Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Asynchronous Byzantine consensus with 2f+1 processes

Byzantine consensus in asynchronous message-passing systems has been shown to require at least 3f + 1 processes to be solvable in several system models (e.g., with failure detectors, partial synchrony or randomization). Recently a couple of solutions to implement Byzantine fault-tolerant state-machine replication using only 2f + 1 replicas have appeared. This reduction from 3f + 1 to 2f + 1 is possible with a hybrid system model, i.e., by extending the system model with trusted/trustworthy components that constrain the power of faulty processes to have certain behaviors. Despite these important results, the problem of solving Byzantine consensus with only 2f + 1 processes is still far from being well understood. In this paper we present a methodology to transform crash consensus algorithms into Byzantine consensus algorithms with different characteristics, with the assistance of a reliable broadcast primitive that requires trusted/trustworthy components to be implemented. We exemplify the methodology with two algorithms, one that uses failure detectors and one that is randomized. We also define a new flavor of consensus and use it to solve atomic broadcast, showing the practical interest of the transformations.
Novel ultrafiltration flat sheet mixed matrix membranes for arsenic and lead removal and fouling mitigation

The aim of this work is to develop novel, efficient and environmental friendly water treatment technology with low cost and low energy consumption for adsorptive removal of selected heavy metals such as arsenic (As) and lead (Pb) from aqueous system as well as membrane fouling mitigation. In order to overcome the shortages of adsorption and membrane technology, porous asymmetric nanocomposite flat sheet ultrafiltration (UF) mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) incorporated with hydrophilic metal oxide nanoparticle adsorbents were prepared through the phase inversion process. Prior to the fabrication and characterization of MMMs, metal oxide nanoparticles, i.e. Fe-Mn binary oxide (FMBO) with high As adsorption capacity and hydrous manganese dioxide (HMO) with high Pb adsorption capacity were synthesized and used as inorganic fillers and adsorbents in flat sheet polyethersulfone (PES)-based MMMs. The effects of impregnating inorganic metal oxide nanoparticles on the PES-based MMMs morphology, pure water flux, adsorption capacity, surface pattern formation and membrane fouling mitigation were studied by varying the loading of the metal oxide nanoparticles. Both flat sheet PES/HMO and PES/FMBO MMMs were characterized using scanning electron microscope (SEM), contact angle goniometer, atomic force microscope (AFM) and Fourier transforms infrared (FTIR) spectrometer. The best performing membranes prepared from the FMBO/PES ratio of 1.5: 1 demonstrated the pure water flux as high as 94.6 L/m2.h. bar and maximum As(III) uptake capacity of around 73.5 mg/g. On the other hand the experimental results showed that with increasing HMO:PES weight ratio from zero to 2.0 times, the membrane water flux was increased from 39.4 to 573.2 L/m2.hr. bar (more than 14 times) and the optimized membranes fabricated from the HMO/PES ratio of 2.0 : 1 showed the highest Pb(II) adsorption capacity i.e. 204.1 mg/g. The continuous UF experiments showed that the optimized MMMs could achieve promising results by removing selected heavy metals from water samples by producing permeate of high quality to meet the maximum contaminant As level set by World Health Organization (WHO), i.e.<10 µg/L As and <15 µg/L Pb. Furthermore, the adsorptive performance of MMMs could be easily regenerated using alkaline and acidic solution. This work also contributed to the novel membrane design with present simple method to control nano-sized pattern formation (alignment of macromolecular nodules) on the polymeric membrane surface. Unlike the lithographical method, the proposed method allows the control of smaller nano-sized patterns of a large membrane area at a lower cost and further shows promising results in reducing membrane fouling due to the protein adsorption. Antifouling property of PES membrane was improved with increasing HMO:PES weight ratio from zero to 1.5 and most importantly, the initial pure water flux of the membranes could be nearly completely recovered by a simple deionized water washing.
Audiovisual emotional processing and neurocognitive functioning in patients with depression

Alterations in the processing of emotional stimuli (e.g., facial expressions, prosody, music) have repeatedly been reported in patients with major depression. Such impairments may result from the likewise prevalent executive deficits in these patients. However, studies investigating this relationship are rare. Moreover, most studies to date have only assessed impairments in unimodal emotional processing, whereas in real life, emotions are primarily conveyed through more than just one sensory channel. The current study therefore aimed at investigating multi-modal emotional processing in patients with depression and to assess the relationship between emotional and neurocognitive impairments. Fourty one patients suffering from major depression and 41 never-depressed healthy controls participated in an audiovisual (faces-sounds) emotional integration paradigm as well as a neurocognitive test battery. Our results showed that depressed patients were specifically impaired in the processing of positive auditory stimuli as they rated faces significantly more fearful when presented with happy than with neutral sounds. Such an effect was absent in controls. Findings in emotional processing in patients did not correlate with Beck’s depression inventory score. Furthermore, neurocognitive findings revealed significant group differences for two of the tests. The effects found in audiovisual emotional processing, however, did not correlate with performance in the neurocognitive tests. In summary, our results underline the diversity of impairments going along with depression and indicate that deficits found for unimodal emotional processing cannot trivially be generalized to deficits in a multi-modal setting. The mechanisms of impairments therefore might be far more complex than previously thought. Our findings furthermore contradict the assumption that emotional processing deficits in major depression are associated with impaired attention or inhibitory functioning.
Classifying Text Documents by Associating Terms With Text Categories

Automatic text categorization has always been an important application and research topic since the inception of digital documents. Today, text categorization is a necessity due to the very large amount of text documents that we have to deal with daily. Many techniques and algorithms for automatic text categorization have been devised and proposed in the literature. However, there is still much room for improving the effectiveness of these classifiers, and new models need to be examined. We propose herein a new approach for automatic text categorization. This paper explores the use of association rule mining in building a text categorization system and proposes a new fast algorithm for building a text classifier. Our approach has the advantage of a very fast training phase, and the rules of the classifier generated are easy to understand and manually tuneable. Our investigation leads to conclude that association rule mining is a good and promising strategy for efficient automatic text categorization.
Crystal Cassie: Use of a 3-D Gaming Environment for a Cognitive Agent

The SNePS research group has built several implementations of an embodied computational cognitive agent called Cassie, based on the Grounded Layered Architecture with Integrated Reasoning (GLAIR). In this document we describe a new implementation, in which Cassie’s body and the world are simulated in Crystal Space, an environment for building 3-D games. We describe the implementation of Cassie in a Crystal Space environment including her current suite of actions and her simulated vision system. Crystal Cassie is a tool for cognitive modeling and testing cognitive theories. We briefly discuss our first use of the resulting simulated cognitive agent and our experiences using an off-the-shelf 3-D product to build a cognitive agent.
Discriminative Generative Contour Detection

Contour detection is an important and fundamental problem in computer vision which finds numerous applications. Despite significant progress has been made in the past decades, contour detection from natural images remains a challenging task due to the difficulty of clearly distinguishing between edges of objects and surrounding backgrounds. To address this problem, we first capture multi-scale features from pixel-level to segmentlevel using local and global information. These features are mapped to a space where discriminative information is captured by computing posterior divergence of Gaussian mixture models and then used to train a random forest classifier for contour detection. We evaluate the proposed algorithm against leading methods in the literature on the Berkeley segmentation and Weizmann horse data sets. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed contour detection algorithm performs favorably against state-of-the-art methods in terms of speed and accuracy.
Actin regulation in endocytosis

Increasing evidence from a variety of cell types has highlighted the importance of the actin cytoskeleton during endocytosis. No longer is actin viewed as a passive barrier that must be removed to allow endocytosis to proceed. Rather, actin structures are dynamically organised to assist the remodelling of the cell surface to allow inward movement of vesicles. The majority of our mechanistic insight into the role of actin in endocytosis has come from studies in budding yeast. Although endocytosis in mammalian cells is clearly more complex and subject to a greater array of regulatory signals, recent advances have revealed actin, and actin-regulatory proteins, to be present at endocytic sites. Furthermore, live cell imaging indicates that spatiotemporal aspects of actin recruitment and vesicle formation are likely to be conserved across eukaryotic evolution.
Cognitive computing systems: Algorithms and applications for networks of neurosynaptic cores

Marching along the DARPA SyNAPSE roadmap, IBM unveils a trilogy of innovations towards the TrueNorth cognitive computing system inspired by the brain's function and efficiency. The non-von Neumann nature of the TrueNorth architecture necessitates a novel approach to efficient system design. To this end, we have developed a set of abstractions, algorithms, and applications that are natively efficient for TrueNorth. First, we developed repeatedly-used abstractions that span neural codes (such as binary, rate, population, and time-to-spike), long-range connectivity, and short-range connectivity. Second, we implemented ten algorithms that include convolution networks, spectral content estimators, liquid state machines, restricted Boltzmann machines, hidden Markov models, looming detection, temporal pattern matching, and various classifiers. Third, we demonstrate seven applications that include speaker recognition, music composer recognition, digit recognition, sequence prediction, collision avoidance, optical flow, and eye detection. Our results showcase the parallelism, versatility, rich connectivity, spatio-temporality, and multi-modality of the TrueNorth architecture as well as compositionality of the corelet programming paradigm and the flexibility of the underlying neuron model.
Comparison of Flexural Strength of Mineral Trioxide Aggregate, Calcium-enriched Mixture and BioAggregate

Introduction: The aim of this study was to compare the flexural strength of mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA), calcium-enriched mixture (CEM), and BioAggregate (BA). Methods and Materials: In this study, the flexural strength of materials was measured using a 3-point bend test. After being prepared, MTA, CEM, and BA were inserted into the intra-putty molds using amalgam plugger. The specimens were covered with a sponge wetted with synthetic tissue fluid (STF) and incubated for 96 h. They were then subjected to a 3-point bend test using Universal Testing Machine. The Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests were used to compare flexural strength in groups. In this study, P<0.05 was considered as the significant level. Results: There were significant differences between the three groups in terms of the flexural strength (P<0.001). The mean flexural strength in the BA, CEM, and MTA groups were 27.32±2, 9.09±1.16, and 10.25±1.6, respectively. Pairwise comparison showed significant differences between the three groups. Conclusion: This in vitro study showed that BA has the highest and CEM has the lowest flexural strength.
Security protocols in a nutshell

Security protocols are building blocks in secure communications. They deploy some security mechanisms to provide certain security services. Security protocols are considered abstract when analyzed, but they can have extra vulnerabilities when implemented. This manuscript provides a holistic study on security protocols. It reviews foundations of security protocols, taxonomy of attacks on security protocols and their implementations, and different methods and models for security analysis of protocols. Specifically, it clarifies differences between information-theoretic and computational security, and computational and symbolic models. Furthermore, a survey on computational security models for authenticated key exchange (AKE) and password-authenticated key exchange (PAKE) protocols, as the most important and well-studied type of security protocols, is provided.
Agency is Associated with Decreased Emotional Distress and Suicidal Ideation in Military Personnel

Suicides in the U.S. military continue to rise at a rapid rate. Identification of protective factors that reduce risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors among military personnel are therefore needed. Agency—the sense that one is competent, effective, and in control of one's life—has shown to reduce the effects of hopelessness and emotional distress on suicidal thoughts and attempts in non-military populations. The current study explores the association of agency with suicidal ideation in a sample (n = 273) of active duty Air Force Security Forces personnel. Results of generalized regression modeling suggest that agency is directly associated with decreased emotional distress and severity of suicidal ideation, but does not moderate the effect of emotional distress on suicidal ideation.
Spin–orbit-induced photoelectron spin polarization in angle-resolved photoemission from both atomic and condensed matter targets

The existence of highly spin polarized photoelectrons emitted from non-magnetic solids as well as from unpolarized atoms and molecules has been found to be very common in many studies over the past 40 years. This so-called Fano effect is based upon the influence of the spin–orbit interaction in the photoionization or the photoemission process. In a non-angle-resolved photoemission experiment, circularly polarized radiation has to be used to create spin polarized photoelectrons, while in angle-resolved photoemission even unpolarized or linearly polarized radiation is sufficient to get a high spin polarization. In past years the Rashba effect has become very important in the angle-resolved photoemission of solid surfaces, also with an observed high photoelectron spin polarization. It is the purpose of the present topical review to cross-compare the spin polarization experimentally found in angle-resolved photoelectron emission spectroscopy of condensed matter with that of free atoms, to compare it with the Rashba effect and topological insulators to describe the influence and the importance of the spin–orbit interaction and to show and disentangle the matrix element and phase shift effects therein. The relationship between the energy dispersion of these phase shifts and the emission delay of photoelectron emission in attosecond-resolved photoemission is also discussed. Furthermore the influence of chiral structures of the photo-effect target on the spin polarization, the interferences of different spin components in coherent superpositions in photoemission and a cross-comparison of spin polarization in photoemission from non-magnetic solids with XMCD on magnetic materials are presented; these are all based upon the influence of the spin–orbit interaction in angle-resolved photoemission.
Genome scan of schizophrenia families in a large Veterans Affairs Cooperative Study sample: Evidence for linkage to 18p11.32 and for racial heterogeneity on chromosomes 6 and 14

Genome‐wide linkage analyses of schizophrenia have identified several regions that may harbor schizophrenia susceptibility genes but, given the complex etiology of the disorder, it is unlikely that all susceptibility regions have been detected. We report results from a genome scan of 166 schizophrenia families collected through the Department of Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program. Our definition of affection status included schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, depressed type and we defined families as European American (EA) and African American (AA) based on the probands' and parents' races based on data collected by interviewing the probands. We also assessed evidence for racial heterogeneity in the regions most suggestive of linkage. The maximum LOD score across the genome was 2.96 for chromosome 18, at 0.5 cM in the combined race sample. Both racial groups showed LOD scores greater than 1.0 for chromosome 18. The empirical P‐value associated with that LOD score is 0.04 assuming a single genome scan for the combined sample with race narrowly defined, and 0.06 for the combined sample allowing for broad and narrow definitions of race. The empirical P‐value of observing a LOD score as large as 2.96 in the combined sample, and of at least 1.0 in each racial group, allowing for narrow and broad racial definitions, is 0.04. Evidence for the second and third largest linkage signals come solely from the AA sample on chromosomes 6 (LOD = 2.11 at 33.2 cM) and 14 (LOD = 2.13 at 51.0). The linkage evidence differed between the AA and EA samples (chromosome 6 P‐value = 0.007 and chromosome 14 P‐value = 0.004). © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Cleavage of Rhesus Rotavirus VP4 after Arginine 247 Is Essential for Rotavirus-Like Particle-Induced Fusion from Without

ABSTRACT We recently described our finding that recombinant baculovirus-produced virus-like particles (VLPs) can induce cell-cell fusion similar to that induced by intact rotavirus in our assay for viral entry into tissue culture cells (J. M. Gilbert and H. B. Greenberg, J. Virol. 71:4555–4563, 1997). The conditions required for syncytium formation are similar to those for viral penetration of the plasma membrane during the course of viral infection. This VLP-mediated fusion activity was dependent on the presence of the outer-layer proteins, viral protein 4 (VP4) and VP7, and on the trypsinization of VP4. Fusion activity occurred only with cells that are permissive for rotavirus infection. Here we begin to dissect the role of VP4 in rotavirus entry by examining the importance of the precise trypsin cleavage of VP4 and the activation of VP4 function related to viral entry. We present evidence that the elimination of the three trypsin-susceptible arginine residues of VP4 by specific site-directed mutagenesis prevents syncytium formation. Two of the three arginine residues in VP4 are dispensable for syncytium formation, and only the arginine residue at site 247 appears to be required for activation of VP4 functions and cell-cell fusion. Using the recombinant VLPs in our syncytium assay will aid in understanding the conformational changes that occur in VP4 involved in rotavirus penetration into host cells.
Learning High-level Features for Satellite Image Classification With Limited Labeled Samples

This paper presents a novel method addressing the classification task of satellite images when limited labeled data is available together with a large amount of unlabeled data. Instead of using semi-supervised classifiers, we solve the problem by learning a high-level features, called semisupervised ensemble projection (SSEP). More precisely, we propose to represent an image by projecting it onto an ensemble of weak training (WT) sets sampled from a Gaussian approximation of multiple feature spaces. Given a set of images with limited labeled ones, we first extract preliminary features, e.g., color and textures, to form a low-level image description. We then propose a new semisupervised sampling algorithm to build an ensemble of informative WT sets by exploiting these feature spaces with a Gaussian normal affinity, which ensures both the reliability and diversity of the ensemble. Discriminative functions are subsequently learned from the resulting WT sets, and each image is represented by concatenating its projected values onto such WT sets for final classification. Moreover, we consider that the potential redundant information existed in SSEP and use sparse coding to reduce it. Experiments on high-resolution remote sensing data demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method.
A New Source Code Auditing Algorithm for Detecting LFI and RFI in PHP Programs

Static analysis of source code is used for auditing web applications to detect the vulnerabilities. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm to analyze the PHP source code for detecting LFI and RFI potential vulnerabilities. In our approach, we first define some patterns for finding some functions which have potential to be abused because of unhandled user inputs. More precisely, we use regular expression as a fast and simple method to define some patterns for detection of vulnerabilities. As inclusion functions could be also used in a safe way, there could occur many false positives (FP). The first cause of these FP’s could be that the function does not use a usersupplied variable as an argument. So, we extract a list of usersupplied variables to be used for detecting vulnerable lines of code. On the other side, as vulnerability could spread among the variables like by multi-level assignment, we also try to extract the hidden usersupplied variables. We use the resulted list to decrease the false positives of our method. Finally, as there exist some ways to prevent the vulnerability of inclusion functions, we define also some patterns to detect them and decrease our false positives. Keywords—User-supplied Variables, hidden user-supplied variables, PHP vulnerabilities.
Spatio-temporal constraints for matching view-based descriptions of 3D objects

We propose a 3D object recognition method based on first extracting a compact description of image sequences, and then matching these descriptions with a two-steps strategy. The compactness of the description, made of a set of time-invariant local features, allows us to use a simple nearest neighbour matching to obtain an initial set of recognition hypothesis; spatio-temporal constraints help us to confirm or to reject these hypotheses. We carried out an extensive experimental analysis to assess our method against changes in illumination, abrupt scale changes, occlusions, clutter, view-point variations. Since our approach is based on the use of image sequences we also tested it with different camera motions. Our description strategy may be also applied to relatively simple poor-textured objects, since few stable features are enough for recognition.
Gemella haemolysans Infection in Total Hip Arthroplasty

Gemella haemolysans is a Gram-positive coccus and commensal of the upper respiratory tract and oral mucosa that rarely causes clinically important infections. There is only one previous report of this organism causing periprosthetic infection, in a total knee arthroplasty. We present a case of septic loosening of an uncemented total hip arthroplasty due to G. haemolysans, in an asplenic patient with insulin dependent diabetes mellitus. Treatment with two-stage revision has been successful at 7 years of follow-up.