Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Party Pooper: Third-Party Libraries in Android

Third-party libraries (3PLs), such as advertising networks, gaming networks, and analytics engines, are an integral part of modern mobile platforms. If Android developers want to integrate functionality provided by 3PLs, they must bundle opaque binary code into their applications. Unfortunately, developers must in essence overprivilege their Android applications by requesting dangerous permissions, such as full Internet access, solely for the purpose of supporting 3PLs. Mixing 3PLs and dangerous permissions introduces vulnerabilities and risks to potential compromise of private user data, especially in an uncurated application marketplace. This work presents AdDroid, a proof-of-concept implementation that applies the principle of least privilege to mobile applications and advertising 3PLs by introducing the notion of third-party privileges directly into the Android API. AdDroid minimizes the burden of change to application developers and consumers, improves privacy, and supplies independent controls for 3PLs. AdDroid eliminates overprivileging in 44% of advertising-supported free applications. We also study how much advertising-supported “free” applications may cost users in terms of their limited monthly data plans and how AdDroid addresses this concern. Finally, we present possible deployment plans of the new system.
Accurate Analysis of Finite-Volume Lumped Elements in Metamaterial Absorber Design

To simulate lumped elements (LEs) more accurately in metamaterial absorber (MA) designs, a finite-volume LE (FVLE) model based on the time-domain finite-integral theorem (TDFIT) is proposed in this paper. In MA designs, lumped resistors and capacitors play an important role in dissipating electromagnetic (EM) fields, controlling resonant frequencies, and achieving an impedance matching. Through a rigorous mathematical derivation, we successfully prove that an arbitrary lumped resistor or capacitor can be modeled more accurately by modifying the conductivity or permittivity of a finite-volume model in TDFIT method. Compared with existing traditional zero-volume LE (ZVLE) solutions, the coupling effect between the circuit part and the EM part can be considered much better in the proposed FVLE model. For this reason, the numerical results of the FVLE model match the measured results much better. In addition, a result comparison is given to validate that the challenges of grid dispersion error and frequency response error in the classic ZVLE solution can be greatly overcome by the proposed FVLE model.
Faculty attitudes toward distance education in Utah public colleges and universities

The purpose of this study was to obtain faculty attitude information toward distance education at the Utah public colleges and universities. Faculty attitudes were deemed important with more and more money being allocated in Utah to the development of distance education. A survey of Utah public higher education faculty was conducted in the fall of 1997. The survey achieved a 66% return rate, a total of 421 faculty members. The survey found that 95% of the Utah faculty was familiar with distance education and that a high number would be willing to teach distance courses, even if they hadn’t already done so. Communication, Education and Business were the most willing academic areas and the most willing group was the comprehensive university group of Southern Utah University and Weber State University. The faculty believed distance education was an effective educational method and they were supportive of their institutions being involved in distance education delivery. They were slightly positive toward using distance education in their academic areas, but held slightly negative attitudes toward the use of distance education in their own courses. They were most familiar with correspondence study, but favored the use of twoway video and two way audio methods. Nonverbal communication skills were important t faculty, but they did not agree that nonverbal skills could be as effective in the distance classrooms. Accessibility issues were
Understanding the Biological Functions of DCF1 Based on Molecular Interaction Network

It is important to understand the neural dendrite formation at molecular level. Unfor- tunately, the regulation mechanisms underlying neural dendrite formation remain unclear. In our previous work, it is found that dentritic cell factors (DCF1) express differentially between undif- ferentiated and differentiated neural stem cells (NSCs). In this study, we compared whole-genome gene expression data for DCF1-knockout and wild type mice. By integrating gene expression data and protein-protein interaction data, a connected subnetwork that consist of differentially expressed genes is identified. Analyzing the affected subnetwork, we find that glycolysis is enriched for down- regulated genes in the extracted subnetwork while biosynthetic process is enriched for up-regulated genes, which give hints that DCF1 is possibly related to these functions and provides guidelines for future experiment verification.
Registration Framework using Mixture Models

We formulate feature registration problems as maximum likelihood or Bayesian maximum a posteriori estimation problems using mixture models. An EM-like algorithm is proposed to jointly solve for the feature correspondences as well as the geometric transformations. A novel aspect of our approach is the embedding of the EM algorithm within a deterministic annealing scheme in order to directly control the fuzziness of the correspondences. The resulting algorithm— termed mixture point matching (MPM)—can solve for both rigid and high dimensional (thin-plate spline-based) nonrigid transformations between point sets in the presence of noise and outliers. We demonstrate the algorithm’s performance on 2D and 3D data.
The Impact of Vision Impairment for Children (IVI_C): validation of a vision-specific pediatric quality-of-life questionnaire using Rasch analysis.

PURPOSE To validate the Impact of Vision Impairment for Children (the IVI_C), a new vision-specific pediatric instrument designed to assess the affect of impaired vision on quality of life (QoL) in children. METHODS The IVI_C was administered to vision-impaired and normally sighted students, 8 to 18 years of age. Reliability and validity were tested, and the IVI_C was subjected to Rasch analysis to assess the scale unidimensionality, measurement characteristics, response options, and targeting. RESULTS The mean (SD) presenting bilateral distance visual acuity (VA) for the vision-impaired group (n = 122) was 1.10 (0.79) logMAR and 1.15 (0.80) logMAR for near VA. After the initial response categories were collapsed from five to three, content validity was further supported by good person and item fit parameters. The person separation index (PSI) was 0.85, which indicates that the IVI_C can assess QoL across children of several participation levels. The scale was shown to be unidimensional after principal components analysis (PCA) of the residuals (t-test; P = 0.48, P = 0.34). Significant differences in overall person measures between the vision-impaired and normally sighted groups substantiated the scale discriminant validity (ANOVA; F = 78.75; P < 0.0001). Guttman split-half correlations for temporal, mode (face-to-face and telephone), and interobserver administrations were 0.95, 0.90, and 0.86, respectively, supporting scale reliability. CONCLUSIONS The modified IVI_C is a unidimensional, reliable, and valid scale for assessing QoL of children with vision impairment. It provides a valid means of assessing the outcomes of interventions and needs in children with vision impairment.
Alcohol Consumption and Age in Thailand from 2006 to 2011: An exploration of non-linear relationships

RESEARCH ARTICLE Alcohol Consumption and Age in Thailand from 2006 to 2011: An Exploration of Non-Linear Relationships Pannapa Changpetch and Dominique Haughton Department of Mathematical Sciences, Bentley University, Waltham, MA, USA Department of Mathematical Sciences and Global Studies, Bentley University, Waltham, MA, USA Affiliated Researcher, Paris 1 University (SAMM), Paris, France Affiliated Researcher, Toulouse 1 University (TSE-R), Toulouse, France
Self-Explaining Agents in Virtual Training

Virtual training systems are increasingly used for the training of complex, dynamic tasks. To give trainees the opportunity to train autonomously, intelligent agents are used to generate the behavior of the virtual players in the training scenario. For effective training however, trainees should be supported in the reflection phase of the training as well. Therefore, we propose to use self-explaining agents, which are able to generate and explain their own behavior. The explanations aim to give a trainee insight into other players' perspectives, such as their perception of the world and the motivations for their actions, and thus facilitate learning. Our project investigates the possibilities of self-explaining agents in virtual training systems, and the effects on learning.
Developmental Changes in Glucocorticoid Receptor and 11β-Hydroxysteroid Dehydrogenase Oxidative and Reductive Activities in Rat Leydig Cells.

Glucocorticoids directly regulate testosterone production in Leydig cells through a glucocorticoid receptor (GR)-mediated repression of the genes that encode testosterone biosynthetic enzymes. The extent of this action is determined by the numbers of GR within the Leydig cell, the intracellular concentration of glucocorticoid, and 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (11βHSD) activities that interconvert corticosterone (in the rat) and its biologically inert derivative, 11-dehydrocorticosterone. As glucocorticoid levels remain stable during pubertal development, GR numbers and 11βHSD activities are the primary determinants of glucocorticoid action. Therefore, in the present study, levels of GR and 11βHSD messenger RNA (mRNA) and protein were measured in rat Leydig cells at three stages of pubertal differentiation: mesenchymal-like progenitors (PLC) on day 21, immature Leydig cells (ILC) that secrete 5α-reduced androgens on day 35, and adult Leydig cells (ALC) that are fully capable of testosterone biosynthesi.
Respiratory symptoms of rural Fijian and Indian children in Fiji.

BACKGROUND--Significant ethnic differences exist in the respiratory morbidity of children in the Fiji Islands. Indian children have higher national hospital admission rates for asthma whereas Fijian children have higher admission rates for pneumonia. In Suva City the prevalence of wheeze is similar in Fijian and Indian children, productive cough is more common in Fijians, and bronchial hyperresponsiveness is more common in Indians. This study was undertaken to see whether ethnic differences in national hospital admission rates are reflected in the prevalence of respiratory symptoms in rural children. METHODS--A respiratory symptoms questionnaire in three languages with known repeatability was returned by 487 (98.2%) of 496 class 4 primary school children with a mean age of 9.3 years living in Nausori District, an agrarian region with a climate similar to Suva City. RESULTS--The prevalence of one or more episodes of wheezing in the last 12 months was similar in Fijians (19.8%) and Indians (19.4%). However, 8.9% of Indian children had experienced four or more episodes of wheeze in the last 12 months compared with only 2.9% of Fijian children. Productive cough on most mornings occurred more frequently in Fijians (35.8%) than Indians (23.9%), but this difference was not significant after controlling for the presence of a smoker in the home. CONCLUSIONS--This study provides the first evidence that frequent wheeze (four or more episodes in the last 12 months) is more prevalent in Indian than Fijian children. The higher prevalence of productive cough in Fijian children may be related to exposure to smoking in the home.
Research on Multi-Mode Medical Image Fusion Algorithm Based on Wavelet Transform and the Edge Characteristics of Images

This article presents a wavelet transformation based multi-mode medical image fusion algorithm which combined with the edge characteristics of sub-image, making wavelet transformation on multi-source medical image to be integrated firstly, and then set up appropriate fusion operator to make integration according to edge feature of sub-images transformed and human eyes’ different sensitivity on images in HVS, and reconstruct fusion image through inverse transformation at last. Tested by the integration experiment on brain MRI-PET images, it is proved that this method can combine anatomical information and functional information together more effectively, and retain the edge characteristics of original image better. Keyword:multi-mode medical image; image fusion; wavelet transforamtion; edge feature
Molecular epidemiology and phylogenetic analysis of diverse bovine astroviruses associated with diarrhea in cattle and water buffalo calves in China

Astroviruses are the principal causative agents of gastroenteritis in humans and have been associated with diarrhea in other mammals as well as birds. However, astroviral infection of animals had been poorly studied. In the present study, 211 rectal swabs collected from cattle and water buffalo calves with mild to severe diarrhea were tested for bovine astrovirus (BAstV) by RT-PCR. Results: 92/211 (43.6%) samples were positive for BAstV, at a rate of 46.10% (71/154) in cattle and 36.84% (21/57) in water buffalo. Phylogenetic analysis based on the partial and full-length of 25 ORF2 amino acid sequences obtained in this study classified the Guangxi BAstVs isolates into five subgroups under the genus of Mamastrovirus, genotype MAstV33, which suggested that the water buffalo was a new host of this genogroup that previously included only cattle and roe deer. Despite the origin of the host, the Guangxi BAstV isolates were closely related to the BAstV Hong Kong isolates (B18/HK and B76-2/HK), but highly divergent from the BAstV NeuroS1 isolate previously associated with neurologic disease in cattle in the U.S.A. Nucleotide sequence-based characterization of the ORF1b/ORF2 junction and corresponding overlapping regions showed distinctive properties, which may be common to BAstVs. Our results suggested that cattle and water buffalo are prone to infection of closely related astroviruses, which probably evolved from the same ancestor. The current study described astroviruses in water buffalo for the first time and is thus far among the largest epidemiological investigations of BAstV infection in cattle conducted in China.
Syntactic Identification of Attribution in the RST Treebank

We present a system that automatically identiﬁes Attribution, an intra-sentential relation in the RST Tree-bank. The system uses uses syntactic information from Penn Treebank parse trees. It identiﬁes Attributions as structures in which a verb takes an SBAR complement, and achieves a f-score of . 92. This supports our claim that the Attribution relation should be eliminated from a discourse treebank, since it represents information that is already present in the Penn Treebank, in a different form. More generally, we suggest that intra-sentential relations in the RST Treebank might all be eliminable in this way.
Data centre monitoring and alerting system using WSN

Wireless sensor networks have become more popular in the domains like environmental sensing, health monitoring, home and building automation, smart energy, green computing etc. The application of wireless sensor networks can be extended for the effective monitoring of the data centre environment. Almost all the data centres are equipped with high end servers, data storage equipments which must be protected against cooling failures by providing necessary monitoring tools and alerting mechanism to the administrators. It is therefore very essential to design a system that monitors and alerts about the environmental conditions of the data centres. The work carried out to design an effective data centre monitoring system has been discussed in this paper. This paper discusses both hardware and software development aspects to achieve the desired goal. The wireless personal area network has been established in the data centres using low power wireless sensor motes which are powered by Zigbee protocol and Zigbee to internet gateway system. This will enable the monitoring of data centre environmental parameters such as temperature and the relative humidity over the internet. This system also has a SMS/e-mail based alerting provision whenever the sensed parameters go beyond the preset threshold values.
Embedding with syndrome coding based on BCH codes: The corrected version of this paper is now available as full text. To view the original document as presented in the printed proceedings (with its errors), download the supplemental file

With Matrix Embedding based on Hamming Codes, coding theory has entered the field of steganography. Even though this class of structured codes had been used successfully in practical systems to minimize the number of embedding changes, thus maximizing embedding efficiency, further developments, such as Wet Paper Codes, were based on random codes instead.This paper redraws attention to structured codes, which are built according to deterministic rules. In particular, we study BCH Codes for embedding with syndrome coding, using either a structured matrix Hk x n as in Matrix Embedding, or a generator polynomial g(χ). We propose different approaches for embedding without locked elements, which differ in the tradeoff reached between embedding complexity and efficiency.As some practical systems allow more secure steganography if embedding constraints -- in terms of locked elements -- are respected, we demonstrate how BCH Codes can be employed in a Wet Paper Codes scenario as well. Based on a deduced analogy between code rate and the maximum number of lockable elements, we can find appropriate code parameters for a given fraction of locked elements in the cover, complexity constraints, and desired probability of successful embedding.
Tactical network design and simulator with Wireless Mesh Network-based Backbone architecture

For tactical networks, rapid reconfiguration and recovery of network topology is highly required. In this paper, we propose an effective tactical network architecture with WMN(Wireless Mesh Network)-based backbone. To reduce the computational and maintenance complexities of tactical networks, a hierarchical architecture is considered in the proposed architecture. The proposed architecture is called called TMB (Tactical Mesh Backbone). In addition, we develop an OPNET simulator not only to evaluate the performances, but also to develop and improve core algorithms for the TMB architecture such as routing, topology management, mobility support and so on.
A Data Handling Architecture for a Prototype Federal Application

The Distributed Object Computation Testbed (DOCT) Project is a collaboration led by the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The DOCT project was initiated with the objective of creating a testbed system for handling complex documents on geographically distributed data archives and computing platforms. The project focuses on technologies that apply to the information needs of federal agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense. In particular, the patent filing and amendment processing application of the USPTO is used as the prototype application for this testbed. This paper describes the DOCT system architecture and the USPTO application.
On the Meaning of Internal Rates of Return and Why an Internal Rate of Return is Not an Investment Criterion

All conceivable solutions to the internal rate of return equation are shown to have meaning as well as use. Internal rates of return are the units in which value is measured and the quantities of such units. This result implies a single internal rate of return cannot be an investment criterion. Moreover, a rate of return should not be considered in isolation; a rate is fully meaningful only when considered alongside its unorthodox partners.
Heterogeneity of catecholamine-containing vesicles in PC12 cells.

Vesicular catecholamine release has been measured amperometrically from undifferentiated rat PC12 cells using carbon fiber microelectrodes. During superfusion with high K(+) saline, vesicular release was detected from approximately 50% of 200 cells investigated. On repeated stimulation the releasable pool of vesicles is rapidly depleted, while vesicle contents remains constant. Vesicular catecholamine release is not restored within 1 h after depletion of the releasable pool. Although the distribution of the cube root of vesicle contents of many cells is apparently Gaussian, maximum likelihood analysis of single cell data demonstrates double Gaussian distributions with median vesicle contents of 141 and 293 zeptomole. It is concluded that the releasable pool of vesicles in PC12 cells is heterogeneous. In the presence of l-DOPA mean vesicle contents increases, but cessation of release cannot be prevented, indicating that the number of releasable vesicles in PC12 cells is limited by a slow rate of vesicle cycling.
The Variable Quiescence of Centaurus X-4

Centaurus X-4 is one of the best-studied low-mass neutron star transients in quiescence. Thanks to XMM-Newton's large throughput, Centaurus X-4 was observed at the highest signal-to-noise ratio ever. This allowed us to discern rapid (>100 s), large (45% ± 7% rms in the 10-4 to 1 Hz range) intensity variability, especially at low energies. In order to highlight the cause of this variability, we divided the data into intensity intervals and fit the resulting spectra with the canonical model for neutron star transients in quiescence, i.e., an absorbed power law plus a neutron star atmosphere. The fit is consistent with a variable column density plus variability in (at least) one of the spectral models. Variations in the neutron star atmosphere might suggest that accretion onto the active millisecond radio pulsar emitting X-rays at the shock between a radio pulsar wind and inflowing matter from the companion star.
Multilingual Aliasing for Auto-Generating Proposition Banks

Semantic Role Labeling (SRL) is the task of identifying the predicate-argument structure in sentences with semantic frame and role labels. For the English language, the Proposition Bank provides both a lexicon of all possible semantic frames and large amounts of labeled training data. In order to expand SRL beyond English, previous work investigated automatic approaches based on parallel corpora to automatically generate Proposition Banks for new target languages (TLs). However, this approach heuristically produces the frame lexicon from word alignments, leading to a range of lexicon-level errors and inconsistencies. To address these issues, we propose to manually alias TL verbs to existing English frames. For instance, the German verb drehen may evoke several meanings, including “turn something” and “film something”. Accordingly, we alias the former to the frame TURN.01 and the latter to a group of frames that includes FILM.01 and SHOOT.03. We execute a large-scale manual aliasing effort for three target languages and apply the new lexicons to automatically generate large Proposition Banks for Chinese, French and German with manually curated frames. We present a detailed evaluation in which we find that our proposed approach significantly increases the quality and consistency of the generated Proposition Banks. We release these resources to the research community.