Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pointed and colored binary encompassing trees

For n disjoint line segments in the plane we construct in optimal O(n log n) time an encompassing tree of maximum degree three such that at every vertex all incident edges lie in a halfplane defined by the incident input segment. In particular, this implies that each vertex is pointed. Furthermore, we show that any set of colored disjoint line segments (for each segment one endpoint is colored red and the other endpoint is colored blue) has an encompassing tree of maximum degree three in which no edge is monochromatic.
Recent advances in cuticular wax biosynthesis and its regulation in Arabidopsis.

The aerial parts of land plants are covered with cuticular waxes that limit non-stomatal water loss and gaseous exchanges,and protect plants from ultraviolet radiation and pathogen attacks.They are composed of very-long-chain fatty acids (VLCFAs;C20 to C34) in addition to their derivatives,aldehydes,alkanes,primary and secondary alcohols,and wax esters.Due to their physical properties,such as solidity at room temperature and a translucency ranging from transparent to opaque,plant waxes have been used as raw materials in the production of cosmetics,detergents,plastics,soaps,paints,drugs,lubricants,and high-value renewable fuels.Many genes involved in cuticular wax biosynthesis and export have been characterized by forward and reverse genetic approaches as well as by stem epidermis transcriptome analysis.The regulatory mechanisms of cuticular wax biosynthesis have been reported at the transcriptional,posttranscriptional,and translational levels.Recent advances in cuticular wax biosynthesis and its regulation are reviewed in this paper.
[The clinical study of adhesion prevention of sodium hyaluronate in flexor tendon surgery].

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effects of sodium hyaluronate on adhesion prevention after flexor tendon surgery. METHODS In 47 cases with the flexor tendon surgery, two kinds of sodium hyaluronate jelly preparations were injected into the tendon sheath before suture. Preparation I (20 mg/2 ml) was for group A (17 patients) and preparation II (20 mg/2 ml) was for group B (16 patients). The control group (group C, 14 patients) were treated in the same way except injection of sodium hyaluronate. The functions of afflicted fingers including flexibility, pain and swelling were measured immediately, at the first, second and the third month after operation. RESULTS All 47 patients were followed up 1 to 3 months. 64.71% patients in group A and 68.75% in group B showed significant improvement. There were significant difference compared with group C (P < 0.05). There were no significant adverse reactions were observed in all groups. CONCLUSION Two sodium hyaluronate preparations have effects in adhesion prevention after flexor tendon surgery with safety and expedience.
Reply: Migraine, cortical excitability, and evoked potentials: a clinico-pharmacological perspective

We thank Dr Gupta for his comments, which are, as usual, comprehensive and thought-provoking. We will focus on responses to queries about experimental data and not discuss in detail hypotheses the main purpose of which is to design research protocols to prove or disprove them. Dr Gupta rightly points out the necessity to distinguish between the interictal state and the attack period in any pathophysiological study of migraineurs. We and others have underscored this for physiological studies and shown dramatic changes in the habituation pattern of cortical evoked potentials during the attack where habituation actually normalizes (Maertens et al ., 1986; Afra et al ., 2000; Kropp and Gerber, 1995; Evers et al ., 1999). Several of these studies have shown that the change in evoked …
Dark Hazard: Learning-based, Large-Scale Discovery of Hidden Sensitive Operations in Android Apps

Hidden sensitive operations (HSO) such as stealing privacy user data upon receiving an SMS message are increasingly utilized by mobile malware and other potentially-harmful apps (PHAs) to evade detection. Identification of such behaviors is hard, due to the challenge in triggering them during an app’s runtime. Current static approaches rely on the trigger conditions or hidden behaviors known beforehand and therefore cannot capture previously unknown HSO activities. Also these techniques tend to be computationally intensive and therefore less suitable for analyzing a large number of apps. As a result, our understanding of real-world HSO today is still limited, not to mention effective means to mitigate this threat. In this paper, we present HSOMINER, an innovative machinelearning based program analysis technique that enables a largescale discovery of unknown HSO activities. Our approach leverages a set of program features that characterize an HSO branch and can be relatively easy to extract from an app. These features summarize a set of unique observations about an HSO condition, its paths and the relations between them, and are designed to be general for finding hidden suspicious behaviors. Particularly, we found that a trigger condition is less likely to relate to the path of its branch through data flows or shared resources, compared with a legitimate branch. Also, the behaviors exhibited by the two paths of an HSO branch tend to be conspicuously different (innocent on one side and sinister on the other). Most importantly, even though these individual features are not sufficiently accurate for capturing HSO on their own, collectively they are shown to be highly effective in identifying such behaviors. This differentiating power is harnessed by HSOMINER to classify Android apps, which achieves a high precision (>98%) and coverage (>94%), and is also efficient as discovered in our experiments. The new tool was further used in a measurement study involving 338,354 realworld apps, the largest one ever conducted on suspicious hidden operations. Our research brought to light the pervasiveness of HSO activities, which are present in 18.7% of the apps we analyzed, surprising trigger conditions (e.g., click on a certain region of a view) and behaviors (e.g., hiding operations in a dynamically generated receiver), which help better understand 1A branch, unless otherwise specified, refers to a branching structure, which contains a condition and multiple paths. the problem and contribute to more effective defense against this new threat to the mobile platform.
Semi-automatic object tracking in video sequences

A method is presented for semi-automatic object tracking in video sequences using multiple features and a method for probabilistic relaxation to improve the tracking results producing smooth and accurate tracked borders. Starting from a given initial position of the object in the first frame the proposed method automatically tracks the object in the sequence modelling the a posteriori probabilities of a set of features such as color, position and motion, depth, etc.
Object oriented framework for CUDA based image processing

In this paper, we propose and implement an object oriented framework for the GPU based image processing. Compute Unified Device Architecture i.e. the CUDA is a novel and promising GPU programming framework from the NVIDIA. The CUDA has been used to speedup many computationally intensive graphics as well as non graphics applications, but it requires more than just kernel programming. A pyramidal image blending algorithm is essential for a seamless panoramic mosaic. We introduce an object oriented framework for the CUDA based pyramidal image blending using software engineering principles and design patterns. We illustrate a set of design patterns, which assist in reusing an existing functionality. We show that use of design patterns facilitate extending existing functionality by adding new classes, rather than modifying an existing classes or functionality. We also talk about extending our framework for computation using the GPU texture memory. We talk about the framework's performance in terms of programming efforts and a speedup factor achieved.
Contractual Form in Domestic and International Strategic Alliances

This paper studies the factors that influence the adoption of a contractual form in strategic alliances within a transaction, cost framework. It is argued that joint ventures are preferred to contractual agreements as cooperation becomes increasingly complex. An analysis of 663 strategic alliances has confirmed this proposition while showing the differences that exist between domestic and international alliances. The former are more intensively influenced by variables relative to organizational complexity such as the number of partners and the number of functional areas; the latter being influenced to a greater extent by strategic complexity and the need to learn.
Nanoscale Strain Mapping in SIMOX 3-D Sculpted Silicon Waveguides Using Tip-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy

Strain in silicon plays a significant role in exploring electro-optical material, boosting transistor performance, tuning birefringence of optical silicon waveguides, and so on. In this paper, we measured, for the first time, the nanoscale strain in the SIMOX 3-D sculpted silicon waveguides using tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS). A model, which relates the observed Raman peak shifts to the localized stresses for our TERS experiments, was presented. The tip-induced electric-field enhancements, tip-induced depolarization of incident light, and oblique incidence geometry of the TERS system were included in the model. Both polarizations of incident light and Raman scattered light are selected appropriately with the guidance of the model for obtaining enough electric-field enhancements and accurately calculate the stresses. A 2-D stress map inside the silicon waveguide with spatial resolution of about 20 nm was obtained, and corresponding strains were calculated based on Hooke's law. We observed that the stresses are compressive, and the strains show inhomogeneity. The origins of strain and the strain-induced second-order optical susceptibility inside the SIMOX 3-D sculpted buried silicon waveguides are discussed and analyzed. The mapping of 2-D nanoscale strain and the analysis of second-order optical susceptibility in this work suggest that the SIMOX 3-D sculpted strained silicon might be a potential metamaterial for electro-optical modulation and optical signal processing. Moreover, the presented TERS model could be a valuable tool for probing strain in strained silicon devices.
Research-Based Guidelines for Child Forensic Interviews

Abstract We present important considerations for conducting forensic interviews with children who are witnesses to or alleged victims of crime. Specifically, we (a) present the basic principles of the forensic interview and review some of the best structured forensic protocols currently available; (b) provide a detailed, practical blueprint for conducting a structured forensic interview and emphasize how the components of the interview are based upon empirical research; and (c) discuss special con siderations for interviews with children of different age groups and children who have special needs or circumstances, and interviews involving various crime circumstances. We end with suggestions to assist legal and social service professionals in accessing the social science research literature that should inform forensic interview techniques.
Query modeling for spoken document retrieval

Spoken document retrieval (SDR) has recently become a more interesting research avenue due to increasing volumes of publicly available multimedia associated with speech information. Many efforts have been devoted to developing elaborate indexing and modeling techniques for representing spoken documents, but only few to improving query formulations for better representing the users' information needs. In view of this, we recently presented a language modeling framework exploring a novel use of relevance information cues for improving query effectiveness. Our work in this paper continues this general line of research in two main aspects. We further explore various ways to glean both relevance and non-relevance cues from the spoken document collection so as to enhance query modeling in an unsupervised fashion. Furthermore, we also investigate representing the query and documents with different granularities of index features to work in conjunction with the various relevance and/or non-relevance cues. Experiments conducted on the TDT (Topic Detection and Tracking) SDR task demonstrate the performance merits of the methods instantiated from our retrieval framework when compared to other existing retrieval methods.
The Effectiveness of Noninvasive Biomarkers to Predict Hepatitis B-Related Significant Fibrosis and Cirrhosis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Diagnostic Test Accuracy

Noninvasive biomarkers have been developed to predict hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related fibrosis owing to the significant limitations of liver biopsy. Those biomarkers were initially derived from evaluation of hepatitis C virus (HCV)-related fibrosis, and their accuracy among HBV-infected patients was under constant debate. A systematic review was conducted on records in PubMed, EMBASE and the Cochrane Library electronic databases, up until April 1st, 2013, in order to systematically assess the effectiveness and accuracy of these biomarkers for predicting HBV-related fibrosis. The questionnaire for quality assessment of diagnostic accuracy studies (QUADAS) was used. Out of 115 articles evaluated for eligibility, 79 studies satisfied the pre-determined inclusion criteria for meta-analysis. Eventually, our final data set for the meta-analysis contained 30 studies. The areas under the SROC curve for APRI, FIB-4, and FibroTest of significant fibrosis were 0.77, 0.75, and 0.84, respectively. For cirrhosis, the areas under the SROC curve for APRI, FIB-4 and FibroTest were 0.75, 0.87, and 0.90, respectively. The heterogeneity of FIB-4 and FibroTest were not statistically significant. The heterogeneity of APRI for detecting significant fibrosis was affected by median age (P = 0.0211), and for cirrhosis was affected by etiology (P = 0.0159). Based on the analysis we claim that FibroTest has excellent diagnostic accuracy for identification of HBV-related significant fibrosis and cirrhosis. FIB-4 has modest benefits and may be suitable for wider scope implementation.
Locating and managing service-learning: a complex issue in higher education

Within the broad theoretical context provided by debates on the South African education reforms and the civic engagement agenda in higher education, this article focuses on service learning in higher education and portrays complex relationships between the service-learning office and different existing structures within and outside the University of Technology. The article argues that such a web of relationships could create confusion in terms of locating and managing servicelearning in the university. The article demonstrates the interviewees' confusion with regard to an ideal location for service learning in a merged University of Technology, stimulates discussion and calls for guidance and sustainable partnerships between the university and government departments that are responsible for community development. South African Journal of Higher Education Vol. 20(4) 2006: pp.488-502
On the Practicality of Cryptographic Access Control for Dynamic Workloads

The ability to enforce robust and dynamic access controls on cloud-hosted data while simultaneously ensuring confidentiality with respect to the cloud itself is a clear goal for many users and organizations. To this end, there has been much cryptographic research proposing the use of (hierarchichal) identity based encryption, attribute based encryption, predicate encryption functional encryption, or related technologies to perform robust and private access control on untrusted cloud providers. However, the vast majority of this work studies static models where the access control policies being enforced do not change over time. This is contrary to the needs of most practical applications, which leverage dynamic data and/or policies. In this paper, we provide strong evidence that for access control scenarios that require even moderate amounts of dynamism in their policies, the current technology is not computationally efficient enough for deployment. This is done by exploring the viability and costs associated with adapting the above types of cryptosystems to perform dynamic and private access control on the cloud using a threat model commonly assumed in the cryptographic literature and desired in practice. Specifically, we develop lightweight identity based and traditional publickey cryptography based constructions for enforcing role based access controls over files hosted by a cloud storage provider. Specifically, we consider RBAC0. We prove the correctness of these constructions and leverage real-world RBAC datasets and recent techniques developed by the access control community to experimentally analyze, through simulation, their associated computational costs. Although identity based and traditional public-key systems are a natural fit for enforcing static RBAC policies, we show that supporting revocation, update, and other state change functionality incurs significant overheads in realistic scenarios. We identify a number of bottlenecks in such systems, and fruitful areas for future work that will lead to more natural and efficient constructions for cryptographic enforcement of dynamic access controls. The majority of our findings naturally extend to similar attempts to use hierarchical identity based or attribute based cryptographic schemes to enforce dynamic RBAC1 or ABAC policies; seemingly, all of the costs in our constructions would need to be incurred by similar mechanisms is schemes associated with these alternate encryption schemes.
Transition matters: pupils’ experiences of the primary–secondary school transition in the West of Scotland and consequences for well‐being and attainment

The importance of school transitions for pupil adjustment, particularly their impact on later well‐being and attainment, remains contested. This paper draws on data from a longitudinal, school‐based study of over 2000 Scottish pupils, first surveyed in 135 primary schools (age 11) in 1994, and followed up in 43 secondary schools (age 13 and 15) and again after leaving school (age 18/19) in 2002/3. The length of follow‐up makes this study unique in transition research. After a year in secondary school (age 13), the majority recalled having had difficulties of adjustment to both school and peer social systems at the beginning of secondary education. While the primary (but not secondary) school played a small part in accounting for different transition experiences, controlling for a wide range of sociodemographic and other factors, personal characteristics were much more important. Respondents of lower ability and lower self‐esteem experienced poorer school transitions; those who were anxious, less prepared for secondary school and had experienced victimisation, poorer peer transitions. Further analysis of the impact of school and peer transitions on well‐being and attainment revealed that each had specific independent effects both within and beyond secondary education. At age 15, a poorer school transition predicted higher levels of depression and lower attainment; a poorer peer transition, lower self‐esteem, more depression and lower levels of anti‐social behaviour. Although reduced in size, similar results extended to outcomes at age 18/19. These effects bear comparison with those associated with gender and school disengagement, clearly demonstrating the importance of successful transition for later well‐being and attainment.
Bandpass filter design by artificial neural network modeling

This paper presents a design approach for a /spl lambda//2 resonator bandpass filter by using the artificial neural network (ANN) modeling technique. Three important dimensions of the filter layout are used to capture critical input-output relationships in the ANN model. Once fully developed, the ANN model has been shown to be as accurate as an EM simulator and much more efficient computationally in the design optimization of the filter.
STUDENTS’ READINESS AND PERCEPTIONS TOWARDS USING MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES FOR LEARNING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE LITERATURE COMPONENT

The appropriate use of materials and tools in teaching and learning is undeniably helpful in making the process more meaningful. Current global developments open up more opportunities for educationists to design and implement ICT-based lessons. Realizing the fact that students nowadays are from the Net-generation and do not suffer from technophobia, a survey was conducted with the aim of examining students’ readiness and perceptions towards the use of mobile technologies in learning. In this paper, results from a preliminary study provide useful information about students’ readiness and perception towards using mobile technologies for learning the English language literature components in school. A total of 235 students were randomly selected to respond to an adapted questionnaire. Using SPSS 16, the data were processed and analyzed descriptively. The descriptive results showed that the participants displayed readiness and positive perceptions toward using mobile technologies for learning. The findings provide some insights to teachers so that they can employ suitable approaches in order to make learning the English language literature component more meaningful through the integration of tools used by Net-generation students.
Reduce and Re-Lift: Bootstrapped Lifted Likelihood Maximization for MAP

By handling whole sets of indistinguishable objects together, lifted belief propagation approaches have rendered large, previously intractable, probabilistic inference problems quickly solvable. In this paper, we show that Kumar and Zilberstein's likelihood maximization (LM) approach to MAP inference is liftable, too, and actually provides additional structure for optimization. Specifically, it has been recognized that some pseudo marginals may converge quickly, turning intuitively into pseudo evidence. This additional evidence typically changes the structure of the lifted network: it may expand or reduce it. The current lifted network, however, can be viewed as an upper bound on the size of the lifted network required to finish likelihood maximization. Consequently, we re-lift the network only if the pseudo evidence yields a reduced network, which can efficiently be computed on the current lifted network. Our experimental results on Ising models, image segmentation and relational entity resolution demonstrate that this bootstrapped LM via "reduce and re-lift" finds MAP assignments comparable to those found by the original LM approach, but in a fraction of the time.
Executive coercion and state audit: A processual analysis of the responses of the Australian audit office to the dilemmas of efficiency auditing1978‐84

The introduction of efficiency auditing in Australian Commonwealth state audit created a level of stress and threat for the Auditor‐General never previously encountered. Using insights from processual analysis as developed by Turner to demonstrate the pressures on state audit, the paper focuses on the principal events constituting the short life of the new Efficiency Audit Division (1978‐84) which had been established within the Australian Audit Office to develop efficiency auditing methods and to carry out efficiency audits. It documents for the first time a level of executive intrusion in state audit which contradicts the image promoted in Westminster democracies of a robustly independent state auditor and highlights the political nature of state audit.