Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distributed network resource allocation for multi-tiered multimedia applications

The continuously growing number of multimedia applications in current communication networks highlights the necessity for an efficient resource allocation mechanism to capture the unique characteristics of multi-tiered multimedia applications and allocate network capacity in an efficient way. This paper examines the problem of sharing the network throughput under the existence of inelastic traffic flows that follow a multi-tiered utility function. First, the concept of multi-sigmoidal utilities is introduced in order to describe user satisfaction, then, the implications of the use of such utilities are discussed for two different allocation policies; the bandwidth-proportional and the utility-proportional fairness allocation policies. In the former case, the intrinsic reasons of possible network oscillations are analyzed in detail and a heuristic to overcome such situations is proposed. In the latter one, where such oscillations are not possible, efficient ways to calculate a closed form solution for the optimal rate allocation are described. Moreover, a novel mathematical representation of such a multi-sigmoidal utility is presented and closed form solutions for a number of application types are calculated. Finally, the efficiency and robustness of the proposed algorithms is evaluated by simulations for different network topologies and compared against other work in literature.
Gridding Multivariate Positive Data for Real Time Visualization

Common visualization methods require an underlying grid. For visualization of scattered data samples it is required to approximate the data at the same grid using some interpolation technique. It is common that the data samples are positive and representing the quantities for which negative value is meaningless. For example mass, volume and density are meaningless when negative. Modified quadratic Shepard method is a commonly used method for gridding purposes. However it does not preserve positivity for inherently positive data sets. This paper discusses the problem of gridding inherently positive data sets for real time visualization applications using modified quadratic Shepard's method. Key requirement for an algorithm to be used for real time application is its predictable timing behavior. We present an efficient and deterministic alternative quadratic Shepard method as a solution to the problem of visualization of multivariate positive data in real time
Probability of Seeing Increases Saccadic Readiness

Associating movement directions or endpoints with monetary rewards or costs influences movement parameters in humans, and associating movement directions or endpoints with food reward influences movement parameters in non-human primates. Rewarded movements are facilitated relative to non-rewarded movements. The present study examined to what extent successful foveation facilitated saccadic eye movement behavior, with the hypothesis that foveation may constitute an informational reward. Human adults performed saccades to peripheral targets that either remained visible after saccade completion or were extinguished, preventing visual feedback. Saccades to targets that were systematically extinguished were slower and easier to inhibit than saccades to targets that afforded successful foveation, and this effect was modulated by the probability of successful foveation. These results suggest that successful foveation facilitates behavior, and that obtaining the expected sensory consequences of a saccadic eye movement may serve as a reward for the oculomotor system.
Biological inspired tools for patrimonial handwriting denoising and categorization

In this paper, we propose a global segmentation free methodology for patrimonial documents denoising, handwriting characterization and categorization that are based on biological inspired approaches. We widely used here the spectral domain of handwritten images by frequency decompositions: Hermite transforms and Gabor bank filters. Handwritten pages are described by a multiscale signature that is based on orientation features and that is at the basis of a similarity measure. The current results of handwriting categorization and indexing are very promising and show that it is possible to analyze handwritten drawings without any a priori graphemes segmentation.
Three-Phase Detection and Classification for Android Malware Based on Common Behaviors

Android is one of the most popular operating systems used in mobile devices. Its popularity also renders it a common target for attackers. We propose an efficient and accurate three-phase behavior-based approach for detecting and classifying malicious Android applications. In the proposed approach, the first two phases detect a malicious application and the final phase classifies the detected malware. The first phase quickly filters out benign applications based on requested permissions and the remaining samples are passed to the slower second phase, which detects malicious applications based on system call sequences. The final phase classifies malware into known or unknown types based on behavioral or permission similarities. Our contributions are three-fold: First, we propose a self-contained approach for Android malware identification and classification. Second, we show that permission requests from an Application are beneficial to benign application filtering. Third, we show that system call sequences generated from an application running inside a virtual machine can be used for malware detection. The experiment results indicate that the multi-phase approach is more accurate than the single-phase approach. The proposed approach registered true positive and false positive rates of 97% and 3%, respectively. In addition, more than 98% of the samples were correctly classified into known or unknown types of malware based on permission similarities.We believe that our findings shed some lights on future development of malware detection and classification.
Maximizing the Coverage of Information Propagation in Social Networks

Social networks, due to their popularity, have been studied extensively these years. A rich body of these studies is related to influence maximization, which aims to select a set of seed nodes for maximizing the expected number of active nodes at the end of the process. However, the set of active nodes can not fully represent the true coverage of information propagation. A node may be informed of the information when any of its neighbours become active and try to activate it, though this node (namely informed node) is still inactive. Therefore, we need to consider both active nodes and informed nodes that are aware of the information when we study the coverage of information propagation in a network. Along this line, in this paper we propose a new problem called Information Coverage Maximization that aims to maximize the expected number of both active nodes and informed ones. After we prove that this problem is NP-hard and submodular in the independent cascade model, we design two algorithms to solve it. Extensive experiments on three real-world data sets demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithms.
Density-of-States Modeling of Solution-Processed InGaZnO Thin-Film Transistors

The effects of Ga composition on the performance of InGaZnO (IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) prepared by a sol-gel method are investigated, and the density of states (DOS) is characterized by the device modeling. The TFT mode is changed from a depletion type to an enhancement type, and the extracted DOS parameters are reduced with the increase of Ga contents. The extracted DOS distribution has a higher peak value than that of an IGZO TFT prepared by physical vapor deposition.
Role of Boundary Dynamics in Improving Efficiency of Particle Swarm Optimization on Antenna Problems

Attainment of global optimal solution and reduction of computational time and resources have always been a trade off issue in formulation of nature inspired algorithms, this trade off challenge has brought in a deluge of new algorithms proposing their efficacy over one another. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and its variants are quite popular in optimizing antenna designs particularly due to their algorithmic simplicity and fast convergence rates. However, as a matter of the ever present trade off, fast convergence often leads to sub optimal solutions. In some recent researches it has been shown that a class of boundary handling algorithms of PSO, known as position regulated boundary conditions (PRBCs), can minimize the trade off between fast convergence and accomplishment of global optimal solution, here, the performance of these boundary algorithms are compared with that of other established ones over three different optimization targets of antenna design namely, "Multi target optimization in linear antenna arrays", "Inset feed position optimization of rectangular patch antennas" and "Edge feed position optimization of rectangular patch antennas". Results show that the use of PRBCs in PSO leads to impressive improvement in the optimization efficiency in terms of lesser computational time and attainment of global optimal solution.
Mechanism of additive genetic transformation in Haemophilus influenzae

Transforming deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) preparations from Haemophilus influenzae Rd strains carrying a chromosomally integrated, conjugative, antibiotic resistance transfer (R) plasmid were exposed to ultraviolet radiation and then assayed for antibiotic resistance transfer on sensitive wild-type Rd competent suspensions and on similar suspensions of a uvr-1 mutant unable to excise pyrimidine dimers. No host cell reactivation of resistance transfer (DNA repair) was observed. Parallel experiments with ethanol-precipitated, heated, free R plasmid DNA preparations gave much higher survival when assayed on the wild-type strain compared to the survival on the uvr-1 strain. These observations indicate that additive genetic transformation (in this case, the addition of the integrated R plasmid to the recipient genome) involves single-strand insertion.
Compacting garbage collection with ambiguous roots

Many modern garbage collectors [4] recover space by copying. Using an initial "root" set of pointers which are stored in known locations, all accessible objects are copied into a "new space". Two of the attractive properties of such a collector are that it results in memory compaction and it can have a running time proportional to the amount of accessible storage [2]. However, such schemes place a large burden on the underlying system as all pointers to the objects must be found and changed.
Sosyal Bilgiler Öğretmenlerinin Sosyal Bilgiler Kavramına İlişkin İmgesel Algıları

Sosyal bilimler alaninda meydana gelen her turlu degisimi ogrenciye aktarmakla yukumlu olan sosyal bilgiler, bireyin yasamsal degisiminde ortaya cikan ihtiyaclarina cevap vermek amaci ile bircok disiplini ya da ogrenme alanini kapsayan bir kavramdir. Bu arastirmanin temel amaci da, devlet okulu ve ozel okulda gorev yapan sosyal bilgiler ogretmenlerinin okul turune gore, "sosyal bilgiler" kavramina iliskin sahip olduklari algilari metaforlar araciligiyla ortaya koymaktir. Arastirmanin calisma grubunu, Diyarbakir, Erzurum, Gaziantep, Malatya ve Elazig illerinde 2013-2014 egitim-ogretim yili bahar doneminde 110’u devlet okulunda, 50’si ozel okulda gorev yapmakta olan toplam 160 sosyal bilgiler ogretmeni olusturmaktadir. Arastirmanin verileri, Arastirma kapsaminda yer alan sosyal bilgiler ogretmenlerinin “sosyal bilgiler …… benzer; cunku……” cumlesini tamamlamasiyla elde edilmistir
AgentSpeak(XL): efficient intention selection in BDI agents via decision-theoretic task scheduling

This paper shows how to use a decision-theoretic task scheduler in order to automatically generate efficient intention selection functions for BDI agent-oriented programming languages. We concentrate here on the particular extensions to a known BDI language called AgentSpeak(L) and its interpreter which were necessary so that the integration with a task scheduler was possible. The proposed language, called AgentSpeak(XL), has several other features which increase its usability; some of these are indicated briefly in this paper. We assess the extended language and its interpreter by means of a factory plant scenario where there is one mobile robot that is in charge of packing and storing items, besides other administrative and security tasks. This case study and its simulation results show that, in comparison to AgentSpeak(L), AgentSpeak(XL) provides much easier and efficient implementation of applications that require quantitative reasoning, or require specific control over intentions (e.g., for giving priority to certain tasks once they become intended).
Components of the Arabidopsis mRNA Decapping Complex Are Required for Early Seedling Development[W]

To understand the mechanisms controlling vein patterning in Arabidopsis thaliana, we analyzed two phenotypically similar mutants, varicose (vcs) and trident (tdt). We had previously identified VCS, and recently, human VCS was shown to function in mRNA decapping. Here, we report that TDT encodes the mRNA-decapping enzyme. VCS and TDT function together in small cytoplasmic foci that appear to be processing bodies. To understand the developmental requirements for mRNA decapping, we characterized the vcs and tdt phenotypes. These mutants were small and chlorotic, with severe defects in shoot apical meristem formation and cotyledon vein patterning. Many capped mRNAs accumulated in tdt and vcs mutants, but surprisingly, some mRNAs were specifically depleted. In addition, loss of decapping arrested the decay of some mRNAs, while others showed either modest or no decay defects, suggesting that mRNAs may show specificity for particular decay pathways (3′ to 5′ and 5′ to 3′). Furthermore, the severe block to postembryonic development in vcs and tdt and the accompanying accumulation of embryonic mRNAs indicate that decapping is important for the embryo-to-seedling developmental transition.
Improving Attack Detection in Host-Based IDS by Learning Properties of System Call Arguments

Beginning with the work of Forrest et al, several researchers have developed intrusion detection techniques based on modeling program behaviors in terms of system calls. A weakness of these techniques is that they focus primarily on system call names, and not the arguments. This weakness makes them susceptible to several classes of attacks, including mimicry attacks, attacks on security critical data, and race-condition attacks. To address this weakness, we present an approach for capturing data-flow behaviors of programs. We provide a formal definition of data-flow behaviors on system call traces, and describe efficient algorithms for building such models. Our algorithm can be layered on top of most existing control-flow models. This layering increases the precision of models by exploting control-flow context to refine data-flow properties. We present a detailed experimental evaluation to establish the effectiveness of the approach, paying particular attention to detection of sophisticated attacks. A unique benefit of our approach is that the models contain sufficient information regarding resources (such as files) accessed by a program to make it feasible to formally reason about the security assurances provided by the model.
Conductive Core–Sheath Nanofibers and Their Potential Application in Neural Tissue Engineering

Conductive core–sheath nanofibers are prepared by a combination of electrospinning and aqueous polymerization. Specifically, nanofibers electrospun from poly(ε‐caprolactone) (PCL) and poly(L‐lactide) (PLA) are employed as templates to generate uniform sheaths of polypyrrole (PPy) by in‐situ polymerization. These conductive core–sheath nanofibers offer a unique system to study the synergistic effect of different cues on neurite outgrowth in vitro. It is found that explanted dorsal root ganglia (DRG) adhere well to the conductive core–sheath nanofibers and generate neurites across the surface when there is a nerve growth factor in the medium. Furthermore, the neurites can be oriented along one direction and enhanced by 82% in terms of maximum length when uniaxially aligned conductive core–sheath nanofibers are compared with their random counterparts. Electrical stimulation, when applied through the mats of conductive core–sheath nanofibers, is found to further increase the maximum length of neurites for random and aligned samples by 83% and 47%, respectively, relative to the controls without electrical stimulation. Together these results suggest the potential use of the conductive core–sheath nanofibers as scaffolds in applications such as neural tissue engineering.
Cellular Targets of Nitric Oxide in the Hippocampus

In the hippocampus, as in many other CNS areas, nitric oxide (NO) participates in synaptic plasticity, manifested as changes in pre- and/or postsynaptic function. While it is known that these changes are brought about by cGMP following activation of guanylyl cyclase-coupled NO receptors attempts to locate cGMP by immunocytochemistry in hippocampal slices in response to NO have failed to detect the cGMP elevation where expected, i.e. in the pyramidal neurones. Instead, astrocytes, unidentified varicose fibres and GABA-ergic nerve terminals are reported to be the prominent NO targets, raising the possibility that NO acts indirectly via other cells. We have re-investigated the distribution of cGMP generated in response to endogenous and exogenous NO in hippocampal slices using immunohistochemistry and new conditions designed to optimise cGMP accumulation and, hence, its detectability. The conditions included use of tissue from the developing rat hippocampus, a potent inhibitor of phosphodiesterase-2, and an allosteric enhancer of the NO-receptive guanylyl cyclase. Under these conditions, cGMP was formed in response to endogenous NO and was found in a population of pyramidal cell somata in area CA3 and subiculum as well as in structures described previously. The additional presence of exogenous NO resulted in hippocampal cGMP reaching the highest level recorded for brain tissue (1700 pmol/mg protein) and in cGMP immunolabelling throughout the pyramidal cell layer. Populations of axons and interneurones were also stained. According with these results, immunohistochemistry for the common NO receptor β1-subunit indicated widespread expression. A similar staining pattern for the α1-subunit with an antibody used previously in the hippocampus and elsewhere, however, proved to be artefactual. The results indicate that the targets of NO in the hippocampus are more varied and extensive than previous evidence had suggested and, in particular, that the pyramidal neurones participating in NO-dependent synaptic plasticity are direct NO targets.
Methods for modelling and generating probabilistic components in digital computer simulation when the standard distributions are not adequate: A survey

Methods of modelling probabilistic components which are not adequately represented by the standard continuous distributions (such as normal, gamma, and Weibull) are surveyed. The methods are categorized as systems of distributions, approximations to the cumulative distribution function, and four-parameter distributions. Emphasis is on generality, determination of appropriate parameter values, and random variate generation.
Social networking for membership engagement in nonprofit organisations: a trade union study

Similar to the majority of public authorities internationally, many non-profit organisations are considering using Web 2.0 tools to establish online interactions with their members. However, such organisations encounter practical difficulties with assessing the impact of Web 2.0 tools and aligning them with the expectations of their audience. The limited availability of relevant empirical work provides the motivation to reflect on the findings of a research survey conducted with the members of a Greek trade union organisation. Guided by the survey results, union officials are able to better consider an online engagement strategy. For example, contrasting preliminary expectations, most union members did anticipate benefits from the union’s presence on Facebook and appeared willing not to draw fixed boundaries between their personal and working life. The study illustrates how research and continuous monitoring can contribute to realising the value of networking technologies within the naturally complicated socio-political environment of such organisations.
Familiar Fears: The Assessment of Lesbian and Gay Fostering and Adoption Applicants

This thesis considers how local authority social workers go about assessing the suitability of lesbians and gay men to foster or adopt children. It also asks how far a stated lesbian or gay sexuality is problematic within this process. A constructionist approach to social enquiry is used, data being generated by interviews with social workers, as well as a case study of a lesbian couple? s adoption application. Dorothy Smith? s ? institutional ethnography? is also employed to examine the ? relations of ruling? that structure such assessments.A continuum of assessment models is proposed in order to show the dominance of ? on merit? approaches which prioritise child care skills over sexuality issues. The thesis demonstrates the presence of arguments about the supposed ? risks? to children posed by lesbians or gay men. The notion of ? discrimination? in assessments is analysed, as are attempts by some social workers to challenge discrimination, and it is argued that small-scale anti-discriminatory measures are inadequate.Constructions of the categories ? lesbian? and ? gay? are discussed in relation to the ? good carer of children? , and the thesis proposes the dominance of two versions: the ? good lesbian? and the ? maternal gay man? The thesisargues that the ? on merit: prioritisation of child care skills? model relies upon heteronormative ideas, and the case study looks at contested meanings given to the category ? lesbian? which are also gendered and raced.The thesis sees ? lesbian? and ? gay? as categories of knowledge, and social work assessment as a ? making sense? activity in which versions of these are produced. Such everyday practices are problematised in the thesis, and discourse, (black) feminist and queer theories are used to analyse how the assessment is a site for the production of knowledges about sexuality.