Here we report an unbiased mutagenesis approach to identify positions in the influenza A NS1 protein that modulate the IFN response upon infection. A random library of virus ribonucleoproteins containing circa 40 000 point mutants in NS1 were transferred to infectious virus and amplified in MDCK cells unable to respond to interferon. Viruses that activated the interferon (IFN) response were subsequently selected by their ability to induce expression of green-fluorescent protein (GFP) following infection of A549 cells bearing an IFN promoter-dependent GFP gene. Using this approach we isolated individual mutant viruses that replicate to high titers in IFN-compromised cells but, compared to wild type viruses, induced higher levels of IFN in IFN-competent cells and had a reduced capacity to counteract exogenous IFN. Most of these viruses contained not previously reported NS1 mutations within either the RNA-binding domain, the effector domain or the linker region between them. These results indicate that subtle alterations in NS1 can reduce its effectiveness as an IFN antagonist without affecting the intrinsic capacity of the virus to multiply. The general approach reported here may facilitate the generation of replication-proficient, IFN-inducing virus mutants, that potentially could be developed as attenuated vaccines against a variety of viruses.
Networks-on-Chip in a Three-Dimensional Environment: A Performance Evaluation

The Network-on-Chip (NoC) paradigm has emerged as a revolutionary methodology for integrating a very high number of intellectual property (IP) blocks in a single die. The achievable performance benefit arising out of adopting NoCs is constrained by the performance limitation imposed by the metal wire, which is the physical realization of communication channels. With technology scaling, only depending on the material innovation will extend the lifetime of conventional interconnect systems a few technology generations. According to International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) for the longer term, new interconnect paradigms are in need. The conventional two dimensional (2D) integrated circuit (IC) has limited floor-planning choices, and consequently it limits the performance enhancements arising out of NoC architectures. Three dimensional (3D) ICs are capable of achieving better performance, functionality, and packaging density compared to more traditional planar ICs. On the other hand, NoC is an enabling solution for integrating large numbers of embedded cores in a single die. 3D NoC architectures combine the benefits of these two new domains to offer an unprecedented performance gain. In this paper we evaluate the performance of 3D NoC architectures and demonstrate their superior functionality in terms of throughput, latency, energy dissipation and wiring area overhead compared to traditional 2D implementations.
Importance of gene variants and co-factors of folate metabolic pathway in the etiology of idiopathic intellectual disability

Abstract Different components of the folate metabolic cycle are crucial for maintaining integrity of DNA. The present study was aimed at exploring the role of some important constituents of the folate cycle in the etiology of idiopathic intellectual disability (IID). Nuclear families with IID probands (n = 226) and ethnically matched controls (n = 181) were recruited for micronucleus, karyotype, genetic polymorphism (MTR rs1805087, MTRR rs1801394, and DHFR rs70991108), folate, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, and cysteine analysis. Significant difference in genotype frequencies in IID probands and their parents were observed for rs1805087 (P = 0.03, 0.02), rs1801394 (P = 0.03, 0.001), and rs70991108 ((P = 0.03, 0.02) as compared to controls. IID probands showed significantly higher micronucleus frequency (P = 0.01) and decreased vitamin B6 level (P = 0.002). A strong correlation between rs1801394 ‘G’ allele and micronucleus was also noticed. From the present investigation, a role of genetic polymorphisms and vitamin B6 levels could be hypothesized in the etiology of IID.
In favor of behavior: on the importance of experimental paradigms in testing predictions from Gray's revised reinforcement sensitivity theory

Approach to desirable events or stimuli of reward and avoidance of undesirable events or stimuli of non-reward or punishment are powerful forces to drive behavior. The importance of approach and avoidance motivation has been outlined in many psychological theories and traditions, including psychodynamics, behaviorism and cognitivism (Elliot and Covington, 2001). Of all theoretical accounts, the Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) by Jeffrey Gray is probably the most elaborate perspective on approach and avoidance (Gray, 1971; Gray and McNaughton, 2000). Key contributions by Gray within this framework are the identification of neural circuits underlying approach and avoidance behavior, the description of these circuits as neuropsychological systems with circumscribed functions in terms of a conceptual nervous system, and the development of a theory of personality based on individual differences in the reactivity of these systems.
CpG-ODN Attenuates Pathological Cardiac Hypertrophy and Heart Failure by Activation of PI3Kα-Akt Signaling

Phosphoinositide-3-kinase α (PI3Kα) represents a potential novel drug target for pathological cardiac hypertrophy (PCH) and heart failure. Oligodeoxynucleotides containing CpG motifs (CpG-ODN) are classic agonists of Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9), which typically activates PI3K-Akt signaling in immune cells; however, the role of the nucleotide TLR9 agonists in cardiac myocytes is largely unknown. Here we report that CpG-ODN C274 could both attenuate PCH and improve cardiac dysfunction by activating PI3Kα-Akt signaling cascade. In vitro studies indicated that C274 could blunt reactivation of fetal cardiac genes and cell enlargement induced by a hypertrophic agent, isoproterenol. The anti-hypertrophic effect of C274 was suppressed by a pan-PI3K inhibitor, LY294002, or a small interfering RNA targeting PI3Kα. In vivo studies demonstrated that PCH, as marked by increased heart weight (HW) and cardiac ANF mRNA, was normalized by pre-administration with C274. In addition, Doppler echocardiography detected cardiac ventricular dilation, and contractile dysfunction in isoproterenol-treated animals, consistent with massive replacement fibrosis, reflecting cardiac cell death. As expected, pre-treatment of mice with C274 could prevent cardiac dysfunction associated with diminished cardiac cell death and fibrosis. In conclusion, CpG-ODNs are novel cardioprotective agents possessing antihypertrophic and anti-cell death activity afforded by engagement of the PI3Kα-Akt signaling. CpG-ODNs may have clinical use curbing the progression of PCH and preventing heart failure.