Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Shuffling Based Mechanism for DDoS Prevention on Cloud Environment

Cloud Computing has evolved as a new paradigm in which users can use on-demand services, according to their needs. However, security concerns are primary obstacles to a wider adoption of clouds. Newly born concepts that clouds introduced, such as multi-tenancy, resource sharing and outsourcing, create new challenges for the security research. DDoS (Distributed Denial of service) attack is the biggest threat to the cloud since it affects the availability of services. There are a lot of techniques proposed by various researchers to prevent DDoS attacks on a cloud infrastructure. We are using a Shuffling Based approach for preventing DDoS in the cloud environment. This approach is reactive and uses the resource elasticity of the cloud. The aim of this technique is to save the maximum number of benign clients from the attack through shuffling. For assignment of clients to the replica servers, we are using a greedy algorithm. Every time we call this algorithm, we estimate the number of malicious clients using a proposed random function for that round of shuffle. We have shown that we can save a desired percentage of benign clients from the ongoing attacks after some shuffles. To detect the attack on each server, a detector is deployed that uses an entropy-based approach for detecting DDoS. A significant deviation in entropy represents the DDoS attack. We have also performed some tests to select the suitable attributes for entropy-based DDoS detection in different type of DDoS attacks. So in our work we have worked on both detection and prevention of DDoS on cloud infrastructure
Regulatory independence, investment and political interference: evidence from the EU

This paper analyses and empirically investigates the impact of "modern" regulatory governance - i.e. the inception of Independent Regulatory Agencies (IRAs) - on the investment decisions of a large sample of European publicly traded regulated firms from 1994 to 2004. Because these firms provide essential services, governments are highly sensitive to regulatory decisions and outcomes. We therefore also investigate the impact of governments' political influence, controlling for residual state ownership and market liberalization. To account for potential endogeneity of the key institutional variables, we draw our identification strategy from the political economy literature. Our results show that regulatory independence has a positive impact on firm investment. We also find that government interference generates instability and uncertainty in the regulatory framework, thus undermining investment incentives
Les Determinants Economiques de la Performance Olympique

The analysis of economic determinants of Olympic performance was for a long time a macroeconomics of the cold war in which the number of medals won by a nation was explained by its endowment with economic and human resources, then its political regime and a host country effect. We adopt a post-cold war view of the Games which provides an additional explanation closer to the Olympic ideals since it takes into account individual athlete performances, culture, and sporting disciplines. Various econometric estimations that translate this renewed view are achieved under the constraint of limited available data, over 1976-2004. In a first specification inspired from the macroeconomic approach by Bernard and Busse (2004), with a more detailed country classification, GDP per capita, population, the political regime and the host country effect determine the number of medals won. A second specification adds a variable that captures cultural differences across various regions in the world, which improves the previous estimation. A third estimation relies on a new individual data base, introduces an economic classification of sports as a dependent variables and enables estimating, for an athlete from a given country, his/her chances of participating to an Olympic final and of winning a medal. Finally, regarding the prediction of the would-be medal wins in Peking 2008, an inertial variable is introduced in the macroeconomic model in order to capture an ‘Olympic worship’ in those nations which are used to win a number of medals, a variable that differentiates them from other participating nations. Another prevision is based on individual data without any inertia.
Transient Stability Analysis of Large Scale Aluminum Stabilized Superconductor Cooled by He II

Large-scale aluminum stabilized superconductors are applied to accelerator magnets, SMES, fusion magnets and so on. Authors have investigated transient stability of large helical device (LHD) conductor, which consists of a NbTi/Cu Rutherford cable, a pure aluminum stabilizer, and a copper sheath, cooled by saturated He I, sub-cooled He I and pressurized He II. The peculiar phenomena, such as "traveling normal zone" and "asymmetrical propagation of normal zone" were observed in the original LHD helical coil and also in small test coils wound with the LHD conductor. These phenomena appeared with He I cooling and were emphasized with He II cooling. In order to investigate the transient stability of LHD composite superconductors against a thermal disturbance and the electromagnetic behavior inside the conductor, the tests with numerical simulations were carried out. In this paper, the effects of the polarity of the external field and the transport current on the direction of the traveling normal zone and the propagation velocity were discussed based on the experimental and simulation results. The hall current distributions in the longitudinal area around the normal zone and their effects on the transient stability were discussed. Important factors in the design of a large-scale aluminum stabilized superconductor were discussed.
Leadership in transformational Estonia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to find out whether the leadership expectations in independent Estonia differ from leadership expectations in other East European countries (EEC) and from other neighbouring countries and also to investigate actual leadership perception in Estonia.Design/methodology/approach – To find answers to the research questions stated above, two leadership surveys were carried out in Estonia in 2001 and 2003. The research carried out in 2001 concentrated on actual leader behaviour and the next wave of research, carried out in 2003, was devoted to desirable leader behaviour. The methodology of the surveys was based on the cross‐cultural Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) research program with its initial headquarters in the USA. The GLOBE research program is a world‐wide, multi‐phase and method project.Findings – The crucial thing in the Estonian working environment during the transformation period was team spirit and team reinforcement. Unless.
Effects on blood pressure of reduced dietary sodium and the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet. DASH-Sodium Collaborative Research Group.

BACKGROUND The effect of dietary composition on blood pressure is a subject of public health importance. We studied the effect of different levels of dietary sodium, in conjunction with the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, which is rich in vegetables, fruits, and low-fat dairy products, in persons with and in those without hypertension. METHODS A total of 412 participants were randomly assigned to eat either a control diet typical of intake in the United States or the DASH diet. Within the assigned diet, participants ate foods with high, intermediate, and low levels of sodium for 30 consecutive days each, in random order. RESULTS Reducing the sodium intake from the high to the intermediate level reduced the systolic blood pressure by 2.1 mm Hg (P<0.001) during the control diet and by 1.3 mm Hg (P=0.03) during the DASH diet. Reducing the sodium intake from the intermediate to the low level caused additional reductions of 4.6 mm Hg during the control diet (P<0.001) and 1.7 mm Hg during the DASH diet (P<0.01). The effects of sodium were observed in participants with and in those without hypertension, blacks and those of other races, and women and men. The DASH diet was associated with a significantly lower systolic blood pressure at each sodium level; and the difference was greater with high sodium levels than with low ones. As compared with the control diet with a high sodium level, the DASH diet with a low sodium level led to a mean systolic blood pressure that was 7.1 mm Hg lower in participants without hypertension, and 11.5 mm Hg lower in participants with hypertension. CONCLUSIONS The reduction of sodium intake to levels below the current recommendation of 100 mmol per day and the DASH diet both lower blood pressure substantially, with greater effects in combination than singly. Long-term health benefits will depend on the ability of people to make long-lasting dietary changes and the increased availability of lower-sodium foods.
Components of the Ku‐dependent non‐homologous end‐joining pathway are involved in telomeric length maintenance and telomeric silencing

In the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, genes in close proximity to telomeres are subject to transcriptional silencing through the process of telomere position effect (TPE). Here, we show that the protein Ku, previously implicated in DNA double‐strand break (DSB) repair and in telomeric length maintenance, is also essential for telomeric silencing. Furthermore, using an in vivo plasmid rejoining assay, we demonstrate that SIR2, SIR3 and SIR4, three genes shown previously to function in TPE, are essential for Ku‐dependent DSB repair. As is the case for Ku‐deficient strains, residual repair operating in the absence of the SIR gene products ensues through an error‐prone DNA repair pathway that results in terminal deletions. To identify novel components of the Ku‐associated DSB repair pathway, we have tested several other candidate genes for their involvement in DNA DSB repair, telomeric maintenance and TPE. We show that TEL1, a gene required for telomeric length maintenance, is not required for either DNA DSB repair or TPE. However, RAD50, MRE11 and XRS2 function both in Ku‐dependent DNA DSB repair and in telomeric length maintenance, although they have no major effects on TPE. These data provide important insights into DNA DSB repair and the linkage of this process to telomere length homeostasis and transcriptional silencing.
Social services in interim housing programs and shelters

This study investigates the effectiveness in delivering social services of interim housing programs compared to shelters. Interim housing programs represent a new approach to housing and serving homeless adults, one which provides emergency housing in apartment-like units, and in which use of services is voluntary. Shelters tend to provide congregate care and to expect or rely on clients to access needed services in order to secure resources required to obtain housing. Analyses of original survey data, which correct for sample selection utilizing propensity scores, suggest that clients in interim housing programs obtain more professional, advocacy, and employment services than do clients in shelters. This differential service use is found to reflect not client incentives, but the service offerings and referrals made by the programs. In general, the findings suggest that interim housing programs hold particular promise in service rich environments. They also suggest that program contingencies are more important than certain individual client incentives in affecting service use. Finally, the results begin to suggest the value of this new, interim housing-based approach.
Social responsibility in SMEs: a source of business value

Purpose - The aim of this paper is to analyse some of the main elements that affect the social responsibility (SR) business value generation in the small and medium firms (SMEs) context. In the SMEs, basically three elements are related with the business value of a SR approach: the top management SR orientation, the SR focus on the business critical issues and the SR alignment with the business strategy. Design/methodology/approach - In order to achieve this objective, different valid and reliable SR measurement scales are developed and an ad hoc survey is answered by a sample of 245 SMEs out of a population of 1,317 SMEs, a representative sample with a 5.76 per cent error. Findings - This paper concludes that SR can be a source of value for the business and that the business value generated by an SR approach is associated with certain conditions: the firm must believe in SR behaviour further than a mere economic and legal perspective; the SR activities must be focused on the critical issues that heavily conditions business competitiveness and, finally, the SR must be embedded in the firm's business strategy. Originality/value - The empirical evidence obtained would not only support theoretical development about SR and SMEs, but it is also relevant to practice. The study of how SR must be developed in order to generate value for the firm helps SMEs to engage more effectively in SR and generates incentives for the stable, coherent and long-term development of this kind of activity.
Mortes violentas não esclarecidas e impunidade no Rio de Janeiro

According to official data from the Mortality Information System (SIM / MS), the number of homicides in the State of Rio de Janeiro decreased 28.7% between 2006 and 2009. However, there is evidence that this variation is due to error on data classification. The number of fatal violent incidents of unknown cause in Rio de Janeiro has inexplicably increased since 2007, which is in the opposite direction of the national standard trend. Based on microdata of the victims' characteristics, we developed a multinomial logit model to reclassify deaths with undetermined cause, as homicides, suicides or fatal accidents. Our estimates indicated that the number of homicides in Rio de Janeiro, in this period, decreased only 3.6%, but the number of "hidden homicides" sharply increased representing 62.5% of the homicides registered in 2009.
Knowing when to hold ‘em: regret and the relation between missed opportunities and risk taking in children, adolescents and adults

ABSTRACT Regret over missed opportunities leads adults to take more risks. Given recent evidence that the ability to experience regret impacts decisions made by 6-year-olds, and pronounced interest in the antecedents to risk taking in adolescence, we investigated the age at which a relationship between missed opportunities and risky decision-making emerges, and whether that relationship changes at different points in development. Six- and 8-year-olds, adolescents and adults completed a sequential risky decision-making task on which information about missed opportunities was available. Children also completed a task designed to measure their ability to report regret when explicitly prompted to do so. The relationship between missed opportunities and risky decision-making did not emerge until 8 years, at which age it was associated with the ability to explicitly report regret, and was stronger in adults than in adolescents. These novel results highlight the potential importance of the ability to experience regret in children and adolescents’ risky decision-making.
BDNF-TrkB Axis Regulates Migration of the Lateral Line Primordium and Modulates the Maintenance of Mechanoreceptor Progenitors

BDNF and its specialized receptor TrkB are expressed in the developing lateral line system of zebrafish, but their role in this organ is unknown. To tackle this problem in vivo, we used transgenic animals expressing fluorescent markers in different cell types of the lateral line and combined a BDNF gain-of-function approach by BDNF mRNA overexpression and by soaking embryos in a solution of BDNF, with a loss-of-function approach by injecting the antisence ntrk2b-morpholino and treating embryos with the specific Trk inhibitor K252a. Subsequent analysis demonstrated that the BDNF-TrkB axis regulates migration of the lateral line primordium. In particular, BDNF-TrkB influences the expression level of components of chemokine signaling including Cxcr4b, and the generation of progenitors of mechanoreceptors, at the level of expression of Atoh1a-Atp2b1a.
Knowledge, Higher Education, and the New Managerialism: The Changing Management of UK Universities

1. New Managerialism and Public Service Organizational Reform: From Regulated Autonomy to Institutionalized Distrust 2. The Changing Context of University Knowledge Work: the UK Higher Education System from the 1960s to the 21st Century 3. The Knowledge Worker in the Divided University 4. Manager-Academic Identities, Practices and Careers in the Contemporary University 5. Learning How to Do the Management of Academic Knowledge Work in Universities 6. Values, Public Service, the University and the Manager-Academic Appendix 1 Questions and Themes Used in the Economic and Social Research Council Project Focus Groups and Interviews
Depressive Symptoms, Antidepressant Medication Use, and New Onset of Diabetes in Participants of the Diabetes Prevention Program and the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study

Objective To assess in the Diabetes Prevention Program and Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study whether diagnosis of diabetes predicted elevated depressive symptoms (DS) or use of antidepressant medicine (ADM) following diagnosis; whether diabetes status or duration had significant effect on DS or ADM use; and to determine the associations between A1C, fasting plasma glucose (FPG), normalization of FPG, and DS or ADM use after diagnosis. Methods Diabetes Prevention Program participants in three treatment arms (intensive life style, metformin, placebo) were assessed for diabetes, glucose control, ADM use, and DS, measured using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Among 3234 participants, 1285 developed diabetes. Depression levels were measured before and after diabetes diagnosis. Results Neither DS nor use of ADM increased after diagnosis; higher FPG was associated with greater ADM use in the intensive life style arm; a 10-mg/dl rise in FPG is associated with greater odds of ADM use. Higher FPG and A1C were associated with higher BDI scores in all three arms; A 10-mg/dl rise in FPG had a 0.07 increase in BDI. A 1% higher A1c was associated with a 0.21-point increase in BDI. Normalization of FPG was associated with lower BDI. When FPG had normalized, there was a decrease of 0.30 points in the BDI score compared when FPG had not normalized. Conclusions Contrary to clinical attributions, diabetes diagnosis did not show an immediate impact on BDI scores or ADM use. Higher glucose levels after diagnosis were associated with a small but significantly higher BDI score and more ADM use. Trial Registration: DPPOS: NCT00038727; DPP: NCT00004992
Sleep spindles and their significance for declarative memory consolidation.

STUDY OBJECTIVES Functional significance of stage 2 sleep spindle activity for declarative memory consolidation. DESIGN Randomized, within-subject, multicenter. SETTING Weekly sleep laboratory visits, actigraphy, and sleep diary (4 weeks). PARTICIPANTS Twenty-four healthy subjects (12 men) aged between 20 and 30 years. INTERVENTIONS Declarative memory task or nonlearning control task before sleep. MEASUREMENT AND RESULTS This study measured spindle activity during stage 2 sleep following a (declarative) word-pair association task as compared to a control task. Participants performed a cued recall in the evening after learning (160 word pairs) as well as in the subsequent morning after 8 hours of undisturbed sleep with full polysomnography. Overnight change in the number of recalled words, but not absolute memory performance, correlated significantly with increased spindle activity during the experimental night (r24 = .63, P < .01). Time spent in each sleep stage could not account for this relationship. CONCLUSION A growing body of evidence supports the active role of sleep for information reprocessing. Whereas past research focused mainly on the distinct rapid eye movement and slow-wave sleep, these results indicate that increased sleep stage 2 spindle activity is related to an increase in recall performance and, thus, may reflect memory consolidation.
Business Training Allocation and Credit Scoring: Theory and Evidence from Microcredit in France

The microcredit market, where inexperienced micro-borrowers meet experienced microfinance institutions (MFIs), is subject to reversed asymmetric information. Thus, MFIs' choices can shape borrowers' beliefs and their behavior. We analyze how this mechanism may influence microfinance institution decisions to allocate business training. By means of a theoretical model, we show that superior information can lead the MFI not to train (or to train less) riskier borrowers. We then investigate whether this mechanism is empirically relevant, using data from a French MFI. Confirming our theoretical reasoning, we find a non-monotonic relationship between the MFI's decision to train and the risk that micro-borrowers represent.
Models of recruitment and rate coding organization in motor-unit pools.

1. Isometric muscle force and the surface electromyogram (EMG) were simulated from a model that predicted recruitment and firing times in a pool of 120 motor units under different levels of excitatory drive. The EMG-force relationships that emerged from simulations using various schedules of recruitment and rate coding were compared with those observed experimentally to determine which of the modeled schemes were plausible representations of the actual organization in motor-unit pools. 2. The model was comprised of three elements: a motoneuron model, a motor-unit force model, and a model of the surface EMG. Input to the neuron model was an excitatory drive function representing the net synaptic input to motoneurons during voluntary muscle contractions. Recruitment thresholds were assigned such that many motoneurons had low thresholds and relatively few neurons had high thresholds. Motoneuron firing rate increased as a linear function of excitatory drive between recruitment threshold and peak firing rate levels. The sequence of discharge times for each motoneuron was simulated as a random renewal process. 3. Motor-unit twitch force was estimated as an impulse response of a critically damped, second-order system. Twitch amplitudes were assigned according to rank in the recruitment order, and twitch contraction times were inversely related to twitch amplitude. Nonlinear force-firing rate behavior was simulated by varying motor-unit force gain as a function of the instantaneous firing rate and the contraction time of the unit. The total force exerted by the muscle was computed as the sum of the motor-unit forces. 4. Motor-unit action potentials were simulated on the basis of estimates of the number and location of motor-unit muscle fibers and the propagation velocity of the fiber action potentials. The number of fibers innervated by each unit was assumed to be directly proportional to the twitch force. The area of muscle encompassing unit fibers was proportional to the number of fibers innervated, and the location of motor-unit territories were randomly assigned within the muscle cross section. Action-potential propagation velocities were estimated from an inverse function of contraction time. The train of discharge times predicted from the motoneuron model determined the occurrence of each motor-unit action potential. The surface EMG was synthesized as the sum of all motor-unit action-potential trains. 5. Two recruitment conditions were tested: narrow (limit of recruitment < 50% maximum excitation) and broad recruitment range conditions (limit of recruitment > 70% maximum excitation). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)