Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
COREAN: A proposed Model for Predicting Effort Estimation having Reuse

The estimation accuracy has been focused in various formal estimation models in recent research initiatives. The formal estimation models were developed to measure lines of code and function points in the software projects but most of them failed to improve accuracy in estimation. The concept of reusability in software development in estimating effort using artificial neural network is focused in this paper. Incorporation of reusability metrics in COCOMO II may yield better results. In COCOMO II it is very difficult to find the values of size parameters. A new model called COREAN has been proposed in this paper for better effort estimation accuracy and reliability. The proposed model has focused on two components of COCOMO II. First, instead of using RUSE cost driver, three new reuse cost drivers are introduced. Second, In order to reduce the project cost, three cost drivers such as PEXE, AEXE, LTEX are combined into single cost driver Personnel Experience (PLEX). Finally, this proposed model accuracy is more improved with the help of Enhanced RPROP algorithm and simulated annealing optimization technique.
Combined Chromatin and Expression Analysis Reveals Specific Regulatory Mechanisms within Cytokine Genes in the Macrophage Early Immune Response

Macrophages play a critical role in innate immunity, and the expression of early response genes orchestrate much of the initial response of the immune system. Macrophages undergo extensive transcriptional reprogramming in response to inflammatory stimuli such as Lipopolysaccharide (LPS). To identify gene transcription regulation patterns involved in early innate immune responses, we used two genome-wide approaches - gene expression profiling and chromatin immunoprecipitation-sequencing (ChIP-seq) analysis. We examined the effect of 2 hrs LPS stimulation on early gene expression and its relation to chromatin remodeling (H3 acetylation; H3Ac) and promoter binding of Sp1 and RNA polymerase II phosphorylated at serine 5 (S5P RNAPII), which is a marker for transcriptional initiation. Our results indicate novel and alternative gene regulatory mechanisms for certain proinflammatory genes. We identified two groups of up-regulated inflammatory genes with respect to chromatin modification and promoter features. One group, including highly up-regulated genes such as tumor necrosis factor (TNF), was characterized by H3Ac, high CpG content and lack of TATA boxes. The second group, containing inflammatory mediators (interleukins and CCL chemokines), was up-regulated upon LPS stimulation despite lacking H3Ac in their annotated promoters, which were low in CpG content but did contain TATA boxes. Genome-wide analysis showed that few H3Ac peaks were unique to either +/−LPS condition. However, within these, an unpacking/expansion of already existing H3Ac peaks was observed upon LPS stimulation. In contrast, a significant proportion of S5P RNAPII peaks (approx 40%) was unique to either condition. Furthermore, data indicated a large portion of previously unannotated TSSs, particularly in LPS-stimulated macrophages, where only 28% of unique S5P RNAPII peaks overlap annotated promoters. The regulation of the inflammatory response appears to occur in a very specific manner at the chromatin level for specific genes and this study highlights the level of fine-tuning that occurs in the immune response.
eHealth for inflammatory bowel disease self-management – the patient perspective

Abstract Background: Electronic health (eHealth) solutions may help address the growing pressure on IBD outpatient services as they encompass a component of self-management. However, information regarding patients’ attitudes towards the use of eHealth solutions in IBD is lacking. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate eHealth technology use and explore the perspectives of IBD patients on what constitutes the ideal eHealth solution to facilitate self-management. Methods: A mixed methods qualitative and quantitative analysis of the outcomes of a discussion forum and an online survey conducted at a tertiary hospital in Melbourne, Australia between November 2015 and January 2016 was undertaken. Results: Eighteen IBD patients and parents participated in the discussion forum. IBD patients expressed interest in eHealth tools that are convenient and improve access to care, communication, disease monitoring and adherence. Eighty six patients with IBD responded to the online survey. A majority of patients owned a mobile phone (98.8%), had access to the internet (97.7%), and felt confident entering data onto a phone or computer (73.3%). Most patients (98.8%) were willing to use at least one form of information and communication technology to help manage their IBD. Smartphone apps and internet websites were the two most preferred technologies to facilitate IBD self-management. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the willifngness of patients to engage with eHealth as a potential solution to facilitate IBD self-management. Future development and testing of eHealth solutions should be informed by all major stakeholders including patients to maximise their uptake and efficacy to facilitate IBD self-management.
IDS for detecting malicious non-executable files using dynamic analysis

Attackers are increasingly relying on non-executable files to launch their attacks. Anti-virus solutions can detect a high percentage of malicious files but usually cannot reach and maintain a 100% detection rate. We propose a file-level IDS that relies on automated dynamic analysis system (sandbox) to detect malicious PDF files. We achieved a 99.2% detection rate, where the rates of both the false positives and the false negatives are less than 1%. Because it does not rely on anti-virus signatures, this solution can detect malicious documents that utilize malware not covered by the anti-virus database.
Increasing the power efficiency of application specific instruction set processors using datapath optimization

Application specific instruction set processors (ASIPs) can be optimized both for speed and power taking advantage of the flexibility of a synthesized semi-custom implementation. The current case study evaluates the effect of datapath and instruction set optimisation using two examples from terrestrial digital video broadcasting (DVB-T) acquisition and tracking algorithms. Starting from a conventional, unoptimized instruction set architecture, which uses simple instructions like any commercially available DSP, incremental application specific optimizations are performed. Results in terms of cycle count and energy per task are used to evaluate the feasibility and the power efficiency of each implementation. The results show a huge potential (>6x) concerning power savings using this design methodology.
On the Efficiency of CSMA-CA Scheduling in Wireless Multihop Networks

This paper establishes that random access scheduling schemes, and more specifically CSMA-CA, yield exceptionally good performance in the context of wireless multihop networks. While it is believed that CSMA-CA performs significantly worse than optimal, this belief is usually based on experiments that use rate allocation mechanisms that grossly underutilize the available capacity that random access provides. To establish our thesis, we first compare the achievable rate region of CSMA-CA and optimal in a number of carefully constructed multihop topologies and find that CSMA-CA is always within 48% of the optimal. Motivated by this result, we next characterize the worst-case performance of CSMA-CA in neighborhood topologies representing the congested regions of larger multihop topologies by deriving the neighborhood topology that yields the worst-case throughput ratio for CSMA-CA and find that in neighborhood topologies with less than 20 edges: 1) CSMA-CA is never worse than 16% of the optimal when ignoring physical-layer constraints; and 2) in any realistic topology with geometric constraints due to the physical layer, CSMA-CA is never worse than 30% of the optimal. Considering that maximal scheduling achieves much lower bounds than the above, and greedy maximal scheduling, which is one of the best known distributed approximation of an optimal scheduler, achieves similar worst-case bounds, CSMA-CA is surprisingly efficient.
Telepathwords: Preventing Weak Passwords by Reading Users' Minds

To discourage the creation of predictable passwords, vulnerable to guessing attacks, we present Telepathwords. As a user creates a password, Telepathwords makes realtime predictions for the next character that user will type. While the concept is simple, making accurate predictions requires efficient algorithms to model users' behavior and to employ already-typed characters to predict subsequent ones. We first made the Telepathwords technology available to the public in late 2013 and have since served hundreds of thousands of user sessions. We ran a human-subjects experiment to compare password policies that use Telepathwords to those that rely on composition rules, comparing participants' passwords using two different password-evaluation algorithms. We found that participants create far fewer weak passwords using the Telepathwords-based policies than policies based only on character composition. Participants using Telepathwords were also more likely to report that the password feedback was helpful.
Geodesic distance based multi-document summarization

This paper presents a novel extractive approach which takes advantage of geodesic distance for sentence similarity computation to multi-document summarization task. Based on geodesic distance between every two sentences, the text relationship map is constructed. Sentences with higher degree in the map are selected and grouped into clusters. Finally, sentences with highest degree of each cluster are chosen to form the final summary. Experiments on DUC data are performed and the ROUGE evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed approach can be an effective way for multi-document summarization.
Oxidative stress regulates mitogen-activated protein kinases and c-Jun activation involved in heat stress and lipopolysaccharide-induced intestinal epithelial cell apoptosis

Heat stress and gut-derived endotoxinemia are common causes of multiple organ dysfunction syndrome in heat stroke patients. Evidence has demonstrated that cell apoptosis in the small intestine serves an important role in the pathogenesis of heatstroke, which leads to increased intestinal permeability to endotoxin or lipopolysaccharides (LPS) from the gut entering the circulation. However, little is known about the potential underlying mechanisms mediating heat stress combined with LPS-induced intestinal epithelial cell apoptosis. In the present study, LPS combined with heat stress induced production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), mitochondrial membrane potential disruption and cell apoptosis, which eventually led to increased intestinal permeability and reduced epithelial resistance in the IEC-6 cell line. Inductions in ROS, mitochondrial membrane potential disruption and cell apoptosis were detected by using an ROS assay kit, 5,5′,6,6′-tetrachloro-1,1′,3,3′tetraethylbenzimidazo carbocyanine iodide dye kit and annexin V-fluorescein isothiocyanate apoptosis kit, respectively. The effect of ROS on mitogen activated protein kinases (MAPKs) and c-Jun activation was investigated using the antioxidant drug, butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) by western blotting. The results of the present study demonstrated that ROS is essential to activate p38, extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) and c-Jun, but not c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), in LPS combined with heat stress treated cells. Furthermore, ROS, and activation of p38, JNK and c-Jun, were revealed to serve pro-apoptosis roles which aggravated damage to epithelial barrier integrity, as assessed by flow cytometry using Annexin V-fluorescein isothiocyanate staining and pretreatment of cells with specific inhibitors of ROS, JNK, p38 and c-Jun (BHA, SP600125, SB203580 and c-Jun peptide, respectively). Transepithelial electrical resistance and horseradish peroxidase permeability were detected in cells treated with LPS combined with heat stress, which revealed that ERK serves an anti-apoptosis role, as determined by pretreatment of cells with PD98059, a specific inhibitor of ERK. In conclusion, these findings suggested a novel role of the ROS signaling pathway which involved activation of MAPKs and c-Jun, following LPS combined with heat stress-induced IEC-6 cell apoptosis and impairment of the epithelial barrier. These results may facilitate understanding of pathological conditions involving ROS, such as heat stroke.
CHANGE DETECTION ON POINTS CLOUD DATA ACQUIRED W ITH A GROUND LASER SCANNER

Ground bas ed l as er s c anning is now wel l s ettl ed in the f iel ds of c ul tural heritage, as -buil t model l ing and monitoring appl ic ations . W e intend to us e l as er s c anning to detec t c hanges on buil ding s ites or ins ide f ac il ities , mainl y f or monitoring purpos es but al s o to be abl e to provide s ynthetic inf ormation in c as e of an emergenc y. I n both c as es , the main c ons traint is time. A minimum prec is ion on the meas ure of movements is al s o required, depending on the type of appl ic ation. Las er s c anner s eems to be the perf ec t tool f or s uc h appl ic ations as it quic kl y ac quires a l arge amount of ac c urate 3D data. But the c omparis on of s o huge datas ets impl ies the us e of appropriate s truc tures and ad-hoc al gorithms . A s pec if ic oc tree s truc ture is des c ribed, and then s everal s impl e c l oud-to-c l oud c omparis on tec hniques are pres ented. The bes t one, bas ed on the Haus dorf f dis tanc e c omputation is improved on various points . Al s o, as a f ul l automatic proc es s s eems s til l unac hievabl e, a s of tware f ramework has been devel oped. I t intends to minimiz e human intervention and theref ore prevents f rom was ting the LiDAR s peed in time-c ons uming pos t-proc es s ing operations .
Understanding video pixel processing applications for flexible implementations

Media processing system-on-chips (SoCs) mainly consist of audio encoding/decoding (e.g. AC-3, MP3), video encoding/decoding (e.g. H263, MPEG-2) and video pixel processing functions (e.g. de-interlacing, noise reduction). Video pixel processing functions have very high computational demands, as they require a large amount of computations on large amount of data (note that the data are pixels of completely decoded pictures). In this paper, we focus on video pixel processing functions. Usually, these functions are implemented in dedicated hardware. However, flexibility (by means of programmability or reconfigurability) is needed to introduce the latest innovative algorithms, to allow differentiation of products, and to allow bug fixing after fabricating chips. It is impossible to fulfill the computational requirements of these functions by current programmable media processors. To achieve efficient implementations for flexible solutions, we will study, in this paper, the application characteristics of some representative video pixel processing functions. The characteristics considered are granularity of operations, amount and kind of data accesses and degree of parallelism present in these functions. We observe that from computational granularity point of view many functions can be expressed in terms of kernels e.g. Median3 (i.e. median of three values), finite impulse response (FIR) filters, table lookups (LUT) etc. that are coarser grain than ALU, Mult, MAC, etc. Regarding the kind of data accesses, we categorize these functions as regular, regular with some data rearrangement and irregular data access patterns. Furthermore, the degree of parallelism present in these functions is expressed in terms of data level parallelism (DLP) and instruction/operation level parallelism (ILP). We show with an example that these properties can be exploited to make specialized programmable processors.
Developing a Measure to Evaluate a Positive Youth Development Program for Native Hawaiians

Objective. This study introduces the rubrics of Native Hawaiian values developed to measure youth knowledge and understanding of indigenous values along with 8 other tools to evaluate Hui Mālama o ke Kai (HMK), a culturally relevant, positive youth development, after-school program in a Native Hawaiian community. Findings from our efforts to validate the rubrics tool, as an evaluation measure, using triangulation are presented. Methods. Evaluation tools were modified through community input and measured youth risk and protective factors, including knowledge and practice of Hawaiian values. Validity and reliability of the tools were tested by analyzing internal consistency, intraclass correlations, and triangulating data sources. Results. Corroboration of results from the different data sources indicated convergent validity of measures to evaluate youth understanding and practice of Hawaiian values. Conclusions. This community-focused approach to evaluation demonstrates how multiple evaluation instruments may reliably evaluate a program.
A Comparative Study on the Use of Correlation Coefficients for Redundant Feature Elimination

Simplified Silhouette Filter (SSF) is a recently introduced feature selection method that automatically estimates the number of features to be selected. To do so, a sampling strategy is combined with a clustering algorithm that seeks clusters of correlated (potentially redundant) features. It is well known that the choice of a similarity measure may have great impact in clustering results. As a consequence, in this application scenario, this choice may have great impact in the feature subset to be selected. In this paper we study six correlation coefficients as similarity measures in the clustering stage of SSF, thus giving rise to several variants of the original method. The obtained results show that, in particular scenarios, some correlation measures select fewer features than others, while providing accurate classifiers.
Functional Significance of SRJ Domain Mutations in CITED2

CITED2 is a transcriptional co-activator with 3 conserved domains shared with other CITED family members and a unique Serine-Glycine Rich Junction (SRJ) that is highly conserved in placental mammals. Loss of Cited2 in mice results in cardiac and aortic arch malformations, adrenal agenesis, neural tube and placental defects, and partially penetrant defects in left-right patterning. By screening 1126 sporadic congenital heart disease (CHD) cases and 1227 controls, we identified 19 variants, including 5 unique non-synonymous sequence variations (N62S, R92G, T166N, G180-A187del and A187T) in patients. Many of the CHD-specific variants identified in this and previous studies cluster in the SRJ domain. Transient transfection experiments show that T166N mutation impairs TFAP2 co-activation function and ES cell proliferation. We find that CITED2 is phosphorylated by MAPK1 in vitro at T166, and that MAPK1 activation enhances the coactivation function of CITED2 but not of CITED2-T166N. In order to investigate the functional significance in vivo, we generated a T166N mutation of mouse Cited2. We also used PhiC31 integrase-mediated cassette exchange to generate a Cited2 knock-in allele replacing the mouse Cited2 coding sequence with human CITED2 and with a mutant form deleting the entire SRJ domain. Mouse embryos expressing only CITED2-T166N or CITED2-SRJ-deleted alleles surprisingly show no morphological abnormalities, and mice are viable and fertile. These results indicate that the SRJ domain is dispensable for these functions of CITED2 in mice and that mutations clustering in the SRJ region are unlikely to be the sole cause of the malformations observed in patients with sporadic CHD. Our results also suggest that coding sequence mutations observed in case-control studies need validation using in vivo models and that predictions based on structural conservation and in vitro functional assays, or even in vivo global loss of function models, may be insufficient.
Clinical Characteristics and Etiology of Travelers' Diarrhea among Korean Travelers Visiting South-East Asia

The morbidity of travelers' diarrhea (TD) is still high. This study examined the incidence of common pathogens and characteristics of TD among Korean travelers who visited South-East Asian countries. We performed a prospective study involving 479 Korean travelers with diarrheal disease from February 2009 to April 2009 and stool samples were examined and questionnaire surveys were done after arrival. Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) was found in 36.0% of TD cases, as were the following: Enteroaggregative Escherichia coli (EAEC) in 27.0%, Vibrio parahaemolyticus in 13.1%, and Norovirus in 11.5%. The detected rate of classic TD was higher in men (P = 0.007), in patients who had a shorter duration trip (P = 0.023) and in patients who drank more than 1 liter of water per day (P = 0.037). Positive stool culture rates were higher in men (P = 0.005), in hospitalized patients (P = 0.013). and in those who consumed impure water or raw foods (P = 0.033). A higher severity of disease corresponded to a significantly higher culture positivity rate (P = 0.029). We should consider the possibility of other pathogens in addition to ETEC in patients with TD who visit South-East Asia. Travelers need to educate about risk factors associated with TD.
Analysis of Linear Factor Models with Multivariate Stochastic Volatility for Stock and Bond Returns

We explore high-dimensional linear factor models in which the covariance matrix of excess asset returns follows a multivariate stochastic volatility process. We test crosssectional restrictions suggested by the arbitrage pricing theory, compare competing stochastic volatility specifications for the covariance matrix, test for the number of factors, and analyze possible sources of model misspecification. Estimation and testing of these models is feasible due to recent advances in Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. We find that five latent factors with multivariate stochastic volatility best explain excess returns for a sample of seventeen stock and bond portfolios. Analysis of cumulative latent factor shocks suggests that APT pricing restrictions, coupled with constant factor risk premia, do not adequately explain cross-sectional variation in average portfolio excess returns.
Conformal equivalence of triangle meshes

We present a new algorithm for conformal mesh parameterization. It is based on a precise notion of discrete conformal equivalence for triangle meshes which mimics the notion of conformal equivalence for smooth surfaces. The problem of finding a flat mesh that is discretely conformally equivalent to a given mesh can be solved efficiently by minimizing a convex energy function, whose Hessian turns out to be the well known cot-Laplace operator. This method can also be used to map a surface mesh to a parameter domain which is flat except for isolated cone singularities, and we show how these can be placed automatically in order to reduce the distortion of the parameterization. We present the salient features of the theory and elaborate the algorithms with a number of examples.
Blind watermarking applied to image authentication

To prevent image manipulations and fraudulent use of modified images, the embedding of semi-fragile digital watermarks into image data has been proposed. The watermark should survive modifications introduced by random noise or compression, but should not be detectable from non-authentic regions of the image The original image cannot be used by the watermark detector to verify the authenticity of the image. In this paper, we investigate the application of a recently developed quantization based watermarking scheme to image authentication. The watermarking technology, called Scalar Costa Scheme (SCS), allows reliable blind watermark detection from a small number of pixels, and thus enables the detection of local modifications to the image content.