Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Scalable, Behavior-Based Malware Clustering

Anti-malware companies receive thousands of malware samples every day. To process this large quantity, a number of automated analysis tools were developed. These tools execute a malicious program in a controlled environment and produce reports that summarize the program’s actions. Of course, the problem of analyzing the reports still remains. Recently, researchers have started to explore automated clustering techniques that help to identify samples that exhibit similar behavior. This allows an analyst to discard reports of samples that have been seen before, while focusing on novel, interesting threats. Unfortunately, previous techniques do not scale well and frequently fail to generalize the observed activity well enough to recognize
Across the Transition to Adolescence

Numerous researchers have identified qualitatively different types of parent/adolescent relationships, with most relying on theoretical conceptions to derive their typologies. This study employed an inductive, statistical analytic technique (i.e., confirmatory cluster analysis) to identify qualitative differences in parent/adolescent relationships based on short-term, longitudinal data. To validate the various relationship profiles, links were examined between relationship types and adolescents' adjustment. Participants included 133 early adolescents (X = 12.5 years of age at Time 1) who were interviewed in their homes on two occasions one year apart. Although most adolescents reported having "individuated" relationships with parents, "connected" and "detached" relationships also were evident. Relationship types, which were stable over a one-year period, were associated with significant differences in adolescents `well-being. Specifically, adolescents in detached relationships reported greater anxiety, more depressive symptomatology, and lower self-worth than those in either individuated or more especially, those in connected relationships with parents.
Characterization of perceptual importance for object-based image segmentation

We propose a machine learning approach for characterizing the perceptual importance of particular regions in an image. A modular neural network architecture is adopted for encoding our usual notion of a perceptually important region in such a way that generalization of this knowledge to previously unseen images is possible. Specifically, users are allowed to specify examples of perceptually significant regions in images, which are then incorporated as training data for the network. An important characteristic of this approach is its provision for grouping distinct regions into a single perceptually significant area through the previous user guidance, unlike conventional segmentation approaches which partition the image into homogeneous regions without further specifying the relationship between these regions.
Surface electromyographic control of speech synthesis

Individuals with very high spinal cord injuries (e.g. C1-C3) may be ventilator-dependent and therefore unable to support speech breathing. However, their facial musculature is intact, given that these muscles are innervated by cranial nerves. We developed a system using surface electromyography (sEMG) recorded from facial muscles to control a phonemic interface and voice synthesizer and tested the system in healthy individuals. Users were able to use five facial gestures to control an onscreen cursor and the phonemic interface. Users had mean information transfer rates (ITRs) of 59.5 bits/min when calculating ITRs using the number of phonemes selected. To compare with orthographic systems, ITRs were also calculated using the equivalent number of letters required to spell the selected word. With this calculation, users had a mean ITR of 70.1. Results are promising for further development and testing in individuals with high spinal cord injuries.
Reliability and Validity of a Brief Measure of Loneliness with Anglo-American and Mexican American Adolescents

This article focuses on the operating characteristics of an eight-item loneliness scale developed by the second author. Data from a sample of 2,600 Mexican American and Anglo-American middle school students indicate the scale, the RULS-8, has good reliability and validity. Cronbach's alpha was . 87 for Mexican American and . 90 for Anglo-American students. Principal components factor analysis yielded one factor accounting for 55.5% of the variance, with little variation across groups. Correlations with measures of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, self-esteem, social skills, and other measures were in the direction and on the order of magnitude predictedfrom other studies of loneliness, providing evidence for construct validity. Overall, the RULS-8 appears to provide an acceptable and parsimonious measure of adolescent loneliness suitable for use in mental health surveys.
Reducing and verifying haloacetic acids in treated drinking water using a biological filter system

This study focused on reducing the haloacetic acid (HAA) concentrations in treated drinking water. HAA has been thought to be one possible nutrient supporting heterotrophic bacteria regrowth in drinking water. In this study, experiments were conducted using a pilot-scale system to evaluate the efficiency of biological filters (BF) for reducing excess HAA concentrations in water. The BF system reduced the total HAA concentration and the concentrations of five HAA species in the water. Dichloroacetic acid (DCAA), monobromoacetic acid (MBAA) and dibromoacetic acid (DBAA) were the three main HAA5 species that were present in the treated drinking water in this investigation. Combined, these three species represent approximately 77% of the HAA5 in the finished water after BF. The verification of the empirical HAA equation for the outlet in the BF system indicated linear relationships with high correlation coefficients. The empirical equation for the HAA5 concentrations in the finished water was established by examining other nutrients (e.g., dissolved organic carbon (DOC), ultraviolet absorbance at 254 nm wavelength (UV254), and ammonia nitrogen) that can reduce pathogenic contamination. These findings may be useful for designing advanced processes for conventional water treatment plants or for managing water treatment and distribution systems for providing high-quality drinking water.
RNA polymerase I can mediate expression of CAT and neo protein‐coding genes in Trypanosoma brucei.

We show that the ribosomal RNA (rRNA) promoter can efficiently direct expression of protein‐coding genes in the parasitic protozoan Trypanosoma brucei. The rRNA promoter was characterized by: (i) point mutations at the rRNA transcription initiation site which completely abolished its promoter function in transient CAT transformation assays; (ii) the alpha‐amanitin resistance of transcription of rRNA promoter‐neomycin phosphotransferase (neo) genes in stably transformed trypanosomes; and (iii) the nucleolar location of neo RNA, synthesized under the control of the rRNA promoter. The rRNA promoter‐derived CAT mRNA required a 3′ splice acceptor site and the neo mRNA was trans‐spliced and polyadenylated. In situ hybridization revealed neo RNA at the nucleolus in stably transformed trypanosomes in which rRNA promoter‐neo constructs were integrated either at a rRNA locus or at a locus for the procyclic acidic repetitive protein (PARP) coding genes. We postulate that trans‐splicing, by uncoupling the requirement for transcription of protein‐coding genes by RNA polymerase II, allows RNA polymerase I mediated protein‐coding gene transcription, presumably because a 5′ cap can be transferred to the pre‐mRNA by trans‐splicing.
The Expansion and Functional Diversification of the Mammalian Ribonuclease A Superfamily Epitomizes the Efficiency of Multigene Families at Generating Biological Novelty

The ribonuclease (RNase) A superfamily is a vertebrate-specific gene family. Because of a massive expansion that occurred during the early mammalian evolution, extant mammals in general have much more RNase genes than nonmammalian vertebrates. Mammalian RNases have been associated with diverse physiological functions including digestion, cytotoxicity, angiogenesis, male reproduction, and host defense. However, it is still uncertain when their expansion occurred and how a wide array of functions arose during their evolution. To answer these questions, we generate a compendium of all RNase genes identified in 20 complete mammalian genomes including the platypus, Ornithorhynchus anatinus. Using this, we delineate 13 ancient RNase gene lineages that arose before the divergence between the monotreme and the other mammals (∼220 Ma). These 13 ancient gene lineages are differentially retained in the 20 mammals, and the rate of protein sequence evolution is highly variable among them, which suggest that they have undergone extensive functional diversification. In addition, we identify 22 episodes of recent expansion of RNase genes, many of which have signatures of adaptive functional differentiation. Exemplifying this, bursts of gene duplication occurred for the RNase1, RNase4, and RNase5 genes of the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus), which might have contributed to the species’ effective defense against heavier pathogen loads caused by its communal roosting behavior. Our study illustrates how host-defense systems can generate new functions efficiently by employing a multigene family, which is crucial for a host organism to adapt to its ever-changing pathogen environment.
Tuberculosis Treatment Managed by Providers outside the Public Health Department: Lessons for the Affordable Care Act

Introduction Tuberculosis (TB) requires at least six months of multidrug treatment and necessitates monitoring for response to treatment. Historically, public health departments (HDs) have cared for most TB patients in the United States. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) provides coverage for uninsured persons and may increase the proportion of TB patients cared for by private medical providers and other providers outside HDs (PMPs). We sought to determine whether there were differences in care provided by HDs and PMPs to inform public health planning under the ACA. Methods We conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional analysis of California TB registry data. We included adult TB patients with culture-positive, pulmonary TB reported in California during 2007–2011. We examined trends, described case characteristics, and created multivariate models measuring two standards of TB care in PMP- and HD-managed patients: documented culture conversion within 60 days, and use of directly observed therapy (DOT). Results The proportion of PMP-managed TB patients increased during 2007–2011 (p = 0.002). On univariable analysis (N = 4,606), older age, white, black or Asian/Pacific Islander race, and birth in the United States were significantly associated with PMP care (p<0.05). Younger age, Hispanic ethnicity, homelessness, drug or alcohol use, and cavitary and/or smear-positive TB disease, were associated with HD care. Multivariable analysis showed PMP care was associated with lack of documented culture conversion (adjusted relative risk [aRR] = 1.37, confidence interval [CI] 1.25–1.51) and lack of DOT (aRR = 8.56, CI 6.59–11.1). Conclusion While HDs cared for TB cases with more social and clinical complexities, patients under PMP care were less likely to receive DOT and have documented culture conversion. This indicates a need for close collaboration between PMPs and HDs to ensure that optimal care is provided to all TB patients and TB transmission is halted. Strategies to enhance collaboration between HDs and PMPs should be included in ACA implementation.
Status of Drug-Metabolizing Enzymes after Treatment of Fat-Deficient Mice with N-Nitrosodiethylamine

Dietary deprivation of fat in male Swiss mice for 6 weeks resulted in a decrease in cytochrome c-reductase (Cyt.c-red.) activity without alteration of the activities of arylhydrocarbon hydroxylase (AHH), aminopyrene demethylase (APD), and cytochrome P-450 (Cyt. P-450) in the liver, whereas levels of glutathione-S-transferase (GST) and reduced glutathione (GSH) were significantly increased by fat-free diet feeding. Following N-nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA) administration, AHH, APD, and Cyt. P-450 significantly declined, whereas GST and GSH were stimulated in the liver of control as well as fat-deficient mice. NDEA treatment decreased the activities of AHH and APD, and increased the GST activity in the lungs of fat-deficient mice only. The higher levels of GST and/or GSH in fat deficiency may have a protective role in chemical carcinogenesis.
Multibeam Antennas Array Pattern Synthesis using Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimizer with Breeding and Subpopulations Algorithm

this paper a new effective optimization algorithm called hybrid particle swarm optimizer with breeding and subpopulation is presented. This algorithm is essentially, as PSO and GA, a population-based heuristic search technique, now in use for the optimization of electromagnetic structures, modeled on the concepts of natural selection and evolution (GA) but also based on cultural and social rules derived from the analysis of the swarm intelligence and from the interaction among particles (PSO). The optimized design of multibeam antennas arrays is reported with numerical results.
Too Much Matching

The Pairing Game is a popular classroom demonstration that illustrates how people select romantic partners who approximate their own desirability. However, this game produces matching correlations that greatly exceed the correlations that characterize actual romantic pairings, perhaps because the game does not incorporate the social relations model concept of the relationship effect. We conducted a straightforward variant of the Pairing Game that included relationship effects. As predicted, the matching correlation decreased in the modified versus the original version of the game, and the modified game also clarified difficult social relations model concepts for students. Actual romantic evaluations exhibit both consensus and idiosyncratic variability; this modification of the Pairing Game adds realism by representing both elements.
Application of Resource-based Machine Translation to Real Business Scenes

As huge quantities of documents have become available, services using natural language processing technologies trained by huge corpora have emerged, such as information retrieval and information extraction. In this paper we verify the usefulness of resource-based, or corpus-based, translation in the aviation domain as a real business situation. This study is important from both a business perspective and an academic perspective. Intuitively, manuals for similar products, or manuals for different versions of the same product, are likely to resemble each other. Therefore, even with only a small training data, a corpus-based MT system can output useful translations. The corpus-based approach is powerful when the target is repetitive. Manuals for similar products, or manuals for different versions of the same product, are real-world documents that are repetitive. Our experiments on translation of manual documents are still in a beginning stage. However, the BLEU score from very small number of training sentences is already rather high. We believe corpus-based machine translation is a player full of promise in this kind of actual business scene.
Impact of Medicaid Expansion on Early Prenatal Care and Health Outcomes

To assess the impact of Medicaid expansion for pregnant women in South Carolina and California, the authors compared change in rates of timely prenatal care, adverse infant and maternal health outcomes, and use of cesarean section for groups of pregnant women who were either uninsured or covered by Medicaid, versus women with private coverage. The results showed small and/or inconsistent changes. Provision of coverage may be the first logical step in improving health care for the uninsured, but outcomes may rely more on outreach, coordination of care, and non-medical interventions than on provision of insurance coverage per se.
STARS of MPEG decoder: a case study in worst-case analysis of discrete-event systems

STARS (STatic Analysis of Reactive Systems) is a methodology for worst-case analysis of discrete systems. Theoretical foundations of STARS have been laid down previously but no implementation has been presented so far. We introduce an implementation of STARS as an extension of YAPI, a programming interface used to model signal processing applications as process networks. We apply STARS to a YAPI model of an MPEG decoder. We show that worst-case bounds computed by STARS are quite close to simulated values (within 15%). We also show that additional effort by the designer required to build STARS models is very small compared to effort of building the YAPI simulation model, and that the run times of STARS are negligible compared to the simulation run times.
Estimating Individualized Treatment Rules Using Outcome Weighted Learning

There is increasing interest in discovering individualized treatment rules (ITRs) for patients who have heterogeneous responses to treatment. In particular, one aims to find an optimal ITR that is a deterministic function of patient-specific characteristics maximizing expected clinical outcome. In this article, we first show that estimating such an optimal treatment rule is equivalent to a classification problem where each subject is weighted proportional to his or her clinical outcome. We then propose an outcome weighted learning approach based on the support vector machine framework. We show that the resulting estimator of the treatment rule is consistent. We further obtain a finite sample bound for the difference between the expected outcome using the estimated ITR and that of the optimal treatment rule. The performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated via simulation studies and an analysis of chronic depression data.
An atomistic scale study on solidification in ultrafine interconnects

The electronic packaging technologies have been developed into the three-dimensional era to fulfill the increasing demands for lightweight, portable products. Recently, nano mamterials and structures have been investigated extensively to enable interconnection in microscale or even submicron scale. However, it is still challenging to establish the link between the atomistic scale structures to the properties of the nano materials. In addition, the physical mechanisms involved in the adoption of the nano materials have not yet been fully understood. This work presents an atomistic scale study on the solidification process in ultrafine interconnects using a phase field crystal method. The solidification rate, the grain boundary formation and the atomistic arrangement in the interconnects of different geometries are discussed. Simulation results show that the nuclei in the barrel-shaped and the rectangular joints grow faster than those in the hourglass-shaped joints. In addition, the grain boundary formation in the interconnects differs in different geometries. It is found that one of the grain boundaries in the hourglass-shaped interconnect is shifted compared to that in the thinner hourglass-shaped interconnects. Furthermore, the displacements between atoms in the simulated atomistic microstructure relative to the perfect lattice are plotted to show the geometry effect on the atomistic arrangement. Results show that the magnitude of the displacements depends on the geometry of the interconnects, and that the pattern of the stream-line plot of displacements is influenced by the position of the nucleus.
Functional Treatment of Developmental Hip Dysplasia with the Tübingen Hip Flexion Splint

Objective Developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH) is a deformity that may cause to serious disability. Early diagnosis and early treatment are very important. Our aim is to report the outcomes of infants with DDH who were treated with the Tübingen hip flexion splint. Materials and methods Retrospectively, 49 patients (45 female, four male; 60 hips) diagnosed with DDH were included in the study. For diagnosis, all patients underwent ultrasonography of the hip performed according to the Graf method. Infants whose hips were Graf type 2b or worse underwent orthotic treatment. Treatment success was defined as development into a mature hip (Graf type 1 on ultrasonography and no acetabular dysplasia apparent on the latest radiograph). Results Overall median age at the start of treatment was 18 weeks (14-25). Median total treatment time (from initial application of the splint to the end of weaning) was 17 weeks (14-20). Median duration of follow up was 13.5 months (8.5-31.5). Treatment was successful in 56/60 hips (93.3%). Of the 56 successfully treated patients, acetabular dysplasia was present early in follow up but later resolved in 4 patients. No complications were encountered in any patients in the study. Conclusion The Tübingen splint provides abduction, but due to its different design it offers the advantages of preventing hip adduction and leaving the knee and ankle joints free. Our findings suggest that in infants with DDH, the Tübingen hip flexion splint is an effective form of treatment.
A relational model of jealousy : an exploratory study integrating attachment, object relations, and intergenerational models

The present study involved the development and exploratory testing of a relational model of jealousy. The individual-psychological, sociobiological, and socio-cultural approaches to understanding jealousy and related gender differences were first reviewed. Then the basics of the attachment, object relations, and intergenerational models were described. Common themes derived from these perspectives were integrated into a framework for understanding the origins and expressions of relational jealousy in men and women. It was proposed that young adults identified as being in specific attachment-individuation and family of origin categories would have different levels of reported jealousy. It was also expected that in certain categories the number of men would be proportionally higher than the number of women and that the reverse would be true for certain other categories. University students (92 women and 62 men) completed an objective jealousy measure, a quasi-projective test of the attachment-individuation balance, and a Q-sort which measured the experience of family of origin relationships. Results revealed that attachment-individuation categories differentiated the degree of reported jealousy for both men and women. That is, those people categorized as anxiously attached showed a high level of jealousy, those categorized as self-sufficient detached showed a --. " " low level of jealousy, and those categorized as securely attached and dependent detached showed medium levels of . -. -