Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
IBM Research Report VirtualWires for Live Migrating Virtual Networks across Clouds

Despite significant advances in enabling live virtual machine (VM) migration within a virtualized—cloud— infrastructure,cross-cloudlive migration remains an ad hoc, complex process. To create a network environment in which live migration can occur, clouds are beginning to expose virtual networks as a service. Connecting, managing and maintaining membership and routing information for—possibly incompatible—virtual networks as VMs migrate between clouds is non-trivial for both cloud providers and cloud users. In this paper, we presentVirtualWire, a system in which cloud providers offer—instead of a virtual network abstraction—a connect/disconnectprimitive that is much easier to manage. VirtualWire offers cloud users a consistent method to create complex logical network topologies in which the virtual network fabric itself is able to be elastically stretched or live migrated within or between clouds. Leveraging nested virtualization, we have implemented and evaluated VirtualWire across third-party clouds, including Amazon EC2, achieving cross-cloud live migration of VMs and network components with as low as 1.4 s of downtime.
Investigating the Dimensionality of Job Performance and Its Relationship to Human Attributes using a Sample of U.S. Army Special Forces Candidates

The two primary research objectives of this study were to look at (a) how different dimensions of job performance (i.e., task and team player) may influence overall performance and (b) how three human attributes (i.e., GMA, personality, and biodata) may explain variance in job performance. To achieve these objectives the current study used 256 U.S. Army soldiers attending the Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS) course. There were four research findings in the present study that are particularly noteworthy. Two of the reported findings support the first objective while the final two results support the second objective. First, team player performance was highly significant at predicting overall job performance where task performance was only marginally significant to nonsignificant. Second, the peer assessment method (i.e., rating and ranking) used to measure overall job performance significantly influenced the relationship the two dimensions of job performance had with overall job performance. Third, there was a moderate relationship between personality and biodata and a nonsignificant relationship between the GMA construct and either personality or biodata constructs. Finally, only the ability construct (i.e., GMA) significantly explained variance in job performance (i.e., task performance).
A unified particle model for fluid–solid interactions

We present a new method for the simulation of melting and solidification in a unified particle model. Our technique uses the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method for the simulation of liquids, deformable as well as rigid objects, which eliminates the need to define an interface for coupling different models. Using this approach, it is possible to simulate fluids and solids by only changing the attribute values of the underlying particles. We significantly changed a prior elastic particle model to achieve a flexible model for melting and solidification. By using an SPH approach and considering a new definition of a local reference shape, the simulation of merging and splitting of different objects, as may be caused by phase change processes, is made possible. In order to keep the system stable even in regions represented by a sparse set of particles we use a special kernel function for solidification processes. Additionally, we propose a surface reconstruction technique based on considering the movement of the center of mass to reduce rendering errors in concave regions. The results demonstrate new interaction effects concerning the melting and solidification of material, even while being surrounded by liquids. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A Frame-Based Architecture with Shared Buffers for Slotted Optical Packet Switching

Because of the lack of random access memory in optical domain, optical buffering implemented by fiber delay lines is currently a main way. Typical optical buffering architecture falls into two categories: feed-forward and feedback buffering. Both have advantages and disadvantages. In this paper, we propose an effective hybrid buffering architecture based on output-buffered feed-forward and feedback shared buffering architecture. The proposed architecture employs feed-forward output buffers to connect packets to form a variable-length frame, and employs a feedback shared buffer with a large storage frame to handle frames behind feed-forward output buffers. This scheme uses a frame concept to reduce the control complexity and increase the buffer depth. Our simulation results show that the proposed architecture improves the switch performance and outperforms an existing hybrid buffering architecture, partially shared buffering architecture, in terms of packet loss probability.
User Authentication for Hiererchical Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have a vast field of applications, including environment monitoring, battlefield surveillance and target tracking systems. As WSNs are usually deployed in remote or hostile environments and nodes are prone to compromise attacks, the adoption of key management is extremely important. Most queries in WSN applications are issued at the point of the base station or gateway node of the network. However, there is a great need to access the real-time data inside the network from the nodes because the real-time data may no longer be accessed through the base station only but also by the legal user with authority. To support the requirement, recently Das et al. proposed a dynamic password-based user authentication scheme for hierarchical WSNs. The purposes of this paper are to show Das et al.'s scheme has a security problem of password guessing attack with lost smart card and to provide a remedy for the scheme. For this, we will give a security analysis of Das et al.'s scheme focused on the offline password guessing attack with the assumption that the attacker could steal user's smart card and read the memory on it. Then, we will propose a user authentication scheme for hierarchical WSNs to solve the security problem in Das et al.'s scheme. Our scheme inherits the advantages from Das et al.'s scheme but solves the problems in it.
Analysing Speech Acts in Buhari’s Address at the 71st Session of the UN General Assembly

This article aims at examining the language of a political speech through the linguistic theory of pragmatics. The focus of the study is, specifically, to identify speech acts used in Buhari’s address at the 71 st session of the UN General Assembly. Such an analysis is meant to emphasize the way the Nigerian president conveyed his intentions and his country’s priorities in line with the general theme of the Assembly. The paper has adopted Searle’s (1969) speech act theory. The identification of illocutionary acts in the speech through a tabulated statistics shows that there are 52.56% of representative acts, 19.23% of directive acts, 16.66% of expressive acts, 11.53% of commissive acts and 00% of declaration acts. The findings reveal the dominance of representative illocutionary acts showing that Buhari has mainly expressed his beliefs regarding the theme of the assembly and the priorities of his country. Directive acts are used to make suggestions whereas commissives are used to point out the challenges to be taken up by Buhari and his audience and expressives reflect his psychological state while addressing the world leaders. The paper concludes that this study of speech acts has made it easy to comprehend the message of the Nigerian president in his address.
Layer-by-Layer Assembly of Biopolyelectrolytes onto Thermo/pH-Responsive Micro/Nano-Gels

This review deals with the layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly of polyelectrolyte multilayers of biopolymers, polypeptides (i.e., poly-l-lysine/poly-l-glutamic acid) and polysaccharides (i.e., chitosan/dextran sulphate/sodium alginate), onto thermo- and/or pH-responsive micro- and nano-gels such as those based on synthetic poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) and poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) or biodegradable hyaluronic acid (HA) and dextran-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (DEX-HEMA). The synthesis of the ensembles and their characterization by way of various techniques is described. The morphology, hydrodynamic size, surface charge density, bilayer thickness, stability over time and mechanical properties of the systems are discussed. Further, the mechanisms of interaction between biopolymers and gels are analysed. Results demonstrate that the structure and properties of biocompatible multilayer films can be finely tuned by confinement onto stimuli-responsive gels, which thus provides new perspectives for biomedical applications, particularly in the controlled release of biomolecules, bio-sensors, gene delivery, tissue engineering and storage.
Could standardizing “commercial off-the-shelf” (COTS) monitors to the DICOM part 14: GSDF improve the presentation of dental images? A visual grading characteristics analysis

Objectives: To investigate whether standardizing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) display devices to the digital imaging and communications in medicine part 14: greyscale standard display function (DICOM part 14: GSDF) would affect the presentation of dental images. Methods: Two COTS display devices from the radiology department of a dental teaching hospital and a laptop computer monitor for reference were calibrated to conform to DICOM part 14: GSDF. Four dental surgeons and two final-year students undertook a relative visual grading analysis of the two devices before and after calibration, under control of the viewing environment. Results: Calibrating COTS display devices to conform to the DICOM part 14: GSDF and viewing under reduced ambient light result in a consistent, perceived visual sensation for the presented radiological image. The area under the visual grading characteristics curve (AUCVGC) before calibration is 0.62 CI (0.56, 0.68) and AUCVGC after calibration is 0.51 CI (0.45, 0.57). Conclusions: Standardizing COTS display devices to the DICOM part 14: GSDF can improve image presentation.
Cochlear implants and codas: The impact of a technology on a community

There has been a great amount of debate between the medical community and the Deaf community regarding cochlear implants. Indeed, some factions of the Deaf community have reacted with hostility to the development of the technology and have protested its implementation. Existing literature examines Deaf individuals' perceptions of cochlear implants, however there has been a significant lack of academic attention paid to the hearing children of deaf adults (codas). As children of deaf parents, codas grow up simultaneously inhabiting two worlds: the Deaf world of their parents and the hearing world of their peers. It is codas' unique position and loyalties between the Deaf world and the hearing world that make them important to the cochlear implant debate. This study investigates codas' perceptions of cochlear implantation using standard ethnographic methods, including in-depth, open-ended interviewing with codas, and immersion in the research population through ongoing participant-observation at a deaf school. The findings suggest that (1) codas' interstitial identity impacts their perceptions of and attitudes towards cochlear implantation and (2) cochlear implants have contributed to a refinement of Coda identity in relation to the Deaf community.
Digital Investigation of Wormhole Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks

Several solutions were proposed by the literature to detect wormhole attacks in wireless sensor networks (WSN)but, to the best of our knowledge, none of them has taken interest to the problem of digital investigation. We propose in this paper a solution for digital investigation of wormhole attacks in WSN. An observed WSN is defined to support generation and secure forwarding of evidences regarding sensor nodes behavior in the network. A set of investigator nodes, called observers, are distributed over the network in charge of monitoring the network topology and datagram forwarding by sensor nodes. A set of algorithms are proposed to aggregate the collected evidences, identify colluding nodes, and reconstruct the potential scenarios of wormholes attacks.
Serine Hydroxymethyltransferase from the Cold Adapted Microorganism Psychromonas ingrahamii: A Low Temperature Active Enzyme with Broad Substrate Specificity

Serine hydroxymethyltransferase from the psychrophilic microorganism Psychromonas ingrahamii was expressed in Escherichia coli and purified as a His-tag fusion protein. The enzyme was characterized with respect to its spectroscopic, catalytic, and thermodynamic properties. The properties of the psychrophilic enzyme have been contrasted with the characteristics of the homologous counterpart from E. coli, which has been structurally and functionally characterized in depth and with which it shares 75% sequence identity. Spectroscopic measures confirmed that the psychrophilic enzyme displays structural properties almost identical to those of the mesophilic counterpart. At variance, the P. ingrahamii enzyme showed decreased thermostability and high specific activity at low temperature, both of which are typical features of cold adapted enzymes. Furthermore, it was a more efficient biocatalyst compared to E. coli serine hydroxymethyltransferase (SHMT) particularly for side reactions. Many β-hydroxy-α-amino acids are SHMT substrates and represent important compounds in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and food additives. Thanks to these attractive properties, this enzyme could have a significant potential for biotechnological applications.
3D target detection and tracking based on scene flow

This paper proposes a novel method for 3D multi moving object detection based on scene flow. Scene flow is solved by using the variational method. Datasets are captured by the stereo vision camera systems. Energy function consists of two parts — data term and smooth term. Data term includes the gray and gradient constancy assumption. Smooth term includes optical flow term and disparity term. We use the robust penalty function to reduce the impact of outliers and use multi-resolusion algorithm to solve large displacement problem. In order to solve the nonlinear problem that penalty function brings, we use fixed point iteration and first-order Taylor expansion. After the dence scene flow is obtained, we use Improved Fuzzy C-mean Clustering algorithm to segment the 3D motion vectors dynamically and obtain the moving target information. With the information of the camera, we can get the coordinate position of the moving object in the real world. Experiments show that our method can get better results of 3D moving target detection.
Imaging-Cytology Correlation of Thyroid Nodules with Initially Benign Cytology

Objective. To determine the role of imaging-cytology correlation in reducing false negative results of fine-needle aspiration (FNA) at thyroid nodules. Methods. This retrospective study included 667 nodules 1 cm or larger in 649 patients diagnosed as benign at initial cytologic evaluation and that underwent follow-up ultrasound (US) or FNA following a radiologist's opinion on concordance between imaging and cytologic results. We compared the risk of malignancy of nodules classified into subgroups according to the initial US features and imaging-cytology correlation. Results. Among included nodules, 11 nodules were proven to be malignant (1.6%) in follow-up FNA or surgery. The malignancy rate was higher in nodules with suspicious US features (11.4%) than in nodules without suspicious US features (0.5%, P < 0.001). When a thyroid nodule had discordant US findings on image review after having benign FNA results, malignancy rate increased to 23.3%, significantly higher than that of nodules with suspicious US features (P < 0.001). However, no significant difference was found in the risk of malignancy between the nodules without suspicious US features (0.5%) and imaging-cytology concordant nodules (0.6%, P = 0.438). Conclusions. Repeat FNA can be effectively limited to patients with cytologically benign thyroid nodules showing discordance in imaging-cytology correlation after initial biopsy, which reduces unnecessary repeat aspirations.
Joint angle and delay estimation (JADE) for multipath signals arriving at an antenna array

In wireless communications, mobiles emit signals that arrive at a base station via multiple paths. Estimating each path's angle-of-arrival (AOA) and propagation delay is necessary for several applications, such as mobile localization for emergency services. We propose a novel subspace approach to estimate the AOA and delays of multipath signals from digitally modulated sources arriving at an antenna array. Our method uses a collection of estimates of a space-time vector channel. The Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) and simulations are provided.
Multiscale Orientation and Recognition for Permanent Scatterers

How to effectively detect and identify permanent scatterers (PS) from SAR images is one of the crucial procedures in PS interferometric system. In this paper, a new method of PS detection is presented by using the wavelet multi-scale Product and wavelet modulus maxima according to the PS targets' features and the characteristics of speckle noise in SAR image. This paper analyzed the theory of wavelet multi-scale product and wavelet modulus maxima and its suitability for identifying PS points respectively. Using 4 SAR images over Nanjin from satellites ENVISAT of European Space Agency, both of the methods have been validated for PS detection. The testing results show that both the two algorithm can identify PS from SAR images effectively and reliably. Of which the method using wavelet modulus maxima has stronger anti-noise ability.
Individual Option Prices for Climate Change Mitigation

Willingness to pay for climate change mitigation depends on people's perceptions about just how bad things will get if nothing is done. Individual subjective distributions for future climate conditions are combined with stated preference discrete choice data over alternative climate policies to estimate individual option prices (the appropriate ex ante welfare measure in the face of uncertainty) for climate change mitigation. We find significant scope effects in the estimated option prices according to both expected conditions and degree of uncertainty.
A statistical model for consumer preferences: the case of Italian extra virgin olive oil

The CUB model is a mixture distribution recently proposed in literature for modelling ordinal data. In this article we investigate how this univariate distribution can be exploited in order to model the margins of multivariate ordinal data. In particular, we take the theory of discrete copula into consideration and we show how use the Plackett distribution in order to construct a one parameter bivariate distribution from CUB margins.
Classification of the metric in ISO model by oriented object properties

In this paper we present a new classification of object-oriented metrics, in order to facilitate software evaluation. This classification is based on standardized model “ISO 9126” and focuses on design and quality properties. The crux of this work is to make the relationship between sub-characteristics of ISO model and properties of object-oriented design and quality. Thus our purpose is to find a way to evaluate software without neglecting the properties of the object-oriented design such as: abstraction, inheritance, encapsulation etc.
Evaluating meta-programming mechanisms for ORB middleware

Distributed object computing middleware, such as CORBA, COM+, and Java RMI, shields developers from many tedious and error-prone aspects of programming distributed applications. It is hard to evolve distributed applications after they are deployed, however, without adequate middleware support for meta-programming mechanisms, such as smart proxies, interceptors, and pluggable protocols. These mechanisms can help improve the adaptability of distributed applications by allowing their behavior to be modified without changing their existing software designs and implementations significantly. This article examines and compares common meta-programming mechanisms supported by DOC middleware. These mechanisms allow applications to adapt more readily to changes in requirements and runtime environments throughout their lifecycles. Some of these meta-programming mechanisms are relatively new, whereas others have existed for decades. This article provides a systematic evaluation of these mechanisms to help researchers and developers determine which are best suited to their application needs.
Relation extraction among learning concepts in intelligent tutoring systems

This paper addresses the question of how to extract the relevance among the learning concepts in an intelligent tutoring system using the mathematical modeling of the search engines. To test the proposed approach, two learning domains have been selected from mathematics. For each domain, five distinct chapters have been quoted from the books written by various authors. After extracting candidate concepts, some feature of them have been determined. After feature extraction, the relationships among the concepts have been detected using context vector models, and finally, the concept maps have been automatically constructed as maximum spanning tree.
Mockup driven web development

Dynamic web development still borrows heavily from its origins in CGI scripts: modern web applications are largely designed and developed as programs that happen to output HTML. This thesis proposes to investigate the idea taking a mockup-centric approach instead, in which self-contained, full page web mockups are the central artifact driving the application development process. In some cases, these mockups are sufficient to infer the dynamic application structure completely. This approach to mockup driven development is made possible by the development of a language the thesis develops, called Cascading Tree Sheets (CTS), that enables a mockup to be annotated with enough information so that many common web development tasks and workflows can be eliminated or vastly simplified. CTS describes and encapsulates a web page's design structure the same way CSS describes its styles. This enables mockups to serve as the input of a web application rather than simply a design artifact. Using this capability, I will study the feasibility and usability of mockup driven development for a range of novice and expert authorship tasks. The thesis aims to finish by demonstrating that the functionality of a domain-specific content management system can be inferred automatically from site mockups.