Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Security of Black-Box Implementation of Visual Secret Sharing Schemes

Cryptographic software and devices give users the ability to take advantage of the benefits of cryptography more easily. However, this implies that the users must totally trust the manufacturer and the authenticity of the device or software they use. Young and Yung were the first to question the correctness of the manufacturer and considered the advantage that a malicious implementation could offer to a specific attacker. In this paper, we consider a modified version of two visual secret sharing schemes and the advantage that they provide to the attacker in order to reconstruct the secret by himself, while the other participants must fulfill the honest scheme reconstruction conditions. We also analyze the security of the proposed mechanisms and the conditions in which they can be applicable.
Spin-current diode with a ferromagnetic semiconductor

Diode is a key device in electronics: the charge current can flow through the device under a forward bias, while almost no current flows under a reverse bias. Here, we propose a corresponding device in spintronics: the spin-current diode, in which the forward spin current is large but the reversed one is negligible. We show that the lead/ferromagnetic quantum dot/lead system and the lead/ferromagnetic semiconductor/lead junction can work as spin-current diodes. The spin-current diode, a low dissipation device, may have important applications in spintronics, as the conventional charge-current diode does in electronics.
The comparative responses of human polymorphonuclear leukocytes obtained by counterflow centrifugal elutriation and Ficoll-Hypaque density centrifugation. I. Resting volume, stimulus-induced superoxide production, and primary and specific granule release.

: Standard isolation techniques for the human polymorphonuclear leukocyte (PMN) involve sequential exposure of cells to the nonphysiologic environments of dextran, Ficoll-Hypaque (FH) gradient centrifugation, and hypotonic conditions. It has been suggested that these may be harmful to the recovered PMN. Counterflow centrifugal elutriation (CCE) allows separation of human PMNs while the cells are continuously bathed in a physiologic and isotonic buffer. To investigate whether preparative technique may alter PMN activation, we compared PMNs obtained by these two methods for stimulus-induced superoxide production and release of primary and specific granule contents. Resting PMN volume was also evaluated. We observed that PMNs obtained using the CCE method were larger and released significantly more superoxide and specific granule contents than PMNs obtained by the standard FH technique. The possible origins for these differences are discussed.
Recent Highlights of ATVB

Atherosclerosis contributes to major mortality and modality of cardiovascular diseases in Western countries. Lipid-laden macrophage accumulation in the subendothelial area of the arterial wall is a hallmark of atherosclerosis. These lipid-laden cells promote inflammatory responses in the arterial wall and lead to multiple fatal pathological consequences, such as hemorrhage, rupture, and calcification. Mechanisms of atherosclerosis relating to disruption of lipoprotein metabolism and inflammation have been the major focuses of atherosclerosis research. Animal models are still the major tools to determine mechanisms and to discover potential targets for therapeutic purpose. Although hypercholesterolemic mouse models such as low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptor– deficient and apolipoprotein (apo) E–deficient mice are used in most experimental studies, other animal models such as rabbits and pigs have also been used frequently to study atherosclerosis. This article highlights some recent ATVB publications that have either extended the traditional concepts or provided new insights into understanding mechanisms of atherosclerosis.
Collaborative hypertext in computer mediated communications

A morphological model for hypertext based upon J.P. Guilford's (1956) 'theory of the intellect' is presented. The model is proposed as one encompassing the scope of human intellectual abilities in forming concepts and the relationships among concepts. In so doing, it provides a foundation for creation of hypertext as a collaborative group process. Also discussed is the related concept of a 'group memory' and analysis tools to support the utilization of the model. <<ETX>>
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer [modis] And Observations Of The Land Surface

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer [MODIS] is a NASA facility instrument that is being designed for flight on the Earth Observing System [EOS] series of missions scheduled for initial operation in the late 1990’s. The MODIS has 36 spectral bands with a spatial resolution at nadir varying, depending on the spectral band, between 250 and 1000 meters. In order to make best use of the MODIS bands, it will be important to understand the effects of sampling the electromagnetic spectrum from the visible to the thermal infrared, the effects of mixtures of land cover within the 250 to 1000 meter resolution elements, and the impact of anisotropy in the observed bidirectional radiances in estimating parameters such as albedo, above ground plant biomass, and percent plant canopy cover. Plans need to be made to make use of other instruments that will be accompanying MODIS on the EOS series of missions such as the High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer [HIRIS] and the Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer [MISR]. The HIRIS instrument, a spectrometer operating in the visible to shortwave infrared parts of the spectrum, would be examined in combination with the MODIS to understand the impact of sampling the spectrum and the effects of land cover mixtures within the MODIS pixel. The MISR will help in understanding the effects of anisotropy in reflected solar radiation. Both instruments will work in combination with MODIS to better quantify the effects of the atmosphere on observations of surface properties. BACKGROUND
Selection of an Improvement Strategy in Internal Service Operations: The MCDM Approach with Fuzzy AHP and Nonadditive Fuzzy Integral

Service operation strategy has been widely adopted by firms who wish to enhance their competitive advantage to be better prepared to face external challenges. Previous studies have shown that internal service quality (ISQ) ultimately drives the profit of enterprises. This research has thus chosen ISQ as the focus for the development of an assessment model to reform organizations that undertake ISQ to enhance their core competencies. This paper describes a fuzzy hierarchical analytic approach to determine the weighting of subjective judgments and presents a nonadditive fuzzy integral technique to evaluate an ISQ case as a fuzzy multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. Through literature reviews and experts interviews, 26 criteria are generated along with nine dimensions and five strategy alternatives. By ranking fuzzy weights and fuzzy synthetic utility values, the relative importance of criteria and the best strategies can be determined. An empirical case of ISQ improvement strategy for a Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer is demonstrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed methods when dealing with criteria that are not independent. The empirical results show that employee rewards and recognition outrank other strategies with regard to improving the ISQ. These results will not only help organizations that aim to improve their internal service operations, but can also assist human resource professionals in more effectively monitoring and improving the performance of employees.
Relieving the Cognitive Load of Constructing Molecular Biological Ontology Based Queries by means of Visual Aids

The domain of molecular biology is complex and vast. Bio-ontologies and information visualisation have arisen in recent years as means to assist biologists in making sense of this information. Ontologies can enable the construction of conceptual queries, but existing systems to do this are too technical for most biologists. OntoDas, the software developed as part of this thesis work, demonstrates how the application of techniques from information visualisation and human computer interaction can result in software which enables biologists to construct conceptual queries.
Fixed effects inference for clustered data in Gaussian linear models

Jacqueline L. Johnson: Fixed Effects Inference for Clustered Data In Gaussian Linear Models (Under the direction of Dr. Diane J. Catellier and Dr. Keith E. Muller) Important public health research often requires the use of community based studies due to logistical, ethical and cost constraints. Such designs require special methods of analysis. Gaussian clustered data are often analyzed with either a mixed effects linear model on individual level data or two-stage analysis of cluster means. For data with a large number of clusters and large number of observations within each cluster, both techniques provide unbiased hypothesis tests. In small samples with unbalanced data, however, even moderate imbalance in cluster size across treatment groups can bias hypothesis tests in the two stage analysis of cluster means. The use of large sample approximations for one-stage mixed model test statistics for analysis of small, unbalanced clustered experiments may also lead to inaccurate hypothesis tests. I derived a formulation of quadratic form theory which leads to a method to obtain exact test size for hypothesis tests in the two stage model. This theory is used in an enumeration study of type I error for a test of treatment difference in the two stage analysis of cluster means where means are either unweighted or weighted by their cluster size. These enumerations focus on scenarios of imbalance common to non-randomized cluster data settings. Next I performed a simulation study of type I error for a test of treatment difference in both the analysis of individual level data and of cluster means for scenarios of imbalance common to randomized clustered data trials. Ten methods were considered; of these, a two stage analysis of cluster means with means weighted by their theoretical variance controlled type I error under the most cases. In this analysis, the weights contain restricted maximum likelihood estimates of variance components estimated from the individual level data and are constrained to be positive. Many current clustered data studies currently show a misalignment between power calculations and data analysis; that is, the power analysis is done for a simplified version of the
Competitive Hebbian learning

Summary form only given. Competitive Hebbian learning, a modified Hebbian-learning rule, is introduced. In competitive Hebbian learning the change in each connection weight is made proportional to the product of node and input activities multiplied by a factor which decreases with increasing activity on the other nodes. The individual nodes learn to respond to different components of the input activity while collectively developing maximal response. Several applications of competitive Hebbian learning were presented to show examples of the power and versatility of this learning algorithm. <<ETX>>
Development and implementation of adaptive critic based optimal neurocontroller on a cantilever plate

An adaptive critic-based optimal neurocontroller was developed and applied to a non-linear cantilevered plate system to improve its vibrational characteristics. The smart structural system which incorporates a two dimensional aluminum plate mounted with PZT actuators and PVDF sensors is interfaced to a PC with a DAS 1600 data acquisition card. The neural network plant model was acquired from a previous study on the setup. A model based design approach was used to design the optimal neuro-controller which minimizes an infinite horizon quadratic cost function by solving the equations obtained by the dynamic programming methodology. Two multi-layer perceptron networks the action and the critic were trained offline for a wide range of initial conditions in the specified range for the state vector. The critic (supervisor) network in our case outputs the co-state vector and critiques the output of the controller network. After convergence to a desired degree of accuracy the action (controller) network gives an optimal output in a feedback form and can be directly incorporated in the control loop. The controller is finally tested for a range of initial conditions and the experimental results were compared for a time response of the plant with and without control.
Equilibrium intermediate-state patterns in a type-I superconducting slab in an arbitrarily oriented applied magnetic field

The equilibrium topology of superconducting and normal domains in flat type-I superconductors is investigated. Important improvements with respect to previous work are that (1) the energy of the external magnetic field, as deformed by the presence of superconducting domains, is calculated in the same way for three different topologies and (2) calculations are made for arbitrary orientation of the applied field. A phase diagram is presented for the minimum-energy topology as a function of applied field magnitude and angle. For small (large) applied fields, normal (superconducting) tubes are found, while for intermediate fields, parallel domains have a lower energy. The range of field magnitudes for which the superconducting-tubes structure is favored shrinks when the field is more in-plane oriented.
A method for medulloblastoma tumor differentiation based on convolutional neural networks and transfer learning

Convolutional neural networks (CNN) have been very successful at addressing different computer vision tasks thanks to their ability to learn image representations directly from large amounts of labeled data. Features learned from a dataset can be used to represent images from a different dataset via an approach called transfer learning. In this paper we apply transfer learning to the challenging task of medulloblastoma tumor differentiation. We compare two different CNN models which were previously trained in two different domains (natural and histopathology images). The first CNN is a state-of-the-art approach in computer vision, a large and deep CNN with 16-layers, Visual Geometry Group (VGG) CNN. The second (IBCa-CNN) is a 2-layer CNN trained for invasive breast cancer tumor classification. Both CNNs are used as visual feature extractors of histopathology image regions of anaplastic and non-anaplastic medulloblastoma tumor from digitized whole-slide images. The features from the two models are used, separately, to train a softmax classifier to discriminate between anaplastic and non-anaplastic medulloblastoma image regions. Experimental results show that the transfer learning approach produce competitive results in comparison with the state of the art approaches for IBCa detection. Results also show that features extracted from the IBCa-CNN have better performance in comparison with features extracted from the VGG-CNN. The former obtains 89.8% while the latter obtains 76.6% in terms of average accuracy.
An Unambiguous Clustering and Ranking of Software Cost Estimation Models by Modified Scott-Knott Approach

—Software Cost Estimation can be described as the process of predicting the most realistic effort required to complete a software project. Due to the strong relationship of accurate effort estimations with many crucial project management activities, the research community has been focused on the development and application of a vast variety of methods and models trying to improve the estimation procedure. From the diversity of methods emerged the need for comparisons to determine the best model. In the existing work Scott-Knott test was used to rank and cluster the software estimation models. The test proposed by Scott Knott, a procedure of means grouping, is an effective alternative to perform procedures of multiple comparisons without ambiguity. This study aimed to propose a modification related to the partitioning and means grouping in the said procedure, to obtain results without ambiguity among treatments, organized in more homogeneous groups. In the proposed methodology, treatments that did not participate in the initial group are joined for a new analysis, which allows for a better group distribution. The proposed methodology is considered effective, aiming at the identification of elite cultivar groups for recommendation.
World Applied Programming

World Applied Programming (WAP) Journal (ISSN: 2222-2510) is a scholarly online, open access, peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary, monthly, and fully refereed journal. It is an international scientific journal that aims to contribute to the constant scientific research and training, so as to promote research in different fields of basic and applied sciences. The Journal welcomes the submission of manuscripts that meet the general criteria of significance and scientific excellence
Infrastructures for Public Service Delivery: Aligning IT governance and architecture in infrastructure development

Governments are developing infrastructures to accelerate online service delivery. Service infrastructures are shared facilities that can be used and configured in such a way that different public organizations are able to create their own online services. This paper investigates the governance and architecture of these infrastructure developments by conducting a cross-country analysis. We developed a comparative framework for analyzing two countries that share many institutional similarities: Norway and the Netherlands. Furthermore, the typical complexities of infrastructure development are analyzed and trade-offs are identified. We found many similarities between the service infrastructure development and architecture in the two countries, but as a result of the governance being different, differences in e-services development could be observed. While Norway enables integration of building blocks into e-government initiatives of individual government organizations by developing a Business Process Management building block on the national level, in the Netherlands local governments integrate the building blocks with implementation support from the national level. The differences in governance between the two countries lead to different ways of e-government infrastructure development and, ultimately, to different ways of e-services delivery. Governance is thus an important contingency influencing infrastructure development. A key element for advancing infrastructure development is to ensure the complementarity of IT architecture and governance.
The Evolving Roles of Language Teachers: Trained Coders, Local Researchers, Global Citizens.

Language teachers are working in a world which has changed in the past decades in fundamentally disruptive ways, through profound changes in the role that networked computers play in everyday life and through the social and demographic shifts brought on by an increasingly globalized society, bringing together more than ever before people from different cultures and languages in real and virtual environments. Not all parts of the world are affected in the same way or at the same rate of change, but these global trends are likely to bring significant changes to communities everywhere (Canagarajah, 2002). One of the byproducts of this new environment is the growth in opportunity for language learning, in particular through informal environments such as social networks and networked gaming. Increasingly, our students’ lives involve heavy use of technology, especially through mobile devices, and the building and maintenance of meaningful relationships not necessarily based on face-to-face contact and sometimes extending well beyond their own home base. Second language teachers need to be able to work effectively in this evolving environment, preparing students for work and life in a world likely to be quite different from that in which they grew up, and which is likely to continue to change in significant ways. The challenges for training language teachers to deal with this dynamic are considerable. We need teachers not only to be proficient in the target language and have sufficient training in being effective classroom teachers, but they also will need to be able to cope with increased use of technology, and the need for all educated citizens to be global citizens (Kumaravadivelu, 2013). They will need to be able to follow new developments in technology and be able to understand their potential use in second language instruction. Crucially, teachers will need to be able to assess how new developments might fit in (or not) to their local instructional context. In this column we will examine the interconnected roles that L2 (second language) teachers may need to play in order to be effective in a changing social, educational, and technological environment. Fundamentally, this involves 1) gaining an inside appreciation of how computers and networks operate, 2) being able to evaluate new technologies and how they can be integrated into their own teaching and learning environments, and 3) learning how to equip students to deal with an increasingly interconnected and multilingual world.
DESIGN OF A MULTIAGENT SYSTEM FOR SOLVING SEARCH PROBLEMS

Search problems are fundamental in artificial intelligence. When domain knowledge is limited or not available, search is the only way to solve a problem. Although search algorithms have been widely implemented using structured or object-oriented programming, the design of a multiagent system for solving search problems raises a different type of challenges. In this paper, the design of such a system is presented, along with some implementation details. The performance of the system is analysed for several problems using different algorithms and parameters.
Encoding the Past, Decoding the Future: Corpora in the 21st Century

In the first decade of the twenty first century Corpus Linguistics as a methodology had already proved to be an impeccable one, probably the most elaborate way to approach empirical studies on languages. At present this seems to be essential to formulate general theories about most aspects of languages in different stages of their evolution. "Corpora and Corpus Linguistics" have been present in research for a reasonably long time now. The evolution of the discipline has been assessed by conferences, new publications and all sorts of events related to the field. Therefore, it seems most convenient to offer an outline of the advances made in the past decade as well as to try and make a guess as for what is yet to come. The editors have used their experience to collect a volume that certainly will have something to offer to the scientific community. Their work as compilers of the "Coruna Corpus of English Scientific Writing" has made them familiar with corpus-compilation and the time-consuming tasks it entails. As users of this and other corpora they can also appreciate the tools modern technology offers researchers and what the possibilities of exploitation are. In this way, the selection of papers contained in this volume address a wide range of scholars interested in the discipline, both corpus compilers and users.