Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MAC Spoofing Attack Detection based on EVM in 802.11 WLAN

Wireless LAN is very vulnerable to MAC spoofing attack. This paper proposes an Error Vector Magnitude (EVM)-based MAC spoofing attack detection scheme. The proposed scheme identifies wireless devices by using EVM as feature for distinguishing them. The proposed scheme can detect MAC spoofing attacks in real-time by using a prototype hardware system which has been developed in this paper to capture radio signal of wireless devices and extract EVM. Through experiment, we have confirmed that our scheme is excellent in detecting MAC spoofing attacks that employ wireless devices with different Wi-Fi chipset from legitimate
Finding the right incentives; circular business models for the construction industry

After its launch, the circular economy gained popularity all over the world as the new sustainability paradigm. Despite its popularity there is little to no material to be found on the implementation of the circular economy in the construction industry. Through a mixed method methodology using literature reviews, case studies, thought exercises, and interviews to both build and subsequently validate theory, five circular business models for service providing in the construction industry were developed. Next a roadmap for advance circular services was set up. These models show internal and external supply-side stakeholders how to implement the circular economy, and that this implementation is thinkable on a business-case level, but less evident on an industry level. This as previously unaddressed financial and regulatory aspects challenge the implementation of the circular economy in the construction industry. Considering these challenges, implementing the circular economy in the construction industry might be considered even more disruptive as in other sectors of our industrial economy.
On the origin of the two way shape memory effect in Cu-Zn-Al alloys

Several training procedures have been found suitable to induce the two way shape memory effect (TWSME) in copper based alloys. Complex dislocation arrangements can be produced by transformation cycling, which are believed to be the cause of the TWSME. Small martensite plates can be stabilized, serving as origin of subsequent transformations, or deformation around second phase precipitates are used. In this work, the role of the dislocations arrangements is investigated. It is shown that the stress field around the dislocations leads to the formation, in the β phase, above the Ms, of small martensite plates. These martenistes do not necessarily correspond to the trained variant. Complex defects consisting of dislocations and heavily deformed martensites are thus produced. The role of these complex defects on the TWSME is discussed and possible mechanisms are suggested
Flax Inorganic Phosphate Deficiency Responsive miRNAs

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) control a variety of biological processes and are involved in plant response to abiotic stress including phosphate starvation. Phosphate deficiency is one of the major limiting factors for crop yield. In the present work inorganic phosphate deficiency responsive miRNAs were identified in flax for the first time by high-throughput sequencing. Three conserved miRNA families (miR398, miR399 and miR408) were differentially expressed under inorganic phosphate starvation. In other plant species it was demonstrated that these miRNAs are involved in response to a combination of different stresses. In phosphate starvation conditions miR399 and miR408 are up-regulated but miR398 is differentially expressed. We found that in flax under inorganic phosphate starvation stress conditions expression level alterations for conserved miRNAs miR399 and miR408 were close to those in other plant species and for miR398 – to those in tomato but not in Arabidopsis . A better understanding of miRNAs stress regulatory functions would provide new tools for genetic improvement of stress tolerance in flax and other plants.
DEVELOPMENT OF A PCR INTERNAL AMPLIFICATION CONTROL FOR THE DETECTION OF SHIGA TOXIN- PRODUCING ESCHERICHIA COLI

An internal amplification control (IAC) for the PCR-based method for the detection of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli is presented. IAC was constructed in order that the same primer can be applied to amplify the target DNA and coamplify with IAC, but gave the different size products. The primers have the 5’-end sequences identical to the diagnostic stx gene primers and the 3’-end sequences complementary to the appropriate pUC19 plasmid sites. PCR amplification with target and pUC19 DNAs gave two predicted PCR products without any non-specific bands. The obtained results showed that the presented method is sensitive and simple for standardization and can be utilized for specific identification of STEC in different matrices.
Relation between Sonic Layer and Mixed layer depth in the Arabian Sea

Seasonal evolution of the sonic layer depth and its relation to mixed layer depth in the Arabian Sea is studied. Monthly sonic layer depth climatology is constructed using Argo temperature and salinity and compared with mixed layer depth. Sonic layer depth showed semiannual variability with peaks during June – August and December – February and lows during pre and post monsoon season. Sonic layer depth is observed to be shallower than mixed layer depth over most of the Arabian Sea except in the southeastern Arabian Sea during winter owing to temperature inversions. Sonic layer and mixed layer depth is observed to have high correlation (> 0.85) over most of the Arabian Sea indicating a good relationship between them, except in south eastern Arabian Sea. SLD is found to be deeper than MLD only in the southeastern AS (SEAS) during the winter season due to the presence of temperature inversions (TI) which are common phenomenon during that period. Advection of cooler low-salinity water over warmer salty SEAS water leads to the formation of TI in SEAS. Sound velocity being sensitive to temperature, results in deepening of SLD in this region. This can be used to understand relation between them to a great degree of accuracy and estimate one from the other.
Directionally Bounded Utility and the Executive Pay Puzzle

The pay of CEOs and other top executives has risen disproportionately relative to other earnings. We provide a supply-side explanation based on utility theory using directionally bounded utility functions. As overall income levels have grown, the amount of compensation required to induce top executives to sacrifice a quiet life has risen. We show that directionally bounded utility functions predict a general rise in compensation for stress. More importantly, such utility functions can be used to explain why the CEO pay ratio has risen at an increasing rate, something which other approaches have difficulty explaining.
Entrepreneurship in Public Management: The Case of Sri Lanka Administrative Service

The role of entrepreneurship in public management remains in debate. Despite the debatable arguments to regarding public entrepreneurship, this paper argues that the concept still has validity of utilizing as a tool for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of public service. By using Hunter's reputational snowballing technique to identify public entrepreneurs among Sri Lanka's administrative service, this study presents the preliminary findings based on a recent empirical study and examines their administrative and decision-making roles towards desired changes in the public service in Sri Lanka. During the period of October 2002 and March 2003, the study gathered the data through in-depth interviews of 25 officers in the Sri Lanka Administrative Service. The results of the study indicate that public managers’ motivation to achieve and their leadership skills, goal clarity, managerial autonomy, performance-based reward system, citizen participation and public support represent major factors contributing to public entrepreneurship in the Sri Lanka Administrative Service. This study also finds that there are entrepreneurs in the Sri Lanka public service. Also the paper argues that there are opportunities and potential in the service to work as entrepreneurs who are innovative, proactive and willing to take some risks beyond their work responsibilities. Further, the author argues that there are significant benefits when the entrepreneurship is applied to public management. Therefore the necessary reforms are needed to sustain such initiatives of public entrepreneurs towards more effectiveness and efficiency of public service.
Anti-trypanosomal effects of Azadiracta indica (neem) extract on Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense-infected mice

Abstract. An in vivo study was carried out to determine the anti-typanosomal effect of aqueous extracts of the bark of Azadiracta indica (neem) in Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense- infected mice. The extracts were orally administered ad libitum twenty four hours post-infection for three days to mice after dose determination and toxicity testing. The effect of the extracts in trypanosome-infected mice was monitored for 20 days by determining changes in the packed cell volume (PCV), parasitemia levels and survival rate. The bark extracts of the neem plant did not show any acute toxicity to the uninfected animals because no significant effect on weight and PCV was recorded. However, infection with T. b. rhodesiense led to a decrease in weight and PCV, the decrease being more in those animals that were given water only and low doses of plant extracts. The extracts produced a dose-dependent effect at delaying onset of parasites appearance in circulation, decreasing level of parasitemia and PCV. Treatment with 1000 mg/kg of plant extract was comparable to and in some cases more effective than suramin, a known trypanocidal drug. Key words: Azadiracta indica, trypanosomosis, parasitemia, packed cell volume, survival rate
Family farming work organization of agro-extractivist communities in the region of Mambaí, Goias State, Brazil

Located in the center of Brazil, the Cerrado biome is the most diverse savanna in the world and covers about a quarter of the country area. However, since the 1960s, an ongoing agricultural expansion has led to profound transformations of the natural landscape of this biome, notably through land conversion. The remaining areas of native vegetation is a living and working place for many traditional communities and more recent rural settlements, who undertake low-impact agricultural and extractivist activities. Extractivism in the Cerrado constitutes harvesting of many Non-Timber Forest Products, especially Pequi fruits (Caryocar brasiliense). This proposal aims to study the agro-extractivism systems in Mambai district, Goias State, central Brazil, by describing their work organization, by analysing participation in the market, and by discussing the challenges they face. Data was gathered in socio-anthropological fieldwork through semi-structured interviews with over 40 agro-extractivists in rural settlements, visits to farms and observation of the town's weekly street market, followed by interviews with the main actors along the value chain. Results show thatfarmers have different strategies of production and combine different activities within their household. Regarding Pequi, there are many products obtained from the fruit, the commercial ones (mainly Pulp Preserves) being different from those for household consumption. Harvesting and processing the fruits is a family activity, almost always led by the women. Different products are sold through different commercial channels, including: direct sales to consumers (on orders or at the street market) or directly to local and distant industries, but mostly through intermediaries. The complexity of the relationship between the latter and the agro-extractivists is discussed. Although the income generated by these sales is important and complementary, access to markets appears as a main issue. Therefore, projects and public policy should address basic market access needs, by focusing on marketing, legislation requirements, transportation and especially entrepreneurial management. (Resume d'auteur)
Information Ordering for decision support in building design

A systematic approach for the application of AI-based information processing for information ordering in architectural building design is described. For this purpose fuzzy associative memory (FAM) method is considered. In this system FAM is used for knowledge representation in building design concerning the functional & technical requirements information and its graded relevance to individuals concerned in the same context. A set of FAM rules having been established as a knowledge base for use, a pattern of information in the form of a fuzzy vector is fed to each FAM rule. Here, a decision support system is aimed to convey the information to the respective individuals and/or bodies involved, in a graded form, according to their capacity of involvement in the building design. By exploiting the binary logic, each FAM rule is fired in parallel but to a different degree so that each rule generates an m-dimensional output fuzzy vector Pi. The union of these vectors creates m-dimensional fuzzy decision vector D that provides the ordered information addressed to respective individuals and/or bodies mentioned. Using simulated data, a verification procedure for the performance of the approach is investigated and by means of the work, the role that artificial intelligence in architecture and building design might play, is pointed out.
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF SIMULATED WOOD DRYING SCHEDULES AS REGARDS DRYING TIME REDUCTION IN AN EXPERIMENTAL KILN

A new configuration of an experimental drying kiln requires tests in what regards the determination of an optimized drying schedule. To draw up the most advantageous drying schedule involves a lot of experimental effort. In order to reduce this effort we have proposed in this paper a statistical method that we have employed to analyze a number of 64 combinations of velocity, dry-bulb temperature and relative humidity, as drying schedule input values, applied to wood drying in an experimental kiln, regarding their influence upon drying time. We used the experimental design, where the experiments were replaced by simulation. The analysis of the data consisted in testing if there are any main effects or two-factor interactions or a three-factor interaction. A conclusion of this analysis is that the low velocity values have less influence upon the drying time, but the temperature has a main effect upon it.
M-ary Optical Computing

The era of cloud computing has fuelled the increasing demand on data centers for high-performance, high-speed data storage and computing. Digital signal processing may find applications in future cloud computing networks containing a large sum of data centers. Addition and subtraction are considered to be fundamental building blocks of digital signal processing which are ubiquitous in microprocessors for arithmetic operations. However, the processing speed is limited by the electronic bottleneck. It might be valuable to implement high-speed arithmetic operations of addition and subtraction in the optical domain. In this chapter, recent results of M-ary optical arithmetic operations for high base numbers are presented. By exploiting degenerate and nondegenerate four-wave mixing (FWM) in highly nonlinear fibers (HNLFs), graphene-assisted optical devices, and silicon waveguide devices, various types of two-/three-input high-speed quaternary/octal/decimal/hexadecimal optical computing operations have been demonstrated. Operation speed up to 50 Gbaud of this computing approach is experimentally examined. The demonstrated M-ary optical computing using high base numbers may facilitate advanced data management and superior network performance.
The relationship between foreign direct investment and international trade. Substitution or complementarity? A survey

Theoretically, the explanatory approaches of foreign direct investment (FDI), as for example, the internalization theory and the eclectic paradigm, and general equilibrium trade models that incorporate horizontal multinational firms (MNEs), sustain the existence of a substitution relationship between FDI and international trade. Models of vertical FDI and considerations concerning demand, for their part, support a complementarity relationship. Empirically, however, it is difficult to find substitution between the two variables. This work presents a review of the existing theoretical and empirical literature, highlighting the reasons that underlie the apparent incongruity between theory and empirical works, and drawing attention to gaps that should be corrected in future works.
Exploring Early College Credit Implications for Engineering

In the past decade, increasing numbers of students are taking college credit courses while still in high school, through programs such as Advanced Placement or through agreements with the local community colleges. Recognizing this trend, an Iowa State University task force researched the impact that this early college credit (ECC) was having on both the student experience and the university. The study methodology included both quantitative and qualitative analyses, using student academic records, student surveys and focus groups, faculty focus groups, and review of institutional materials. This paper disaggregates institutional findings to compare the experiences of engineering and non-engineering students. Similar to nonengineering students, engineering students with ECC had higher one-year retention rates, took fewer credits their first semester of enrollment, graduated after eight semesters of enrollment and graduated in fewer semesters overall than did engineering students without ECC. However, there were differences in the experiences between engineering students and non-engineering students. Engineering students did not see an increase in GPA or graduation rates; and, they were more likely to repeat courses taken as ECC and to have their ECC courses not count toward their degree programs. Strategies to increase the effectiveness of ECC for engineering students could include offering of key entry-level engineering courses to students in high school, a review of the engineering curriculum for sequencing and flexibility, increased attention on issues of mathematics curriculum alignment with feeder institutions, and improved communication with high school students, parents and counselors.
Treatment-induced Brain Plasticity in Borderline Personality Disorder: review of fMRI studies

Whilst neural substrates of symptoms expression in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) have been studied extensively, neural mechanisms mediating post treatment amelioration of symptoms remain poorly characterized. Herein present review sheds a critical light on all here-to-date fMRI findings of brain changes in BPD patients following a treatment with psychotherapy or drugs. Preliminary evidence points to downregulation of neuronal activity within the insula and amygdala, together with differential employment of prefrontal areas, mainly orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), as well as enhanced functional connectivity between limbic and prefrontal regions induced by DBT. Identifying neural circuits behind treatment processes may refine strategies to target specific symptoms, thereby resolving some of the controversies over BPD
Small black holes versus horizonless solutions in AdS spacetime

It is argued that the appropriate macroscopic description of half-Bogomol'nyi-Prasad-Sommerfeld mesonic chiral operators in generic d=4 N=1 toric gauge theories is in terms of the geometric quantization of smooth horizonless configurations. The relevance of different ensemble macroscopic descriptions is emphasized: Lorentzian vs Euclidean configurations as (semiclassical) microstates vs saddle points in a Euclidean path integral.
Research on Timestamp-based Port Hopping in Software Defined Network

Port hopping is a typical technology in moving target defense which constantly changes communication port number to confuse potential attackers and protect target hosts. In port hopping technology, time synchronization is the key problem to be solved since time synchronization can ensure communication port matching and avoid data loss in port hopping process. However, in software defined network (SDN), since its architecture differs from traditional network, port hopping technology hasn’t been fully applied in it. Based on timestamp synchronization, this paper creates a port hopping model in software defined network according to its centralized control, data plane and control plane separation as well as programmable features. In timestampbased port hopping model, we design a three-party port synchronization mode by utilizing SDN controller and solve the problems in time synchronization such as clock drift and handoff. Our theoretical analysis and experimental results show that this proposed timestamp-based port hopping method can effectively resist DoS attack without adding load on SDN controller in software defined network.
Manifold Alignment via Feature Correspondence

We propose a novel framework for combining datasets via alignment of their associated intrinsic dimensions. Our approach assumes that two datasets are sampled from a common latent space, i.e., they measure equivalent systems. Thus, we expect there to exist a natural (albeit unknown) alignment of the data manifolds associated with the intrinsic geometry of these datasets, which are perturbed by measurement artifacts in the sampling process. Importantly, we do not assume any individual correspondence (partial or complete) between data points. Instead, we rely on our assumption that a subset of data features have correspondence across datasets. We leverage this assumption to estimate relations between intrinsic manifold dimensions, which are given by diffusion map coordinates over each of the datasets. We compute a correlation matrix between diffusion coordinates of the datasets by considering graph (or manifold) Fourier coefficients of corresponding data features. We then orthogonalize this correlation matrix to form an isometric transformation between the diffusion maps of the datasets. Finally, we apply this transformation to the diffusion coordinates and construct a unified diffusion geometry of the datasets together. We show that this approach successfully corrects misalignment artifacts and enables data integration.
Optimization scheme for coastal morphodynamic model

Szczecin, Poland, ISSN 0749-0208 To understand the hydrodynamics, sediment transport and morphological changes of the Jade tidal channel and the Jade Bay in the German Bight, Southern North Sea, a series of 2DH numerical morphodynamic models was set-up to simulate the morphological changes. Morphodynamic models are limited in terms of their predictive skills to reproduce mesoscale (temporal scales of years to decades, spatial scales of kilometers to tens of kilometers) erosion and deposition patterns of the Jade tidal channel due to the complex physical processes; uncertainty of topography changes and model parameterization. This paper investigates the use of a combination of model predictions and observations, which is referred to as an ‘optimization scheme’ in this study. The model predicted and observed morphological changes over a 10-year period are combined with weights inversely related to their relative errors. The updated morphological changes and updated bathymetry are achieved by minimizing the total errors of predictions and observations by using a cost function. The updated bathymetry was used as initial bathymetry for a second model simulation of the following 6-year period. The Brier Skill Scores (BSS) are adopted to assess the ability of model predictions. Preliminary results have shown that with updated initial bathymetry calculated from the optimization scheme, the model performance is improved. Success of applying optimization scheme on the morphodynamic model of Jade estuary has shown the potential of using combination of models and observations in future coastal area morphodynamic models.