Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding and Improving the Smartphone Ecosystem: Measurements, Security and Tools

The smartphone ecosystem encompasses smartphones' hardware and software platform, applications (apps) running on top of the platform, as well the infrastructural components. As the smartphone ecosystem is becoming an important part of our daily life, it is essential to profile, understand and, ultimately, secure the devices and the information they collect and manipulate. To this end, we pave the way for understanding and improving the smartphone ecosystem by designing useful tools, performing measurement studies and security analysis. In this dissertation, we describe several key steps that help us understand and improve the Android smartphone ecosystem. First, we present the results of a long-term evolution study on Android permission system, the basic security mechanism in Android OS, is defined and used in practice; our results indicate that the Android permission system is becoming less secure over time. Second, we present a systematic approach and tool, named ProfileDroid, that enables multi-layer profiling of Android apps. ProfileDroid has a myriad of applications including behavioral app fingerprinting, enhancing users' understanding and control of app behavior, improving user experience, assessing performance and security implications. Finally, the Bring Your Own Handheld-device (BYOH) phenomenon presents novel management challenges to network administrators. We propose a systematic approach, Brofiler, for profiling the behavior of BYOHs along four dimensions: (a) protocol and control plane, (b) data plane, (c) temporal behavior, and (d) across dimensions using the H-M-L model by considering the different levels of intensity in each dimension. Using profiles from Brofiler, a network administrator can develop effective policies for managing BYOHs.
Career Goals and Retention-Related Factors Among College Freshmen

The relationships of four types of career goals (job related, school related, value related, and unknown) with factors of school retention, academic performance, self-esteem, educational self-efficacy, and school and career commitment are studied among 401 first-semester college freshmen. Differences in types of goals based on gender are also considered. Students reporting job-related goals are more likely to make positive persistence decisions than students reporting unknown goals. Men are more likely to report value-related goals than women, whereas women are more likely to report job-related goals than men. Implications of these findings for those working in college settings that help foster students’ career development and academic success are discussed.
Improved base-φ expansion method for Koblitz curves over optimal extension fields

An improved base-phis expansion method is proposed, in which the bit-length of coefficients is shorter and the number of coefficients is smaller than in Kobayashi's expansion method. The proposed method meshes well with efficient multi-exponentiation algorithms. In addition, two efficient algorithms based on the proposed expansion method, named phis-wNAF and phis-SJSF, are presented which significantly reduce the computational effort involved in online precomputation by using the property of Frobenius endomorphism. The proposed algorithms noticeably accelerate computation of a scalar multiplication on Koblitz curves over optimal extension fields (OEFs). In particular, for OEFs where the characteristic is close to 32 bits or 64 bits, the required number of additions is reduced up to 50% in comparison with Kobayashi's base-phis scalar multiplication algorithm. Finally, a method that significantly reduces the memory usage of the precomputation table at the expense of slightly more computation is presented.
Effects of Scrophularia ningpoensis Hemsl. on Inhibition of Proliferation, Apoptosis Induction and NF-κB Signaling of Immortalized and Cancer Cell Lines

Scrophularia ningpoensis has been used in China for centuries as a herbal tea to treat various diseases. Based on the numerous animal studies on its pharmaceutical effects and the long time clinical experiences, we studied the molecular and cellular mechanism underlying the bioactivity of aqueous extract of Scrophularia and its isolated compounds. Seven isolated compounds, unlike Scrophularia extract, failed to induce cytotoxicity on HaCaT cells, but their combination improved the effect of extract. Tumor cell line selectivity was not observed, when we studied its cytotoxic effect on melanoma cell lines. The apoptotic and anti-inflammatory effects of Scrophularia extract have been demonstrated on HaCaT cells. The extract induced those effects potentially through affecting the MAPK pathway and inhibition of the NF-κB pathway, Microarray-based bioinformatical analyses on the compound acetoside from Scrophularia revealed a gene expression profile which confirmed our findings with the extract on proliferation inhibition, anti-inflammation and apoptosis. With DNA alkylation as major proposed mechanism of action, we assume acetoside as one of the active compounds in Scrophularia.
From Dare I say … ? to I dare say: a case example illustrating the extension of the use of Talking Mats to people with learning disabilities who are able to speak well but unwilling to do so

Accessible summary • Sometimes people are worried about saying things to staff even if they are usually good at talking. • Sometimes they think if they say something then someone might blame them. • It can help to use picture symbols to help you say what you want. • Symbols help you remember what you have said because the pictures are there in front of you. • This article tells you how these picture symbols in Talking Mats work. • It also tells you how one woman was helped to say what she wanted. Abstract This article presents the case of a woman with mild learning disability and with good verbal and expressive language ability. However, she was unable to explore verbally with her clinical psychologist issues concerning her low mood and to discuss strategies to address this. Talking Mats provided a low-tech communication framework to help the woman think about the issues and express her views. This article explores this approach and the woman’s response and considers the advantages of using Talking Mats in such cases.
The MARCKS protein amount is differently regulated by calpain during toxic effects of methylmercury between SH-SY5Y and EA.hy926 cells

Methylmercury (MeHg) is an environmental pollutant that shows severe toxicity to humans and animals. However, the molecular mechanisms mediating MeHg toxicity are not completely understood. We have previously reported that the MARCKS protein is involved in the MeHg toxicity to SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma and EA.hy926 vascular endothelial cell lines. In addition, calpain, a Ca2+-dependent protease, is suggested to be associated with the MeHg toxicity. Because MARCKS is known as a substrate of calpain, we studied the relation between calpain activation and cleavage of MARCKS and its role in MeHg toxicity. In SH-SY5Y cells, MeHg decreased cell viability along with increased calcium mobilization, calpain activation and a decrease in MARCKS amounts. However, pretreatment with calpain inhibitors attenuated the decrease in cell viability and MARCKS amount induced only by 1 µM but not by 3 µM MeHg. In cells with a MARCKS knockdown, calpain inhibitors failed to attenuate the decrease in cell viability caused by MeHg. In EA.hy926 cells, although MeHg caused calcium mobilization and a decrease in MARCKS levels, calpain activation was not observed. These results indicate that the participation of calpain in the regulation of MARCKS amounts is dependent on the cell type and concentration of MeHg. In SH-SY5Y cells, calpain-mediated proteolysis of MARCKS is involved in cytotoxicity induced by a low concentration of MeHg.
Is continuation-passing useful for data flow analysis?

The widespread use of the continuation-passing style (CPS) transformation in compilers, optimizers, abstract interpreters, and partial evaluators reflects a common belief that the transformation has a positive effect on the analysis of programs. Investigations by Nielson [13] and Burn/Filho [5,6] support, to some degree, this belief with theoretical results. However, they do not pinpoint the source of increased abstract information and do not explain the observation of many people that continuation-passing confuses some conventional data flow analyses. To study the impact of the CPS transformation on program analysis, we derive three canonical data flow analyzers for the core of an applicative higher-order programming language. The first analyzer is based on a direct semantics of the language, the second on a continuation-semantics of the language, and the last on the direct semantics of CPS terms. All analyzers compute the control flow graph of the source program and hence our results apply to a large class of data flow analyses. A comparison of the information gathered by our analyzers establishes the following points: 1. The results of a direct analysis of a source program are incomparable to the results of an analysis of the equivalent CPS program. In other words, the translation of the source program to a CPS version may increase or decrease static information. The gain of information occurs in non-distributive analyses and is solely due to the duplication of the analysis of the continuation. The loss of information is due to the confusion of distinct procedure returns. 2. The analyzer based on the continuation semantics produces more accurate results than both direct analyzers, but again only in non-distributive analyses due to the duplication of continuations along every execution path. However, when the analyzer explicitly accounts for looping constructs, the results of the semantic-CPS analysis are no longer computable. In view of these results, we argue that, in practice, a direct data flow analysis that relies on some amount of duplication would be as satisfactory as a CPS analysis.
Symmetric, transitive, geometric deformation and intensity variation invariant nonrigid image registration

Non-rigid registration of medical images is often posed as an algorithmic problem. While algorithms are important, it is equally critical to investigate non-rigid registration axiomatically: what properties should a registration algorithm possess and how do these properties influence the objective functions of the registration algorithms? In this paper, we present four possible properties that a non-rigid registration algorithm may possess: symmetry, transitivity, geometric deformation invariance, and intensity variation invariance. We also investigate the theoretical and practical implications of these properties, and propose a new non-rigid registration algorithm that provably satisfies these properties. We present experimental results of the use of this algorithm on cardiac and brain images to show that it satisfies the above properties with a very small numerical error.
Ten Benchmark Database Queries for Location-based Services

Location-based services (l-services for short) comprise an emerging application involving spatiotemporal databases. In this paper, we discuss this type of application in terms of database requirements and provide a set of ten benchmark database queries (plus two operations for loading and updating data). The list includes selection queries on stationary and moving reference objects, join queries and unary operations on trajectories of moving objects. We also survey recent work in query processing for those query types, with an emphasis on indexing moving objects, and suggest candidates for efficiently supporting databases for l-services.
From Emergency Management to Managing Emergence: A Genealogy of Disaster Management in Jamaica

The common narrative in disaster studies positions the field's paradigm shift from postevent response to preevent mitigation as a progressive development in knowledge on how to reduce disasters' impacts on public safety, human welfare, and development. Although the incorporation of participatory methods and vulnerability analysis has undoubtedly made valuable contributions to reducing human suffering, these techniques continue the biopolitics of disaster management that early critiques of hazards studies identified three decades ago. This article adopts an analytics of assemblage to analyze the topological transformations in disaster management that sustain its will to truth even as the elements comprising disaster management—for example, bodies, institutions, techniques, strategies, and rationalities—are reconfigured into assemblages of disaster mitigation. Through a genealogy of Jamaican disaster management, I show how participatory and mitigation techniques were deterritorialized from marginalized experiences of disaster and reterritorialized into mitigation policies through the confluence of local disaster events and the global emergence of sustainable development and resilience theory. Rather than offering new forms of empowerment and security from unpredictable change, institutionalized disaster mitigation articulates disaster preparedness with sustainability's calculative foresight and resilience theory's visions of life as an emergent socioecological system to extend logistical orderings of life to the everyday socioecological metabolisms that make up daily existence. Institutionalized mitigation enacts a new series of power relations through an immunitary logic that problematizes adaptability as the source of, and solution to, the threat that disasters pose to neoliberal order.
Patterns of Touching between Preschool Children and Male and Female Teachers.

PERDUE, VALERIE P., and CONNOR, JANE MARANTZ. Patterns of Touching between Preschool Children and Male and Female Teachers. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1978, 49, 1258-1262. The frequency and types of physical touching that occurred between preschool teachers and children were observed in 4 classrooms, each of which contained a male and a female teacher. Teachers touched children of their own sex more often than children of the opposite sex. When male teachers touched a female child, this touch was more likely to occur in the context of a helping situation than when they touched a male child. Boys, but not girls, showed differences in the rates of touching male and female teachers. The role of nonverbal communication in sex-role socialization is discussed.
Global exponential stabilization on the n-dimensional sphere

In this paper, we show that the existence of centrally synergistic potential functions on the n-dimensional sphere, denoted by Sn, is a sufficient condition for the global asymptotic stabilization of a point in Sn. Additionally, if these functions decrease exponentially fast during flows and are bounded from above and from below by some polynomial function of the tracking error, then the reference point can be globally exponentially stabilized. We construct two kinds of centrally synergistic functions: the first kind consists of a finite family of potential functions on Sn while the second kind consists of an uncountable number of potential functions on Sn. While the former generates a simpler jump logic, the latter is optimal in the sense that it generates flows with minimal length.
Cavity-enhanced coherent light scattering from a quantum dot

A microcavity enhances the efficiency of resonant photon scattering, generating pure indistinguishable single photons. The generation of coherent and indistinguishable single photons is a critical step for photonic quantum technologies in information processing and metrology. A promising system is the resonant optical excitation of solid-state emitters embedded in wavelength-scale three-dimensional cavities. However, the challenge here is to reject the unwanted excitation to a level below the quantum signal. We demonstrate this using coherent photon scattering from a quantum dot in a micropillar. The cavity is shown to enhance the fraction of light that is resonantly scattered toward unity, generating antibunched indistinguishable photons that are 16 times narrower than the time-bandwidth limit, even when the transition is near saturation. Finally, deterministic excitation is used to create two-photon N00N states with which we make superresolving phase measurements in a photonic circuit.
Low-Complexity Constrained Constant Modulus SG-based Beamforming Algorithms with Variable Step Size

In this paper, two low-complexity adaptive step size algorithms are investigated for blind adaptive beamforming. Both of them are used in a stochastic gradient (SG) algorithm, which employs the constrained constant modulus (CCM) criterion as the design approach. A brief analysis is given for illustrating their properties. Simulations are performed to compare the performances of the novel algorithms with other well-known methods. Results indicate that the proposed algorithms achieve superior performance, better convergence behavior and lower computational complexity in both stationary and non-stationary environments.
Power Function Forgetting Curves as an Emergent Property of Biologically Plausible Neural Network Models

Empirical forgetting curve data have been shown to follow a power function. In contrast, many connectionist models predict either an exponential decay or flat forgetting curves. This paper simulates power function forgetting curves in a Hopfield network modified to incorporate the more biologically realistic assumptions of bounded weights and a distribution of learning rates. The modified model produces power function forgetting curves. The bounded weights introduce exponential decay for individual weights, and a power function forgetting curve when summing exponential decays with different learning rates. Because these assumptions are biologically reasonable, power function forgetting curves may be an emergent property of biological networks. The results fit empirical data and indicate that forgetting curves restrict possible implementation of models of memory. Il a ete demontre que les donnees associees a la courbe d'oubli suivent une fonction de puissance. Par ailleurs, plusieurs modeles connexionniste.
Geriatric Depression Scale

Har du gett upp många aktiviteter och intressen ? Tycker du att ditt liv är tomt ? Blir du ofta uttråkad ? Är du oftast på gott humör ? Är du rädd att något skall hända dig ? Känner du dig oftast glad och nöjd ? Känner du dig ofta hjälplös ? Vill du hellre stanna hemma än gå ut och prova nya sysselsättningar ? Tycker du att du har fler problem med ditt minne än de flesta andra ? Tycker du att det känns bra att leva ? Känner du dig tämligen värdelös som du är nu ? Känner du dig full av energi ? Tycker du att din situation är hopplös ? Tycker du att de flesta andra har det bättre än du ? Har du svårt att somna och/eller vaknar du tidigt på morgonen ? Är du ofta orolig och ängslig ? Kan du ibland känna så kraftig oro att det känns outhärdligt ? Har du ofta smärtor och/eller värk i kroppen ? Oroar du dig ofta för att du har en kroppslig sjukdom ? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej ja nej GERIATRIC DEPRESSION SCALE
INFECTIOUS DISEASE AND SEXUAL ATTITUDES 2 in perceived vulnerability to disease ?

A study (N = 411) investigated the relationship between chronic individual differences in germ aversion and sociosexual attitudes (short-term mating orientation, long-term mating orientation, and anticipated future sexual promiscuity), and also tested whether the magnitudes of these relations differ depending on the temporary perceptual salience of disease threat. Results revealed person-by-situation interactions. When the threat of disease was temporarily salient, germ aversion correlated negatively with short-term mating orientation and with future sexual promiscuity, and correlated positively with long-term mating orientation; these effects were either weaker or nonexistent under control conditions. These effects emerged most clearly among women.
Human Body Segmentation in the Presence of Occlusion

Human body segmentation in complex situation is an important processing stage in video surveillance. The results have great affects on tracking, behavior recognition or object identification. In this paper, we present a method to segment region in which human bodies are overlapping or walking together. The multiple human objects region is segmented using potential function clustering in the vertical projection histograms of the region, the segmented results are verified by analyzing their geometry features. If the results are not consistent with the human geometry feature, it shows that multiple humans are overlapping. A binocular vision algorithm is proposed to segment the region based on distance. The Experimental results prove the algorithm works robustly, adaptively and efficiently.
System-Level Analysis of Genes and Functions Affecting Survival During Nutrient Starvation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

An essential property of all cells is the ability to exit from active cell division and persist in a quiescent state. For single-celled microbes this primarily occurs in response to nutrient deprivation. We studied the genetic requirements for survival of Saccharomyces cerevisiae when starved for either of two nutrients: phosphate or leucine. We measured the survival of nearly all nonessential haploid null yeast mutants in mixed populations using a quantitative sequencing method that estimates the abundance of each mutant on the basis of frequency of unique molecular barcodes. Starvation for phosphate results in a population half-life of 337 hr whereas starvation for leucine results in a half-life of 27.7 hr. To measure survival of individual mutants in each population we developed a statistical framework that accounts for the multiple sources of experimental variation. From the identities of the genes in which mutations strongly affect survival, we identify genetic evidence for several cellular processes affecting survival during nutrient starvation, including autophagy, chromatin remodeling, mRNA processing, and cytoskeleton function. In addition, we found evidence that mitochondrial and peroxisome function is required for survival. Our experimental and analytical methods represent an efficient and quantitative approach to characterizing genetic functions and networks with unprecedented resolution and identified genotype-by-environment interactions that have important implications for interpretation of studies of aging and quiescence in yeast.
Lyα Line Spectra of the First Galaxies: Dependence on Observed Direction to the Underlying Cold Dark Matter Filament

The first galaxies in the universe are built up where cold dark matter (CDM) forms large-scale filamentary structure. Although the galaxies are expected to emit numerous Lyα photons, they are surrounded by plentiful neutral hydrogen with a typical optical depth for Lyα of ~105 (H I halos) before the era of cosmological reionization. The H I halo almost follows the cosmological Hubble expansion with some anisotropic corrections around the galaxy because of gravitational attraction by the underlying CDM filament. In this paper, we investigate the detectability of the Lyα emissions from the first galaxies, examining their dependence on viewing angles. Solving the Lyα line transfer problem in an anisotropically expanding H I halo, we show that the escape probability from the H I halo is the largest in the direction along the filament axis. If the Lyα source is observed with a narrowband filter, the difference in apparent Lyα line luminosities among viewing angles can be a factor of ≳40 for an extreme case. Furthermore, we evaluate the predicted physical features of the Lyα sources and flux magnification by the gravitational lensing effect due to clusters of galaxies along the filament. We conclude that by using next-generation space telescopes such as JWST, the Lyα emissions from the first galaxies whose CDM filament axes almost face us can be detected with S/N ≳ 10.