Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Firmware Modification Analysis in Programmable Logic Controllers

Abstract : Incorporating security in supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and sensor networks has proven to be a pervasive problem due to the constraints and demands placed on these systems. Both attackers and security professionals seek to uncover the inherent roots of trust in a system to achieve opposing goals. With SCADA systems, a battle is being fought at the cyber -- physical level, specifically the programmable logic controller (PLC). The Stuxnet worm, which became increasingly apparent in the summer of 2010, has shown that modifications to a SCADA system can be discovered on infected engineering workstations on the network, to include the ladder logic found in the PLC. However, certain firmware modifications made to a PLC can go undetected due to the lack of effective techniques available for detecting them. Current software auditing tools give an analyst a singular view of assembly code, and binary difference programs can only show simple differences between assembly codes. Additionally, there appears to be no comprehensive software tool that aids an analyst with evaluating a PLC firmware file for modifications and displaying the resulting effects. Manual analysis is time consuming and error prone. Furthermore, there are not enough talented individuals available in the industrial control system (ICS) community with an in-depth knowledge of assembly language and the inner workings of PLC firmware. This research presents a novel analysis technique that compares a suspected-altered firmware to a known good firmware of a specific PLC and performs a static analysis of differences. This technique includes multiple tests to compare both firmware versions, detect differences in size, and code differences such as removing, adding, or modifying existing functions in the original firmware. A proof-of-concept experiment demonstrates the functionality of the analysis tool using different firmware versions from an Allen-Bradley ControlLogix L61 PLC.
Constrained Inversion of a Microwave Snowpack Emission Model Using Dictionary Matching: Applications for GPM Satellite

This article presents a new algorithmic framework for multilayer inversion of the dense media radiative transfer (DMRT) equations of snowpack emission, with particular emphasis on the role of high-frequency microwave channels above 60 GHz. The approach relies on dictionary matching and locally constrained least squares. The results demonstrate that the algorithm can invert the DMRT model and retrieve depth, density, and grain size of a single-layer snowpack when dependencies of density and grain size on depth are properly accounted for. However, as the number of layers increases, the sensitivity of the inversion to observation noise grows markedly. Using observations, over the Great Plains in the United States, from the microwave imager onboard the global precipitation measurement (GPM, 10-166 GHz) core satellite, the initial results demonstrate that under a clear-sky condition and no vegetation canopy, the algorithm is capable to retrieve the snow depth and water equivalent of seasonal snow with a mean absolute error (MAE) of less than 0.15 m--when compared to the high-resolution analysis data from the SNOw Data Assimilation System (SNODAS).
Cross-Flow Corrected Axisymmetric Solution for Multiple Body Interference.

Abstract : The objective of this effort was to develop the theoretical solution required to define the mutual aerodynamic interference associated with the carriage and release of weapons in the multiple mode. The cross-flow solution for multiple axisymmetric bodies that was previously generated was used to correct the axisymmetric solution in order to account for the mutual interference effects. An equivalent cylindrical body was generated by conformal transformation in order to simulate, as if axisymmetric, the finned portions of the bodies. The analysis reported is for three M-117 bombs in the vicinity of a triple ejector rack; however, any axisymmetric, slender pointed weapon shape could be used. A limited amount of experimental work substantiating this theoretical solution is included as part of this effort. The resulting analytical solution has been programmed for use on both the IBM 360/50 and the CDC 6600 computers. (Author)
Air Force Officer Qualifying Test (AFOQT): Forms P Pre-Implementation Analyses and Equating

Abstract : Forms P of the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test (AFOQT) became operational in 1987. This paper describes the equating of Forms P1 and P2 for Form O, and the associated analyses. The pre-implementation equating was necessary (a) to check the adequacy of the items in the new forms, (b) to assess the similarity of the new forms, and (c) to establish conversion tables for placing scores from the new test on the metric of Form O. Three forms of the AFOQT (Om P1, and P2) were administered to subjects (N = 3,400) at Basic Training School (BMTS), Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC), and Officer Training School (OTS). Results are reported at the item, subtest, and composite levels. In general, Forms O and P are content equivalent while Forms P have items of slightly lower difficulty than those of Form O. Equipercentile equatings were used to produce provisional conversion tables for the operational implementation of Form P. Keywords: Aptitude tests, Item analyses, Selection tests.
Addressing the Needs of Underprepared Students in Higher Education

Each year, thousands graduate high school academically underprepared for college. Many must take remedial or developmental postsecondary coursework, and there is a growing debate about the effectiveness of such programs. This paper examines the effects of remediation using a unique data set of over 28,000 students. To account for selection biases, the paper implements an instrumental variables strategy based on variation in placement policies and the importance of proximity in college choice. The results suggest that students in remediation are more likely to persist in college in comparison to students with similar backgrounds who were not required to take the courses.
The Effects of Rain on Traffic Safety and Operations on Florida Freeways

Although the association between weather and traffic variables or crash events appear intuitive to motorists, quantifying the effects that weather, especially rain, has on driver response in travel speeds, traffic demands, and susceptibility of accident occurrence is needed to evaluate practical aspects of traffic operations and safety measures. Previous studies have researched driver responses to inclement weather on roadways located primarily in northern and western regions of the United States (U.S.), Canada, and Europe. However, driver familiarity to local weather conditions is a factor that should be considered in determining inclement weather effects on traffic variables and crash occurrence. This research focused on the effects of rain precipitation on freeways located in the Southeast region of the U.S. to determine if results from previous studies are general indicators or location specific in nature. The impacts of rain on hourly mean speeds and traffic volumes were studied for freeway segments in Jacksonville, Florida. Results indicate significant reductions in both traffic parameters with increasing rain intensity. Crash data examined along the same freeway sections found that hourly crash risks and crash rates per 100 million vehicle miles of travel, based on rain exposure hours, increased with increasing rain intensity, and were significant. However, hour-of-day and season of year had little effect on hourly crash occurrence. Rain intensity also significantly increased the proportion of injury accidents in the majority of traffic conditions.
Mitigating Fatigue in Cantilevered Overhead Sign Structures

Cantilevered overhead sign structures (COSSs) are widely used across highways in the United States. Several cases of excessive vibrations and failures caused by fatigue wind loads from natural and truck-induced wind gusts have been reported. Not enough research has included the effect of making structural design modifications on the fatigue performance of COSSs. Under fatigue wind-induced loads, the dynamic characteristics (frequency and damping) of COSSs are important parameters affecting their structural behavior. When frequencies of wind load and the structure match, resonance may occur, causing excessive vibrations, depending on the frequency value. If accompanied fatigue stresses exceed the fatigue endurance limit, failure occurs after a certain number of loading cycles. The objective of this study was to investigate stiffness and mass distribution of COSSs to control the structural frequency, thus mitigating fatigue caused by wind-induced gusts. For this purpose, modifications in the members' shape, arrangement, size, and layout of structure were examined. Three layouts were compared: four-chord, two-chord, and monotube COSSs. These layouts were designed according to the 2013 AASHTO Standard Specifications for Structural Supports for Highway Signs, Luminaires, and Traffic Signals and modeled with SAP2000. Wind pressure power spectral density and time history loading functions were applied to these structures to simulate natural and truck-induced wind gusts, respectively. Results showed that the vertical mono-tube COSS design with curved end post had the least mass, but fatigue stresses were comparable with the four-chord COSS. The two-chord COSS design had the largest mass and exhibited the highest fatigue stresses.
Agricultural technology: policy issues for the international community.

Major complex issues confront agricultural policy analysts and development specialists regarding the broad issue of "agricultural technology". These issues are reviewed in this volume which provides information relevant to the debates surrounding development issues and outlines many topics that require careful scrutiny in determining priorities. The book consists of 37 chapters, developed from papers presented at a conference held in Washington. The authors include leading international authorities form the academic sector, World Bank and agricultural research centres. The chapters are grouped into six parts. The first introductory part is followed by investment as the focus of Part II. In Part III a variety of conceptual and practical issues involved in the transfer of agricultural technology are considered. Part IV includes discussions of concrete technical matters ranging for example from the general to the specific, from plant to animal, and from soil management to irrigation engineering. Emphasis moves from the specifically technological to wider policy issues in Part V and this latter thrust is carried through into the final summarizing section.
Creating Polyphony with Exploratory Web Documentation in Singapore

WE INTRODUCE AND REFLECT ON Images of Teaching, an ongoing web documentation research project on preschool teaching in Singapore. This paper discusses the project's purpose, methodological process, and our learning points as researchers who aim to contribute towards inquiry-based professional learning. The website offers a window into some Singaporean ways of working with young children in preschool settings; it contains video examples of authentic classroom teaching, contextualised with teacher reflections, artefacts, and interview transcripts. Based on two years of reflection and research meetings, we discuss four key learning points: a) utilising the affordances of web technology to create heteroglossia; b) the need to diversify ‘best practices'; c) encouraging dialogue and interrogation; and d) the need to see ourselves as knowledge brokers.
Application of a Multi-Objective Network Model to a Combat Simulation Game: "The Drive on Metz" Case Study

Abstract : War games are routinely analyzed by the Department of Defense to study the players decision making process. This research develops a multicriteria model that enhances a war game players decision-making capability. The war game consists of a hexagonal-grid map of varying terrain that will be represent as a two-dimensional directed network. The network is obstructed by multiple enemy threats that expose a unit traversing the network to possible attack. The player is faced with the decision of choosing a route to a target node that balances the objectives of following the shortest path and maximizing the probability of success. A weighted arc cost matrix is supplied to Dijkstras shortest path algorithm to and an optimal route. Critical values of the ratio of the objective function weights determine where the optimal path changes. These values are determined on a test scenario for the war game The Drive On Metz.
Deep Transform Learning Vision Accuracy Analysis on GPU using Tensor Flow

Transfer learning is one of the most amazing concepts in machine learning and A.I. Transfer learning is completely unsupervised model. Transfer learning is a machine learning technique in which a network that has been trained to perform a specific task is being reused or repurposed as a starting point to perform another similar task. For this work I used ImageNet Dataset and MobileNet model to analyse Accuracy performance of my Deep Transform learning model on GPU of Intel® Core™ i3-7100U CPU using TensorFlow 2.0 Hub and Keras. ImageNet is an open source Large-Scale dataset of images consisting of 1000 classes and over 1.5 million images. And my overall idea is to analyse accuracy of Vision performance on the very poor network configuration. This work reached an Accuracy almost near to 100% on GPU of Intel® Core™ i3-7100U CPU which is great result with datasets used in this work are not easy to deal and having a lot of classes. That’s why it’s impacting the performance of the network. To classify and predict from tons of images from more classes on low configured network is really challenging one, it’s a great thing the computer vision accuracy showed an excellent vision nearly 100% on GPU in my work.
Assessing the disclosure protection provided by misclassification for survey microdata

Government statistical agencies often apply statistical disclosure limitation techniques to survey microdata to protect confidentiality. There is a need for ways to assess the protection provided. This paper develops some simple methods for disclosure limitation techniques which perturb the values of categorical identifying variables. The methods are applied in numerical experiments based upon census data from the United Kingdom which are subject to two perturbation techniques: data swapping and the post randomisation method. Some simplifying approximations to the measure of risk are found to work well in capturing the impacts of these techniques. These approximations provide simple extensions of existing risk assessment methods based upon Poisson log-linear models. A numerical experiment is also undertaken to assess the impact of multivariate misclassification with an increasing number of identifying variables. The methods developed in this paper may also be used to obtain more realistic assessments of risk which take account of the kinds of measurement and other non-sampling errors commonly arising in surveys.
Optimization of Buffer Allocation in Manufacturing System Using Particle Swarm Optimization

In this paper, we present heuristic approach to optimize buffer allocation in manufacturing system with tandem, split and merge topologies. Finite Closed queuing network approach is used to represent manufacturing systems. An attempt is made to find near optimal buffer allocation to minimize cost function in unlimited space buffer allocation problem. Expanded Mean Value Analysis is used to evaluate the objective function of closed queuing network. Particle Swarm Optimization is used as generative technique to optimize the buffer allocation. Numerical experiments are shown to explain the effectiveness of procedure.
Policy-based self-management in embedded systems

This paper describes work towards the deployment of flexible self-management into realtime embedded systems. A challenging project DySCAS which focused specifically on the development of a dynamic, adaptive automotive middleware is described. The self-management and context-awareness requirements of the middleware have been identified through the refinement of a wide-ranging set of Use cases, a sample of which are presented. The embedded and real-time nature of the target system brings the constraints that dynamic adaptation capabilities must not require changes to the deployed executable code, adaptation decisions must have low latency, and because the target platforms are resource-constrained the self-management mechanism must have low resource requirements (especially in terms of processing and memory). The incorporation of policy-based self-management in this situation satisfies all of these requirements and in addition yields a highly flexible system that can be tailored for specific deployment-systems. The policy logic is independent of the deployed code, can be loaded at run-time and easily replaced or changed subsequently to cater for user customisation or changes in application requirements. The architecture of a designed-for-purpose powerful yet lightweight AGILE_Lite policy library is described. Additionally, a suitable evaluation platform, supporting the whole life-cycle of feasibility analysis, concept evaluation, development, rigorous testing and behavioural validation has been devised and is described.
Neutron Tomography and Space

The University of California/Davis McClellan Nuclear Radiation Center (UCD/MNRC) was originally constructed by the U.S. Air Force as a nondestructive testing tool to detect moisture and corrosion in large honeycomb filled structures of aircrafts. The MNRC was transferred to UCD in February of 2000 as part of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process of McClellan Air Force Base. UCD MNRC has a sound base of research and industrial partnerships. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. approached UCD MNRC with the need to image the condition of brushes contained in motors used in their space related projects. JPL explained that they were unable to see what they needed to see with X-rays. They wanted to know if we could see the carbon brushes in these motors. Using their samples, we initially performed two computed radiography (CR) shots 90 degrees apart through the diameter. Furthermore, another shot along the rotational axis was taken. The brushes could not be seen in the shot along the axis. The exposures through the diameter showed an inconsistency between the two motors’ brushes. We then performed neutron computed tomography (CT) on both motors with one degree projection. Reconstruction clearly showed that the motor with the inconsistent shape brushes had the brushes installed incorrectly. There is a significant difference in both time and cost between CR and CT of the motors. CR took about 30 minutes from beginning of the set up to the complete evaluation, while CT took about five hours to finish. UCD/MNRC was not completely satisfied with just saying that there is an inconsistency between the two motors. Through working outside the envelope, a complete picture of the brushes condition was seen with CT in about 30 minutes.
A System that Builds Decoy Protein Backbones by Assembling Smaller Fragments

The project was focused on designing a system that can build protein-like decoy structures using a dynamic programming algorithm. The system first builds three-residue-long polymer fragments, which are then used to build longer fragments, finally leading to large polymer chains of the same length as a given sequence. The decoys formed by the systems are free of any steric clashes.
Agile software development with Scrum

The thesis describes the importance and characteristics of agile methodologies for software development, focusing on the currently most widely used methodology - Scrum. In addition to basic features and the presentation of the Scrum development process, the paper describes the specification of user requirements through user stories and their use in the above-mentioned methodology. It also presents the most widely spread user stories estimation techniques and gives a detailed examination of the technique called Planning poker. The paper concludes with a review of tools that support project management tasks and their comparison with the help of a decision model and the program DEXi.
CHEMICAL ANALYSIS, ANTIOXIDANT, ANTI-INFLAMMATORY AND ANTINOCICEPTIVE EFFECTS OF ACETONE EXTRACT OF ALGERIAN SOLENOSTEMMA ARGEL (DELILE) HAYNE LEAVES

Objective: To investigate the qualitative composition of the acetonic extract from leaves of S. argel (AESA) and their anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties in vivo. Methods: AESA profile was established by UHPLC/DAD/ESI-MS2. AESA was subjected to the acute oral toxicity study according to the OECD-420 method. Antioxydant activity of AESA was performed by DPPH radical scavenging assay. Anti-inflammatory effects of AESA were determined in two animal models: carrageenan-induced paw edema in rats and cotton pellet-induced granuloma formation in rats. Further, anti-nociceptives activities of AESA were assessed by hot plate test, acetic acid-induced abdominal writhing test and formalin test. Results: The in vivo AESA toxicity was low. AESA expresses a maximum radical scavenging activity with a IC50 value of 36,05 μg/ml. The AESA at 250 and 400 mg/kg significantly reduced carrageen an induced paw edema by 70.09% and 85.53% 6h after carrageenan injection, respectively. AESA produced significant dose-dependent anti-inflammatory effect against cotton pellets-induced granuloma formation in rats. In addition, AESA at 250 and 400 mg/kg significantly reduced acetic acid-induced writhing by 56.83 and 80.41%, respectively. Oral administration of 250 and 400 mg/kg of AESA caused a significant dose dependent anti-nociceptive effect in both neurogenic and inflammatory phases of formalin-induced licking. AESA also impacted the pain latency in the hot plat test. Conclusion: These data suggest that AESA possesses antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-nociceptive effects. These results support the traditional use of S. argel to cure pain and inflammatory diseases in the Algerian Sahara.