Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of Requirements Traceability in System Development

In the field of software development, there is never a shortage of debates regarding the relative merits of methods, practices, and specific techniques for analysis, design, and coding activities. Not far from the top of the "most controversial" list is the topic of requirements traceability and its role in defining and implementing systems. Although the arguments may well go on for decades, and tools will assuredly evolve to support both more and less artifact traceability, there can be little doubt about one thing: Requirements traceability has been shown to be an effective technique in some development practices, particularly for those classes of systems for which software failure is not an option.
Network Anomaly Detection Based on Wavelet Analysis

Signal processing techniques have been applied recently for analyzing and detecting network anomalies due to their potential to find novel or unknown intrusions. In this paper, we propose a new network signal modelling technique for detecting network anomalies, combining the wavelet approximation and system identification theory. In order to characterize network traffic behaviors, we present fifteen features and use them as the input signals in our system. We then evaluate our approach with the 1999 DARPA intrusion detection dataset and conduct a comprehensive analysis of the intrusions in the dataset. Evaluation results show that the approach achieves high-detection rates in terms of both attack instances and attack types. Furthermore, we conduct a full day's evaluation in a real large-scale WiFi ISP network where five attack types are successfully detected from over 30 millions flows.
The de novo Transcriptome and Its Analysis in the Worldwide Vegetable Pest, Delia antiqua (Diptera: Anthomyiidae)

The onion maggot Delia antiqua is a major insect pest of cultivated vegetables, especially the onion, and a good model to investigate the molecular mechanisms of diapause. To better understand the biology and diapause mechanism of the insect pest species, D. antiqua, the transcriptome was sequenced using Illumina paired-end sequencing technology. Approximately 54 million reads were obtained, trimmed, and assembled into 29,659 unigenes, with an average length of 607 bp and an N50 of 818 bp. Among these unigenes, 21,605 (72.8%) were annotated in the public databases. All unigenes were then compared against Drosophila melanogaster and Anopheles gambiae. Codon usage bias was analyzed and 332 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were detected in this organism. These data represent the most comprehensive transcriptomic resource currently available for D. antiqua and will facilitate the study of genetics, genomics, diapause, and further pest control of D. antiqua.
Tradeoff analysis of delay-power-CSIT quality of generalized dynamic backpressure algorithm for energy efficient OFDM systems

In this paper, we analyze the fundamental power-delay tradeoff in point-to-point OFDM systems under imperfect channel state information quality and non-ideal circuit power. We consider a family of generalized dynamic backpressure (GDBP) algorithms parameterized by α which determines the relative importance of the system delay. The transmitter determines the rate and power control actions based on the instantaneous channel state information (CSIT) and the queue state information (QSI). We exploit a general fluid queue dynamics using a continuous time dynamic equation. Using the sample-path approach and renewal theory, we decompose the average delay in terms of multiple unfinished works along a sample path, and derive an upper bound on the average delay under the GDBP power control, which is asymptotically accurate at small delay regime. We show that despite imperfect CSIT quality and non-ideal circuit power, the average power (P) of the GDBP policy scales with delay (D) as P = O(Dexp(1/D)) at small delay regime. The impact of CSIT quality and circuit power appears as the coefficients of the scaling law.
Nipple detection in craniocaudal digital mammograms

Digital mammography brought many changes in the development of Computer Aided Detection (CAD) algorithms. Many preprocessing steps on mammograms are made automatically before the detection and diagnosis process begins. One of the very important steps is mammogram registration, which helps in finding asymmetrical regions in left and right breast. Mammogram registration is done by determining some key points of the breast. Key points are generally coordinates of the nipple and the pectoral muscle position. Nipple position can be detected using the algorithm presented in this paper. There are two possible nipple locations, outside and inside the skin-air interface. Each of these two cases has different intensity properties that should be taken into consideration when detecting the exact position.
Use Mean Shift to Track Neuronal Axons in 3D

Morphology is very important in help neuroscientists understand neuronal functions and connectivity of neurons. Using confocal microscopy researchers can acquire 3D images of neuronal axons in high resolution and study how axons innervate muscular fibers. To test different innervation models, researchers need to track every single axons and its branches in 3D. A robust segmentation and tracking method is needed to follow each axon in 3D. Challenges are that axons may appear touching each other in the image and make it difficult to segment. In addition, split and merge of axons require judicious image processing to correctly track axons in these cases. We present a 3-step segmentation and tracking algorithm to address these problems. Our proposed method includes nonlinear anisotropic diffusion for noise removal and edge enhancement, morphological operation for edge detection, and mean shift for tracking in three dimensions. The method can segment contacting objects and track the axons when they merge or split
Gather: Design for Impromptu Activity Support Utilizing Social Networks

This project examines impromptu gathering of 20-30 year old urban dwellers. We examine current products in the space, and look to Voice User Interfaces to provide highly interactive interfaces in the mobile context. We summarize data from a diary study and focus groups into a set of design principles for this product space. Finally, we propose our design for Gather, a system that meets the communication and coordination needs for impromptu activity planning. By utilizing multiple interaction modes, this system facilitates and rapidly promotes the formation and commencement of activities.
Canonical Polyadic Decomposition of Third-Order Tensors: Reduction to Generalized Eigenvalue Decomposition

Canonical polyadic decomposition (CPD) of a third-order tensor is decomposition in a minimal number of rank-1 tensors. We call an algorithm algebraic if it is guaranteed to find the decomposition when it is exact and if it relies only on standard linear algebra (essentially sets of linear equations and matrix factorizations). The known algebraic algorithms for the computation of the CPD are limited to cases where at least one of the factor matrices has full column rank. In this paper we present an algebraic algorithm for the computation of the CPD in cases where none of the factor matrices has full column rank. In particular, we show that if the famous Kruskal condition holds, then the CPD can be found algebraically.
Perfect bodies: The relation of gay men’s body image to their appearance enhancement product consumption behaviors

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how dimensions of body image relate to product involvement among gay men. Design/methodology/approach A survey consisting of body image and product involvement measures was administered to 147 self-identified gay men. Multiple regression was used to examine the relations of the significant body image variables to each of the consumer behavior outcomes in separate analyses. Findings The more the men were behaviorally invested in their appearance predicted a higher frequency of shopping each month for apparel and grooming-related products. The stronger the men’s psychological drive to have a lean body and the more they focused on their appearance and invested in their looks, the more likely they were to view apparel as important to them. The more psychologically and behaviorally involved the gay men reported being with their appearance, the more importance they gave to grooming-related products. Research limitations/implications The sample was drawn primarily from a college population, limiting findings to this age cohort. Practical implications The findings of the current research demonstrate the importance of appearance management products to the gay market, where commodities are often used to enhance or maintain a perceived self-image. Retailers can use this information to establish appropriate service options and effective marketing initiatives. Originality/value This study replicated others that have investigated gay men’s involvement in consumer products. However, the current study looked at the relationship between involvement and body image.
Record of tropical interannual variability of temperature and water vapor from a combined AIRS‐MLS data set

[1] We utilize a merged AIRS and MLS temperature and water vapor record (August 2004 to March 2010) to study the atmospheric variability of these quantities. The seasonal and spatial distribution of temperature and humidity shows the tropical western Pacific (TWP, 8°S–8°N, 120°E–170°E) to be a location with persistent deep convection and the tropical central Pacific (TCP, 8°S–8°N, 120°W–170°W) to be a region of subsidence, consistent with previous work. Furthermore, our estimates of 3.9 ± 0.3 ppmv and 4.9 ± 0.9 ppmv for the tropical mean stratospheric entry water vapor concentration and saturation mixing ratio, respectively, are well within previous estimates from a wide variety of observations. We also find that the interannual variability modes of the El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) both impact the tropopause region. The TWP (TCP) experiences enhancements (cancellation) of temperature anomalies when the ENSO and QBO are in phase. When these interannual modes fall out of phase the additive behavior of the anomalies migrate to the TCP with the TWP experiencing weaker anomalies. In both cases a change in the water vapor distribution is also observed. Our results are consistent with previous results, showing that this migration of anomaly enhancement and cancellation is a result of the ENSO impact on the Walker Circulation and the period when this occurs relative to the phase of the QBO. Our findings suggest that when the ENSO and QBO are out of phase, the TCP water vapor distribution may have a substantial impact on the tropical zonal water vapor distribution.
Micromechanics-Based Durability Study of Polyvinyl Alcohol-Engineered Cementitious Composite

Durability of engineered cementitious composites (ECC) reinforced with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fiber is investigated. ECCs have been realized as ductile strain-hardening cementitious composites with tensile strain capacity up to 5%. This material is being applied in new construction and for the repair and retrofit of structures. A micromechanics-based approach is adopted in this durability study. The micromechanics-based model relates fiber, matrix, and interface parameters to composite properties through knowledge of microdeformation mechanisms beyond the elastic stage. Composite property changes resulting from environmental loading are expected to be a manifestation of changes in properties at the fiber, matrix, and/or interface level. This concept is examined in this paper by experimentally determining the changes in the fiber and fiber-matrix interface properties with specimens exposed to accelerated testing and correlating such changes to changes in the ductility of composites exposed to the same accelerated testing conditions. The accelerated test used in this study is a hot water immersion test simulating a long-term hot and humid environment. It is found that the fiber-matrix interface chemical bond increases while the apparent fiber strength decreases when the exposure time reaches 26 weeks. Correspondingly the composite ductility also decreases. The micromechanical model provides a rational means of interpreting and correlating the data from these 2 levels of testing. Despite the deterioration, PVA-ECC is found to retain tensile ductility more than 200 times that of normal concrete or normal fiber-reinforced concrete after exposure to an equivalent of 70 years or more of hot and humid environmental conditions.
Building reconstruction using manhattan-world grammars

We present a passive computer vision method that exploits existing mapping and navigation databases in order to automatically create 3D building models. Our method defines a grammar for representing changes in building geometry that approximately follow the Manhattan-world assumption which states there is a predominance of three mutually orthogonal directions in the scene. By using multiple calibrated aerial images, we extend previous Manhattan-world methods to robustly produce a single, coherent, complete geometric model of a building with partial textures. Our method uses an optimization to discover a 3D building geometry that produces the same set of façade orientation changes observed in the captured images. We have applied our method to several real-world buildings and have analyzed our approach using synthetic buildings.
Colored Image Encryption and Decryption Using Chaotic Lorenz System and DCT2

In this paper, a scheme for the encryption and decryption of colored images by using the Lorenz system and the discrete cosine transform in two dimensions (DCT2) is proposed. Although chaos is random, it has deterministic features that can be used for encryption; further, the same sequences can be produced at the transmitter and receiver under the same initial conditions. Another property of DCT2 is that the energy is concentrated in some elements of the coefficients. These two properties are used to efficiently encrypt and recover the image at the receiver by using three different keys with three different predefined number of shifts for each instance of key usage. Simulation results and statistical analysis show that the scheme high performance in weakening the correlation between the pixels of the image that resulted from the inverse of highest energy values of DCT2 that form 99.9 % of the energy as well as those of the difference image.
Choosing parameters for detecting DDoS attack

DDoS attack has always been a major threat for information security. Realizing the complexity and difficulty in dest-end detection, researchers have switched their focus on “source-end detection”. And CUSUM is considered an efficient method in source-end detection. However, there is no guidance about how to choose the parameters in CUSUM, which dramatically affect the performance of detections. So this article discusses and simulates the selection of these parameters, to provide reference for further research.
Cooking with robots: designing a household system working in open environments

We propose a cooking system that operates in an open environment. The system cooks a meal by pouring various ingredients into a boiling pot on an induction heating cooker and adjusts the heating strength according to the user's instructions. We then describe how the system incorporates robotic- and human-specific elements in a shared workspace so as to achieve a cooperative rudimentary cooking capability. First, we use small mobile robots instead of built-in arms to save space, improve flexibility and increase safety. Second, we use detachable visual markers to allow the user to easily configure the real-world environment. Third, we provide a graphical user interface to display detailed cooking instructions to the user. We hope insights obtained in this experiment will be useful for the design of other household systems in the future.
Formal Semantics of Runtime Monitoring, Verification, Enforcement and Control

Runtime monitoring can be used to verify, enforce and control the dynamic execution of a target program at runtime to detect property violations, enforce desired properties and actively correct the execution, respectively. However, the state-of-the-art study lacks an appropriate formal program semantics of runtime monitoring. In this paper, we propose a theory of runtime control at an appropriate level of formalization to provide a formal program semantics of instrumented target programs under the control of controlling programs. Our theory provides a complete formal semantics for real implementations of runtime monitoring and control, but still retains a good balance between implementation and generality. Indeed, the theory encompasses the formalization of key implementation techniques, such as program instrumentation, synchronization on passively monitored actions, and synthesis of controlling programs from specifications. On the other hand, the theory is so generic and expressive that many existing formalisms about runtime monitoring can be considered as special cases of our theory.
Phosphorylation-dependent interaction with 14-3-3 in the regulation of bad trafficking in retinal ganglion cells.

PURPOSE To focus on the proteomic analysis of 14-3-3 proteins and to determine their cellular localization and functional role during glaucomatous neurodegeneration. METHODS Complementary proteomic approaches were used to identify phosphorylated proteins in a chronic pressure-induced rat model of glaucoma. To detect interacting proteins, specific protein complexes were eluted using coimmunoprecipitation and recombinant protein-based affinity pull-down for subsequent mass spectrometric analysis. Western blot analysis was performed for validation of the proteomic findings, and immunohistochemical analysis of rat eyes and human donor eyes determined the cellular localization of 14-3-3 proteins. In addition, in vivo treatment experiments were conducted using JNK and protein phosphatase inhibitors. RESULTS Findings of mass spectrometry, Western blotting, and tissue immunolabeling revealed the presence of different 14-3-3 isotopes in RGCs and their up-regulation and phosphorylation during glaucomatous neurodegeneration. Consecutive experiments through proteomic analysis identified various proteins interacting with 14-3-3, which included calmodulin and a proapoptotic member of the Bcl-2 family, Bad; 14-3-3 was found to keep phospho-Bad sequestered in the cytoplasm. However, this association was disrupted in ocular hypertensive eyes in correlation with Bad dephosphorylation and 14-3-3 phosphorylation, thereby leading to mitochondrial translocation of Bad for apoptotic function. Inhibition of JNK activity and of protein phosphatase activity complementarily secured the 14-3-3-scaffold of Bad in the cytoplasm and preserved optic nerve axons in ocular hypertensive eyes. CONCLUSIONS Findings of this in vivo study identify that an important protein family associated with checkpoint control pathways, 14-3-3, is involved in cellular signaling during glaucomatous neurodegeneration in a phosphorylation-dependent manner.
Comparison and Evaluation of Real-Time PCR, Real-Time Nucleic Acid Sequence-Based Amplification, Conventional PCR, and Serology for Diagnosis of Mycoplasma pneumoniae

ABSTRACT Mycoplasma pneumoniae is a common cause of community-acquired pneumonia and lower-respiratory-tract infections. Diagnosis has traditionally been obtained by serological diagnosis, but increasingly, molecular techniques have been applied. However, the number of studies actually comparing these assays is limited. The development of a novel duplex real-time PCR assay for detection of M. pneumoniae in the presence of an internal control real-time PCR is described. In addition, real-time nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) on an iCycler apparatus is evaluated. These assays were compared to serology and a conventional PCR assay for 106 clinical samples from patients with lower-respiratory-tract infection. Of the 106 samples, 12 (11.3%) were positive by all the molecular methods whereas serology with acute sample and convalescent samples detected 6 (5.6%) and 9 (8.5%), respectively. Clinical symptoms of the patients with Mycoplasma-positive results were compared to those of the other patients with lower-respiratory-tract infections, and it was found that the results for mean lower age numbers as well as the presence of chills, increased erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and raised C-reactive protein levels showed significant differences. Molecular methods are superior for diagnosis of M. pneumoniae, providing more timely diagnosis. In addition, using real-time methods involves less hands-on time and affords the ability to monitor the reaction in the same tube.
SmartWalk: Enhancing Social Network Security via Adaptive Random Walks

Random walks form a critical foundation in many social network based security systems and applications. Currently, the design of such social security mechanisms is limited to the classical paradigm of using fixed-length random walks for all nodes on a social graph. However, the fixed-length walk paradigm induces a poor trade-off between security and other desirable properties. In this paper, we propose SmartWalk, a security enhancing system which incorporates adaptive random walks in social network security applications. We utilize a set of supervised machine learning techniques to predict the necessary random walk length based on the structural characteristics of a social graph. Using experiments on multiple real world topologies, we show that the desired walk length starting from a specific node can be well predicted given the local features of the node, and limited knowledge for a small set of training nodes. We describe node-adaptive and path-adaptive random walk usage models, where the walk length adaptively changes based on the starting node and the intermediate nodes on the path, respectively. We experimentally demonstrate the applicability of adaptive random walks on a number of social network based security and privacy systems, including Sybil defenses, anonymous communication and link privacy preserving systems, and show up to two orders of magnitude improvement in performance.
Building Rich Web Applications with Ajax

Looks at how developers are going back to the future by building Web applications using Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), a set of technologies mostly developed in the 1990s. A key advantage of Ajax applications is that they look and act more like desktop applications. Proponents argue that Ajax applications perform better than traditional Web programs. As an example, Ajax applications can add or retrieve new data for a page it is working with and the page will update immediately without reloading.
On the Properties for Iteration of a Compact Operator with Unstructured Perturbation

We consider certain speed estimates for Krylov subspace methods (such as GMRES) when applied upon systems consisting of a compact operator K with small unstructured perturbation B. Information about the decay of singular values of K is also assumed. Our main result is that the Krylov method will perform initially at superlinear speed when applied upon such pre-conditioned system. However, with large iteration numbers the eeect of B is seen to be dominant. As a byproduct, we present several upper speed estimates with explicit constant that should be useful for numerical purposes.