Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Precisely Characterizing Security Impact in a Flood of Patches via Symbolic Rule Comparison

A bug is a vulnerability if it has security impacts when triggered. Determining the security impacts of a bug is important to both defenders and attackers. Maintainers of large software systems are bombarded with numerous bug reports and proposed patches, with missing or unreliable information about their impact. Determining which few bugs are vulnerabilities is difficult, and bugs that a maintainer believes do not have security impact will be de-prioritized or even ignored. On the other hand, a public report of a bug with a security impact is a powerful first step towards exploitation. Adversaries may exploit such bugs to launch devastating attacks if defenders do not fix them promptly. Common practice is for maintainers to assess the security impacts of bugs manually, but the scaling and reliability challenges of manual analysis lead to missed vulnerabilities. We propose an automated approach, SID, to determine the security impacts for a bug given its patch, so that maintainers can effectively prioritize applying the patch to the affected programs. The insight behind SID is that both the effect of a patch (either submitted or applied) and security-rule violations (e.g., out-of-bound access) can be modeled as constraints that can be automatically solved. SID incorporates rule comparison, using under-constrained symbolic execution of a patch to determine the security impacts of an un-applied patch. SID can further automatically classify vulnerabilities based on their security impacts. We have implemented SID and applied it to bug patches of the Linux kernel and matching CVE-assigned vulnerabilities to evaluate its precision and recall. We optimized SID to reduce false positives, and our evaluation shows that, from 54K recent valid commit patches, SID detected 227 security bugs with at least 243 security impacts at a 97% precision rate. Critically, 197 of them were not reported as vulnerabilities before, leading to delayed or ignored patching in derivative programs. Even worse, 21 of them are still unpatched in the latest Android kernel. Once exploited, they can cause critical security impacts on Android devices. The evaluation results confirm that SID’s approach is effective and precise in automatically determining security impacts for a massive stream of bug patches.
EuroParl-UdS: Preserving and Extending Metadata in Parliamentary Debates

Multilingual parliaments have been a useful source for monolingual and multilingual corpus collection. However, extra-textual information about speakers is often absent, and as a result, these resources cannot be fully used in translation studies. In this paper we present a method for processing and building a parallel corpus consisting of parliamentary debates of the European Parliament for English into German and English into Spanish, where original language and native speaker information is available as metadata. The paper documents all necessary (preand post-) processing steps for creating such a valuable resource. In addition to the parallel corpora, we collect monolingual comparable corpora for English, German and Spanish using the same method.
Bequeathable Assets, Kinship Pressure, and Visits by Adult Children

A recent survey conducted in Taiwan shows that parents often transfer all of their assets to their children inter vivos. Furthermore, compared to parents who have not done so, these parents actually enjoy more frequent family visits on the part of their children. This observation is puzzling from the perspective of a strategic bequest (Bernheim et al. 1985), and suggests that there exists a mechanism which facilitates parents-child interactions even after the former give up their leverage of bequeathable assets. In this paper, we propose that, by transferring all their assets, parents may trigger a shame effect on negligent children, who would feel guilty if they were not to visit their parents frequently after the transfer. The empirical evidence is consistent with our theoretical prediction, that this shame effect is more powerful within a tighter kinship network. Our results suggest that in places with distinct cultures, parental assets may play very different roles. We wish to thank two anonymous referees for their extremely helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts. All remaining errors are of course our own.
PREDICTING SOCIO-POLITICAL ATTITUDES: INSIGHTS FROM THE 2015 FEDERAL ELECTION IN CANADA

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of personality and left-right wing affiliation in predicting attitudes on several socio-political topics (e.g. abortion, euthanasia). Participants completed a demographics questionnaire, a set of personality measures, and a contentious issues questionnaire (CIQ). Our final sample consisted of 267 participants. A total score on the CIQ was created and hierarchical linear regression found that left-right wing affiliation, openness, and private self-consciousness predicted higher total CIQ scores. Right wing affiliation predicted lower CIQ score. The results of this study suggest that that total CIQ score was measuring right-left wing attitudes on socio-political issues and could be a useful tool in predicting voting behaviour.
The Mayergoyz vector Preisach-type model in analysis of irreversibilities in financial systems

The following two trends have emerged in the modelling of macroeconomic and financial processes. • Interest in equilibria and the role of shocks in their formation. Standard economic analysis assumes that economic equilibria are homeostatic, in that the reversal or removal of a temporary shock will be accompanied by a return to the original equilibrium. This assumption, however, rarely holds in economic systems, and in financial systems it is just as unreliable. Keynes [1] answered the question “are economic systems selfadjusting? ” in the negative. The persistent effect of temporary shocks are known as heterostasis, with a range of equilibria available, the selection being realised by the history of such temporary shocks. Permanent effects of a temporary stimuli is a characteristic of systems with hysteresis, see [2], [3]. • Interest in dynamics in zones separated from equilibria. It is increasingly accepted that economic and financial systems operate in zones separated from equilibria, and that the analysis of their behaviour in such zones is important. Some classical models, when studied in this way, yield very interesting results, for example the finding of chaos in the classical Kaldor model [4] and the Kaldor model with hysteresis [5]. The study of these two trends, which has largely been done separately, have recently been brought together. A new approach, suggested in [6], based on a special type of differential-operator equation of the form
The DKU Speech Synthesis System for 2019 Blizzard Challenge

This paper describes the DKU text-to-speech synthesis system built for the 2019 Blizzard Challenge. The task of this year’s challenge is to build a synthetic voice that is similar, expressive and clear as the given data collected from an internet talk show. The DKU speech synthesis system adopts the end-to-end speech synthesis architecture named Tacotron2. First, we analyze the data provided by the organizers and preprocess the data to make it appropriate for text-to-speech synthesis model training. The preprocessing phase includes audio-text aligning, segmentation and manually labeling the pinyin sequences. We pre-train a synthesis model trained with clean Mandarin Chinese speech synthesis dataset and ﬁnetune the model using the preprocessed data. In the synthesis phase, we preprocess the texts in evaluation set to obtain the appropriate phoneme sequences for synthesis. After feeding the phoneme sequences into the synthesis system, we use the Griﬂim algorithm to estimate the phase and convert the output spectrogram to audio. We report our result based on the system performance provided by the organizers.
Effects of cassava starch supplementation on behavioural characteristics and oxidative status in Drosophila melanogaster

Studies have revealed that adaptive life-history behaviour and reproductive capacity of an organism are influenced by the amount and quality of nutrients. Furthermore, it has been established that the balance between energy production and utilization is crucial to the animal's survival and reproduction vis-a-vis the organism's ability to adjust their developmental, physiological or behavioural response to environmental conditions. In the present study an attempt was made to investigate the effect of cassava starch supplementation on chill-coma recovery, reproductive capacity and some metabolicinduced changes in oxidative status of Drosophila melanogaster, which was raised on a normal fly diet supplemented with 500, 750, 1000, 1250, 1500 and 2000 mg/mL starch extracted from three cassava cultivars (TMS 92/0326, TMS 30572 and OmuAran local sweet cassava). Data generated from this study showed that flies consuming starch-supplemented diet have a higher level of cold resistance, an increased survival rate as well as enhanced egg to adult viability. However, flies raised on starchsupplemented diet showed a significantly higher concentration of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) with a compensatory significant increase in activities of antioxidant defense enzymes, and nitric oxide scavenging capacity compared to flies raised on the normal fly diet. In conclusion, data obtained from this study revealed that supplementation to the D. melanogaster diet with cassava starch enhances the organism's survival rate, and adaptive response to cold stress, with concomitant improvement in antioxidant status.
SZ-NPU Team’s Entry to Blizzard Challenge 2019

In this paper, we introduce the entry from the SZ-NPU team submitted to Blizzard Challenge 2019. The goal of this year challenge is to build a natural Mandarin Chinese speech synthesis system from 8-hours single-speaker stylistic speech data in talk shows. We will discuss the major modules of the submitted Tacotron-Wavenet system: (1) The front-end module to analyze the pronunciation and prosody of text; (2) The GMM-attention based sequence-to-sequence acoustic model to predict speech features; (3) The Wavenet based neural vocoder to reconstruct waveforms; (4) A bandwidth extension module to up-sample the generated speech. Evaluation results provided by the challenge organizer are also discussed.
A generic framework for modeling airport operations at a macroscopic level,

In this paper, a general approach for modeling airport operations is presented. Airport operations have been extensively studied in the last decades ranging from airspace, airside and landside operations. Due to the nature of the system, simulation techniques have emerged as a powerful approach for dealing with the variability of these operations. However, in most of the studies, the different elements are studied in an individual fashion. The aim of this paper, is to overcome this limitation by presenting a methodological approach where airport operations are modeled together, such as airspace and airside. The contribution of this approach is that the resolution level for the different elements is similar therefore the interface issues between them is minimized. The framework can be used by practitioners for simulating complex systems like airspace-airside operations or multi-airport systems. The framework is illustrated by presenting a case study analyzed by the authors.
The General Combinatorial Optimisation Problem: Towards Automated Algorithm Design

—This paper deﬁnes a new combinatorial optimisation problem, namely General Combinatorial Optimisation Problem (GCOP), whose decision variables are a set of parametric algorithmic components, i.e. algorithm design decisions. The solutions of GCOP, i.e. compositions of algorithmic components, thus represent different generic search algorithms. The objective of GCOP is to ﬁnd the optimal algorithmic compositions for solving the given optimisation problems. Solving the GCOP is thus equivalent to automatically designing the best algorithms for optimisation problems. Despite recent advances, the evolutionary computation and optimisation research communities are yet to embrace formal standards that underpin automated algorithm design. In this position paper, we establish GCOP as a new standard to deﬁne different search algorithms within one uniﬁed model. We demonstrate the new GCOP model to standardise various search algorithms as well as selection hyper-heuristics. A taxonomy is deﬁned to distinguish several widely used terminologies in automated algorithm design, namely automated algorithm composition, conﬁguration and selection. We would like to encourage a new line of exciting research directions addressing several challenging research issues including algorithm generality, algorithm reusability, and automated algorithm design.
Testing the effect of PAR1 inhibitors on Plasmodium falciparum-induced loss of endothelial cell barrier function.

Background: Sequestration and cytoadherence of Plasmodium falciparum-infected erythrocytes (IE) to microvascular endothelium alters endothelial barrier function and plays a role in the pathogenesis of severe malaria. Binding of IE is mediated by P. falciparum erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1) and the PfEMP1 variants that binds to endothelial protein C receptor (EPCR) have, in particular, been associated with the dysregulation of the coagulation/inflammation pathways in endothelial cells. This has prompted speculation about the role of protease-activated receptor-1 (PAR1) activation and signalling in causing endothelial activation and loss of barrier function in cerebral malaria. Methods: We used a co-culture of primary human brain microvascular endothelial cells (HBMEC) with P. falciparum material, recombinant PfEMP1 or lysates from IE, and measured barrier function by trans endothelial electrical resistance (TEER). A selection of PAR1 inhibitors was tested for their ability to reverse the P. falciparum and thrombin induced decrease in barrier function. Results: An initial screen in the presence of recombinant PfEMP1 identified a few inhibitors that were able to reduce the rapid thrombin-induced barrier disruption even when activated protein C (aPC) was unable to do so. However, in the IE lysate co-culture system we identified a mechanism that slowly reduces barrier function and which is insensitive to PAR1 inhibitors. Conclusions: The selected PAR1 inhibitors were able to reverse the disruption of barrier function by thrombin but did not reverse the IE lysate induced disruption of barrier function, implicating a different PAR1-independent mechanism. These findings have implications for the design of adjunct therapies to reduce brain swelling in cerebral malaria.
Anxiety as a mediating factor of perfectionism and needs thwarting in relation to exercise dependence in team sports

The main aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between exercise dependence, basic psychological needs, perfectionism and anxiety. Specifically, the purpose was to examine if the relationship between psychological needs thwarting and exercise dependence as well as socially prescribed perfectionism and exercise dependence was mediated by anxiety. Participants were 59 team sport athletes with the mean age 20.36 years from twelve different team sport clubs in Sweden. Data were analysed using PROCESS tool in the program Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS). The PROCESS analysis indicated that anxiety did not mediate the relationship between psychological needs thwarting and exercise dependence or socially prescribed perfectionism and exercise dependence. Further, the results showed that needs thwarting and perfectionism had a direct effect on exercise dependence. This indicates that needs thwarting and socially prescribed perfectionism should be considered risk factors for exercise dependence in team sports. Anxiety did not predict exercise dependence. Based on the findings, exercise dependence is a complex process where different personal and social factors interact. Further research is recommended to increase the understanding about potential risk factors and mediating mechanisms that can explain how exercise dependence develop in team sports.
Semantic Classification of Nouns

This paper presents several methods that can be used to achieve the semantic classification of nouns and tests the applicability of one of these algorithms through the study of the quality of the results. Using a machine learning technique, co-training, we expect the system to increase the number of portuguese nouns semantically correctly classified in the STRING system. This algorithm receives as input data a set of previously classified nouns (seeds), which are labeled according to an existing set of semantic categories, and it performs an extensive search on a corpus looking for new sentences containing such seed-words, and also compares these sentences with the remaining sentences in the corpus in order to extract other words that fit the same word-seed context, by analyzing the syntax of the constitution of the sentences, organized as dependencies. This way, conclusions arise about new nouns that must receive as classification label the semantic category of the word seed with which they resemble in terms of the sentence context. The predictions of the algorithm are then be submitted as proposals for the classification of a set of nouns, which are subject to approval by a human user about its correctness, allowing the expansion of the database if approved. A graphic interface was developed to present proposals for classification and allow the user to judge about their correction. The algorithm proven to suit the classification task subject of this work. However, it is greatly influenced by the dimension of the corpus, due to its heavy comparing nature, but also by the source of the corpus, in terms of nature of the texts contained in the corpus.
Boards for Automated Referential Communication Task

In this paper, the Boards for Automated Referential Communication Task (BARCoT) experimental program is described. BARCoT emulates the referential communication task used in Hwang et al. 2015, in which participants interact with model talkers to ﬁll in words on a game board. BARCoT was created in order to allow for this task to be conducted in two distant locations (Miami, Florida, and Ithaca, New York), with participants interacting with the same two model talkers in each location. The program also allows for quicker data analysis by automating the labeling and storing of data in a format suitable for use with the Montreal Forced Aligner (McAuliffe et al., 2017). How BARCoT works—including details related to the stimuli, materials, task, and more–are described in this paper, along with information on how this program may be used in the future.
Antagonistic activity of bacterial endophytes against major soilborne pathogens of soybean

The antagonistic effect of 30 bacterial endophytes of soybean collected from northern Karnataka and parts of Maharashtra against Sclerotium rolfsii, Rhizoctonia bataticola and Fusarium oxysporum were assayed in vitro through dual culture plate technique. The bacterial endophytes RB-KK-6 (40.78%), SBBS-6 (50.08%) and LB-BU-1 (47.02%) were found effective against S. rolfsii and the isolates SB-DG-11 (47.41%), LB-BiN-8 (41.22%) were effective against R. bataticola. The effective bacterial endophytes against F. oxysporum were RB-HS-1 (41.99%), SB-BiJ-9 (40.07%), LB-BU-1 (54.20%) and LB-BV-2 (51.64%). Based on molecular characterization the effective bacterial endophytes were identified as Acinetobacter sp. (RB-HS-1), Alcaligenes faecalis (RB-KK-6), Stenotrophomonas sp. (SB-BiJ-9), Bacillus pumilus (SBDG-11 & LB-BiN-8), Paenalcaligenes sp. (LB-BU-1), Bacillus cereus (SB-BS-6) and Brevibacillus sp. (LB-BV-2).
ABSynthe: Automatic Blackbox Side-channel Synthesis on Commodity Microarchitectures

—The past decade has seen a plethora of side-channel attacks on various CPU components. Each new attack typically follows a whitebox analysis approach, which involves (i) identifying a speciﬁc shared CPU component, (ii) reversing its behavior on a speciﬁc microarchitecture, and (iii) surgically exploiting such knowledge to leak information (e.g., by actively evicting shared entries to monitor victim accesses). This approach requires lengthy reverse engineering, repeated for every component and microarchitecture, and does not allow for attacking unknown shared resources. In this paper, we present ABSynthe, a system that takes a target program and a microarchitecture as inputs and automatically synthesizes new side channels. The key insight is that by limiting ourselves to (typically on-core) contention-based side channels, we can treat the target CPU microarchitecture as a black box, enabling automation. To make ABSynthe possible, we have automatically generated leakage maps for a variety of x86_64 microarchitectures. These leakage maps show a complex picture of interaction between different x86_64 instructions and justify a black box approach to ﬁnding the best sequence of instructions that cause information to leak from a given software target, which we also treat as a black box. To recover the secret information using the optimized sequence of instructions, ABSynthe relies on a recurrent neural network to craft practical side-channel attacks that recover a secret bit stream. Our evaluation shows that ABSynthe can synthesize better attacks by exploiting contention on multiple components at the same time compared to state of the art contention-based attacks that focus on a single component. Furthermore, the automation made possible by ABSynthe allows us to synthesize cross-thread attacks for a variety of microarchitectures (from Intel, AMD and ARM) on four different cryptographic software targets, in both native and virtualized environments. The results show that ABSynthe can
Synthesis of novel [4, 9-dimethoxy-5H-furo [3, 2-g] chromen-5-one] derivatives with antiproliferative potency towards breast and hepatic cancer cell lines

Abstract Chromen derivative (2) was obtained by the reaction of [cyclohexyl isocyanide, furochromone carbaldehyde (1), cyclohexane-1, 3-dione]. Also, reaction of compound (2) in the presence of semicarbazide hydrochloride to proceed the compound (3) which react with selenium dioxide to form compounds (4). In one-step, the condensation of cyclohexyl isocyanide, furochromone carbaldehyde (1) and pentane-2-dionein pipredine was given compound (5). The mixture of furochromone carbaldehyde (1), barbaturic/or thio-barbaturic acid and cyclohexyl isocyanide was afforded the corresponding compounds (6a,b). While the reaction of furochromonecarbaldehyde (1), Meldrum acid and cyclohexyl isocyanide was yielded the compound (7). The condensation of furochromonecarbaldehyde (1), 1, 3-dicarbonyl compound (cyclohexane-1, 3-dione) with acid derivatives (carboxylic, chlorocarboxylic and cinnamic acid) afforded the corresponding compounds (8a-c). The reaction of furochromonecarbaldehyde (1), dimethyl acetylene dicarboxylate, cyclohexyl isocyanide with 1, 3dicarbonyle was afforded compound (9). Some of the newly synthesized derivatives showed a reasonable antiproliferative activity towards breast (MCF7) and liver (HEPG2) cancer cell lines in comparison to traditional anticancer agents: 5-Fluorouracil & Doxorubicin.