Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Secure distributed key generation in attribute based encryption systems

Nowadays usage of cloud computing is increasing in popularity and this raises new data protection challenges. In such distributed systems it is unrealistic to assume that the servers are fully trusted in enforcing the access policies. Attribute Based Encryption (ABE) is one of the solutions proposed to tackle these trust problems. In ABE the data is encrypted using the access policy and authorized users can decrypt the data only using a secret key that is associated with their attributes. The secret key is generated by a Key Generation Authority (KGA), which in small systems can be constantly audited, therefore fully trusted. In contrast, in large and distrusted systems, trusting the KGAs is questionable. This paper presents a solution which increases the trust in ABE KGAs. The solution uses several KGAs which issue secret keys only for a limited number of users. One KGA issues a secret key associated with user's attributes and the other authorities issue independently secret keys associated with generalized values of user's attributes. Decryption is possible only if the secret keys associated with the non-generalized and generalized attributes are consistent. This mitigates the risk of unauthorized data disclosure when a couple of authorities are compromised.
Network latency prediction using high accuracy prediction tree

Network latency is often used as an optimization parameter for network path construction over the Internet for various real-time applications. This paper proposes a high accuracy prediction tree method for latency estimation minimizing the need for intrusive mesh measurements. The network overlay of communication nodes is represented as a tree structure, called a prediction tree, with the latency of unmeasured network links predicted based on selected measured network links. We describe three novel heuristics that are the foundations of this high accuracy prediction tree, assisted by optimal target node selection and elimination of imprecise prediction steps. We have examined the proposed method based on publicly available data to ensure accuracy of high precision latency estimation process. Experiment results show that with 50% measurement, our proposed algorithm obtains 82% accuracy of latency prediction over a 120-node network.
Improvement of CRF-Based Accent Sandhi Prediction Using The Features Derived from Accent Rules

When developing Japanese text-to-speech (TTS) systems, algorithms to accurately predict accent types of each constituent phrase is essential for better output speech quality. In our previous studies on the accent type estimation, a CRF-based method was realized. Although this method outperformed the conventional rule-based method, the estimation accuracy of particular phrases such as those including numerals or loanwords was still not sufficient. In this paper, we newly added the features used in the rule-based estimation of these phrases as CRF features. The experimental result for JNAS corpus showed improvements in accent type estimation. As an example of possible applications of the developed method other than speech synthesis, we constructed an accent type prediction module for CALL systems. This module can automatically generate accent dictionaries of conjugation words for any Japanese texts.
Physical rehabilitation exercises assessment based on Hidden Semi-Markov Model by Kinect v2

This work investigates how Hidden Semi-Markov Model (HSMM) can be used to monitor and evaluate physical rehabilitation exercises by Kinect v2 to support medical personnel and patients during rehabilitation at home. Authors developed an exercises assessment method based on the extraction of motion features determined by clinicians. Five different rehabilitation exercises are modeled using a HSMM to provide an assessment score. The scores are compared with those obtained using the Dynamic Time Warping to discriminate which, between these two methods, best correlates doctors and physiotherapists' evaluation. Results show that HSMM can be used to evaluate exercise performances and give a feedback to physiotherapists and patients about exercise execution.
Postoperative pulmonary embolism in a three year old with Klippel–Trenaunay syndrome

Massive pulmonary embolism (PE) in a small child is a rare event and unified guidelines for its treatment are missing. Timely diagnosis and management of massive pulmonary embolism is of crucial importance for a good outcome. We describe a unique management of PE causing oxygenation failure using a combination of catheter extraction technique, and regional thrombolysis on top of systemic heparin administration and inferior vena cava filter placement. Pulmonary hypertension was treated with inhaled nitric oxide. We believe that catheter extraction technique and regional thrombolysis is an option to consider provided that resources and expertise are available. Preoperative placement of an inferior vena cava filter should be contemplated in such high risk situations.
SVM-Based Classification of Segmented Airborne LiDAR Point Clouds in Urban Areas

Object-based point cloud analysis (OBPA) is useful for information extraction from airborne LiDAR point clouds. An object-based classification method is proposed for classifying the airborne LiDAR point clouds in urban areas herein. In the process of classification, the surface growing algorithm is employed to make clustering of the point clouds without outliers, thirteen features of the geometry, radiometry, topology and echo characteristics are calculated, a support vector machine (SVM) is utilized to classify the segments, and connected component analysis for 3D point clouds is proposed to optimize the original classification results. Three datasets with different point densities and complexities are employed to test our method. Experiments suggest that the proposed method is capable of making a classification of the urban point clouds with the overall classification accuracy larger than 92.34% and the Kappa coefficient larger than 0.8638, and the classification accuracy is promoted with the increasing of the point density, which is meaningful for various types of applications.
Who Pays for Banking Supervision? Principles, Practices, and Determinants

This paper is focused on the economics of financing banking supervision. Two questions are investigated: What are the most common financing practices? Can we explain differences in current financing practices by country specific factors, using a path dependence approach? Given a sample of 90 banking supervisors (central banks and financial authorities), we perform an empirical analysis that identifies the determinants of the financing structure of banks' prudential supervision. First, the financing rule is a function of the type of supervisory authority: if the supervisor is a central bank the public funding is more likely to occur, while the probability of a supervision funded via a levy on the regulated banks is higher if the supervisor is a financial authority. Secondly, the financing rule depends on the structure of the financial systems. In the bank oriented systems, the public funding is more likely to occur. Finally the geographical factor is also significant: European countries seem to be more oriented towards the private funding regime. In general we do not find evidence of the role of the political factor, the economy's size or the level of development and legal tradition.
Mob -a Parallel Heuristic for Graph-embedding Mob { a Parallel Heuristic for Graph-embedding Y Z X

We have extended the Mob heuristic for graph partitioning [21] to grid and hypercube embedding and have e ciently implemented our new heuristic on the CM-2 Connection Machine. We have conducted an extensive series of experiments to show that it exploits parallelism, is fast, and gives very low embedding costs. For example, on the 32K-processor CM-2 it runs in less than 30 minutes on random graphs of 1 million edges and shows impressive reductions in edge costs. Due to excessive run times, other heuristics reported in the literature can only construct graph embeddings for graphs that are 100 to 1000 times smaller than those used in our experiments.
EDUCATIONAL EXPANSION AND THE INEQUALITY OF PAY: COLOMBIA 1973–78†

In this note, the authors apply to Colombia the method used in a recent paper by J. B. Knight a nd R. Sabot (1983) to measure the influence of educational expansion on the inequality of pay in East Africa. Their analysis was conducted within a framework first suggested by S. Kuznets (1955) and elaborat ed by S. Robinson (1976). Copyright 1988 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Destination‐based seed dispersal homogenizes genetic structure of a tropical palm

As the dominant seed dispersal agents in many ecosystems, frugivorous animals profoundly impact gene movement and fine‐scale genetic structure of plants. Most frugivores engage in some form of destination‐based dispersal, in that they move seeds towards specific destinations, resulting in clumped distributions of seeds away from the source tree. Molecular analyses of dispersed seeds and seedlings suggest that destination‐based dispersal may often yield clusters of maternal genotypes and lead to pronounced local genetic structure. The long‐wattled umbrellabird Cephalopterus penduliger is a frugivorous bird whose lek mating system creates a species‐specific pattern of seed dispersal that can potentially be distinguished from background dispersal processes. We used this system to test how destination‐based dispersal by umbrellabirds into the lek affects gene movement and genetic structure of one of their preferred food sources Oenocarpus bataua, a canopy palm tree. Relative to background dispersal processes, umbrellabird mating behaviour yielded more diverse seed pools in leks that included on average five times more seed sources and a higher incidence of long‐distance dispersal events. This resulted in markedly lower fine‐scale spatial genetic structure among established seedlings in leks than background areas. These species‐specific impacts of destination‐based dispersal illustrate how detailed knowledge of disperser behaviour can elucidate the mechanistic link driving observed patterns of seed movement and genetic structure.
European Carbon Prices Fundamentals in 2005-2007: The Effects of Energy Markets, Temperatures and Sectorial Production

This article aims at characterizing the daily price fundamentals of European Union Allowances (EUAs) traded since 2005 as part of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). First, the presence of two structural changes on April, 2006 following the disclosure of 2005 verified emissions and on October, 2006 following the European Commission announcement of stricter Phase II allocation allow to isolate distinct fundamentals evolving overtime. The results extend previous literature by showing that spot prices react not only to other energy markets and temperatures, but also to economic activity within the main sectors covered by the EU ETS such as proxied by sectoral production indices. Besides, the sub-period decomposition of the pilot phase gives a better grasp of institutional and market events that drive allowance price changes.
Speech, media and ethics : the limits of free expression : critical studies on freedom of expression, freedom of the press and the public's right to know

Foreword G.Marshall Acknowledgements Introduction PART ONE: FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION Harm Principle, Offence Principle, and Hate Speech The Right to Demonstrate v. the Right to Privacy: Picketing Private Homes of Public Officials The Right to Participate in Elections: Judicial and Practical Considerations PART TWO: MEDIA ETHICS, FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITIES Objective Reporting in the Media: Phantom Rather than Panacea Ethical Boundaries of Media Coverage Media Coverage of Suicide: Comparative Analysis The Work of the Press Councils in Great Britain, Canada, and Israel: A Comparative Appraisal Appendix Index
Mechanical design of a compliant prosthesis finger by structural topology optimization

This paper presents the problem formulation and design of compliant prosthesis finger. The finger is a path generating compliant mechanism. The automated synthesis of path generating mechanisms is by a structural topology optimization approach. The problem of topology optimization of continuum structures is solved using a multiobjective genetic algorithm coupled with a geometric representation scheme using fat Bezier curve that efficiently defines the variable structural geometry upon a finite element grid. A graph-theoretic chromosome encoding together with compatible crossover and mutation operators are then applied to form an effective evolutionary optimization procedure. One finger has been designed and are presented in this paper, and some concluding remarks and future work are put forward.
Academic Behaviors in Children with Convergence Insufficiency with and without Parent-Reported ADHD

Purpose. To determine if children with symptomatic Convergence Insufficiency without the presence of parent-reported Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have higher scores on the academic behavior survey (ABS). Methods. The ABS is a 6-item survey that evaluates parent concern about school performance and the parents’ perceptions of the frequency of problem behaviors that their child may exhibit when reading or performing schoolwork (such as difficulty completing work, avoidance, and inattention). Each item is scored on an ordinal scale from 0 (Never) to 4 (Always) with a total score ranging from 0 to 24. The survey was administered to the parents of 212 children 9- to 17-year old (mean age 11.8 years.) with symptomatic convergence insufficiency before enrolling into the Convergence Insufficiency Treatment Trial and to 49 children with normal binocular vision (NBV) (mean age 12.5 years). The parents reported whether the child had ADHD, and this information was used to divide the symptomatic convergence insufficiency group into the convergence insufficiency with parent report of ADHD or convergence insufficiency with parent report of no ADHD groups. Results. Sixteen percent of the convergence insufficiency group and 6% of the NBV group were classified as ADHD by parental report. An analysis of covariance showed that the total ABS score for the symptomatic convergence insufficiency with parent report of ADHD group (15.6) was significantly higher than the symptomatic convergence insufficiency with parent report of no ADHD group (11.7, p = 0.001) and the NBV group (8.7, p < 0.0001). Children with convergence insufficiency with parent report of no ADHD scored significantly higher on the ABS than the NBV group (p = 0.036). Conclusions. Children with symptomatic convergence insufficiency with parent report of no ADHD scored higher on the ABS, when compared to children with NBV. Children with parent report of ADHD or related learning problems may benefit from comprehensive vision evaluation to assess for the presence of convergence insufficiency.
Augmenting graph cut with TV-L1 approach for robust stereo matching

Stereo matching plays a significant role in various vision based systems including 3D reconstruction, robot localization, mapping and navigation and it has been an intense area of research for many years. In the last decade, with the increase in processing power and reduction in the camera cost, the stereo systems have found many new applications. In this paper, we present a stereo matching algorithm which computes the disparities with sub-pixel accuracy. The proposed method combines graph cut based stereo matching method with total variation approach to achieve improved accuracy. We demonstrate the robust performance of the algorithm on the large scale Middlebury benchmark. The algorithm has also been tested on real data and the results compare favorably with the similar category state-of-the-art algorithms.
ELFbac: Using the Loader Format for Intent-Level Semantics and Fine-Grained Protection

Adversaries get software to do bad things by rewriting memory and changing control ow. Current approaches to protecting against these attacks leave many exposures; for example, OS-level lesystem protection and OS/architecture support of the userspace/kernelspace distinction fail to protect corrupted userspace code from changing userspace data. In this paper we present a new approach: using the ELF/ABI sections already produced by the standard binary toolchain to dene, specify, and enforce ne-grained policy within an application’s address space. We experimentally show that enforcement of such policies would stop a large body of current attacks and discuss ways we could extend existing architecture to more eciently provide such enforcement. Our approach is designed to work with existing ELF executables and the GNU build chain, but it can be extended into the compiler toolchains to support code annotations that take advantage of ELFbac enforcement|while maintaining full compatibility with the existing ELF ABI.
Emotion detection in music, a survey

Mood and emotion detection can play an important role in (music) entertainment applications. There are a lot of methods for mood and emotion detection in music through acoustical feature analysis. Some perform better depending on the situation. Differences in either music or emotions or precision of a method play a role in the application of a method. This paper presents a comparison of different methods of emotion detection. This comparison will make a distinction between the precision of a certain method, the granularity of emotions and the various possible applications with all their requirements.
Detection of polyphonic music note onsets by application of the Bayesian theory of surprise

In this paper we present an onset detection algorithm that consists of two parts, the detection of transient peaks in an audio spectrum and the classification of the peaks, adapting a model derived from the Bayesian Theory of Surprise. The model is an unsupervised, robust adaptation of conjugate priors, providing the distributions of beliefs about the number of the transient peaks, in a time space as well as in a frequency space. The novelty points marked by the model are then classified according to their relevance in order to filter out non-onset events, caused for example by a background noise. It has been evaluated using a collection of over 170 music excerpts. Our experiments show that the new model can provide an overall performance close to the current state of the art solutions. We discuss the advantages of the presented approach and the ways to overcome its shortcomings and the possible directions of future research.
An exact representation of polygonal objects by C1-continuous scalar fields based on binary space partitioning

The problem considered in this work is to find a dimension independent algorithm for the generation of signed scalar fields exactly representing polygonal objects and satisfying the following requirements: the defining real function takes zero value exactly at the polygonal object boundary; no extra zero-value isosurfaces should be generated; C1 continuity of the function in the entire domain. The proposed algorithms are based on the binary space partitioning (BSP) of the object by the planes passing through the polygonal faces and are independent of the object genus, the number of disjoint components, and holes in the initial polygonal mesh. Several extensions of the basic algorithm are proposed to satisfy the selected optimization criteria. The generated BSP-fields allow for applying techniques of the function-based modelling to already existing legacy objects from CAD and computer animation areas, which is illustrated by several examples.
Low Concentrations of 5-Fluorouracil Phosphoribosyltransferase Gene Sensitizes Cancer Cells to Uracil Escherichia coli Adenovirus-mediated Transduction of Updated

5-fluorouracil (5-FU), although a widely used chemotherapuetic agent, has a limited effect in the treatment of human solid tumors due to their resistance to the cytotoxic effects of 5-FU. Escherichia coli uracil phosphoribosyltransferase (UPRT) is a pyrimidine salvage enzyme that cata lyzes the synthesis of UMP from uracil and 5-phosphoribosyl-a-l-diphosphate. The present study demonstrates that adenovirus-mediated transduction of E. coli UPRT gene results in marked sensitization of colon, gastric, liver, and pancreas cancer cell lines to low concentration of 5-FU in vitro. The in vitro bystander effect was observed when only 10% of the hepatoma Hep3B cells were infected with UPRT-expressing adenovirus. In addition, 5-FU treatment of human hepatoma or gastric cancer xenografts in nude mice transduced with UPRT was demonstrated to result in significant in vivo antitumor effects. The adenovirus vector transduc tion of the UPRT gene followed by 5-FU administration is representative of a new chemosensitization strategy for cancer gene therapy.
Solving SDD linear systems in time Õ(mlog nlog(1/ε))

We present an algorithm that on input of an n × n symmetric diagonally dominant matrix A with m non-zero entries constructs in time ˜ O ( m log n ) a solver which on input of a vector b computes a vector x satisfying || x − A + b || A <� || A + b || A in time ˜ O ( m log n log(1 /� )) 1 . The new algorithm exploits previously unknown structural properties of the output of the incremental sparsiﬁcation algorithm given in [Koutis,Miller,Peng, FOCS 2010]. We also accelerate the construction of low-stretch spanning trees by rounding the edge weights to ensure that each iteration of the hierarchical star decomposition encounters a small number of distinct edge lengths.
miR-33 controls the expression of biliary transporters, and mediates statin- and diet-induced hepatotoxicity

Bile secretion is essential for whole body sterol homeostasis. Loss‐of‐function mutations in specific canalicular transporters in the hepatocyte disrupt bile flow and result in cholestasis. We show that two of these transporters, ABCB11 and ATP8B1, are functional targets of miR‐33, a micro‐RNA that is expressed from within an intron of SREBP‐2. Consequently, manipulation of miR‐33 levels in vivo with adenovirus or with antisense oligonucleotides results in changes in bile secretion and bile recovery from the gallbladder. Using radiolabelled cholesterol, we show that systemic silencing of miR‐33 leads to increased sterols in bile and enhanced reverse cholesterol transport in vivo. Finally, we report that simvastatin causes, in a dose‐dependent manner, profound hepatotoxicity and lethality in mice fed a lithogenic diet. These latter results are reminiscent of the recurrent cholestasis found in some patients prescribed statins. Importantly, pretreatment of mice with anti‐miR‐33 oligonucleotides rescues the hepatotoxic phenotype. Therefore, we conclude that miR‐33 mediates some of the undesired, hepatotoxic effects of statins.
On the Importance of Objects in Human Action Classification

Action recognition in still images has seen major improvement in recent years due to advances in human pose estimation, object recognition and stronger feature representations. However, there are still many cases in which performance remains far from that of humans. In this paper we demonstrate that for many action classes exact localization of the objects involved in the action is paramount for the task of classiﬁcation. To obtain exact localization of the action object and its interaction with the actor, we employ a coarse-to-ﬁne approach for localizing action objects, combining semantic segmentation and contextual features as cues for detecting action objects and classifying actions. We focus on (but are not limited) to face-related actions, a subset of actions that includes several currently challenging categories. We present an average relative improvement of 35% over state-of-the art and validate through experimentation the effectiveness of our approach.