Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Defending against flooding-based distributed denial-of-service attacks: a tutorial

Flooding-based distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack presents a very serious threat to the stability of the Internet. In a typical DDoS attack, a large number of compromised hosts are amassed to send useless packets to jam a victim, or its Internet connection, or both. In the last two years, it was discovered that DDoS attack methods and tools are becoming more sophisticated, effective, and also more difficult to trace to the real attackers. On the defense side, current technologies are still unable to withstand large-scale attacks. The main purpose of this article is therefore twofold. The first one is to describe various DDoS attack methods, and to present a systematic review and evaluation of the existing defense mechanisms. The second is to discuss a longer-term solution, dubbed the Internet-firewall approach, that attempts to intercept attack packets in the Internet core, well before reaching the victim.
Multiple sedimenting species of properdin in human serum and interaction of purified properdin with the third component of complement

Normal human serum subjected to sucrose density gradient analysis exhibited multiple sedimenting species of properdin antigen. Properdin antigen distribution was dependent on serum concentration, ionic strength, temperature, and the presence of C3, and was not dependent on the presence of divalent metal cations or blood coagulation. In mixtures of purified components, properdin sedimented heavier in the presence of C3, C3b, or C3c. Addition of factor B to mixtures containing C3 and properdin was without effect. These data provide insights into earlier discrepancies concerning the sedimentation behavior of partially purified properdin, indicate a propensity of some constituents of the alternative pathway to form protein-protein complexes, and suggest caution in interpretation of immunopathological studies in which properdin deposits are found in the presence of C3.
Knowledge and Attitude of a Semi Urban Community in the South-South Region of Nigeria towards Diabetes Mellitus

Adequate knowledge of Diabetes Mellitus empowers the community about good health seeking behavior, drug compliance and follow up care. Studies on the knowledge and attitude of the community dwellers are therefore important. This study seeks to access the knowledge and attitude towards Diabetes Mellitus. A descriptive cross sectional study of 384 adults was carried out at Okada in Edo State. Questionnaire was used to collect information and analyzed with SPSS version 15. Descriptive statistics were done and presented as bar charts and tables. Attitude was scored using a Likert scale of 10 questions with maximum attainable mark of 50 points. Respondents with mean score and above were classified as having good attitude. Association between categorical variables were explored using chi square, Level of significance was set at 5%. The mean age of respondents was 34±11years, 206 (53.6%) were males and half of the respondents were married. In all, 243(63.5%) of the respondents had a good attitude towards diabetes treatment. Lack of health care facilities and attitude of health care providers were the commoner factor preventing respondents from seeking screening for Diabetes. A larger proportion 82.7% of respondents with tertiary education and 53.2% of those with primary education had good attitude towards Diabetes treatment. P = 0.003. The majority of the respondents have heard about Diabetes but only few of them had a good attitude towards the treatment of the disease. It is therefore important that awareness programs about diabetes should be provided in the community.
Yrkeskunnande och kompetensutveckling i arbetet med vuxna individer med utvecklingsstörning — ett vårdarperspektiv

Since the law of support and service for people with certain disabilities (LSS) was implemented 1994, the carers' role has changed from «taking care of» to «giving support to» people with intellectual disabilities/autism, but the requirements of knowledge hasn't been altered. In order to provide appropriate support, carers need both theoretical knowledge and experience of how people with intellectual disabilities understand their surrounding environment. The purpose was to describe the knowledge and development of competence needed in caring for adults with intellectual disabilities/autism as viewed from a carer's perspective. Ten carers at different group dwellings in Sweden were interviewed. A qualitative content analysis was performed. The result demonstrated two main categories: The carer's competence described personal qualities, theoretical knowledge, experience, communication abilities as well as co-working and problem solving abilities. Possibilities of development of competence described interest and commitment, support and acknowledgement as well as organization and resources. In conclusion, the carers' competence of creating a good life and a confident relationship between themselves and adults with intellectual disabilities/autism can be described as multifaceted with elements of tacit knowledge. To develop the individual competence, a personal interest, support and time for reflection is needed but not always offered.
Reprise: A Design Tool for Specifying, Generating, and Customizing 3D Printable Adaptations on Everyday Objects

Everyday tools and objects often need to be customized for an unplanned use or adapted for specific user, such as adding a bigger pull to a zipper or a larger grip for a pen. The advent of low-cost 3D printing offers the possibility to rapidly construct a wide range of such adaptations. However, while 3D printers are now affordable enough for even home use, the tools needed to design custom adaptations normally require skills that are beyond users with limited 3D modeling experience. In this paper, we describe Reprise--a design tool for specifying, generating, customizing and fitting adaptations onto existing household objects. Reprise allows users to express at a high level what type of action is applied to an object. Based on this high level specification, Reprise automatically generates adaptations. Users can use simple sliders to customize the adaptations to better suit their particular needs and preferences, such as increasing the tightness for gripping, enhancing torque for rotation, or making a larger base for stability. Finally, Reprise provides a toolkit of fastening methods and support structures for fitting the adaptations onto existing objects. To validate our approach, we used Reprise to replicate 15 existing adaptation examples, each of which represents a specific category in a design space distilled from an analysis of over 3000 cases found in the literature and online communities. We believe this work would benefit makers and designers for prototyping lifehacking solutions and assistive technologies.
Non-parametric Bayesian Hierarchical Factor Modeling and Regression

We address the problem of sparse Bayesian factor regression from high-dimensional gene-expression data where the number and inter-relationship of factors is not known apriori. We take a non-parametric Bayesian approach based on a variant of the Indian Buffet Process [1]. This leads to an interpretable model for gene-pathway relationships, a simple inference procedure, and allows us to consider more complex models for factor modeling than is allowed by model-selection based approaches [2]. Our motivation is that nonparametric approaches yield models that let us look at structurally rich problems in a coherent manner. In particular, the non-parametric approach allows us to directly consider variable selection and hierarchical factors in a unified model. Variable selection models the fact that most genes are not involved in any pathway for a given dataset, and leads to computational benefits. The non-parametric nature of our model allows us to impose a hierarchy over the discovered factors which helps in explaining the correlations within sets of factors having similar functions. Finally, we couple the regression task within the factor modeling framework itself, instead of considering them as separate tasks [3].
Evaluation of correlation of articular cartilage staining for DDR2 and proteoglycans with histological tissue damage and the results of radiographic assessment in patients with early stages of knee osteoarthritis.

OBJECTIVE To determine, if staining of articular cartilage for proteoglycans (natural element of healthy and functioning cartilage) and discoidin domain receptor 2 (DDR2) (a protein associated with articular cartilage degradation) is correlated with histological tissue damage or radiographic assessment score in patients with early stages of knee osteoarthritis (OA). METHOD 40 patients, with early stage OA were enrolled, from whom the biopsies for histological and immunohistochemical studies were obtained from edge of the femoral condyle during the arthroscopy. Semi-quantitative computer based analysis was used to evaluate the proportion of staining in histological sections. RESULTS No correlation was shown between the proportion of tissue stained for DDR2 and histological score or the results of radiographic assessment of tibiofemoral (TF) joint. There was a negative correlation between the proportion of tissue stained for DDR2 and radiographic grade of patellofemoral (PF) OA (Spearman r=-0.34; 95% CI -0.60 to -0.02; P=0.03). No correlation was shown between the proportion of tissue stained for proteoglycans and histological score or the results of radiographic assessment of TF and PF joints. A negative correlation was found between proportion of tissue stained for DDR2 and proteoglycans. Spearman r=-0.43; 95% CI=-0.66 to -0.12; P=0.006. CONCLUSION Production of DDR2 in articular cartilage could be related to early stages of OA, as it is significantly correlated to decrease of staining for cartilage proteoglycans. The role of production of DDR2 in cartilage may be decreased in stages, where higher grades of OA are detected on the radiographs.
Ubiquitin-specific Peptidase 42 (USP42) Functions to Deubiquitylate Histones and Regulate Transcriptional Activity*

Background: Ubiquitin modification of histones regulates gene expression. Results: USP42 targets histone H2B at promoters, leading to decreased ubiquitylation. This correlates with the regulation of transcription driven by a number of transcription factors. Conclusion: USP42 contributes to the modulation of transcription. Significance: The identification of histone H2B as a target for USP42 extends our understanding of the factors that can regulate gene expression. Ubiquitin-specific peptidase 42 (USP42) is a deubiquitylating enzyme that can target p53 and contribute to the stabilization of p53 in response to stress. We now show that USP42 can also regulate transcription independently of p53. USP42 co-localized with RNA polymerase II (RNA Pol II) in nuclear foci, bound to histone H2B, and deubiquitylated H2B. Depletion of USP42 increased H2B ubiquitylation at a model promoter and decreased both basal and induced transcription from a number of promoters. These results are consistent with a role for USP42 in regulating transcription by deubiquitylating histones.
Graph-based malware distributors detection

Search engines are currently facing a problem of websites that distribute malware. In this paper we present a novel efficient algorithm that learns to detect such kind of spam. We have used a bipartite graph with two types of nodes, each representing a layer in the graph: web-sites and file hostings (FH), connected with edges representing the fact that a file can be downloaded from the hosting via a link on the web-site. The performance of this spam detection method was verified using two set of ground truth labels: manual assessments of antivirus analysts and automatically generated assessments obtained from antivirus companies. We demonstrate that the proposed method is able to detect new types of malware even before the best known antivirus solutions are able to detect them.
Object oriented machine learning with a multicore real-time Java processor: short paper

The term intelligent systems is spreading beyond the data mining and machine learning communities. This presents new challenges that are fundamental to classical problems within object oriented programming and analysis. In this paper we investigate the use of a popular intelligent algorithm on a Java-based processor. The processor is a real-time enabled processor implemented on an FPGA, and we deploy a support vector machine on this processor. Furthermore, we show how this support vector machine can work on the Java-processor's multiple cores. This is a first step toward understanding how intelligent algorithms can be implemented on object-oriented Java systems with multiple cores in a hard real-time environment. Our experiments show significant speedup of the selected machine learning algorithm, and this can potentially be useful for other intelligent algorithms also.
Population Structure, Genetic Diversity, and Evolutionary History of Kleinia neriifolia (Asteraceae) on the Canary Islands

Kleinia neriifolia Haw. is an endemic species on the Canarian archipelago, this species is widespread in the coastal thicket of all the Canarian islands. In the present study, genetic diversity and population structure of K. neriifolia were investigated using chloroplast gene sequences and nuclear SSR (simple sequence repeat). The differentiation among island populations, the historical demography, and the underlying evolutionary scenarios of this species are further tested based on the genetic data. Chloroplast diversity reveals a strong genetic divergence between eastern islands (Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, and Lanzarote) and western islands (EI Hierro, La Palma, La Gomera, Tenerife), this west–east genetic divergence may reflect a very beginning of speciation. The evolutionary scenario with highest posterior probabilities suggests Gran Canaria as oldest population with a westward colonization path to Tenerife, La Gomera, La Palma, and EI Hierro, and eastward dispersal path to Lanzarote through Fuerteventura. In the western islands, there is a slight decrease in the effective population size toward areas of recent colonization. However, in the eastern islands, the effective population size increase in Lanzarote relative to Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura. These results further our understanding of the evolution of widespread endemic plants within Canarian archipelago.
Explaining Sleep Duration in Adolescents: The Impact of Socio‐Demographic and Lifestyle Factors and Working Status

Previous studies found students who both work and attend school undergo a partial sleep deprivation that accumulates across the week. The aim of the present study was to obtain information using a questionnaire on a number of variables (e.g., socio‐demographics, lifestyle, work timing, and sleep‐wake habits) considered to impact on sleep duration of working (n=51) and non‐working (n=41) high‐school students aged 14–21 yrs old attending evening classes (19:00–22:30 h) at a public school in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. Data were collected for working days and days off. Multiple linear regression analyses were performed to assess the factors associated with sleep duration on weekdays and weekends. Work, sex, age, smoking, consumption of alcohol and caffeine, and physical activity were considered control variables. Significant predictors of sleep duration were: work (p < 0.01), daily work duration (8–10 h/day; p < 0.01), sex (p=0.04), age 18–21 yrs (0.01), smoking (p=0.02) and drinking habits (p=0.03), irregular physical exercise (p < 0.01), ease of falling asleep (p=0.04), and the sleep‐wake cycle variables of napping (p < 0.01), nocturnal awakenings (p < 0.01), and mid‐sleep regularity (p < 0.01). The results confirm the hypotheses that young students who work and attend school showed a reduction in night‐time sleep duration. Sleep deprivation across the week, particularly in students working 8–10 h/day, is manifested through a sleep rebound (i.e., extended sleep duration) on Saturdays. However, the different roles played by socio‐demographic and lifestyle variables have proven to be factors that intervene with nocturnal sleep duration. The variables related to the sleep‐wake cycle—naps and night awakenings—proved to be associated with a slight reduction in night‐time sleep, while regularity in sleep and wake‐up schedules was shown to be associated with more extended sleep duration, with a distinct expression along the week and the weekend. Having to attend school and work, coupled with other socio‐demographic and lifestyle factors, creates an unfavorable scenario for satisfactory sleep duration.
Decision-making Model of Concession Price and Period for Traffic BOT Projects under Elastic Demand

Recently, the BOT (build-operate-transfer) scheme has been garnering increasing attention from both academic and practical fields. In order to make the decision-making more scientific and effective, this paper takes traffic BOT projects as research objectives, and proposes a dynamic game model of complete information to balance the benefits of the government and company. According to the refining Nash equilibrium solution, a discussion about relevant properties and effects of traffic demand changes under elastic demand due to various concession price and period is conducted. Ultimately, a numerical example is adopted to verify the model and equilibrium solution.
Putting Consumer Experience Back into Consumer Research: The Philosophy and Method of Existential-Phenomenology

Existential-phenomenology is presented as an alternative paradigm for conceptualizing and studying consumer experience. Basic theoretical tenets of existential-phenomenology are contrasted with more traditional assumptions and methods used in consumer research. The metaphors used by each paradigm to describe its world view are provided and their respective implications for consumer research discussed. One phenomenological research method is detailed, and examples of how the method is applied and the type of data it produces are provided. An epistemological analysis reveals that existential-phenomenology can provide an empirically based and methodologically rigorous understanding of consumer phenomena.
Les usages de produits psychoactifs des étudiants

En France, les usages de substances psychoactives des adolescents sont de mieux en mieux decrits par les enquetes epidemiologiques, mais ceux des jeunes adultes restent relativement mal connus. A partir d’une enquete telephonique en population generale (Barometre Sante 2000), cet article explore ces usages parmi les etudiants âges de 18 a 25 ans (n=580) et les compare a ceux des jeunes du meme âge sortis du systeme scolaire (n=907). Une fois controles les effets de l’âge et du sexe, les etudiants rapportent des usages d’alcool moins reguliers, mais des ivresses alcooliques plus frequentes, des usages occasionnels de cannabis egalement plus frequents. En revanche, parmi eux, le tabagisme et les signes de dependance au tabac s’averent moins repandus que parmi les jeunes sortis du systeme scolaire. Aucune difference significative n’apparait pour les autres drogues illicites. En outre, la differenciation sexuelle des usages apparait nettement attenuee parmi les etudiants. D’autres recherches sont necessaires pour mieux cerner les determinants de ce profil d’usage etudiant, concernant aussi bien l’origine sociale que le mode de vie etudiant.
Adaptive in-band self-backhauling for full-duplex small cells

Recent advancements in the self-interference (SI) cancellation capability of low-power wireless devices pave the way of implementing full-duplex (FD) self-backhauling in small-cell networks. FD self-backhauling allows exploiting the radio spectrum used by the radio access network (RAN) for backhaul links as well as access links concurrently. This paper characterizes the performance of FD self-backhauling for both downlink and uplink transmissions in a two-tier macrocell-small cell network and compares it against half-duplex (HD) selfbackhauling. The performance of small cell base stations (SBSs) with adaptive FD scheme that switches between HD and FD modes depending on the network parameters such as the distance of backhaul link (i.e., link between the macrocell base station and SBS), SI cancellation value at the SBS, and the distance of the served user from the SBS is then numerically analyzed for two different user selection schemes used by the SBS. Numerical results show the usefulness of adaptive FD self-backhauling over FD self-backhauling, especially in fairness-constrained scheduling schemes.
Sparse reconstruction based reweighted non-convex optimization using homotopy-DCD algorithm

This paper proposed a simple, efficient and easy to hardware implementation iteratively reweighted algorithm to improve the recovery performance for sparse reconstruction from compressive sensing (CS). The algorithm focusses on solving the weighted non-convex penalty minimization problem using homotopy and dichotomous coordinate descent (DCD) algorithm compared with the traditional l1 norm and weighted l1 norm optimization. The numerical experiential results demonstrate that the new proposed method outperforms in signal reconstruction quality.
Describing patients' normal tissue reactions: Concerning the possibility of individualising radiotherapy dose prescriptions based on potential predictive assays of normal tissue radiosensitivity

Clinical radiotherapeutic doses are limited by the tolerance of normal tissues. Patients given a standard treatment exhibit a range of normal tissue reactions, and a better understanding of this individual variation might allow for individualisation of radiotherapeutic prescriptions, with consequent improvement in the therapeutic ratio. At present, there is no simple way to describe normal tissue reactions, which hampers communication between clinic and laboratory and between groups from different centres. There is also no method for comparing the severity of reactions in different normal tissues. This arises largely because there is no definition of a “normal” reaction, an “extreme” reaction or the particular term “over‐reactor” (OR). This report proposes definitions for these terms, as well as a simple terminology for describing normal tissue reactions in patients having radiotherapy. The “normal” range represents the individual variation in normal tissue reactions amongst large numbers of patients treated in the same way which is within clinically acceptable limits. The term “OR” is applied to an individual whose reaction is more severe than the normal range but also implies that this forced a major change in the radiotherapeutic prescription or that the reactions were very severe or fatal. A “severe OR” would develop serious problems with a typical radical dose, while an “extreme OR” would have such difficulties at a much lower dose. To describe the normal range, a numerical scale is suggested, from 1 to 5, resistant to sensitive. The term “highly radiosensitive” (HR) is suggested for category 5. An “informal” relative scale, as suggested here, is quick and simple. It should allow comparison between different hospitals, compensate for differences in radiotherapeutic dose and technique and allow comparison of reactions between different anatomical sites. It should be adequate for discriminating patients at the extremes of the normal range from those at the centre. It is hoped that the definitions and terminology proposed here will aid communication in the field of predictive testing of normal tissue radiosensitivity. Int. J. Cancer (Pred. Oncol.) 79:606–613, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.