Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Introducing Accountability to Anonymity Networks

Many anonymous communication (AC) networks rely on routing traffic through proxy nodes to obfuscate the originator of the traffic. Without an accountability mechanism, exit proxy nodes risk sanctions by law enforcement if users commit illegal actions through the AC network. We present BackRef, a generic mechanism for AC networks that provides practical repudiation for the proxy nodes by tracing back the selected outbound traffic to the predecessor node (but not in the forward direction) through a cryptographically verifiable chain. It also provides an option for full (or partial) traceability back to the entry node or even to the corresponding user when all intermediate nodes are cooperating. Moreover, to maintain a good balance between anonymity and accountability, the protocol incorporates whitelist directories at exit proxy nodes. BackRef offers improved deployability over the related work, and introduces a novel concept of pseudonymous signatures that may be of independent interest. We exemplify the utility of BackRef by integrating it into the onion routing (OR) protocol, and examine its deployability by considering several system-level aspects. We also present the security definitions for the BackRef system (namely, anonymity, backward traceability, no forward traceability, and no false accusation) and conduct a formal security analysis of the OR protocol with BackRef using ProVerif, an automated cryptographic protocol verifier, establishing the aforementioned security properties against a strong adversarial model.
Maximal degeneracy points of GKZ systems

Motivated by mirror symmetry, we study certain integral representations of solutions to the Gel’fand-Kapranov-Zelevinsky(GKZ) hypergeometric system. Some of these solutions arise as period integrals for Calabi-Yau manifolds in mirror symmetry. We prove that for a suitable compactification of the parameter space, there exists certain special boundary points, which we called maximal degeneracy points, at which all but one solutions become singular. 3/2/96 † email: hosono@sci.toyama-u.ac. jp ‡ email: lian@max.math.brandeis.edu ⋄ email: yau@math.harvard. edu
Work-Related Values of Managers

The cultural dimensions of Power Distance and Uncertainty Avoidance described by Hofstede (1980a) were tested using samples from seven different organizations, four Sudanese, two British, and a Pakistani organization in Britain, in an attempt to replicate and extend Hofstede's work. With large Power Distance and weak Uncertainty Avoidance, work-related values of Sudanese managers were found to lie in accordance with Hofstede's findings for some other African and Arabic nations. The British scores were very close to the ones reported by Hofstede. The study showed that the Pakistanis in Britain, despite a lifetime spent in Britain, scored closer to their country of origin than to their current home.
A Decision Support Model for Multi-Tenant Architectures

Business software is increasingly moving from a traditional on-premises deployment model to a Software as a Service deployment model. In a Software as a Service deployment model, the possession and ownership of the software application is separated from its use. The software is hosted by a Software as a Service provider, relieving the customer organization from the responsibility for supporting the software, and purchasing and maintaining server hardware for it. The service provider can achieve substantial cost savings by applying economies of scale. This involves a system where customers share services, databases or resources and is known as multi-tenancy. The option to enable multi-tenancy is not binary. There exist various multi-tenant architectures, because it can be applied at different levels in the architecture. Also, multi-tenancy is not necessarily beneficial, certain situations require a more single-tenant approach. The appropriate level of resource sharing is crucial for a software provider, because it defines an architectural decision. However, there is insufficient knowledge and understanding to determine the most suitable multi-tenant architecture for the software application of a specific Software as a Service provider. This research focuses on the development of a Multi-Tenant Architecture Selection Model to assist service providers with this architectural decision problem. First by means of a structured literature study a set of twelve multi-tenant architectures is identified. These multitenant architectures describe which resources in an application’s system are shared among tenants, discriminating between the application and database layer. With the same literature study a list of twenty two decision criteria, representing factors that influence the decision, is identified. They are based on consequences, drawbacks and benefits, considerations and requirements related to multi-tenancy. The multi-tenant architectures and decision criteria are then evaluated by domain experts. The Analytic Hierarchy Process is selected as the decision making method, based on the complexity of the decision problem, the lack of quantitative data, and the importance of weighing the decision criteria. After this selection, all multi-tenant architectures are ranked on each decision criterion, using domain experts. This results in a decision matrix showing the performance score of each architecture with respect to each criterion. This matrix can then be used by Software as a service providers performing the analytic hierarchy process. The set of multi-tenant architectures, the list of decision criteria, the decision matrix and the final Multi-Tenant Architecture Selection Model are the key deliverables of this research and support architects in choosing the most suitable architectural pattern. This research is the first step in helping architects of Software as a Service providers make better architectural decisions, saving them time, effort and potential problems in the future.
Sitting and standing intention can be decoded from scalp EEG recorded prior to movement execution

Low frequency signals recorded from non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG), in particular movement-related cortical potentials (MRPs), are associated with preparation and execution of movement and thus present a target for use in brain-machine interfaces. We investigated the ability to decode movement intent from delta-band (0.1–4 Hz) EEG recorded immediately before movement execution in healthy volunteers. We used data from epochs starting 1.5 s before movement onset to classify future movements into one of three classes: stand-up, sit-down, or quiet. We assessed classification accuracy in both externally triggered and self-paced paradigms. Movement onset was determined from electromyography (EMG) recordings synchronized with EEG signals. We employed an artifact subspace reconstruction (ASR) algorithm to eliminate high amplitude noise before building our time-embedded EEG features. We applied local Fisher's discriminant analysis to reduce the dimensionality of our spatio-temporal features and subsequently used a Gaussian mixture model classifier for our three class problem. Our results demonstrate significantly better than chance classification accuracy (chance level = 33.3%) for the self-initiated (78.0 ± 2.6%) and triggered (74.7 ± 5.7%) paradigms. Surprisingly, we found no significant difference in classification accuracy between the self-paced and cued paradigms when using the full set of non-peripheral electrodes. However, accuracy was significantly increased for self-paced movements when only electrodes over the primary motor area were used. Overall, this study demonstrates that delta-band EEG recorded immediately before movement carries discriminative information regarding movement type. Our results suggest that EEG-based classifiers could improve lower-limb neuroprostheses and neurorehabilitation techniques by providing earlier detection of movement intent, which could be used in robot-assisted strategies for motor training and recovery of function.
Regulation of Transketolase Like 1 Gene Expression in the Murine One-Cell Stage Embryos

In mice, transcription from the zygotic genome starts at the mid-one-cell stage after fertilization. Previous studies showed that an enhancer is not required for transcription at this stage, and that the enhancer-dependent mechanism of transcription is established during the two-cell stage. However, these results were obtained using reporter gene assays with promoters derived from viruses, rather than from endogenous genes. We conducted a reporter-gene assay using the promoter of Tktl1, which is transcribed after fertilization, to investigate the mechanism regulating gene expression at the one-cell stage. When a plasmid containing the 2467 bp upstream and 25 bp downstream of the Tktl1 transcription start site (TSS) was microinjected into the nuclei of growing oocytes, and one-cell stage and early and late two-cell-stage embryos, transcriptional activity was detected in the one-cell- and two-cell-stage embryos, but not in the oocytes. It was highest at the early two-cell stage and was reduced at the late two-cell stage. The decrease in activity at the late two-cell stage was prevented by inhibiting the second round of DNA replication, suggesting that the transcriptionally repressive state is established during the two-cell stage by a mechanism coupled to DNA replication. When the Tktl1 promoter was deleted to leave 56 bp upstream of the TSS which includes GC and TATA boxes, transcriptional activity was still detected in one-cell-stage embryos, but not early or late two-cell-stage embryos. The core promoter of Tktl1 alone seems to be able to induce basal transcription at the one-cell stage. These results suggest that repressive chromatin is established after fertilization in two steps, which occur during the transition from the one- to two-cell stage and during DNA replication at the two-cell stage.
Recognizing shrinkable complexes is NP-complete

We say that a simplicial complex is shrinkable if there exists a sequence of admissible edge contractions that reduces the complex to a single vertex. We prove that it is NP-complete to decide whether a (three-dimensional) simplicial complex is shrinkable. Along the way, we describe examples of contractible complexes which are not shrinkable.
Pre‐convolved Radiance Caching

The incident indirect light over a range of image pixels is often coherent. Two common approaches to exploit this inter‐pixel coherence to improve rendering performance are Irradiance Caching and Radiance Caching. Both compute incident indirect light only for a small subset of pixels (the cache), and later interpolate between pixels. Irradiance Caching uses scalar values that can be interpolated efficiently, but cannot account for shading variations caused by normal and reflectance variation between cache items. Radiance Caching maintains directional information, e.g., to allow highlights between cache items, but at the cost of storing and evaluating a Spherical Harmonics (SH) function per pixel. The arithmetic and bandwidth cost for this evaluation is linear in the number of coefficients and can be substantial. In this paper, we propose a method to replace it by an efficient per‐cache item pre‐filtering based on MIP maps — such as previously done for environment maps — leading to a single constant‐time lookup per pixel. Additionally, per‐cache item geometry statistics stored in distance‐MIP maps are used to improve the quality of each pixel's lookup. Our approximate interactive global illumination approach is an order of magnitude faster than Radiance Caching with Phong BRDFs and can be combined with Monte Carlo‐raytracing, Point‐based Global Illumination or Instant Radiosity.
Risk Factors and the Development of Competence in Children from Low-Income Countries: The Importance of Social-Emotional Outcomes and Multiple Process Models

A major focus of the second paper in The Lancet Child Development series was identification of biological and psychosocial risk factors that compromise the cognitive competence of young children from developing countries. Additional evidence is presented on two issues raised in the second paper: (a) the necessity to go beyond cognitive outcomes when defining children’s competence, and include critical dimensions of social-emotional development such as attachment and temperament, and (b) the need to assess underlying mechanisms such as covariance among risk factors, and additive co-action and nonlinear interaction processes, through which exposure to multiple risks can compromise the development of infants and young children. Implications for the identification of children at risk and for designing interventions are presented.
The Medium Shapes the Message: McLuhan and Grice Revisited in Race Talk Online †

Compared with the wealth of research accumulated on face-to-face social interactions, relatively little research has examined race talk within anonymous Web 2.0 mediums. We investigated online threaded comments on YouTube video clips of two race-related incidents involving New Zealand television presenter Paul Henry. Through thematic content analysis, thematic analysis, and discourse analysis, it was found that characteristics unique to Web 2.0 were associated with the appearance of old-fashioned racism and high-levels of obscenity (together with modern racism/symbolic racism). The hyper-low context of communication led to interpretive ambiguity; conversation sequences failed to follow Gricean maxims for cooperative communication, with most comments attracting no replies and the modal sequence being two turns. There was almost never resolution to a disagreement online: rather there was points-scoring against opposing opinions and a tangential style of dialogue influenced by the asynchronous and anonymous nature of communication. The YouTube medium shaped but did not determine the message, as obscenity and racist content in the target video from the eliciting public figure influenced the subsequent degree of obscenity and hostility in the responses. A third corpus that examined responses to our own research on race talk presented on a news website (stuff.co.nz) underlined this point by engendering a dramatically different response to the same subject, retaining the tangential style of communication, but with little to no obscenity. A framework to understand race talk as a function of both medium and context effects is proposed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Antagonistic Microbial Interactions: Contributions and Potential Applications for Controlling Pathogens in the Aquatic Systems

Despite the active and intense treatment of wastewater, pathogenic microorganisms and viruses are frequently introduced into the aquatic environment. For most human pathogens, however, this is a rather hostile place, where starvation, continuous inactivation, and decay generally occur, rather than successful reproduction. Nevertheless, a great diversity of the pathogenic microorganisms can be detected, in particular, in the surface waters receiving wastewater. Pathogen survival depends majorly on abiotic factors such as irradiation, changes in water ionic strength, temperature, and redox state. In addition, inactivation is enhanced by the biotic interactions in the environment. Although knowledge of the antagonistic biotic interactions has been available since a long time, certain underlying processes and mechanisms still remain unclear. Others are well-appreciated and increasingly are applied to the present research. Our review compiles and discusses the presently known biotic interactions between autochthonous microbes and pathogens introduced into the aquatic environment, including protozoan grazing, virus-induced bacterial cell lysis, antimicrobial substances, and predatory bacteria. An overview is provided on the present knowledge, as well as on the obvious research gaps. Individual processes that appear promising for future applications in the aquatic environment are presented and discussed.
Calibration and Scoring of Tests With Multiple-Choice and Constructed-Response Item Types

This article discusses and demonstrates combining scores from multiple-choice (MC) and constructed-response (CR) items to create a common scale using item response theory methodology. Two specific issues addressed are (a) whether MC and CR items can be calibrated together and (b) whether simultaneous calibration of the two item types leads to loss of information. Procedures are discussed and empirical results are provided using a set of tests in the areas of reading, language, mathematics, and science in three grades.
Linking off-target kinase pharmacology to the differential cellular effects observed among PARP inhibitors

PARP inhibitors hold promise as a novel class of targeted anticancer drugs. However, their true mechanism of action is still not well understood following recent reports that show marked differences in cellular effects. Here, we demonstrate that three PARP drug candidates, namely, rucaparib, veliparib, and olaparib, have a clearly different in vitro affinity profile across a panel of diverse kinases selected using a computational approach that relates proteins by ligand similarity. In this respect, rucaparib inhibits nine kinases with micromolar affinity, including PIM1, PIM2, PRKD2, DYRK1A, CDK1, CDK9, HIPK2, CK2, and ALK. In contrast, olaparib does not inhibit any of the sixteen kinases tested. In between, veliparib inhibits only two, namely, PIM1 and CDK9. The differential kinase pharmacology observed among PARP inhibitors provides a plausible explanation to their different cellular effects and offers unexplored opportunities for this drug class, but alerts also on the risk associated to transferring directly both preclinical and clinical outcomes from one PARP drug candidate to another.
Data structures and algorithms for topological analysis

One of the steps of geometric modeling is to know the topology and/or the geometry of the objects considered. This paper presents different data structures and algorithms used in this study. We are particularly interested by algebraic structures, eg homotopy and homology groups, the Betti numbers, the Euler characteristic, or the Morse-Smale complex. We have to be able to compute these data structures, and for (homotopy and homology) groups, we also want to compute their generators. We are also interested in algorithms CIA and HIA presented in the thesis of Nicolas DELANOUE, which respectively compute the connected components and the homotopy type of a set defined by a CSG (constructive solid geometry) tree. We would like to generalize these algorithms to sets defined by projection.
Economic Evaluation of Treatments for Pediatric Bilateral Severe to Profound Sensorineural Hearing Loss: An Australian Perspective

Objectives: In Australia, surgical treatment options for children with bilateral severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss exist in a continuum ranging from unilateral cochlear implantation (CI), sequential bilateral CI through to simultaneous bilateral CI, depending on the condition. When treatment options are mutually exclusive, the mean costs and benefits of each treatment group are summed together to obtain the total mean costs and benefits. This enables an incremental analysis of treatment options in the context of the treated populations. The objective was to evaluate the cost-utility of current Australian CI treatment practices in children using domestic costs and consequences when compared with bilateral hearing aids (HAs). Research Design: Economic evaluation including a Markov model based on secondary sources. Setting: The base case modeled a government health payer perspective over a child's lifetime. Primary and secondary school education costs were also assessed. Intervention: Bilateral HAs compared with CI, including unilateral, sequential bilateral, or simultaneous bilateral CI weighted according to treatment. Main Outcome Measures: Incremental costs per quality adjusted life year. Results: Approximately 42% of children in Australia with unilateral CI did not transition to sequential bilateral nor undergo simultaneous bilateral implantation. This differs from previous economic evaluations that assumed 100% of children transitioned to sequential bilateral CI treatment or were treated with simultaneous bilateral CI. The incremental cost utility of unilateral cochlear implantation compared with HAs was AUD 21,947/QALY. The weighted average incremental cost utility of the combined cochlear implantation treatment groups was AUD 31,238/QALY when compared with HAs. Conclusion: Previous economic evaluations of cochlear implantation assumed 100% of unilaterally treated patients would transition to sequential bilateral or be treated with simultaneous bilateral implantation. This approach does not take into account the total treated population, where a proportion of patients are treated with unilateral CI. CI was cost effective when compared with HAs, and included children treated with unilateral, sequential bilateral, and simultaneous bilateral CI. The model was sensitive to the number of assessment and habilitation visits. Alternative health service models with cost efficiencies are needed to reduce after care costs.
Atomistic study of electronic structure of PbSe nanowires

Lead Selenide (PbSe) is an attractive ‘IV-VI’ semiconductor material to design optical sensors, lasers, and thermoelectric devices. Improved fabrication of PbSe nanowires (NWs) enables the utilization of low dimensional quantum effects. The effect of cross-section size (W) and channel orientation on the band structure of PbSe NWs is studied using an 18 band sp3d5 tight-binding theory. The band gap increases almost with the inverse of the W for all the orientations indicating weak symmetry dependence. [111] and [110] NWs show higher ballistic conductance for the conduction and valence band compared to [100] NWs due to the significant splitting of the projected L-valleys in [100] NWs.
A novel fluorescence-based assay for the rapid detection and quantification of cellular deoxyribonucleoside triphosphates

Current methods for measuring deoxyribonucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs) employ reagent and labor-intensive assays utilizing radioisotopes in DNA polymerase-based assays and/or chromatography-based approaches. We have developed a rapid and sensitive 96-well fluorescence-based assay to quantify cellular dNTPs utilizing a standard real-time PCR thermocycler. This assay relies on the principle that incorporation of a limiting dNTP is required for primer-extension and Taq polymerase-mediated 5–3′ exonuclease hydrolysis of a dual-quenched fluorophore-labeled probe resulting in fluorescence. The concentration of limiting dNTP is directly proportional to the fluorescence generated. The assay demonstrated excellent linearity (R2 > 0.99) and can be modified to detect between ∼0.5 and 100 pmol of dNTP. The limits of detection (LOD) and quantification (LOQ) for all dNTPs were defined as <0.77 and <1.3 pmol, respectively. The intra-assay and inter-assay variation coefficients were determined to be <4.6% and <10%, respectively with an accuracy of 100 ± 15% for all dNTPs. The assay quantified intracellular dNTPs with similar results obtained from a validated LC–MS/MS approach and successfully measured quantitative differences in dNTP pools in human cancer cells treated with inhibitors of thymidylate metabolism. This assay has important application in research that investigates the influence of pathological conditions or pharmacological agents on dNTP biosynthesis and regulation.