Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ring counting in field‐ion micrographs

Ring counting is an important technique in the quantitative analysis of field‐ion micrographs since the information derived is independent of magnification and projection both of which vary in a complex way over the image. However, although the technique is important, its direct use has previously been restricted to the region within which the particular ring system is discernible. In this paper, techniques and procedures are described which usefully extend the range over which the ring count can be performed. The methods are based on determining the numerical interrelationship of the various ring structures. This not only allows ring counting to be effected over large angular distances, but also enables counts to be performed in any direction so that the number of rings of a high‐index plane can be determined through more prominent low‐index regions.
PEM: Privacy-preserving Epidemiological Modeling

—Modeling the spread of COVID-19 is crucial for any effort to manage the pandemic. However, detailed epidemiological simulations suffer from a scarcity of relevant empirical data, such as social contact graphs, because such data is inherently privacy-critical. Thus, there is an urgent need for a method to perform powerful epidemiological simulations on real-world contact graphs without disclosing privacy-critical information. In this work, we propose a practical framework for privacy-preserving epidemiological modeling (PEM) on contact information stored on mobile phones, like the ones collected by already deployed contact tracing apps. Unlike those apps, PEM allows for meaningful epidemiological simulations. This is enabled by a novel Threshold-PIR-SUM protocol to privately retrieve the sum of a ﬁxed number of distinct values without revealing individual values. PEM protects the privacy of the users by not revealing sensitive data to the system operator or other participants, while enabling detailed predictive models of pandemic spread.
Detection of ryanodine receptor target‐site mutations in diamide insecticide‐resistant Spodoptera frugiperda in China

Spodoptera frugiperda (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is a widely distributed pest of corn. Since it invaded China in 2018, it has caused serious damage to local corn production. Chlorantraniliprole, an anthranilic diamide insecticide, has been widely used to control lepidopteran pests. Tetrachloropyramid is a new allosteric modulator insecticide developed based on chlorantraniliprole, so it has a similar mechanism and insecticidal effect. In this study, we investigated resistance levels to chlorantraniliprole and tetrachloropyramid in S. frugiperda from 13 populations in China. Among the populations tested, the relative highest resistance to chlorantraniliprole occurred in the Guangzhou population, and the most susceptible to chlorantraniliprole was found in the Wuhan population. The lethal dosage LD50 value of the Guangzhou population against chlorantraniliprole was 27.8‐fold higher than that of the Wuhan population. Minimal differences were observed among S. frugiperda populations in terms of sensitivity to tetrachloropyramid. Heterozygous mutations at the I4734 site of the ryanodine receptor (RyR) were found, while no mutations were found in the G4891 site. The mutations were detected in only two of the 786 individuals analyzed, one from the Qinzhou population and other from the Anshun population (frequency below 2% in both cases). There were no significant differences in the expression levels of RyR between Guangzhou and Wuhan populations. In summary, our results indicate that: (i) S. frugiperda has low resistance levels to diamide insecticides in China; and (ii) the differences in relative resistance among the 13 populations analyzed are not caused by the mutations in RyR or the expression of RyR.
A simulation study of high voltage 4H-SiC IGBTs

This paper evaluates the performance of high voltage 4H-SiC IGBTs. The static and dynamic characteristics of SiC IGBTs with various high voltage ratings and structures at different temperatures are obtained by 2D numerical and analytical simulations. Discrepancies in the device performance are investigated. Comparison with silicon IGBTs is also included.
Detection and identification of illicit drugs using terahertz imaging

We demonstrated an advanced terahertz imaging technique for detection and identification of illicit drugs by introducing the component spatial pattern analysis. As an explanation, the characteristic fingerprint spectra and refractive index of ketamine were first measured with terahertz time-domain spectroscopy both in the air and nitrogen. The results obtained in the ambient air indicated that some absorption peaks are not obvious or probably not dependable. It is necessary and important to present a more practical technique for the detection. The spatial distributions of several illicit drugs [3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, methylenedioxyamphetamine, heroin, acetylcodeine, morphine, and ketamine], widely consumed in the world, were obtained from terahertz images using absorption spectra previously measured in the range from 0.2to2. 6THz in the ambient air. The different kinds of pure illicit drugs hidden in mail envelopes were inspected and identified. It could be an effective method in the field of s.
An Analysis of Anatomy Education Before and During Covid‐19: May–August 2020

Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid‐19) created unparalleled challenges to anatomy education. Gross anatomy education has been particularly impacted given the traditional in‐person format of didactic instruction and/or laboratory component(s). To assess the changes in gross anatomy lecture and laboratory instruction, assessment, and teaching resources utilized as a result of Covid‐19, a survey was distributed to gross anatomy educators through professional associations and listservs. Of the 67 survey responses received for the May–August 2020 academic period, 84% were from United States (US) institutions, while 16% were internationally based. Respondents indicated that in‐person lecture decreased during Covid‐19 (before: 76%, during: 8%, P < 0.001) and use of cadaver materials declined (before: 76 ± 33%, during: 34 ± 43%, P < 0.001). The use of cadaver materials in laboratories decreased during Covid‐19 across academic programs, stand‐alone and integrated anatomy courses, and private and public institutions (P ≤ 0.004). Before Covid‐19, cadaveric materials used in laboratories were greater among professional health programs relative to medical and undergraduate programs (P ≤ 0.03) and among stand‐alone relative to integrated anatomy courses (P ≤ 0.03). Furthermore, computer‐based assessment increased (P < 0.001) and assessment materials changed from cadaveric material to images (P < 0.03) during Covid‐19, even though assessment structure was not different (P > 0.05). The use of digital teaching resources increased during Covid‐19 (P < 0.001), with reports of increased use of in‐house created content, BlueLink, and Complete Anatomy software (P < 0.05). While primarily representing US institutions, this study provided evidence of how anatomy educators adapted their courses, largely through virtual mediums, and modified laboratory protocols during the initial emergence of the Covid‐19 pandemic.
Ophthalmic complications of immune checkpoint inhibitors

ABSTRACT Purpose Immune checkpoint inhibitors are a relatively new class of medications that activate normal tumor surveillance mechanisms. These agents have tremendous utility in treating a variety of cancers and are thus being used with increasing frequency. However, these medications carry significant ophthalmic toxicities. This review aims to discuss the most common ocular side effects of immune checkpoint inhibitors. Methods A literature search was performed to identify reports of ophthalmic side effects of immune checkpoint inhibitors. The articles were reviewed, and data was extracted. Results Immune checkpoint inhibitors may result in a wide variety of ophthalmic complications, including ocular surface disease, uveitis, orbital inflammation, myositis and myopathy, optic nerve disease, and chorioretinal lesions. While many of these toxicities respond to topical and systemic corticosteroids, more severe presentations necessitate temporary or permanent discontinuation of therapy. Conclusions This class of medication may yield a spectrum of ocular side effects, and ophthalmologists must be cognizant of these problems and their implications. Patient education facilitates appropriate vigilance and awareness of these issues. Coordination with the oncologic team will help to determine optimal treatment strategies.
Integrating Clinical Reasoning Skills in a Pre‐professional Undergraduate Human Anatomy Course

Clinically integrated curricula in health science education has been shown to promote the development of problem‐solving schema and positively impact knowledge acquisition. Despite its’ purported benefits, this type of curricula can impose a high cognitive load, which may negatively impact novice learners’ knowledge acquisition and problem‐solving schema development. Introducing explicit clinical reasoning instruction within pre‐professional undergraduate basic science courses may limit factors that increase cognitive load, enhance knowledge acquisition, and foster developing clinical problem‐solving skills. This study, conducted over the Fall and Spring semesters of the 2018–2019 school year, sought to evaluate whether the implementation of a clinical reasoning instructional intervention within a clinically integrated pre‐professional undergraduate general human anatomy course influenced students’ acquisition of anatomical knowledge and development of clinical problem‐solving skills. Results of the study were mixed regarding the acquisition of anatomical knowledge. Both the intervention and comparison groups performed similarly on multiple choice examinations of anatomical knowledge. However, the clinical reasoning intervention positively impacted students’ ability to apply clinical reasoning skills to anatomically based clinical case studies. Results from M\mixed between‐within subjects analysis of variance comparing scores on Written Clinical Reasoning Assessments revealed a significant interaction between time and group affiliation, with the groups receiving the interventions outperforming the comparison groups: Fall, P < 0.001; Spring, P < 0.001. The results of this study may imply that explicit clinical reasoning instruction within a clinically integrated undergraduate Human Anatomy course could hold potential for fostering students’ early clinical reasoning skills.
Whole-genome DNA methylation profiling reveals epigenetic signatures in developing muscle in Tan and Hu sheep and their offspring

Introduction The Tan sheep is a popular local breed in China because of its tenderness and flavor. The Hu sheep breed is also famous for its high litter size, and its muscle growth rate is faster than that of Tan sheep. However, the epigenetic mechanism behind these muscle-related phenotypes is unknown. Methods In this study, the longissimus dorsi tissue from 18 6 month-old Tan sheep, Hu sheep, and Tan-Hu F2 generation (6 sheep per population) were collected. After genomic DNA extraction, whole-genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS) and bioinformatics analysis were performed to construct genome-wide DNA methylome maps for the Tan sheep, Hu sheep and their Tan-Hu F2 generation. Results Distinct genome-wide DNA methylation patterns were observed between Tan sheep and Hu sheep. Moreover, DNA methylated regions were significantly increased in the skeletal muscle from Tan sheep vs. the F2 generation compared to the Hu sheep vs. F2 generation and the Tan sheep vs. Hu sheep. Compared with Hu sheep, the methylation levels of actin alpha 1 (ACTA1), myosin heavy chain 11 (MYH11), Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome protein (WAS), vav guanine nucleotide exchange factor 1 (VAV1), fibronectin 1 (FN1) and Rho-associated protein kinase 2 (ROCK2) genes were markedly distinct in the Tan sheep. Furthermore, Gene Ontology analysis indicated that these genes were involved in myotube differentiation, myotube cell development, smooth muscle cell differentiation and striated muscle cell differentiation. Conclusion The findings from this study, in addition to data from previous research, demonstrated that the ACTA1, MYH11, WAS, VAV1, FN1, and ROCK2 genes may exert regulatory effects on muscle development.
Rovibrational states of H+ 3. Part 2: The energy region between 9000 cm−1 and 13000 cm−1 including empirical corrections for the non-adiabatic effects

The first part of this series focused on the calculation of the rovibrational states of H+ 3 in the energy region below 9000 cm−1, where most of the experimentally determined and assigned term values are located. The theoretically justified empirical correction for the non-adiabatic coupling corrections, which was obtained and tested in that study is extended and applied here in the calculation of the rovibrational states of H+ 3 to term values up to 13000 cm−1, which is above the barrier to linearity. In particular, predictions are made for the 5v 2 bands, which are the subject of current experimental investigations, hopefully aiding with our results in the assignment of the spectral lines observed.
Witness Encryption from Garbled Circuit and Multikey Fully Homomorphic Encryption Techniques

In a witness encryption scheme, to decrypt a ciphertext associated with an NP statement, the decrypter takes as input a witness testifying that the statement is in the language. When the statement is not in the language, then the message is hidden. Thus far, the only provably secure constructions assume the existence of indistinguishability obfuscation ( i O ) and multilinear maps ( MMap s). We make progress towards building polynomially eﬃcient witness encryption for NP without resorting to i O or MMap s. In particular, we give a witness encryption scheme from Yao’s garbled circuit technique and a new type of fully homomorphic encryption ( FHE ) that we call annihilating. Interestingly, we require a version of the annihilating FHE that is circularly insecure, i.e., allows testing the presence of a key cycle. We prove our witness encryption’s security from a novel assumption about our annihilating FHE . We formulate the assumption as an interplay between an annihilating FHE and ciphertexts modeled as ideal ciphers. We show a candidate (leveled) annihilating FHE built from a mul-tikey variant of the BGV / BFV fully homomorphic cryptosystems.
A Framework of Private Set Intersection Protocols

Private Set Intersection (PSI) is a speciﬁed protocol of secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC). PSI allows two parties to obtain the intersection of their private sets while nothing else is revealed. In contrast to the great demand for PSI in real-world applications, there is still no evaluation results of diﬀerent general practical PSI framework. Most existing PSI implmentations are based on C/C++, which also makes them hard to compute in parallel. In this paper, we propose a generic Java-based PSI framework and implement all up-to-date OT-based PSI protocols within the framework until now. We evaluate these OT-based PSI protocols and the dependent cryptographic primitives and provide the best combination of primitives for constructing a best-performed OT-based PSI from the ground up. Additional optimizations are also applied to the protocols in our framework, including both generic and custom-tailored ones. We adopt ﬁlters to signiﬁcantly reduce the communication of OT-based PSI protocols. The implementations in our framework support concurrence by using the natural feature of Java, which avoids to manurally allocate threads when using C/C++. We believe that our framework beneﬁts a lot for future MPC and PSI researches and helps the promotion of PSI-based applications.
Addressing the Privacy Threat to Identify Existence of a Target's Account on Sensitive Services

: Online service providers exert tremendous e ﬀ ort to protect users’ accounts against sensitive data breaches. Although threats from complete outsiders, such as account hijacking for monetization, still occur, recent studies have shed light on threats to privacy from insiders. In this study, we focus on these latter threats. Speciﬁcally, we present the ﬁrst comprehensive study of an attack from insiders that identiﬁes the existence of a target’s account by using the target’s email address and the insecure login-related messages that are displayed. Such a threat may violate intimates’ or acquaintances’ privacy because the kinds of service accounts a user has implies his / her personal preferences or situation. We conducted surveys regarding user expectations and behaviors on online services and an extensive measurement study of login-related messages on online services that are considered sensitive. We found that over 80% of participants answered that they have sensitive services and that almost all services were vulnerable to our attack. Moreover, about half the participants who have sensitive services were insecurely registered on them, thus could be potential victims. Finally, we recommend ways for online service providers to improve login-related messages and for users to take appropriate defensive actions. We also report our responsible disclosure process.
An Algorithm for the Influential Hinge Vertex Problem on Interval Graphs

: Consider a simple undirected graph G = ( V , E ) with vertex set V and edge set E . The distance δ G ( x ,y ) is deﬁned as the length of the shortest path between vertices x and y in G . The vertex u ∈ V is a hinge vertex if there exist two vertices x ,y ∈ V − { u } such that δ G − u ( x ,y ) > δ G ( x ,y ). Let U be a set consisting of all hinge vertices of G , and let AVS ( u ) denote the set of pairs of vertices ( x ,y )s to which a path between x and y becomes longer after removal of a hinge vertex u from G . The inﬂuential hinge vertex problem aims to determine the hinge vertex u that maximizes | AVS ( u ) | in G . In this study, we propose an algorithm that runs in O ( n 2 ) time to solve the inﬂuential hinge vertex problem on an interval graph.
Botnet IND: About Botnets of Botless IoT Devices

Recent studies and incidents have shed light on the threat posed by botnets consisting of a large set of relatively weak IoT devices that host an army of bots. However, little is known about the threat posed by a small set of devices that are not infected with malware and do not host bots. In this paper, we present Botnet-IND (indirect), a new type of distributed attack which is launched by a botnet consisting of botless IoT devices. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of Botnet-IND on commercial, off-the-shelf IoT devices, we present Piping Botnet, an implementation of Botnet-IND on smart irrigation systems, a relatively new type of IoT device which is used by both the private and public sector to save water; such systems will likely replace all traditional irrigation systems in the next few years. We perform a security analysis of three of the five most sold commercial smart irrigation systems (GreenIQ, BlueSpray, and RainMachine). Our experiments demonstrate how attackers can trick such irrigation systems (Wi-Fi and cellular) without the need to compromise them with malware or bots. We show that in contrast to traditional botnets that require a large set of infected IoT devices to cause great harm, Piping Botnet can pose a severe threat to urban water services using a relatively small set of smart irrigation systems. We found that only 1,300 systems were required to drain a floodwater reservoir when they are maliciously programmed to simultaneously consume water for just one hour.
DNFA: Differential No-Fault Analysis of Bit Permutation Based Ciphers Assisted by Side-Channel

Physical security of NIST lightweight cryptography competition candidates is gaining importance as the standardization process progresses. Side-channel attacks (SCA) are a well-researched topic within the physical security of cryptographic implementations. It was shown that collisions in the intermediate values can be captured by side-channel measurements to reduce the complexity of the key retrieval to trivial numbers. In this paper, we target a specific bit permutation vulnerability in the block cipher GIFT that allows the attacker to mount a key recovery attack. We present a novel SCA methodology called DCSCA - Differential Ciphertext SCA, which follows principles of differential fault analysis, but instead of the usage of faults, it utilizes SCA and statistical distribution of intermediate values. We simulate the attack on a publicly available bitslice implementation of GIFT, showing the practicality of the attack. We further show the application of the attack on GIFT-based AEAD schemes (GIFT-COFB, ESTATE, HYENA, and SUNDAE-GIFT) proposed for the NIST LWC competition. DCSCA can recover the master key with 213.39 AEAD sessions, assuming 32 encryptions per session.
Paragraph-based Estimation of Cyber Kill Chain Phase from Threat Intelligence Reports

: In order to keep up with the increasing number of cyberattacks, the defense tactics require timely and accurate understanding of the threats and corresponding risks. We propose a scheme for modeling threat information to extract event information from security reports on a paragraph basis and then estimate their kill chain phases. The experimental results show that the model got an average F1-score of 0.67, the average accuracy of 65% of the cyber kill chain phases and 86% of core features can be extracted by using this method.
Controllable growth of ZnO microcrystals by a capping-molecule-assisted hydrothermal process

Different shapes of ZnO microcrystals have been achieved controllably by a capping-molecule-assisted hydrothermal process. The flowerlike, disklike, and dumbbell-like ZnO microcrystals of hexagonal phase have been obtained respectively using ammonia, citric acid (CA), and poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) as the capping molecules. Only a very strong UV emission at ∼380 nm is observed in the photoluminescence (PL) spectra of the three kinds of ZnO microcrystals, indicative of their high crystal quality. The formation mechanisms for the hydrothermally synthesized microcrystals in different morphologies have been phenomenologically presented.
Thermochemistry of Morpholine Adducts of Some Bivalent Transition Metal Bromides

The adducts [MBr 2 (morph) n ] (where M is Mn(II), Fe(II), Co(II), Ni(II), Cu(II), or Zn(II), morph is morpholine, and n = 1.5, 2, or 3) were synthesized and characterized by melting points, elemental analysis, thermal analysis, and electronic and IR spectroscopy. From calorimetric studies in solution, the standard enthalpies of formation of the adducts and several thermochemical parameters were determined. The mean standard enthalpies of the metal-nitrogen bond were calculated.
Theory of Electrical Conduction Through a Molecule

ABSTRACT: We present a theoretical study of electronic transport through a 1,4 benzene‐dithiolate (BDT) ion chemically bonded to two gold leads. The model consists of a single BDT attached to two Au clusters, which are in turn attached to ideal one‐dimensional leads. Extended Hückel theory is used to model the electronic structure and the Lippmann‐Schwinger equation is solved for the lead‐to‐lead transmission. The current‐voltage characteristics of the system are calculated using the finite temperature, finite voltage Landauer formula. Different atomic configurations of the Au clusters are examined including the effects of thermally induced positional disorder of the Au atoms. We find that while in some cases there is conduction via states derived from the BDT HOMO and LUMO levels, conduction due to levels derived from hybrid Au cluster‐BDT states often predominate. The current‐voltage characteristics are found to be sensitive to the specific configuration of the Au clusters, BDT and ideal leads.