Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
University of Birmingham A Protocol for Preventing Insider Attacks in Untrusted Infrastructure-as-a-Service Clouds.

—Recent technical advances in utility computing have allowed small and medium sized businesses to move their applications to the cloud, to beneﬁt from features such as auto-scaling and pay-as-you-go facilities. Before clouds are widely adopted, there is a need to address privacy concerns of customer data outsourced to these platforms. In this paper, we present a practical approach for protecting the conﬁdentiality and integrity of client data and computation from insider attacks such as cloud clients as well as from the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) based cloud system administrator himself. We demonstrate a scenario of how the origin integrity and authenticity of health-care multimedia content processed on the cloud can be veriﬁed using digital watermarking in an isolated environment without revealing the watermark details to the cloud administrator. Finally to verify that our protocol does not compromise conﬁdentiality and integrity of the client data and computation or degrade performance, we have tested a prototype system using two different approaches. Formal veriﬁcation using ProVerif tool shows that cryptographic operations and protocol communication cannot be compromised using a realistic attacker model. Performance analysis of our implementation demonstrates that it adds negligible overhead.
Does the Market React Optimally to Oil Field Discoveries ?

The Hotelling rule argues that the price for a non-renewable resource adjusts to the shadow value of the resource, reflecting the remaining availability of the resource. We derive the expected decline in the price of crude oil to unanticipated oil field discoveries following a standard Hotelling model and compare its predictions to the observed price adjustment. In addition, a measure of deviation from the social optimum is computed. We find that the price declines on average by 0.86% on discovery days. Furthermore, the price shows a subsequent increase two days after discovery announcements in line with the Hotelling rule. The degree of adjustment to the new level of scarcity is not found to differ significantly from the adjustment supposed to take place in the social optimum. Thus, there is evidence that the market reacts to news about scarcity as predicted by the Hotelling rule.
'Best Practices' in Estimating the Cost of Capital: An Update

Theories on cost of capital have been around for decades. Unfortunately for practice, the academic discussions typically stop at a high level of generality, leaving important questions for application unanswered. Recent upheavals in financial markets have only made the practitioner’s task more difficult.This paper updates our earlier work on the state of the art in cost of capital estimation to identify current best practices that emerge. Unlike many broadly distributed multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank surveys, our findings are based on conversations with practitioners at highly regarded corporations and leading financial advisors. We also report on advice from best-selling textbooks and trade books. We find close alignment among all these groups on use of common theoretical frameworks to estimate the cost of capital and on many aspects of estimation. We find large variation, however, for the joint choices of the risk-free rate of return, beta and the equity market risk premium, as well as for the adjustment of capital costs for specific investment risk. When compared to our 1998 publication, we find that practice has changed some since the late 1990s but there is still no consensus on important practical issues. The paper ends with a synthesis of messages from best practice companies and financial advisors and our conclusions.
A Contextual Framework for Reasoning on Events

In this paper we investigate the contextualized representation of events. In particular, we re-interpret the formalization of events and situations adopted in the NewsReader Event and Situation Ontology (ESO) according to the notions of context and module proposed in the Contextualized Knowledge Repositories (CKR) framework. This contextualized formalization sets the basis for exploiting logical reasoning on events and situations, enabling to automatize tasks such as: recognizing incompatible event descriptions or inconsistent situations, inferring missing or implicit events.
GATS-C4.5: An Algorithm for Optimizing Features in Flow Classification

Flow classifier deals with huge amount of data, which contains irrelevant and redundant features causing slower training and testing process, higher resource consumption as well as poor classification accuracy. Optimizing features, therefore, is an important issue in flow classification. In this paper, we propose a wrapper feature selection algorithm GATS-C4.5 aiming at modeling lightweight flow classifier by (1) using hybrid genetic-tabu approach as search strategy to specify candidate subsets for evaluation; (2) using C4.5 algorithm as wrapper approach to obtain the optimum feature subset. We have examined the feasibility of our algorithm by conducting several experiments on flow datasets which were categorized as WWW, MAIL, P2P, etc. The experimental results show that classifier with our approach can greatly improve computational performance without negative impact on classification accuracy. Further more, our approach is able not only to have smaller resource consumption, but also to have higher classification accuracy than Naive Bayes method with Kernel density estimation after Fast Correlation-Based Filter (NBK-FCBF).
A POLYHEDRAL APPROACH FOR THE GRAPH EQUITABLE COLORING PROBLEM

An equitable coloring is a way of coloring the vertices of a graph such that a p ir of adjacent vertices do not share the same color and any pair of color classes differ in size by at most one. Given a graphG, the equitable coloring problem is to find the minimum number of colors needed so as to have an equitable coloring of G. It is known that Branch & Cut algorithms based on the polyhedral study of linear integer programming (IP) models have proven to be an important tool to deal with traditional colorin g problems. The goal of this work is to give an IP formulation for the equitable coloring pr oblem, studying its polyhedral structure, and develop a cutting plane algorithm. These are the first steps to make a further Branch & Cut algorithm.
Evaluating the E-Learning Platform from the Perspective of Knowledge Management: The AHP Approach

A growing number of higher education institutions have adopted asynchronous and synchronous Web-based learning platforms to improve students' learning efficiency and increase learning satisfaction in the past decade. Unlike traditional face-to-face learning methods, e-learning platforms allow teachers to communicate with students and discuss course content anytime or anywhere. In addition, the teaching material can be reused via the e-learning platforms. To understand how students use e-learning platforms and what the implications are, we conducted an empirical study of the iCAN e-learning platform, which has been widely used in Fu-Jen Catholic University since 2005. We use the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), a well-known multi-criteria evaluation approach, to compare five practices, i.e. the functions of the iCAN teaching platform. We adopted a brainstorming approach to design a questionnaire to measure learners' perception of the e-learning platform based on the theory of knowledge transforming process in knowledge management. Accordingly, the model considers functioning and objectivity in terms of the following three attributes of learning effectiveness: individual learning, group sharing and learning performance. Twelve criteria with twelve evaluation items were used to investigate the effectiveness of the five practices. We also evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the functions based on the types of courses in the iCan platform. We expect that the empirical evaluation results will provide teachers with suggestions and guidelines for using the e-learning platform effectively to facilitate their teaching activities and promote students' learning efficiency and satisfaction.
Lookapp: interactive construction of web-based concept detectors

While online platforms like YouTube and Flickr do provide massive content for training of visual concept detectors, it remains a difficult challenge to retrieve the right training content from such platforms. In this technical demonstration we present lookapp, a system for the interactive construction of web-based concept detectors. It major features are an interactive "concept-to-query" mapping for training data acquisition and an efficient detector construction based on third party cloud computing services.
New marker for real-time industrial robot programming by motion imitation

This paper presents a new marker for robot programming by demonstration through motion imitation. The device is based on high intensity LEDs (light emission diodes) which are captured by a pair of industrial cameras. Using stereoscopy, the marker supplies 6-DoF (degrees of freedom) human wrist tracking with both position and orientation data. We propose a robust technique for camera and stereo calibration which maps camera coordinates directly into the desired robot frame, using a single LED. The calibration and tracking procedures are thoroughly described. The tests show that the marker presents a new robust, accurate and intuitive method for industrial robot programming. The system is able to perform in real-time and requires only a single pair of industrial cameras though more can be used for improved effectiveness and accuracy.
LOSS BALANCING IN THREE-LEVEL ACTIVE-NEUTRAL-POINT-CLAMPED CONVERTER

The 3L-NPC (Neutral-Point-Clamped) is the most popular multilevel converter used in high-power medium-voltage applications. An important disadvantage of this structure is the unequal distribution of losses among the switches. The performances of 3L-NPC structure were improved by developing the 3L-ANPC (Active-NPC) converter which has more degrees of freedom. In this paper the switching states and the loss distribution problem are studied for two PWM strategies in a STATCOM application. The PSIM simulation results are shown in order to validate the studied PWM strategies.
We Can "See" You via Wi-Fi - An Overview and Beyond

Recently, Wi-Fi has caught tremendous attention for its ubiquity, and, motivated by Wi-Fi's low cost and privacy preservation, researchers have been putting lots of investigation into its potential on action recognition and even identification. In this paper, we offer an comprehensive overview on these two topics in Wi-Fi. Also, through looking at these two topics from an unprecedented perspective, we could achieve generality instead of designing specific ad-hoc features for each scenario. Observing the great resemblance of Channel State Information (CSI, a fine-grained information captured from the received Wi-Fi signal) to texture, we proposed a brand-new framework based on computer vision methods. To minimize the effect of location dependency embedded in CSI, we propose a novel de-noising method based on Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) to eliminate the background energy and effectively extract the channel information of signals reflected by human bodies. From the experiments conducted, we demonstrate the feasibility and efficacy of the proposed methods. Also, we conclude factors that would affect the performance and highlight a few promising issues that require further deliberation.
Estimating volatility and model parameters of stochastic volatility models with jumps using particle filter

A bearing protector employing a stator and a rotor defining a labyrinth therebetween and disposed for sealing cooperation between a housing and a rotatable shaft. The concentrically fit within one another due to relative axial movement therebetween, each is constructed as an integral continuous one-piece ring. The stator and rotor are axially secured in an assembled condition by a one-piece snap ring carried by the stator and which resiliently distorts to pass axially over the rotor and then resiliently snaps inwardly into a groove in the rotor so as to become fixed to and rotate with the rotor. This snap ring projects outwardly into a radially enlarged annular collecting chamber formed in the stator and acts, when the rotor rotates, as a slinger ring so that contaminates which enter into the labyrinth from the outside come into contact with the slinger ring and are thrown outwardly to the bottom of the collecting chamber for discharge through a drain.
Detecting Activities of Daily Living from Low Frequency Power Consumption Data

With the popularization of smart sensors, detecting activities of daily living (ADL) from sensor readings has attracted many interests in both the academic and the industrial societies. A majority of research works on this topic focus on data of high sampling rate, however, most existing smart sensor deployments support sampling rate much lower than 1 Hz. We are interested in the possibility of inferring ADLs from solely coarse home-level gross power consumptions. In this paper, we first tentatively adopt a layered hidden Markov model (LHMM) in the hope to uncover the association between ADLs and power consumption data. We conduct an exploratory data analysis with this preliminary model on a real-world dataset, and based on the findings from this exploratory study, we propose to infer ADLs from low frequency power consumption data using a hierarchical Dirichlet process hidden markov model (HDP-HMM). We perform experiments on the same dataset, and demonstrate that with sensor readings of 1/180 Hz and 1/900 Hz granularities, HDP-HMM outperforms comparative models and ADLs such as "Entertaining" and "Not at home" can be captured with high accuracy.
Genetic Diversity of Bacillus thuringiensis from Different Geo-Ecological Regions of Ukraine by Analyzing the 16S rRNA and gyrB Genes and by AP-PCR and saAFLP

The Bacillus cereus group consists of closely related species of bacteria and is of interest to researchers due to its importance in industry and medicine. However, it remains difficult to distinguish these bacteria at the intra- and inter-species level. Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is a member of the B. cereus group. In this work, we studied the inter-species structure of five entomopathogenic strains and 20 isolates of Bt, which were collected from different geo-ecological regions of Ukraine, using various methods: physiological and biochemical analyses, analysis of the nucleotide sequences of the 16S rRNA and gyrB genes, by AP-PCR (BOX and ERIC), and by saAFLP. The analysis of the 16S rRNA and gyrB genes revealed the existence of six subgroups within theB.cereus group: B anthracis, B. cereus I and II, Bt I and II, and Bt III, and confirmed that these isolates belong to the genus Bacillus. All strains were subdivided into 3 groups. Seventeen strains belong to the group Bt II of commercial, industrial strains. The AP-PCR (BOX and ERIC) and saAFLP results were in good agreement and with the results obtained for the 16S rRNA and gyrB genes. Based on the derived patterns, all strains were reliably combined into 5 groups. Interestingly, a specific pattern was revealed by the saAFLP analysis for the industrial strain Bt 0376 р. о. , which is used to produce the entomopathogenic preparation “STAR-t”.
Basketball Player Tracking and Automated Analysis

In the modern game of professional and collegiate basketball, automated stat tracking, referee rule verification, and video annotation are popular topics. The core aspect of these improvements is player detection and tracking. This paper presents techniques for court segmentation, player detection, team correlation, player tracking, and court to top-down view homography. For a 125 frame sample video, we were able to accurately detect and track the individual players until more complex situations arose, such as players overlapping on the court. In ideal situations, these techniques provided reliable detection and tracking. Keywords—player detection; player tracking; homography; basketball; automated sport analysis
On Construction of Fourth Order ChebyshevSplinesMladen RoginaDept

It is an important fact that general families of Chebyshev and L-splines can be locally represented, i.e. there exists a basis of B-splines which spans the entire space. We develop a special technique to calculate with 4 th order Chebyshev splines of minimum deeciency on nonuniform meshes, which leads to a numerically stable algorithm, at least in case one special Hermite interpolant can be constructed by stable explicit formull. The algebraic derivation of the algorithm involved makes it possible to apply the construction to L-splines. The underlying idea is an Oslo type algorithm, combined with the known derivative formula for Chebyshev splines. We than show that weighted polynomial and tension spline spaces satisfy the conditions imposed, and show how to apply the above general techniques to obtain local representations. One of the great things in the univariate spline theory is the fact that the most general spline functions can be represented as linear combinations of splines having a compact support, the so called B-splines. This leads to sparse matrix systems in diverse elds of numerical analysis, where entries are usually calculated as linear combinations of B-splines and their derivatives. Therefore, one has to evaluate such splines as accurately as possible; the complexity in calculation can also play signii-cant role. Such algorithms have been found only in cases which are very important, but do not cover all interesting situations. Fully investigated cases include polynomial 16], hyperbolic 17], trigonometric 9], and also some rarely used modiied splines, obtained by substitutions in the recurrence relations for known B-splines. Most algorithms are based on three term recurrence relation due to de Boor and Cox. For the sake of reference, and also to introduce the notation to be used further , let us choose the knot sequence = fx 0 T let us deene an extended partition of the interval a; b] ft 1 : : : t 2n+k g in the usual way:
Analysis on Agile Software Development Methods from the View of Informationalization Supply Chain Management

Agile software development methods are widely used globally, especially in building information systems for enterprises. Software developing vendors are suppliers in an informationalization supply chain (ISC) of the customer. To analysis the impact of agile software development on the management of ISC, firstly a brief introduction of agile software development methods is presented. After that the 7 key processes in traditional supply chain management are mapped to processes in ISC management. Then whether agile software development methods could approve these ISC management processes is discussed. Finally, a conclusion is obtained that generally agile software development has positive impact on most of these processes.
Ocular Complications after Inferior Alveolar Nerve Block

It has been more than 120 years since Carl Koller used cocaine as a local anaesthetic agent. Nowadays, administration of local anaesthetic is one of the commonest and most important procedures in dentistry. Although there may have some rare systemic complications after intra-oral local anaesthesia, most complications are local and temporary. These complications include haematoma formation, tissue blanching, pain due to nerve impingement or injection into muscle, trismus and facial nerve paralysis. A rare but serious complication, permanent damage of the inferior alveolar nerve and lingual nerve, may result from inferior alveolar nerve block (IANB) but the exact mechanism is still unknown. 1 Ocular complications after intra-oral dental anaesthesia are infrequently reported in the literature and these complications include strabismus, ptosis, diplopia, ophthalmoplegia and amaurosis (blindness). 2 Walsh (1957) described a case of permanent amaurosis after dental anaesthesia of upper teeth and he attributed this to the oily nature of the local anaesthetic solution containing procaine hydrochloride which resulted in the embolism of retinal artery. 3 For the past 45 years, ocular complications after middle or posterior alveolar nerve
Cancer research and therapy: Where are we today?

Till date scientists are struggling to understand the complete mechanism of carcinogenesis. In future, the real time detection of cancer may help scientists to identify some of the complicated biological mechanisms. Certain special features of cancer cells enable researchers to deliver the drug or to develop the right drug therapy. These cell properties include over expression or over activity in uptake of certain nutrients e.g. folic acid and increased permeability. Listed properties might vary depending upon the type of cancer and can be fully exploited by using nanoparticles either to detect the site of cancer or to direct the drug at the affected site. Product approach like drug conjugates, complexes serves as a good platform to solve issues like solubility, toxicity, poor penetration and stability related to cancer drugs. Beside this, several drug delivery platforms are under development by researchers in academia as well as in industry to deliver therapeutic molecules and new chemical entities to the targeted site in body. Amongst them, nanotechnology both at molecular and supramolecular level is a leading platform and can help to image, detect and treat cancer. Surface modification of nanoparticles by coating or anchoring their surface with special markers, materials, peptide, proteins, antibodies or antigens add extra feature and thereby can enhance the effectiveness. These treatments can be used individually or in combined form. In this review, advances on nanotechnological platform are discussed together with some assisting techniques like magnetic field, photo or light field, sonic rays are touched upon. New biological therapies that are advancing in this direction include the antisense therapy, cell therapy, gene therapy, radiation therapy and SiRNA interfaces which are discussed in brief in this article. This article gives short overview on use of complementary and alternative medicine for treatment of cancer such as traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), Ayurveda to avoid toxic effects of synthetic drugs.
Evaluation of stop word lists in text retrieval using Latent Semantic Indexing

The goal of this research is to evaluate the use of English stop word lists in Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)-based Information Retrieval (IR) systems with large text datasets. Literature claims that the use of such lists improves retrieval performance. Here, three different lists are compared: two were compiled by IR groups at the University of Glasgow and the University of Tennessee, and one is our own list developed at the University of Northern British Columbia. We also examine the case where stop words are not removed from the input dataset. Our research finds that using tailored stop word lists improves retrieval performance. On the other hand, using arbitrary (non-tailored) lists or not using any list reduces the retrieval performance of LSI-based IR systems with large text datasets.