Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of cloud computing attacks and countermeasures

Business enterprises are competing to get their applications up and running faster with improved manageability and less maintenance by reassigning the ability to IT specialists to adjust resources in order to meet business fluctuating needs. This can be achieved through utilizing the Cloud Computing Model which is distinguished by `pay as you go' model. The model offers solutions of storage, convenient and on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. As with any novel technology, Cloud Computing is subject to security threats and vulnerabilities including network threats, information threats and underlying infrastructure threats. In this paper, we present a framework by which penetration testing is conducted to highlight possible vulnerabilities within our private Cloud Computing infrastructure, simulate attacks to exploit discovered vulnerabilities such as Denial of Service (DoS) and Man-in-the-Cloud attacks, apply countermeasures to prevent such attacks, and then to exemplify a recommended best practice protection mechanism which will contribute to the Cloud Computing security.
Semantic Relatedness with Variable Ontology Density

In a previous work, we proposed a semantic relatedness measure between scientific concepts, using Wikipedia categories network as an ontology, based on the length of the category path. After observing substantial differences in the arc density of the categories network, across the whole graph, it was concluded that these irregularities in the ontology density may lead to substantial errors in the computation of the semantic relatedness measure. Now we attempt to correct for this bias and improve this measure by adding the notion of ontology density and proposing a new semantic relatedness measure. The proposed measure computes a weighed length of the category path between two concepts in the ontology graph, assigning a different weight to each arc of the path, depending on the ontology density in its region. This procedure has been extended to measure semantic relatedness between entities, an entity being defined as a set of concepts.
Analysis of MPLS vs. MPLambdaS next generation networking technologies

Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) and multiprotocol lambda switching (MP/spl lambda/S) are at the forefront of next generation wide area network routing/switching technologies. Both technologies show promising functionalities and capabilities. While MPLS and MP/spl lambda/S provide similar functions, they excel or are limited in areas due to their inherent designs and functional domains. Even though the two technologies show strengths and limitations, their coexistence will result in significant redundancy in several technical aspects. This paper investigates the similarities and differences of MPLS and MP/spl lambda/S providing an analytical and comprehensive comparison within service and coverage, resource utilization, and restoration speed and complexity.
The cervical cancer screening programme in Norway, 1992–2000: changes in Pap smear coverage and incidence of cervical cancer

OBJECTIVES: Changes in the incidence of cervical cancer were studied to assess the impact of the Norwegian coordinated cervical cancer screening programme introduced in 1995. Attention was given as to whether recommendation letters sent to women without a screen in the previous 3 years could be an alternative to a conventional screening programme that invites women irrespectively of their spontaneous screening. SETTING: A population based, nationwide, screening programme in which women of 25 to 69 are recommended to have a conventional Pap smear every 3 years. METHODS: The impact of the screening programme was assessed indirectly by comparing trends in invasive cervical cancer, changes in coverage, and changes in interval between Pap smears in the 3 year period (1992–4) before screening with the two first screening rounds (1995–7 and 1998–2000). All Pap smears taken from women of all ages were included, a total of 4 744 967 Pap smears from more than 1.4 million women. Further, the impact was assessed directly by logistic regression by comparing the screening results of women recruited for the programme with women who had regularly had Pap smears. RESULTS: In the last 2 years studied, the incidence of invasive cancer was 22% lower than in the period before the programme. The proportion of women who had a Pap smear was higher after the implementation of the coordinated screening programme. The number of smears taken was less as the interval after a normal smear was greater. The newly recruited women had a threefold risk of having a high grade precursor and a 20-fold higher risk of cancer than the women who had had regular smears. CONCLUSIONS: The coordinated screening programme provides a low cost way of increasing the coverage of the female population, and consequently has reduced the rate of invasive cervical cancer.
ODaCCI: Ontology-guided Data Curation for Multisite Clinical Research Data Integration in the NINDS Center for SUDEP Research

Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) is the leading mode of epilepsy-related death. The Center for SUDEP Research (CSR) is an NINDS-funded Center Without Wall's initiative aimed at prospectively creating a comprehensive clinical research resource for SUDEP. This resource consists of a growing set of data and biological samples of a statistically significant cohort of patients at an elevated risk, best represented by the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (EMU) patient population. The Informatics and Data Analytics Core (IDAC) of CSR has developed a state-of-the- art informatics infrastructure, to integrate patient data captured in multiple EMU's at a greatly accelerated pace. Data quality assurance is a priority of IDAC. This paper reports our approach, Ontology-guided Data Curation for Multisite Clinical Research Data Integration (ODaCCI), to address the challenging task of centralized data curation while new data is continuously generated and integrated from distributed sites. ODaCCI leverages the Epilepsy and Seizure Ontology not only for upstream data capture, but also for supporting a range of quality assurance tasks such as data quality monitoring, data update, and data reports. Between October 2014 and February 2016, ODaCCI has integrated phenotypic and electroencephalogram signal data of 629 patients from 7 clinical sites, while supporting continuous and asynchronous data quality enhancement overtime.
Prevalence of the Amylase-Binding Protein A Gene (abpA) in Oral Streptococci

ABSTRACT Salivary amylase binds specifically to a number of oral streptococcal species. This interaction may play an important role in dental plaque formation. Recently, a 585-bp gene was cloned and sequenced from Streptococcus gordonii Challis encoding a 20.5-kDa amylase-binding protein (AbpA). The goal of this study was to determine if related genes are present in other species of oral streptococci. Biotinylated abpA was used in Southern blot analysis to screen genomic DNA from several strains representing eight species of oral streptococci. This probe hybridized with a 4.0-kbHindIII restriction fragment from all 13 strains ofS. gordonii tested. The probe did not appear to bind to any restriction fragments from other species of amylase-binding oral streptococci including Streptococcus mitis (with the exception of 1 of 14 strains), Streptococcus crista (3 strains), Streptococcus anginosus (1 strain), andStreptococcus parasanguinis (1 strain), or to non-amylase-binding oral streptococci including Streptococcus sanguinis (3 strains), Streptococcus oralis (4 strains), and Streptococcus mutans (1 strain). Primers homologous to sequences within the 3′ and 5′ ends of abpAyielded products of 400 bp following PCR of genomic DNA from the Southern blot-positive strains. Several of these PCR products were cloned and sequenced. The levels of similarity of these cloned products to the abpA of S. gordonii Challis ranged from 91 to 96%. These studies reveal that the abpA gene appears to be specific to S. gordonii and differs from genes encoding amylase-binding proteins from other species of amylase-binding streptococci.
Label fusion method based on sparse patch representation for the brain MRI image segmentation

The multi-Atlas patch-based label fusion method (MAS-PBM) has emerged as a promising technique for the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) image segmentation. The state-of-the-art MAS-PBM approach measures the patch similarity between the target image and each atlas image using the features extracted from images intensity only. It is well known that each atlas consists of both MRI image and labelled image (which is also called the map). In other words, the map information is not used in calculating the similarity in the existing MAS-PBM. To improve the segmentation result, the authors propose an enhanced MAS-PBM in which the maps will be used for similarity measure. The first component of the proposed method is that an initial segmentation result (i.e. an appropriate map for the target) is obtained by using either the non-local-patch-based label fusion method (NPBM) or the sparse patch-based label fusion method (SPBM) based on the grey scales of patches. Then, the SPBM is applied again to obtain the finer segmentation based on the labels of patches. The authors called these two versions of the proposed fusion method as MAS-PBM-NPBM and MAS-PBM-SPBM. Experimental results show that more accurate segmentation results are achieved compared with those of the majority voting, NPBM, SPBM, STEPS and the hierarchical multi-atlas label fusion with multi-scale feature representation and label-specific patch partition.
Changing Representations During Search: A Comparative Study of Delta Coding

Delta coding is an iterative genetic search strategy that dynamically changes the representation of the search space in an attempt to exploit different problem representations. Delta coding sustains search by reinitializing the population at each iteration of search. This helps to avoid the asymptotic performance typically observed in genetic search as the population becomes more homogeneous. Here, the optimization ability of delta coding is empirically compared against CHC, ESGA, GENITOR, and random mutation hill-climbing (RMHC) on a suite of well-known test functions with and without Gray coding. Issues concerning the effects of Gray coding on these test functions are addressed.
‘Factors affecting services offered to older adults with psychological morbidity: an exploration of health professional attitudes’

ABSTRACT Aim: Poor collaboration between the multiple services involved in hospital discharge planning may contribute to suboptimal patient outcomes post discharge. This study aimed to explore clinician (medical, allied health and nursing) attitudes towards the management of the older patient with psychological morbidity during and following hospitalization. Methods: Focus groups were held with 54 health professionals comprising of 7 from acute, 20 from subacute (geriatric assessment and rehabilitation), and 27 from community care settings. A qualitative study using focus groups of clinicians from a range of disciplines working within a large Australian health care service. Data were analysed using an inductive thematic approach with constant comparison. Results: Key themes included: (1) Clinician decision making towards psychological morbidity; (2) Supply of people with specialised skills dealing with psychological morbidity; (3) Confidence and capability; (4) Facilitating continuity of care; and (5) Perception of depression and aging. Conclusions: Clinicians across healthcare settings are uniquely placed to identity psychological morbidity in older patients and make appropriate referrals for support. Management and referral making for older patients with psychological morbidity can be enhanced by routine education for clinicians and the introduction of clinical pathways. This has potential to improve management of psychological morbidity; however, evaluation of impact on patient outcome is required. Specifically, there is a need for greater access for counselling services.
Prevalence of Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli as Detected by Enzyme-Linked Immunoassays and Real-Time PCR during the Summer Months in Northern Alberta, Canada

ABSTRACT Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) in northern Alberta was detected using two enzyme immunoassays and an in-house real-time PCR. Of 2,328 stool samples, 8 were positive for O157:H7 STEC and 13 were positive for non-O157 STEC. No significant gender (P = 0.17) or age (P = 0.81) differences between groups were seen. Most positive diarrheal stool samples were nonbloody.
Priming of the neutrophil respiratory burst: role in host defense and inflammation

Neutrophils are the major circulating white blood cells in humans. They play an essential role in host defense against pathogens. In healthy individuals, circulating neutrophils are in a dormant state with very low efficiency of capture and arrest on the quiescent endothelium. Upon infection and subsequent release of pro‐inflammatory mediators, the vascular endothelium signals to circulating neutrophils to roll, adhere, and cross the endothelial barrier. Neutrophils migrate toward the infection site along a gradient of chemo‐attractants, then recognize and engulf the pathogen. To kill this pathogen entrapped inside the vacuole, neutrophils produce and release high quantities of antibacterial peptides, proteases, and reactive oxygen species (ROS). The robust ROS production is also called ‘the respiratory burst’, and the NADPH oxidase or NOX2 is the enzyme responsible for the production of superoxide anion, leading to other ROS. In vitro, several soluble and particulate agonists induce neutrophil ROS production. This process can be enhanced by prior neutrophil treatment with ‘priming’ agents, which alone do not induce a respiratory burst. In this review, we will describe the priming process and discuss the beneficial role of controlled neutrophil priming in host defense and the detrimental effect of excessive neutrophil priming in inflammatory diseases.
TEST-RETEST RELIABILITY OF ELECTROMYOGRAPHIC SIGNAL PARAMETERS USED TO EVALUATE NEUROMUSCULAR FATIGUE IN QUADRICEPS FEMORIS MUSCLE

The purpose of this study was to analyze the test-retest reliability of the median frequency (MDF) and root mean square (RMS) used to determine the onset of neuromuscular fatigue (NF) during sustained fatiguing contractions of the quadriceps. Eighteen healthy men were tested on two days, and electromyographic (EMG) signals were recorded from the vastus medialis (VM), rectus femoris (RF) and vastus lateralis (VL) during sustained isometric contractions at 20 and 70% of maximum voluntary contractions (MVC) held until exhaustion. The reliability of endurance time was excellent at 20% MVC and poor at 70% MVC. EMG variables were evaluated: (1) at the beginning of the test; (2) at NF; and (3) at the end of the test. The NF time values presented poor reliability. The MDF has shown, in general, poor reliability at 20 and 70% MVC, whereas the RMS reliability presented better results for both loads, especially for RF, followed by the VM and VL muscles. The MDF and RMS values extracted from NF showed poor reliability at 20 and 70% MVC, which suggests caution in using these variables extracted from the EMG signal to determine the onset of NF.
Macau: Scalable Bayesian factorization with high-dimensional side information using MCMC

Bayesian matrix factorization is a method of choice for making predictions for large-scale incomplete matrices, due to availability of efficient Gibbs sampling schemes and its robustness to overfitting. In this paper, we consider factorization of large scale matrices with high-dimensional side information. However, sampling the link matrix for the side information with standard approaches costs O(F3) time, where F is the dimensionality of the features. To overcome this limitation we, firstly, propose a prior for the link matrix whose strength is proportional to the scale of latent variables. Secondly, using this prior we derive an efficient sampler, with linear complexity in the number of non-zeros, O(Nnz), by leveraging Krylov subspace methods, such as block conjugate gradient, allowing us to handle million-dimensional side information. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method in drug-protein interaction prediction task.
Dynamics of brush border remodeling induced by enteropathogenic E. coli

Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) induces dramatic remodeling of enterocyte brush borders, a process that includes microvillar effacement and actin pedestal formation. Although the Arp2/3 complex is involved in formation of a branched actin network within pedestals, the fate of parallel actin bundles in microvilli during infection remains unclear. Here, we find that in polarized intestinal epithelial cells, EPEC stimulates long-range microvillar dynamics, pulling protrusions toward sites of bacterial attachment in a process mediated by the adhesion molecule protocadherin-24. Additionally, retraction of the EPEC bundle forming pilus stimulates directed elongation of nearby microvilli. These processes lead to coalescence of microvilli and incorporation of the underlying parallel actin bundles into pedestals. Furthermore, stabilization of microvillar actin bundles delays pedestal formation. Together, these results suggest a model where EPEC takes advantage of pre-existing actin filaments in microvillar core bundles to facilitate pedestal formation.
An unsupervised approach to rank product reviews

With the development of online shopping, more and more product reviews are acquired from online shopping sites, which vary a wide range in quality. In order to solve the problem of detecting low-quality reviews, we view the problem as a ranking task and a link analysis based ranking method is proposed. The proposed method requires no domain knowledge and no training data. Experiment results indicate that the proposed approach is effective in (1) showing comparable performance with the SVM (Support Vector Machines) regression method and (2) domain independent.
GAP161 targets and downregulates G3BP to suppress cell growth and potentiate cisplaitin‐mediated cytotoxicity to colon carcinoma HCT116 cells

Ras‐GTPase‐activating protein SH3 domain‐binding proteins (G3BP) are overexpressed in various human tumors and participate in several signaling pathways involved in growth, differentiation and apoptosis. G3BP interact with RasGAP (Ras‐GTPase activating protein) only in growing cells and depend on Ras activation, and participate in the Ras signal pathway. Therefore, the blockage and downregulation of G3BP may be a new strategy for cancer therapy. In this report, we demonstrate that a novel peptide GAP161 blocked the functions of G3BP and markedly suppressed HCT116 cell growth through the induction of apoptosis. The peptide bound with G3BP, which interfered with the interaction of G3BP1 with RasGAP and further suppressed Ras signaling pathways. GAP161 downregulated G3BP1 and G3BP2 proteins. Similarly, the knockdown of G3BP substantially decreased the proliferation of HCT116 cells and inhibited Ras signal pathways. Furthermore, the downregulation of G3BP could enhance cisplatin‐induced apoptosis and growth inhibition of HCT116 cells. We also found that GAP161 suppressed the growth of BALB/c mice bearing colon CT26 tumors and nude mice bearing HCT116 xenografts. These results suggest that downregulation of G3BP might be useful in cancer therapy and that GAP161 is a promising new therapeutic agent for cancers. (Cancer Sci, doi: 10.1111/j.1349‐7006.2012.02361.x, 2012)
Controlled emulsion droplet solvent evaporation for particle production

In this work, we are motivated by the need to produce particles of well-controlled size, shape and morphology for general application in catalysis, environmental remediation, nanomedicine, pharmaceuticals, the development of new materials, and other fields. Moreover, our approaches are guided by the desire for continuous and scalable production, in contrast to the batch-wise processes typically used. We employ the emulsion droplet solvent evaporation method, which is extremely versatile, to create, for example, magnetic nanoparticles, polymeric Janus beads, and crystalline particles. The emulsion droplets act as confined spaces, or templates, within which the particles can form. Upon removal of the solvent, primary magnetite nanoparticles pack into dense magnetic clusters, polymers precipitate as beads, or small molecules crystallize out of the solution to form spherical particulates. The thesis is comprised of experimental, theoretical and computational work that discusses the control of polymeric Janus bead morphology; demonstrates the potential of various operations for integration into large-scale manufacturing systems for monodisperse particle production; and offers insight into solvent and particle diffusion during the solvent evaporation process.
Prospective study of incident age-related macular degeneration in relation to vigorous physical activity during a 7-year follow-up.

PURPOSE To test whether the risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) decreases with vigorous physical activity. METHODS This was a prospective study of self-reported clinically diagnosed macular degeneration in male (n = 29,532) and female (n = 12,176) runners followed prospectively for 7.7 years. Survival analyses of incident AMD versus average running distance (kilometers per day), cardiorespiratory fitness (10-km footrace performance), body mass index (BMI), cigarette use, and diet at baseline. RESULTS The 110 men and 42 women reporting incident AMD were older than those unaffected (mean +/- SE: 54.81 +/- 0.97 vs. 44.86 +/- 0.06 years), and the men were significantly more likely to have once smoked cigarettes (50.6 vs. 41.2%, P = 0.04 when adjusted for age). Age- and sex-adjusted AMD risk was greater in the men and women who consumed more meat (3.17 +/- 0.20 vs. 2.55 +/- 0.02 servings/wk) and less fruit (9.41 +/- 0.70 vs. 10.92 +/- 0.05 pieces/wk). The men and women reporting incident AMD ran for exercise significantly less than those who remained unaffected, when adjustment was made for age and sex (4.57 +/- 0.30 vs. 5.34 +/- 0.02 km/d, P < or = 0.01). When adjusted for age, sex, diet, and smoking history, the relative risk for AMD decreased 10% per km/d increment in running distance. Moreover, compared with the men and women who averaged less than 2 km/d, those averaging 2 to 4 km/d had 19% lower adjusted risk, and those averaging > or = 4 km/d had 42% to 54% lower adjusted AMD risk. CONCLUSIONS Higher doses of vigorous exercise (running) are associated with lower incident AMD risk independent of weight, cardiorespiratory fitness, and cigarette use. Limitations of the analyses include the select nature of the sample and reliance on self-report of both running history and clinically diagnosed AMD.