Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tory Peterschild Professor Patrick Cousot Principles of Software Security Fall 2015 Summary: Confidentiality Issues on a GPU in a Virtualized Environment

Professor Patrick Cousot Principles of Software Security Fall 2015 Summary: Confidentiality Issues on a GPU in a Virtualized Environment 1 “Confidentiality Issues on a GPU in a Virtualized Environment” presents a discussion of the security implications of General-Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU). Because of the inherent parallelisms of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), they have become popular for general-purpose computing that relies heavily on parallel computations. Common applications of GPGPU include financial applications, encryption, and Bitcoin mining; GPUs use hundreds to thousands of cores to accelerate parallel computing tasks. Recently, GPUs have been offered by cloud computing providers in order to supply on demand use of hardware that would otherwise be very expensive. While GPUs have been designed for maximum performance, they have not been designed for concurrent accesses that arise frequently in GPGPU applications. GPU buffers are not zeroed when allocated, and this creates confidentiality issues both between different programs and between different users. In a cloud environment, the attack surface becomes even larger because several users can exploit the same GPU either sequentially or simultaneously. To understand the risks associated with GPGPU applications, we should first review the basics of GPUs. GPUs have hundreds of cores, each of which can handle hundreds of threads. GPUs are composed of a number of Streaming Multiprocessors (SM); SMs are composed of Streaming Processor cores (SP, or CUDA cores). CUDA is the most prevalent GPGPU platform 2
Signal processing of WiMAX physical layer based on low-density parity-check codes

WiMAX technology supports very high data rate, high capacity and high quality in mobile broadband wireless access system. The performance of the WiMAX system can be enhanced by incorporating a better channel coding technique. This paper presents the excellent performance channel coding known as low-density parity check (LDPC) codes which is a part of WiMAX system. A modified array code parity check matrix for LDPC encoder is used and the message passing (MP) algorithm for LDPC decoder is used, respectively. Both systems are modulated by the basic standard modulation scheme. The computer simulation results confirm that the bit error rate (BER) performance of the WiMAX system that incorporate with the powerful LDPC coding technique has been improved over the conventional standard WiMAX system. However, the computational complexity of the proposed WiMAX system is higher than the previous one.
EAP Re-authentication Protocol Extensions for Authenticated Anticipatory Keying (ERP/AAK)

The Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) is a generic framework supporting multiple types of authentication methods. The EAP Re- authentication Protocol (ERP) specifies extensions to EAP and the EAP keying hierarchy to support an EAP method-independent protocol for efficient re-authentication between the peer and an EAP re- authentication server through any authenticator. Authenticated Anticipatory Keying (AAK) is a method by which cryptographic keying material may be established prior to handover upon one or more candidate attachment points (CAPs), AAK uses the AAA infrastructure for key transport. This document specifies the extensions necessary to enable AAK support in ERP.
Turbo Coding for a Coherent DS-CDMA System Employing a MMSE Receiver on a Rayleigh Fading Channel ∗

Previous research which analyzed the performance of a convolutionally coded CDMA system with a MMSE receiver for interference suppression showed that lower rate codes are not always the best choice on Rayleigh fading channels. In this paper, we analyze the performance of a turbo-coded CDMA system with the MMSE receiver. Theoretical bounds are derived based on the optimum tap weights of the MMSE receiver and the tangential bounds of turbo codes. Simulation results incorporating the effects of finite interleaving and RLS adaptation are also presented. The results show that with the MMSE receiver, the high rate turbo code is the best choice. They also show that, except for a bit error rate (BER) lower than 10−3, the capacity of the system is not increased by using turbo codes with small block sizes. ∗This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, TRW, CoRe project and Center for Wireless Communcations, UCSD.
The Competence-Based Approach in the Russian Federation: the Definition of the Notion and Structure of the Professional Competence of a Future Teacher

The article is dedicated to the question of the competence - based approach in higher education in the Russian Federation. The challenges facing education of Russia have fundamentally new requirements to the preparation of the future pedagogical staff. The requirements for professional competence of future teachers are presented in the didactic purposes in the form of the so-called "Model of a Future Teacher" and described in the article. The federal state educational standard of higher professional education in Russia is built in the logic of the competence-based approach. Thus, the acute problem of identifying the notion and structure of the professional pedagogical competence is also observed in it.
Decomposition of Gini Coefficient Based on Axioms and a New Between-Subgroup Inequality Measure *

Since Soltow (1960) first addressed the question of the Gini coefficient decomposition by population subgroups (hereinafter referred to as decomposition), there are more than a dozen different decompositions available in the literature. Whether the Gini coefficient is decomposable and, furthermore, whether the decomposition practices are arbitrary are debated in the literature, since there is no convincing demonstration that any of the methods has an overwhelming advantage over another. In this paper, I decompose the Gini coefficient based on a set of axioms and, most importantly, resolve the issue of the arbitrariness of current decompositions. The new decomposition will be defended against the common criticism that between-subgroup components and overall inequality don’t share an identical metric. I will propose new betweensubgroup inequality measures that can apply to any two groups, and demonstrate their properties as general inequality measures. The social welfare implications of the decomposition will then be explained.
Content adaptive quantization scheme based on visual perception for video coding

This paper proposes a new quantization scheme which fully exploits the human visual perception and the local eye sensitivity characteristic in two layers. This new quantization scheme classifies macro-blocks into different categories and classifies frequency coefficients in the same block into different frequency strips, then adjusts the quantization parameter according to different categories or strips to reserve more sensitive details of video. Experiments results show that the new quantization scheme can achieve better subjective video quality with lower bitrates.
Novel single and double output TSC Berger code checkers

This paper presents a novel method for designing type-I and type-II single and double output TSC Berger code checkers taking into account a realistic fault model including stuck-at, transistor stuck-open, transistor stuck-on, resistive bridging faults and breaks. A benefit of the proposed type-I single and double output checkers is that all faults are testable by a very small set of code words the number of which does not increase with the information length, that is, the checkers are C-testable. The proposed double output checkers are two-times faster than the corresponding single output checkers, but require for their implementation twice as many transistors as the single output checkers. The proposed single output checkers are the first known TSC Berger code checkers in the open literature, while the type-I single output checkers are near optimal with respect to the number of the transistors required for their implementation. The checkers of this paper with either, single or double output are significantly more efficient, with respect to the implementation area and speed than the already known from the open literature Berger code checkers.
Team Assembly Mechanisms Determine Collaboration Network Structure and Team Performance

Agents in creative enterprises are embedded in networks that inspire, support, and evaluate their work. Here, we investigate how the mechanisms by which creative teams self-assemble determine the structure of these collaboration networks. We propose a model for the self-assembly of creative teams that has its basis in three parameters: team size, the fraction of newcomers in new productions, and the tendency of incumbents to repeat previous collaborations. The model suggests that the emergence of a large connected community of practitioners can be described as a phase transition. We find that team assembly mechanisms determine both the structure of the collaboration network and team performance for teams derived from both artistic and scientific fields.
Individual heterogeneity in reproductive rates and cost of reproduction in a long-lived vertebrate

Individual variation in reproductive success is a key feature of evolution, but also has important implications for predicting population responses to variable environments. Although such individual variation in reproductive outcomes has been reported in numerous studies, most analyses to date have not considered whether these realized differences were due to latent individual heterogeneity in reproduction or merely random chance causing different outcomes among like individuals. Furthermore, latent heterogeneity in fitness components might be expressed differently in contrasted environmental conditions, an issue that has only rarely been investigated. Here, we assessed (i) the potential existence of latent individual heterogeneity and (ii) the nature of its expression (fixed vs. variable) in a population of female Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii), using a hierarchical modeling approach on a 30-year mark–recapture data set consisting of 954 individual encounter histories. We found strong support for the existence of latent individual heterogeneity in the population, with “robust” individuals expected to produce twice as many pups as “frail” individuals. Moreover, the expression of individual heterogeneity appeared consistent, with only mild evidence that it might be amplified when environmental conditions are severe. Finally, the explicit modeling of individual heterogeneity allowed us to detect a substantial cost of reproduction that was not evidenced when the heterogeneity was ignored.
Modeling the Switching Behavior of Functional Connectivity Microstates (FCμstates) as a Novel Biomarker for Mild Cognitive Impairment

It is evident the need for designing and validating novel biomarkers for the detection of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). MCI patients have a high risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and for that reason the introduction of novel and reliable biomarkers is of significant clinical importance. Motivated by recent findings about the rich information of dynamic functional connectivity graphs (DFCGs) about brain (dys)function, we introduced a novel approach of identifying MCI based on magnetoencephalographic (MEG) resting state recordings. The activity of different brain rhythms {δ, θ, α1, α2, β1, β2, γ1, γ2} was first beamformed with linear constrained minimum norm variance in the MEG data to determine ninety anatomical regions of interest (ROIs). A dynamic functional connectivity graph (DFCG) was then estimated using the imaginary part of phase lag value (iPLV) for both intra-frequency coupling (8) and also cross-frequency coupling pairs (28). We analyzed DFCG profiles of neuromagnetic resting state recordings of 18 Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) patients and 20 healthy controls. We followed our model of identifying the dominant intrinsic coupling mode (DICM) across MEG sources and temporal segments that further leads to the construction of an integrated DFCG (iDFCG). We then filtered statistically and topologically every snapshot of the iDFCG with data-driven approaches. Estimation of the normalized Laplacian transformation for every temporal segment of the iDFCG and the related eigenvalues created a 2D map based on the network metric time series of the eigenvalues (NMTSeigs). NMTSeigs preserves the non-stationarity of the fluctuated synchronizability of iDCFG for each subject. Employing the initial set of 20 healthy elders and 20 MCI patients, as training set, we built an overcomplete dictionary set of network microstates (nμstates). Afterward, we tested the whole procedure in an extra blind set of 20 subjects for external validation. We succeeded a high classification accuracy on the blind dataset (85 %) which further supports the proposed Markovian modeling of the evolution of brain states. The adaptation of appropriate neuroinformatic tools that combine advanced signal processing and network neuroscience tools could manipulate properly the non-stationarity of time-resolved FC patterns revealing a robust biomarker for MCI.
Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine The relationship between moral distress, professional stress, and intent to stay in the nursing profession

Moral distress and professional stress are common problems that can have adverse effects on nurses, patients, and the healthcare system as a whole. Thus, this cross-sectional study aims to examine the relationship between moral distress, professional stress, and intent to stay in the nursing profession. Two hundred and twenty full-time nurses employed at teaching hospitals in the eastern regions of Iran were studied. A 52-item questionnaire based on Corley’s Moral Distress Scale, Wolfgang’s Health Professions Stress Inventory and Nedd Questionnaire on Intent to Stay in the Profession was used in the study. Additionally, demographic details of the study population were collected. No significant correlation was observed between the intensity and frequency of moral distress, professional stress, and intent to stay in the profession among nurses (P > 0.05). There was a significant correlation between moral distress, professional stress, and age, number of years in service and work setting (P < 0.05). Given the important effect of moral distress and professional stress on nurses, in addition to the educational programs for familiarization of nurses with these concepts, it is recommended that strategies be formulated by the healthcare system to increase nurses’ ability to combat their adverse effects.
openAAL 1the open source middleware for ambient-assisted living ( AAL )

openAAL is a joint open source initiative by FZI Research Center for Information Technologies, Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena and CAS Software AG. It represents a flexible and powerful middleware for ambient-assisted living (AAL) scenarios and is based on research results of several German and international projects including the SOPRANO Integrated Project. The openAAL platform enables easy implementation, configuration and situation-dependent provision of flexible, context-aware and personalized IT services.
Optimism, Delay and (In)Efficiency in a Stochastic Model of Bargaining

I study a bilateral bargaining game in which the size of the surplus follows a stochastic process and in which players might be optimistic about their bargaining power. Following Yildiz (2003), I model optimism by assuming that players have different beliefs about the recognition process. I show that the unique subgame perfect equilibrium of this game might involve inefficient delays. I also show that these inefficiencies disappear when players can make offers arbitrarily frequently.
Are we really doomed? Critical pathways for advancing children’s rights through theory and practice

This chapter presents the argument that two factors are particularly obstructive to the flourishing of a more unified and integrated modus operandi for both practitioners and researchers working in the field of children’s rights. First and foremost, I will argue that the limited synchrony in the historical development of theory and practice, with regards to children’s rights, has impacted and limited the opportunities for a meaningful collaboration between practitioners, activists and academics (Leonard, 2016). I will then discuss how the interpretation of children’s rights as a tool to ensure protection, rather than to promote autonomy (Woodhead, 1994), weakens the rights based approach and deprives the concept of right of its essence (Biggeri and Karkara, 2014). In my conclusions, I will argue that the lack of critical revision of theories of childhood is the overarching issue to the advancement of children’s rights.
Multi-class SVM for Relation Extraction from Clinical Reports

Information extraction in specialized texts raises different problems related to the kind of searched information. In this paper, we are interested in relation identification between some concepts in medical reports, task that was evaluated in the i2b2 2010 challenge. As relations are expressed in natural language with a great variety of forms, we proceeded to sentence analysis by extracting features that enable all together to identify a relation and we modeled this task as a multi-class classification based on an SVM, each type of relation representing a class. We will present the selection of the features used by our system and an error analysis. This approach allowed us to obtain an F-measure of 0.70, classifying the system among the best systems.
How Much Randomness Makes a Tool Randomized ?

Most of presently used academic logic synthesis tools, including SIS and ABC, are fully deterministic. Up to the knowledge of the authors, this holds for all available commercial tools as well. This means that no random decisions are made; the algorithms fully rely on deterministic heuristics. In this paper we present several hints of insufficiency of such an approach and show examples of perspective randomized logic synthesis algorithms. Judging from our experiments, these algorithms have a higher potential of performing better than the deterministic ones. Further we study how much randomness is actually needed for the algorithms to perform well. We show that some algorithms require only a small amount of randomness, while still taking full advantage of their randomized nature. On the other hand, some algorithms require a very high level of randomness to perform well. We propose reasons for this behavior and show a way of computing the necessary measure of randomness required. Keywords-logic synthesis, minimization, randomized algorithms, derandomization, Espresso, ABC
Continuous estimation of cardiac output and arterial resistance from arterial blood pressure using a third-order Windkessel model

Intensive Care Units (ICUs) have high impact on the survival of critically-ill patients in hospitals. Recent statistics have shown that only 10% of the 5 million patients admitted to ICUs in the United States die each year. In modern ICUs, the heart's electrical and mechanical activity is routinely monitored using various sensors. Arterial blood pressure (ABP) and heart rate (HR) are the most commonly recorded waveforms which provide key information to the ICU clinical staff. However, clinicians find themselves in many cases unable to determine the causes behind abnormal behavior of the cardiovascular system because they lack frequent measures of cardiac output (CO), the average blood flow out of the left ventricle. CO is monitored via intermittent thermodilution measurements which are highly invasive and only applied to the sickest ICU patients. The lack of frequent CO measurements has encouraged researchers to develop estimation methods for cardiac output from routinely measured arterial blood pressure waveforms. The prospects of estimating cardiac output from minimally-invasive blood pressure measurements has resulted in numerous estimation algorithms, however, there is no consensus on the performance of the algorithms that have been proposed. In this thesis, we investigate the use of a third-order variation of the Windkessel model, which is referred to as the modified Windkessel model. We validate its ability to generate well-behaved proximal and distal pressure waveforms for a given flow waveform and thus characterize the arterial tree. We also develop a model-based CO estimation algorithm which uses central and peripheral blood pressure waveforms to obtain reliable estimates of CO and the total peripheral resistance (TPR). We applied the estimation algorithm to a porcine data set. The results of our estimation algorithm are promising: the weighted-mean root-mean-squared-normalized-error (RMSNE) is about 13.8% over four porcine records. In each porcine experiment, intravenous drug infusions were used to vary CO, ABP, and HR over wide ranges. Our results suggest that the modified Windkessel model is a good representation of the arterial tree and that the estimation algorithm yields reliable estimates of CO and TPR under various hemodynamic conditions. Thesis Supervisor: Professor George C. Verghese Title: Professor of Electrical Engineering Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Tushar Parlikar
DECT: Distributed Evolving Context Tree for Mining Web Behavior Evolution

Internet user behavior models characterize user browsing dynamics or the transitions among web pages. The mod- els help Internet companies improve their services by accu- rately targeting customers and providing them the informa- tion they want. For instance, specic web pages can be cus- tomized and prefetched for individuals based on sequences of web pages they have visited. Existing user behavior mod- els abstracted as time-homogeneous Markov models do not provide efficient support for modeling user behavior varia- tion through time. This paper presents DECT, a scalable time-variant variable-order Markov model. DECT digests terabytes of user session data and yields user behavior pat- terns through time. We realize DECT using Apache Spark. Our implementation is being open-sourced and we deploy DECT on top of Yahoo! infrastructure. We demonstrate the benets of DECT with anomaly detection and ad click rate prediction applications. DECT enables the detection of higher-order path anomalies that are masked out by exist- ing models. DECT also provides insights into ad click rates with respect to user visiting paths.
A novel technique for wall crack detection using image fusion

A Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) has been a popular analysis technique used in industrial product evaluation and for troubleshooting in research work without causing damage which can also save both money and time. This paper deals with a novel crack detection technique based on NDT for cracks in walls suppressing the diversity and complexity of wall images. The detection technique begins with wall image acquisition. The acquired image is processed through two crack detectors which follow different edge tracking algorithms such as Hyperbolic Tangent (HBT) filtering and canny edge detection algorithm. The main advantage of the proposed model is that it combines the best features of both Canny's filtering and HBT filtering techniques. It also fulfills the three necessary vital criteria, i.e. accurate edge detection, localization and minimal response, making the crack detection process more robust and reliable. The fusion of detector responses are performed using Haar Discrete Wavelet Transform (HDWT) and maximumapproximation with mean-detail image fusion algorithm to get more prominent detection of crack edges. The proposed system gives improved edge detection in images with superior edge localization and higher PSNR.