Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimal Distributed Malware Defense in Mobile Networks with Heterogeneous Devices

As malware attacks become more frequently in mobile networks, deploying an efficient defense system to protect against infection and to help the infected nodes to recover is important to prevent serious spreading and outbreaks. The technical challenges are that mobile devices are heterogeneous in terms of operating systems, the malware infects the targeted system in any opportunistic fashion via local and global connectivity, while the to-be-deployed defense system on the other hand would be usually resource limited. In this paper, we investigate the problem of how to optimally distribute the content-based signatures of malware, which helps to detect the corresponding malware and disable further propagation, to minimize the number of infected nodes. We model the defense system with realistic assumptions addressing all the above challenges that have not been addressed in previous analytical work. Based on the framework of optimizing the system welfare utility, which is the weighted summation of individual utility depending on the final number of infected nodes through the signature allocation, we propose an encounter-based distributed algorithm based on Metropolis sampler. Through theoretical analysis and simulations with both synthetic and realistic mobility traces, we show that the distributed algorithm achieves the optimal solution, and performs efficiently in realistic environments.
Chlorophylls - Natural Solar Cells

A molecular modeling study was conducted on a series of six natural occurring chlorophylls. Quantum chemistry calculated orbital energies were used to estimate frequency of transitions between occupied molecular orbital and unoccupied molecular orbital energy levels of chlorophyll molecules in vivo conditions in standard (ASTMG173) environmental conditions. Obtained results are in good agreement with energies necessary to fix the Magnesium atom by chlorophyll molecules and with occurrence of chlorophylls in living vegetal organisms
Endogenous Growth Without Scale Effects: Comment

Segerstrom (1998) demonstrates that the social optimum requires “radical” technological breakthroughs to be treated less favorably than “incremental” innovations in a growing economy. The aim of this note is to assess the robustness of this welfare result on the basis of two levels of generalization: (i) the elasticity of substitution between any two goods is allowed to be larger than one, and (ii) inter-industry spillovers are introduced. We show that Segerstrom’s results can be reversed. It is also shown that in contrast to Segerstrom, R&D subsidies can be globally optimal, irrespective of the size of innovation, when inter-industry spillovers are large.
Microfabricated needles for transdermal delivery of macromolecules and nanoparticles: Fabrication methods and transport studies

Arrays of micrometer-scale needles could be used to deliver drugs, proteins, and particles across skin in a minimally invasive manner. We therefore developed microfabrication techniques for silicon, metal, and biodegradable polymer microneedle arrays having solid and hollow bores with tapered and beveled tips and feature sizes from 1 to 1,000 μm. When solid microneedles were used, skin permeability was increased in vitro by orders of magnitude for macromolecules and particles up to 50 nm in radius. Intracellular delivery of molecules into viable cells was also achieved with high efficiency. Hollow microneedles permitted flow of microliter quantities into skin in vivo, including microinjection of insulin to reduce blood glucose levels in diabetic rats.
Spectral luminosity indicators in SNe Ia - Understanding the R(SiII) line strength ratio and beyond

Type la supernovae (SNe la) are good distance indicators because the shape of their light curves, which can be measured independently of distance, varies smoothly with luminosity. This suggests that SNe Ia are a single family of events. Similar correlations are observed between luminosity and spectral properties. In particular, the ratio of the strengths of the Si IIλ5972 and λ6355 lines, known as R(Si II), was suggested as a potential luminosity indicator. Here, the physical reasons for the observed correlation are investigated. A Monte Carlo code is used to construct a sequence of synthetic spectra resembling those of SNe with different luminosities near B maximum. The influence of abundances and of ionization and excitation conditions on the synthetic spectral features is investigated. The ratio R(Si II) depends essentially on the strength of Si λ5972, because Si II λ6355 is saturated. In less luminous objects, Si II λ59T2 is stronger because of a rapidly increasing Si II/Si III ratio. Thus, the correlation between R(Si II) and luminosity is the effect of ionization balance. The Si II λ5972 line itself may be the best spectroscopic luminosity indicator for SNe Ia, but all indicators discussed show scatter which may be related to abundance distributions.
Dissociating Value Representation and Inhibition of Inappropriate Affective Response during Reversal Learning in the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex123

Abstract Decision-making studies have implicated the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in tracking the value of rewards and punishments. At the same time, fear-learning studies have pointed to a role of the same area in updating previously learned cue–outcome associations. To disentangle these accounts, we used a reward reversal-learning paradigm in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in 18 human participants. Participants first learned that one of two colored squares (color A) was associated with monetary reward, whereas the other (color B) was not, and then had to learn that these contingencies reversed. Consistent with value representation, activity of a dorsal region of vmPFC was positively correlated with reward magnitude. Conversely, a more ventral region of vmPFC responded more to color A than to color B after contingency reversal, compatible with a role of inhibiting the previously learned response that was no longer appropriate. Moreover, the response strength was correlated with subjects’ behavioral learning strength. Our findings provide direct evidence for the spatial dissociation of value representation and affective response inhibition in the vmPFC.
Surface wettability studies of PDMS using flame plasma treatment

The flame plasma treatment studied in this thesis was able to oxidize the surface of Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) in a fraction of a second. It was found to be a much faster way to modify PDMS surface wettability than the current technologies. The surface wettability of Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) treated with flame plasma was studied. The surface wettability was characterized by contact angle measurements using water and a surface tension liquid as the probe liquids. Two experimental parameters were varied in this investigation: a) distance from the PDMS surface to the inner flame cone; b) the dwell time of the PDMS under the flame. The study concluded that the same surface wettability can be achieved through different combinations of distance and dwell time. The shortest dwell time needed to induce a contact angle of 100 or less on the treated PDMS surface in this experimental setup was approximately 0.18 second. This study also found that over treatment of the PDMS surface in the flame plasma yielded a reversal treatment effect and decreased the surface wettability. The flame plasma yielded uniform contact angle measurements within 15% across the PDMS surface. The recovery mechanism in the treated PDMS surfaces was dominated by the diffusion of untreated polymers from the bulk PDMS to the treated surface. The results from this investigation demonstrated the potential for the flame plasma treatment to be used in rapid manufacturing of PDMS microfludic devices. Thesis Supervisor: David E. Hardt Title: Ralph E. & Eloise F. Cross Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Moral Development in Christian Higher Education

Recent research concerning the mural development of evangelical college and seminary students utilizing Kohlberg's stage theory was examined. Biblical parallels to moral development theory were noted and briefly explored. Various explanations for evangelical students' lower than expected scores on moral development tests were considered including such factors as lack of reflection regarding the content of the faith as well as application of biblical principles, weaknesses in the evangelical educational process including the absence of cognitive disequilibrium, evangelical orientation toward biblical care and concern as well as toward justice, and the manner in which an institution's standards of conduct are communicated to students.
Design and postural synergy synthesis of a prosthetic hand for a manipulation task

Recent advances in neurology showed that human controls muscles for hand poses in a coordinated manner. This coordination is referred as to a postural synergy. Using postural synergies, a few synergy inputs (usually two) can be used to control dozens of motors to accomplish various grasping tasks on a prosthetic robotic hand. This paper presents the latest results of a project which attempts to achieve delicate motions (e.g. manipulation of objects) on a prosthetic hand using two synergy inputs. In order to better reproduce the desired poses for the manipulation task, the postural synergies were synthesized on a kinematically identical dummy hand. The prosthetic hand was designed, fabricated and assembled. Tests were performed to qualitatively verify motion ranges of the prosthetic hand. Experimentation that follows is expected to demonstrate the completion of the intended manipulation tasks.
Policy-Based Tunable Reliable Multicast for Periodic Information Dissemination

Existing transport protocols for periodic information dissemination ignore application semantics while attempting to be 100% reliable. \Application Level Framing" (ALF) suggests that taking application semantics into account when designing transport protocols can result in application performance that is highly optimized for the network. We apply this principle in designing a policy-based TUNAble quasi-reliable multicast protocol (TUNA) for periodic information dissemination. Speciically, TUNA is not constrained to guarantee full reliability, but allows the receiving application to selectively request retransmissions of lost portions of the data stream. TUNA uses statistical properties of the data stream to adaptively guide receivers in dynamically altering their reliability policy. This is particularly well matched for satellite systems, where end node to satellite bandwidth is limited, especially when shared by large community of end nodes, and where power consumption for uplink transmission is a serious concern. Our simulation results show that TUNA reduces the number of NACKs sent back to the information source, while keeping the staleness of received data within application-speciied bounds. We have implemented TUNA and a prototype application called InfoCaster in the MASH toolkit.
Writing Solaris device drivers in Java

Operating system kernels have been traditionally written in C for flexibility and efficiency. They, however, often suffer from bugs and security vulnerabilities because C is inherently error-prone and unsafe. While there have been attempts to experimentally construct a complete operating system in a type safe language such as Java for higher safety and reliability, such type safe operating systems are not mainstream as yet. In this paper, we present an experimental implementation of the Java Virtual Machine that runs inside the kernel of the Solaris operating system. Our approach is to extend the existing operating system, rather than creating a new operating system from scratch, in order to reap the benefits of a type safe language in the kernel without expensive development and transition cost for a new operating system architecture. We implemented our system by porting an existing small, portable JVM, Squawk, into the Solaris kernel. Our first application of this system is to allow device drivers to be written in Java. A simple device driver was ported from C to Java. Characteristics of the Java device driver and our device driver interface are described.
Prospects for Determining the Equation of State of the Dark Energy: What Can Be Learned from Multiple Observables?

The dark energy that appears to produce the accelerating expansion of the universe can be characterized by an equation of state p = wρ with w < - . A number of observational tests have been proposed to study the value or redshift dependence of w, including Type Ia supernova distances, the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, cluster abundances, strong and weak gravitational lensing, galaxy and quasar clustering, galaxy ages, the Lyα forest, and cosmic microwave background anisotropies. The proposed observational tests based on these phenomena measure either the distance-redshift relation d(z), the Hubble parameter H(z), the age of the universe t(z), the linear growth factor D1(z), or some combination of these quantities. We compute the evolution of these four observables and of the combination H(z)d(z) that enters the Alcock-Paczyznski anisotropy test in models with constant w, in quintessence models with some simple forms of the potential V(ϕ), and in toy models that allow more radical time variations of w. Measurement of any of these quantities to a precision of a few percent is generally sufficient to discriminate between w = -1 and - . However, the time dependence predicted in quintessence models is extremely difficult to discern because the quintessence component is dynamically unimportant at the redshifts where w departs substantially from its low-z value. Even for the toy models that allow substantial changes in w at low redshift, there is always a constant-w model that produces very similar evolution of all of the observables simultaneously. We conclude that measurement of the effective equation of state of the dark energy may be achieved by several independent routes in the next few years but that detecting time variation in this equation of state will prove very difficult except in specialized cases.
Bringing the European Union closer to its young citizens: Youth active citizenship in Europe and trust in EU institutions

Abstract European Union countries are participatory and representative democracies. Therefore, active citizenship in the EU and trust in EU institutions are paramount for the continuation and the strengthening of the EU project. Young Europeans who hold the future in their hands need to be actively engaged not only in the social and political life within their national communities, but also in the wider European community. The papers in this special issue examine whether and how European youth identify with the EU, trust EU institutions and engage in EU issues, and which societal and proximal-level contexts and/or individual-level attributes promote or hinder young people’s active citizenship in European context. They are based on results from the Horizon 2020 CATCH-EyoU project, standing for Constructing AcTive CitizensHip with European Youth: Policies, Practices, Challenges and Solutions. Scientists represent different disciplines (Psychology, Political Science, Sociology, Media and Communications, Education) and from eight European countries (Sweden, Estonia, U.K., Germany, Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal, Italy). Together, the papers contribute to the development of a new, cutting-edge conceptualization of youth active citizenship in the EU, and to a better understanding of the factors promoting or inhibiting young EU citizens’ engagement, participation and active citizenship at the European level.
An Introduction to New Extensions for Stochastic Activity Networks

ABSTRACT Stochastic activity networks (SANs) are a powerful and flexible extension of Petri nets. However, SANs facilities are not enough for modeling and analysis of complex and large-scale systems. In order to provide such high-level modeling facilities, we have defined some new extensions for SANs. We intend to preserve all capabilities of SANs for performance, dependability and performability evaluations in these new extensions. In this paper, we present a brief introduction to these new extensions, including hierarchical stochastic activity networks (HSANs) , colored stochastic activity networks (CSANs) , and object stochastic activity networks (OSANs) . Some properties and applications of these models and their analysis methods will also be discussed. KEY WORDS: Modeling, High-Level Petri Nets, Stochastic Activity Networks, Object-Oriented Modeling. 1. INTRODUCTION Petri nets (PNs) have been introduced in 1962 for modeling concurrent and distributed systems [1]. In addition to formal definition and structures, PNs have graphical representation, which helps them to be understood easily. Having only two primitives (i.e.
Evaluation of user perceived quality based on user behavior

User judgment about the quality is an important aspect in quality evaluation. Current approach to evaluate quality of service is based on measuring it from network related parameters such as delay, jitter, and loss or from objective estimations by evaluating degradation of speech. However, the user's view is more meaningful than network view or objective estimation, since the end user is the final judge for evaluation of quality. Therefore involving user's real opinion is an appropriate parameter to improve the performance of multimedia communication networks. Evaluation of user satisfaction depends on user conditions and is varying from user to user. This research attempts to evaluate voice quality from user's feedbacks which are calculated from his/her vocal behaviour. The idea behind this novelty is that quality degradations affect the user's mental state including user emotion and CL where such effects are assessable from user speech.
Quantum Dots for Tracking Dendritic Cells and Priming an Immune Response In Vitro and In Vivo

Dendritic cells (DCs) play a key role in initiating adaptive immune response by presenting antigen to T cells in lymphoid organs. Here, we investigate the potential of quantum dots (QDs) as fluorescent nanoparticles for in vitro and in vivo imaging of DCs, and as a particle-based antigen-delivery system to enhance DC-mediated immune responses. We used confocal, two-photon, and electron microscopies to visualize QD uptake into DCs and compared CD69 expression, T cell proliferation, and IFN-γ production by DO11.10 and OT-II T cells in vivo in response to free antigen or antigen-conjugated to QDs. CD11c+ DCs avidly and preferentially endocytosed QDs, initially into small vesicles near the plasma membrane by an actin-dependent mechanism. Within 10 min DCs contained vesicles of varying size, motion, and brightness distributed throughout the cytoplasm. At later times, endocytosed QDs were compartmentalized inside lysosomes. LPS-induced maturation of DCs reduced the rate of endocytosis and the proportion of cells taking up QDs. Following subcutaneous injection of QDs in an adjuvant depot, DCs that had endocytosed QDs were visualized up to 400 µm deep within draining lymph nodes. When antigen-conjugated QDs were used, T cells formed stable clusters in contact with DCs. Antigen-conjugated QDs induced CD69 expression, T cell proliferation, and IFN-γ production in vivo with greater efficiency than equivalent amounts of free antigen. These results establish QDs as a versatile platform for immunoimaging of dendritic cells and as an efficient nanoparticle-based antigen delivery system for priming an immune response.
Redesigning fronthaul for next-generation networks: beyond baseband samples and point-to-point links

The fronthaul is an indispensable enabler for 5G networks. However, the classical fronthauling method demands large bandwidth, low latency, and tight synchronization from the transport network, and only allows for point-to-point logical topology. This greatly limits the usage of fronthaul in many 5G scenarios. In this article, we introduce a new perspective to understand and design fronthaul for next-generation wireless access. We allow the renovated fronthaul to transport information other than time-domain I/Q samples and to support logical topologies beyond point-to-point links. In this way, different function splitting schemes can be incorporated into the radio access network to satisfy the bandwidth and latency requirements of ultradense networks, control/data decoupling architectures, and delay-sensitive communications. At the same time, massive cooperation and devicecentric networking could be effectively enabled with point-to-multipoint fronthaul transportation. We analyze three unique design requirements for the renovated fronthaul, including the ability to handle various payload traffic, support different logical topology, and provide differentiated latency guarantee. Following this analysis, we propose a reference architecture for designing the renovated fronthaul. The required functionalities are categorized into four logical layers and realized using novel technologies such as decoupled synchronization layer, packet switching, and session-based control. We also discuss some important future research issues.
A STATISTICAL MODELLING BASED LOCATION DETERMINATION METHOD USING FUSION TECHNIQUE IN WLAN

Location information is of paramount importance in context aware Ambient Intelligence (AmI), Smart Space, traffic monitoring, surveillance network and cooperative communications services. This paper describes a Positioning determination solution based on wireless local area network (WLAN) signals. Position determination is based on the statistical modeling of the received signal at any position. This paper presents a probabilistic based statistical modeling approach for location estimation which incorporates fusion strategy in final step to combine efficiently the location individually reported by each WLAN transmitter. The system builds a radio map of the environment. The presented system is easier to implement and provide sufficiently good performance under all conditions. The accuracy with the 90% probability is reported to be 1.85 meters where as average error is reported to be 2.1 meters.
The Rise and Fall of Plankton: Long-Term Changes in the Vertical Distribution of Algae and Grazers in Lake Baikal, Siberia

Both surface water temperatures and the intensity of thermal stratification have increased recently in large lakes throughout the world. Such physical changes can be accompanied by shifts in plankton community structure, including changes in relative abundances and depth distributions. Here we analyzed 45 years of data from Lake Baikal, the world's oldest, deepest, and most voluminous lake, to assess long-term trends in the depth distribution of pelagic phytoplankton and zooplankton. Surface water temperatures in Lake Baikal increased steadily between 1955 and 2000, resulting in a stronger thermal gradient within the top 50 m of the water column. In conjunction with these physical changes our analyses reveal significant shifts in the daytime depth distribution of important phytoplankton and zooplankton groups. The relatively heavy diatoms, which often rely on mixing to remain suspended in the photic zone, shifted downward in the water column by 1.90 m y-1, while the depths of other phytoplankton groups did not change significantly. Over the same time span the density-weighted average depth of most major zooplankton groups, including cladocerans, rotifers, and immature copepods, exhibited rapid shifts toward shallower positions (0.57–0.75 m y−1). As a result of these depth changes the vertical overlap between herbivorous copepods (Epischura baikalensis) and their algal food appears to have increased through time while that for cladocerans decreased. We hypothesize that warming surface waters and reduced mixing caused these ecological changes. Future studies should examine how changes in the vertical distribution of plankton might impact energy flow in this lake and others.