Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Masquerade: Simulating a Thousand Victims

His research interests include network security and information security for resource-constrained devices. Joshua Mason is a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins University. His primary research interest is applying natural-language processing and data-mining techniques to information security. Ryan MacArthur has a Master of Science in Security Informatics from Johns Hopkins University. His current research deals with discovering new malware and finding ways to prevent it. at ta c k s a g a I n s t W e b-s e r v e r a p p l I-cations and their clients' Web browsers have recently increased in popularity. These automated attacks rely not only on weaknesses in a wide variety of applications but also on identifying potential victims with popular search engines. We have built a system that attracts these attacks by representing many different victims in Web searches and simulating their behavior when attacked. Its deployment has succeeded in attracting hundreds of thousands of attacks in a two-month period. As time passes and system security improves, familiar attack vectors become less common and new, more successful techniques emerge. For instance , the increased presence of end-user fire-walls, NAT (network address translation), and better operating systems security have reduced the presence and potency of malware worms, despite their broad notoriety just five years ago. Also, the monetization of vulnerabilities and stolen personal data motivates more clandestine attacks. Consequently , it is no longer common for attackers to write worms that randomly scan the Internet for potential victims, and attackers are forced to shift their strategy to promote wide-scale malware infection accordingly. Increasingly, attackers now co-vertly compromise servers, lying dormant except to covertly infect their visitors as well. This method of infection is commonly referred to as a drive-by download and its victims are typically Web servers running vulnerable software and personal computers with browser vulnerabilities [1]. Left unde-tected, this method of infection affords attackers the opportunity to control large networks of compromised machines. The recent increase in this underhanded tactic, infecting visitors to compromised Web sites and automatically installing executables on the victims' machines unbeknownst to them, was well documented by Provos et al. [2]. Their investigation showed that during a 10-month period, more than 1% of all queries to the Google search engine yield at least one recommended URL that resolves to a Web server suspected of hosting malicious content. After categorizing a subset of the malicious URLs …
Delocalization of vibrational modes caused by electric dipole interaction.

The electric dipole interaction of vibrational modes destroys their localization. Real-space renormalization is constructed for the process of delocalization. The renormalization-group equation for the distribution of dipole parameters is similar to the Boltzmann kinetic equation. Conservation laws are found and an H theorem is proven. Stationary distributions form a six-parameter manifold of fixed points. The two-point dynamical correlation function has the form ${t}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}1}$F(${t}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}1/3}$r), where F(x) is a universal function.
The relative effectiveness of government and private schools in Pakistan: are girls worse off?

Recent evidence from Pakistan points to significant pro‐male bias within households in the allocation of education expenditures. This raises two important questions. Is less spent on enrolled girls than boys through differential school‐type choice for the two sexes; for example, through a greater likelihood of sending boys to fee‐charging private schools? And, if indeed this is the case, are girls thereby condemned to lower quality schooling, on average, than boys? By asking these questions, this paper makes three contributions to the literature. Firstly, this is one of a very few studies in Pakistan to explore the question of the relative effectiveness of public and private schools despite there being an unprecedented expansion of fee‐charging private schools in the past two decades. Secondly, unlike existing papers that focus on primary schooling, this study looks at potential learning gaps by school type for students in their last year of middle school (Grade Eight), very near their transition to secondary schooling. Thirdly, it exploits unique, purposively‐collected data from government and private school students, and thus, in estimating achievement production functions, is able to control for a number of variables typically ‘unobserved’ by researchers. The findings reveal that boys are indeed more likely to be sent to private schools than girls within the household, so that differential school‐type choice is an important channel of differential treatment against girls. Private schools are also found to be of better quality – they are more effective than government schools in imparting mathematics and literacy skills. Girls lose out vis‐à‐vis boys in terms not only of lower within‐household educational expenditures, but also in terms of the quality of schooling accessed.
A Splitting Augmented Lagrangian Method for Low Multilinear-Rank Tensor Recovery

This paper studies a recovery task of finding a low multilinear-rank tensor that fulfills some linear constraints in the general settings, which has many applications in computer vision and graphics. This problem is named as the low multilinear-rank tensor recovery problem. The variable splitting technique and convex relaxation technique are used to transform this problem into a tractable constrained optimization problem. Considering the favorable structure of the problem, we develop a splitting augmented Lagrangian method (SALM) to solve the resulting problem. The proposed algorithm is easily implemented and its convergence can be proved under some conditions. Some preliminary numerical results on randomly generated and real completion problems show that the proposed algorithm is very effective and robust for tackling the low multilinear-rank tensor completion problem.
Different but complementary roles of action and gaze in action observation priming: Insights from eye- and motion-tracking measures

Action priming following action observation is thought to be caused by the observed action kinematics being represented in the same brain areas as those used for action execution. But, action priming can also be explained by shared goal representations, with compatibility between observation of the agent’s gaze and the intended action of the observer. To assess the contribution of action kinematics and eye-gaze cues in the prediction of an agent’s action goal and action priming, participants observed actions where the availability of both cues was manipulated. Action observation was followed by action execution, and the congruency between the target of the agent’s and observer’s actions, and the congruency between the observed and executed action spatial location were manipulated. Eye movements were recorded during the observation phase, and the action priming was assessed using motion analysis. The results showed that the observation of gaze information influenced the observer’s prediction speed to attend to the target, and that observation of action kinematic information influenced the accuracy of these predictions. Motion analysis results showed that observed action cues alone primed both spatial incongruent and object congruent actions, consistent with the idea that the prime effect was driven by similarity between goals and kinematics. The observation of action and eye-gaze cues together induced a prime effect complementarily sensitive to object and spatial congruency. While observation of the agent’s action kinematics triggered an object-centered and kinematic-centered action representation, independently, the complementary observation of eye-gaze triggered a more fine-grained representation illustrating a specification of action kinematics toward the selected goal. Even though both cues differentially contributed to action priming, their complementary integration led to a more refined pattern of action priming.
An evaluation of learning analytics to identify exploratory dialogue in online discussions

Social learning analytics are concerned with the process of knowledge construction as learners build knowledge together in their social and cultural environments. One of the most important tools employed during this process is language. In this paper we take exploratory dialogue, a joint form of co-reasoning, to be an external indicator that learning is taking place. Using techniques developed within the field of computational linguistics, we build on previous work using cue phrases to identify exploratory dialogue within online discussion. Automatic detection of this type of dialogue is framed as a binary classification task that labels each contribution to an online discussion as exploratory or non-exploratory. We describe the development of a self-training framework that employs discourse features and topical features for classification by integrating both cue-phrase matching and k-nearest neighbour classification. Experiments with a corpus constructed from the archive of a two-day online conference show that our proposed framework outperforms other approaches. A classifier developed using the self-training framework is able to make useful distinctions between the learning dialogue taking place at different times within an online conference as well as between the contributions of individual participants.
A cross‐cultural comparative study of patterns of depression in a hospital‐based population

ABSTRACT– In a study of Catego depressive syndromes, using the Syndrome Check List and the Catego programme, no significant differences in depression symptomatology frequencies were found in nine different cultural groups of patients admitted to a London hospital. There were some differences in the frequencies of the hospital diagnoses of depression, whereas the Catego diagnoses showed greater similarity. It is argued that symptoms characteristic of depression in the West are common to all cultures and will become apparent on enquiry in conjunction with other culturally determined symptoms.
XPath fragments on XML in columns

This paper considers schemaless XML data stored in a column-oriented storage, particularly in C-store. A two-level model of C-store based on XML-enabled relational databases is supposed. The axes of XPath language in this environment have been studied in [3]. A low level memory system enables the estimation of the number of two abstract operations providing an interface to an external memory. The algorithms developed are mostly of logarithmic complexity in n, where n is the number of nodes of XML tree associated with an XML document. Here we extend the approach to the XPath fragment using only child and descendant axes and estimate the complexity of evaluating its queries.
Choice and Individual Welfare

We propose an abstract method of systematically assigning a “rational” ranking to non-rationalizable choice data. Our main idea is that any method of ascribing welfare to an individual as a function of choice is subjective, and depends on the economist undertaking the analysis. We provide a simple example of the type of exercise we propose. Namely, we define an individual welfare functional as a mapping from stochastic choice functions into weak orders. A stochastic choice function (or choice distribution) gives the empirical frequency of choices for any possible opportunity set (framing factors may also be incorporated into the model). We require that for any two alternatives x and y, if our individual welfare functional recommends x over y given two distinct choice distributions, then it also recommends x over y for any mixture of the two choice distributions. Together with some mild technical requirements, such an individual welfare functional must weight every opportunity set and assign a utility to each alternative x which is the sum across all opportunity sets of the weighted probability of x being chosen from the set. It therefore requires us to have a “prior view” about how important or representative a choice of x at a given situation is.
Ja n 20 04 Continuous melting of compact polymers

The competition between chain entropy and bending rigidity in compact polymers can be addressed within a lattice model introduced by P.J. Flory in 1956. It exhibits a transition between an entropy dominated disordered phase and an energetically favored crystalline phase. The nature of this order-disorder transition has been debated ever since the introduction of the model. Here we present exact results for the Flory model in two dimensions relevant for polymers on surfaces, such as DNA adsorbed on a lipid bilayer. We predict a continuous melting transition, and compute exact values of critical exponents at the transition point.
Dégradation thermomécanique des réfractaires au contact de laitiers sidérurgiques

Les refractaires au contact de laitiers siderurgiques sont soumis a des sollicitations complexes. Pour identifier les causes de leur degradation, l'examen de cas industriels permet d'etablir un schema de couplages a trois poles : impregnation par les laitiers (IL), thermomecanique (TM) et changements de phases (CP). Les gradients de microstructure et de composition resultant du couplage IL-CP sont caracterises par des observations au MEB et des analyses chimiques avec une sonde EDS ; un traceur naturel de l'impregnation est identifie. Le couplage IL-TM est etudie en modelisant le comportement du revetement soumis a un chargement thermique cyclique dans le cadre de la mecanique des milieux poreux satures. Les parametres regissant la localisation et l'amplitude de la pression interstitielle maximale sont exhibes et leurs influences etudiees. L'etude du pole TM conduit a l'identification d'un modele de comportement > de type thermoelastoviscoplastique de la bauxite a differents etats d'impregnation. Les simulations numeriques indiquent que les contraintes developpees lors de la montee en temperature favorisent l'ecaillage, probablement amorce par une surpression localisee.
New NP-Hardness Results for 3-Coloring and 2-to-1 Label Cover

We show that given a 3-colorable graph, it is NP-hard to find a 3-coloring with (16/17 + ε) of the edges bichromatic. In a related result, we show that given a satisfiable instance of the 2-to-1 Label Cover problem, it is NP-hard to find a (23/24 + ε)-satisfying assignment.
Improving Solar Power PV Plants Using Multivariate Design Optimization

The proliferation of photovoltaic (PV) installations across the globe has accelerated dramatically in the past decade covering home, rural, mobile, industrial, and utility-scale applications. In all these cases, improving payback time and energy production for PV installations is a very complex design tradeoff that involves multiple variables such as irradiance fluctuations, inverter efficiency, operating temperature variation, and PV panel type. In this paper, a detailed multivariate study of PV plant design is presented, resulting in an improved technique to increase the potential benefits of solar plants with lower capital costs. This new approach includes detailed consideration of the probabilistic hourly temperature and solar irradiation profile of the installation site, the efficiencies and operating areas of different grid-tie inverters, and detailed models of different PV modules in the optimal design process. The harvested energy, total costs, and payback time are the objective functions in this approach, while the number of series and parallel panels, the tilt angle, and inverter topology and PV module type are determined from a list of possible candidates. The optimization process is implemented for a sample system, and the results are compared to both a traditional and design software approach. It is seen that by applying the proposed approach with lower capital costs, the harvested energy, financial benefits, and the payback time can be improved by 9.3%, 1%, and 6.95%, respectively. Several case studies are then presented to investigate the sensitivity and robustness of the design with regard to the ambient temperature variation, solar irradiation fluctuation, and available surface area for PV module installation.
Paromomycin Affects Translation and Vesicle-Mediated Trafficking as Revealed by Proteomics of Paromomycin –Susceptible –Resistant Leishmania donovani

Leishmania donovani is a protozoan parasite that causes visceral leishmaniasis (VL) and is responsible for significant mortality and morbidity. Increasing resistance towards antimonial drugs poses a great challenge in chemotherapy of VL. Paromomycin is an aminoglycosidic antibiotic and is one of the drugs currently being used in the chemotherapy of cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis. To understand the mode of action of this antibiotic at the molecular level, we have investigated the global proteome differences between the wild type AG83 strain and a paromomycin resistant (PRr) strain of L. donovani. Stable isotope labeling of amino acids in cell culture (SILAC) followed by quantitative mass spectrometry of the wild type AG83 strain and the paromomycin resistant (PRr) strain identified a total of 226 proteins at ≥95% confidence. Data analysis revealed upregulation of 29 proteins and down-regulation of 21 proteins in the PRr strain. Comparative proteomic analysis of the wild type and the paromomycin resistant strains showed upregulation of the ribosomal proteins in the resistant strain indicating role in translation. Elevated levels of glycolytic enzymes and stress proteins were also observed in the PRr strain. Most importantly, we observed upregulation of proteins that may have a role in intracellular survival and vesicular trafficking in the PRr strain. Furthermore, ultra-structural analysis by electron microscopy demonstrated increased number of vesicular vacuoles in PRr strain when compared to the wild-type strain. Drug affinity pull-down assay followed by mass spectrometery identified proteins in L. donovani wild type strain that were specifically and covalently bound to paromomycin. These results provide the first comprehensive insight into the mode of action and underlying mechanism of resistance to paromomycin in Leishmania donovani.
Characterization of Pectin Biofilms with the Addition of Babassu Mesocarp and Whey Protein Concentrate

Biofilms are defined as flexible films prepared from biological materials with the potential for application in the pharmaceutical and food areas, their use depending on various parameters such as the mechanical properties, barrier properties and water solubility, amongst others. The present work aims to characterize pectin (P) biofilms composed of babassu mesocarp (BM) and whey protein concentrate (WPC), prepared by the casting method. Thus physical attributes such as moisture content, water soluble mass, thickness, water vapor permeability and degradation were determined. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy were used in order to determine the chemical composition and surface structure, respectively, of the biofilms. Calcium crosslinked and non-reticulated films were considered. The biofilms composed of 100%P and 50%P+50%WPC were more hygroscopic than those composed of 50%P+50%BM and 50%P+25%BM+25%WPC. The lowest water vapor permeability and solubility values were found for the films plasticized with 50%P+50%BM. The films plasticized with 50%P+50%BM and 50%P+25%BM+25%WPC showed very similar functional attributes regarding their application as food wrappings and/or production bags.
Pricing American Options on Bonds using Least Squares Simulation

A high accuracy pen plotter includes an automatic sheet feeder for feeding individual sheets of paper from a paper tray to a platen for plotting. A microprocessor, various stepper motors and encoders allow for accurate and repeatable positioning and alignment of the sheet of paper to be plotted. The sheet of paper is automatically fed from the tray to the platen, is pulled entirely free from the tray, is aligned against a reference edge and may be forcefully ejected from the plotter after plotting is finished.
Theory for the systemic definition of metabolic pathways and their use in interpreting metabolic function from a pathway-oriented perspective.

Cellular metabolism is most often described and interpreted in terms of the biochemical reactions that make up the metabolic network. Genomics is providing near complete information regarding the genes/gene products participating in cellular metabolism for a growing number of organisms. As the true functional units of metabolic systems are its pathways, the time has arrived to define metabolic pathways in the context of whole-cell metabolism for the analysis of the structural design and capabilities of the metabolic network. In this study, we present the theoretical foundations for the identification of the unique set of systemically independent biochemical pathways, termed extreme pathways, based on system stochiometry and limited thermodynamics. These pathways represent the edges of the steady-state flux cone derived from convex analysis, and they can be used to represent any flux distribution achievable by the metabolic network. An algorithm is presented to determine the set of extreme pathways for a system of any complexity and a classification scheme is introduced for the characterization of these pathways. The property of systemic independence is discussed along with its implications for issues related to metabolic regulation and the evolution of cellular metabolic networks. The underlying pathway structure that is determined from the set of extreme pathways now provides us with the ability to analyse, interpret, and perhaps predict metabolic function from a pathway-based perspective in addition to the traditional reaction-based perspective. The algorithm and classification scheme developed can be used to describe the pathway structure in annotated genomes to explore the capabilities of an organism.
Anthropogenic and natural influences on the Krka River (Croatia) evaluated by multivariate statistical analysis

A multivariate statistical analysis was applied to the measured physico-chemical parameters to estimate anthropogenic and natural influences to water system of the Krka River. Analysis was conducted on the data from eight sampling sites collected during four sampling events. On the basis of data obtained by the biplot, four main hypotheses were defined and finally statistically confirmed. Thereof, two main and distinct processes occurring in the Krka River could be highlighted: (i) upstream pollution, caused by the inflow of untreated waste-waters from the town of Knin and (ii) downstream self-purification, caused by the settling down of pollutants and the inflow of clean subterranean waters.