Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysing TLS in the strand spaces model

In this paper, we analyse the Transport Layer Security TLS protocol in particular, bilateral TLS in public-key mode within the strand spaces setting. In Proceedings of the 16th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Workshop CSFW, IEEE Computer Society, 2003, pp. 141--154, Broadfoot and Lowe suggested an abstraction of TLS. The abstraction models the security services that appear to be provided by the protocol to the high-level security layers. The outcome of our analysis provides a formalisation of the security services provided by TLS and proves that, under reasonable assumptions, the abstract model suggested by Broadfoot and Lowe is correct. To that end, we reduce the complexity of the protocol using fault-preserving simplifying transformations. We extend the strand spaces model in order to include the cryptographic operations used in TLS and facilitate its analysis. Finally, we use the extended strand spaces model to fully analyse the public-key mode of bilateral TLS with its two main components: the Handshake and Record Layer protocols.
Haplotype and phenotype analysis of six recurrent BRCA1 mutations in 61 families: results of an international study.

Several BRCA1 mutations have now been found to occur in geographically diverse breast and ovarian cancer families. To investigate mutation origin and mutation-specific phenotypes due to BRCA1, we constructed a haplotype of nine polymorphic markers within or immediately flanking the BRCA1 locus in a set of 61 breast/ovarian cancer families selected for having one of six recurrent BRCA1 mutations. Tests of both mutations and family-specific differences in age at diagnosis were not significant. A comparison of the six mutations in the relative proportions of cases of breast and ovarian cancer was suggestive of an effect (P = .069), with 57% of women presumed affected because of the 1294 del 40 BRCA1 mutation having ovarian cancer, compared with 14% of affected women with the splice-site mutation in intron 5 of BRCA1. For the BRCA1 mutations studied here, the individual mutations are estimated to have arisen 9-170 generations ago. In general, a high degree of haplotype conservation across the region was observed, with haplotype differences most often due to mutations in the short-tandem-repeat markers, although some likely instances of recombination also were observed. For several of the instances, there was evidence for multiple, independent, BRCA1 mutational events.
An evolutionary review of human telomere biology: The thrifty telomere hypothesis and notes on potential adaptive paternal effects

Telomeres, repetitive DNA sequences found at the ends of linear chromosomes, play a role in regulating cellular proliferation, and shorten with increasing age in proliferating human tissues. The rate of age‐related shortening of telomeres is highest early in life and decreases with age. Shortened telomeres are thought to limit the proliferation of cells and are associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Although natural selection is widely assumed to operate against long telomeres because they entail increased cancer risk, the evidence for this is mixed. Instead, here it is proposed that telomere length is primarily limited by energetic constraints. Cell proliferation is energetically expensive, so shorter telomeres should lead to a thrifty phenotype. Shorter telomeres are proposed to restrain adaptive immunity as an energy saving mechanism. Such a limited immune system, however, might also result in chronic infections, inflammatory stress, premature aging, and death—a more “disposable soma. ” With an increased reproductive lifespan, the fitness costs of premature aging are higher and longer telomeres will be favored by selection. Telomeres exhibit a paternal effect whereby the offspring of older fathers have longer telomeres due to increased telomere lengths of sperm with age. This paternal effect is proposed to be an adaptive signal of the expected age of male reproduction in the environment offspring are born into. The offspring of lineages of older fathers will tend to have longer, and thereby less thrifty, telomeres, better preparing them for an environment with higher expected ages at reproduction. Am. J. Hum. Biol., 2011. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Ieee Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine @bullet 45 @bullet Summer 2013

—This paper presents a new approach to semi-autonomous vehicle hazard avoidance and stability control, based on the design and selective enforcement of constraints. This differs from traditional approaches that rely on the planning and tracking of paths and facilitates " minimally-invasive " control for human-machine systems. Instead of forcing a human operator to follow an automation-determined path, the constraint-based approach identifies safe homotop-ies, and allows the operator to navigate freely within them, introducing control action only as necessary to ensure that the vehicle does not violate safety constraints. This method evaluates candidate homotopies based on " restrictiveness, " rather than traditional measures of path goodness, and designs and enforces requisite constraints on the human's control commands to ensure that the vehicle never leaves the controllable subset of a desired homotopy. This paper demonstrates the approach in simulation and characterizes its effect on human teleoperation of unmanned ground vehicles via a 20-user, 600-trial study on an outdoor obstacle course. Aggregated across all drivers and experiments, the constraint-based control system required an average of 43% of the available control authority to reduce collision frequency by 78% relative to traditional teleoperation, increase average speed by 26%, and moderate operator steering commands by 34%.
THE DETERMINATION OF DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID AND OF CELL NUMBER IN BRAIN *

IT HAS been reported that the administration of the pituitary growth hormone to young animals produces an increase in the number of cortical neurons (ZAMENHOF, 1941, 1942) or a hypertrophy of neurons (CLENDINNEN and EAYRS, 1961). A corresponding improvement in maze performance of rats treated early with growth hormone has also been studied (WARDEN, ROSS and ZAMENHOF, 1942; CLENDINNEN and EAYRS, 1961). In these and similar problems it is imperative to devise improved methods for the comparison of total numbers of cells in samples of brain tissue. Since the amount of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) per diploid cell of a given species is constant (VENDRELY and VENDRELY, 1949; MIRSKY and RIS, 1951), and since normal neurons and glia cells are essentially diploid (SWIFT, 1950; HELLER and ELLIOTT, 1954), the determination of DNA in brain tissue is often used as a convenient index of the number of brain cells. The examination of some of the existing methods for the determination of the DNA content of tissue (review in HUTCHISON and MUNRO, 1961) reveals that these methods are not applicable to brain tissue for reasons to be discussed subsequently. Nevertheless, such methods have been employed ; not surprisingly, results reported in the literature are often erroneous and inconsistent even when the same species of animal is under consideration. The purpose of this work has been to examine the existing methods of DNA determination and to devise improvements and new methods which will be useful for the determination of the amount of DNA in samples of brain tissue and, therefore, for comparisons of the numbers of cells in such samples.
Other neurological complications of herpes zoster and their management

Varicella-Zoster Virus Infection In 1954, Weller first confirmed von Bokay’s observation that children developed varicella following exposure to patients with herpes zoster, with tissue culture and antibody studies showing that the two diseases were caused by the same virus [l, 21. Varicella, or chickenpox, results from initial exposure to varicellazoster virus (VZV), and herpes zoster results from prior infection with VZV and is characterized by a cutaneous dermatomal exanthematous rash. Both diseases may result in an array of neurological complications.
Low-back Pain in Pregnancy

Two hundred women were interviewed within 24–36 hours after giving birth. The patients were not examined. It was found that 56% of the patients suffered from low-back pain during pregnancy. The percentage of Caucasians was statistically higher in the back pain group. The percentage of Hispanics was statistically higher in the no pain group. Among the variables that were compared in both groups were the age, the weight gained by the mothers during pregnancy, the baby's weight, the number of previous pregnancies, number of prior children. None of the variables reached a statistically significant level. The pain group complained of pain in the low-back area, which radiated in 45.5% of cases to the lower extremities. In about one-third of the patients the pain increased as the day wore on, whereas in another one-third the pain increased during the night and disturbed sleep. Standing, sitting, forward bending, lifting, and walking tended to increase the pain. Most of the patients started suffering from back pain between the fifth and seventh months of pregnancy. Several theories to explain the occurrence of backache during pregnancy are discussed.
One-Year Mortality, Causes of Death, and Cardiac Interventions in Patients with Postoperative Myocardial Injury

BACKGROUND:To evaluate the role of routine troponin surveillance in patients undergoing major noncardiac surgery, unblinded screening with cardiac consultation per protocol was implemented at a tertiary care center. In this study, we evaluated 1-year mortality, causes of death, and consequences of cardiac consultation of this protocol. METHODS:This observational cohort included 3224 patients ≥60 years old undergoing major noncardiac surgery. Troponin I was measured routinely on the first 3 postoperative days. Myocardial injury was defined as troponin I >0.06 &mgr;g/L. Regression analysis was used to determine the association between myocardial injury and 1-year mortality. The causes of death, the diagnoses of the cardiologists, and interventions were determined for different levels of troponin elevation. RESULTS:Postoperative myocardial injury was detected in 715 patients (22%) and was associated with 1-year all-cause mortality (relative risk [RR] 1.4, P = 0.004; RR 1.6, P < 0.001; and RR 2.2, P < 0.001 for minor, moderate, and major troponin elevation, respectively). Cardiac death within 1 year occurred in 3%, 5%, and 11% of patients, respectively, in comparison with 3% of the patients without myocardial injury (P = 0.059). A cardiac consultation was obtained in 290 of the 715 patients (41%). In 119 (41%) of these patients, the myocardial injury was considered to be attributable to a predisposing cardiac condition, and in 111 patients (38%), an intervention was initiated. CONCLUSIONS:Postoperative myocardial injury was associated with an increased risk of 1-year all-cause but not cardiac mortality. A cardiac consultation with intervention was performed in less than half of these patients. The small number of interventions may be explained by a low suspicion of a cardiac etiology in most patients and lack of consensus for standardized treatment in these patients.
Modulation of platelet membrane function via exogenous lipid moiety exposure alters platelet responsiveness to shear

Shear-induced platelet activation may cause life-threatening thrombosis, particularly in patients with mechanical support devices or coronary atherosclerosis. The majority of present anti-platelet agents target or interfere with biochemical, rather than physical mechanisms of platelet activation. Less data and understanding exists with regard to pharmacologic modulation of shear-mediated platelet activation. In this work, we hypothesized that modulating cell membrane properties, via alteration of membrane composition through addition of exogenous lipid moieties, would alter platelet responsiveness to shear. Here we tested fatty acids, lecithin and cholesterol as additive lipid compounds. We demonstrated that incorporation of fatty acids (DHA/EPA) or lecithin into the platelet membrane triggered enhanced sensitivity of platelets to shear-mediated activation. On the other hand, cholesterol incorporation provides significant protection, limiting the effect of shear on platelet activation. These findings provide valuable insight for the development of therapeutic strategies that can modulate shear-mediated platelet activation.
Toward Legless Locomotion Control

Motivated by an error-recovery locomotion problem, we propose a control technique for a complex mechanical system by decomposing the system dynamics into a collection of simplified models. The robot considered, The Rocking and Rolling Robot (RRRobot), is a high-centered round-bodied robot that locomotes on a plane by swinging its legs and rocking on its shell. We identify the elements contributing to locomotion through two steps: 1) decoupling the leg-body rotation dynamics from the body-plane contact kinematics, and 2) decoupling the body rotational dynamics into dynamics along each rotational axis. We show, using simulation, that such decoupling provides a good approximation to RRRobot's locomotion and use these models to find an approximate control solution for RRRobot: a mapping between planar translation and leg motions
Simple Queries as Distant Labels for Predicting Gender on Twitter

The majority of research on extracting missing user attributes from social media profiles use costly hand-annotated labels for supervised learning. Distantly supervised methods exist, although these generally rely on knowledge gathered using external sources. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of gathering distant labels for self-reported gender on Twitter using simple queries. We confirm the reliability of this query heuristic by comparing with manual annotation. Moreover, using these labels for distant supervision, we demonstrate competitive model performance on the same data as models trained on manual annotations. As such, we offer a cheap, extensible, and fast alternative that can be employed beyond the task of gender classification.
Impact of Periodic Switching Frequency Modulation control to reduce conducted EMI in Power Factor Converters

Spread spectrum clock generation techniques (SSCG) were originally developed to reduce EMI in communications and microprocessor systems working in the range of hundreds of MHz. Nowadays, the switching frequency of power converters has been increasing up to values that make feasible the application of such switching frequency modulation techniques to reduce EMI emissions in power converters. Although random modulations have been applied before to power converters, periodic patterns can provide some advantages. The principle of this methods is shown and confirmed with experimental results obtained from tests carried out on a power converter. It is a 600 W boost converter switching at 40 kHz. Attenuations obtained in conducted EMI are evaluated, even under discontinuous conduction mode. Finally, special attention has been paid to converter efficiency, input current distortion and output voltage distortion in order to evaluate possible unwanted side effects produced by this technique
Distinct and replicable genetic risk factors for acute respiratory distress syndrome of pulmonary or extrapulmonary origin

Background The role of genetics in the development of acute lung injury (ALI)/acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) from direct or indirect lung injury has not been specifically investigated. The aim of this study was to identify genetic variants contributing to ALI/ARDS from pulmonary or extrapulmonary causes. Methods We conducted a multistage genetic association study. We first performed a large-scale genotyping (50K ITMAT-Broad_CARe Chip) in 1717 critically ill Caucasian patients with either pulmonary or extrapulmonary injury, to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with the development of ARDS from direct or indirect insults to the lung. Identified SNPs (p≤0.0005) were validated in two separated populations (Stage II), with trauma (Population I; n=765) and pneumonia/pulmonary sepsis (Population II; n=838), as causes for ALI/ARDS. Genetic variants replicating their association with trauma related-ALI in Stage II were validated in a second trauma-associated ALI population (n=224, Stage III). Results In Stage I, non-overlapping SNPs were significantly associated with ARDS from direct/indirect lung injury, respectively. The association between rs1190286 (POPDC3) and reduced risk of ARDS from pulmonary injury was validated in Stage II (p<0.003). SNP rs324420 (FAAH) was consistently associated with increased risk of ARDS from extrapulmonary causes in two independent ALI-trauma populations (p<0.006, Stage II; p<0.05, Stage III). Meta-analysis confirmed these associations. Conclusions Different genetic variants may influence ARDS susceptibility depending on direct versus indirect insults. Functional SNPs in POPDC3 and FAAH genes may be driving the association with direct and indirect ALI/ARDS, respectively.
Automated Architecture Reconstruction from Close-range Photogrammetry ∗

We describe a method of automated reconstruction of buildings from a set of uncalibrated photographs. The method proceeds in two steps (i) Recovering the camera corresponding to each photograph and a set of sparse scene features using uncalibrated structure from motion techniques developed in the Computer Vision community. (ii) A novel plane-sweep algorithm which progressively constructs a piecewise planar 3D model of the building. In both steps, the rich geometric constraints present in architectural scenes are utilized. It is also demonstrated that window indentations may be computed automatically. The methods are illustrated on an image triplet of a college court at Oxford, and on the CIPA reference image set of Zurich City Hall.
Sibling Rivalry in Myxococcus xanthus Is Mediated by Kin Recognition and a Polyploid Prophage

ABSTRACT Myxobacteria form complex social communities that elicit multicellular behaviors. One such behavior is kin recognition, in which cells identify siblings via their polymorphic TraA cell surface receptor, to transiently fuse outer membranes and exchange their contents. In addition, outer membrane exchange (OME) regulates behaviors, such as inhibition of wild-type Myxococcus xanthus (DK1622) from swarming. Here we monitored the fate of motile cells and surprisingly found they were killed by nonmotile siblings. The kill phenotype required OME (i.e., was TraA dependent). The genetic basis of killing was traced to ancestral strains used to construct DK1622. Specifically, the kill phenotype mapped to a large “polyploid prophage,” Mx alpha. Sensitive strains contained a 200-kb deletion that removed two of three Mx alpha units. To explain these results, we suggest that Mx alpha expresses a toxin-antitoxin cassette that uses the OME machinery of M. xanthus to transfer a toxin that makes the population “addicted” to Mx alpha. Thus, siblings that lost Mx alpha units (no immunity) are killed by cells that harbor the element. To test this, an Mx alpha-harboring laboratory strain was engineered (by traA allele swap) to recognize a closely related species, Myxococcus fulvus. As a result, M. fulvus, which lacks Mx alpha, was killed. These TraA-mediated antagonisms provide an explanation for how kin recognition specificity might have evolved in myxobacteria. That is, recognition specificity is determined by polymorphisms in traA, which we hypothesize were selected for because OME with non-kin leads to lethal outcomes. IMPORTANCE The transition from single cell to multicellular life is considered a major evolutionary event. Myxobacteria have successfully made this transition. For example, in response to starvation, individual cells aggregate into multicellular fruiting bodies wherein cells differentiate into spores. To build fruits, cells need to recognize their siblings, and in part, this is mediated by the TraA cell surface receptor. Surprisingly, we report that TraA recognition can also involve sibling killing. We show that killing originates from a prophage-like element that has apparently hijacked the TraA system to deliver a toxin to kin. We hypothesize that this killing system has imposed selective pressures on kin recognition, which in turn has resulted in TraA polymorphisms and hence many different recognition groups.
SU-F-T-132: Variable RBE Models Predict Possible Underestimation of Vaginal Dose for Anal Cancer Patients Treated Using Single-Field Proton Treatments.

PURPOSE Anal cancer patients treated using a posterior proton beam may be at risk of vaginal wall injury due to the increased linear energy transfer (LET) and relative biological effectiveness (RBE) at the beam distal edge. We investigate the vaginal dose received. METHODS Five patients treated for anal cancer with proton pencil beam scanning were considered, all treated to a prescription dose of 54 Gy(RBE) over 28-30 fractions. Dose and LET distributions were calculated using the Monte Carlo simulation toolkit TOPAS. In addition to the standard assumption of a fixed RBE of 1.1, variable RBE was considered via the application of published models. Dose volume histograms (DVHs) were extracted for the planning treatment volume (PTV) and vagina, the latter being used to calculate the vaginal normal tissue complication probability (NTCP). RESULTS Compared to the assumption of a fixed RBE of 1.1, the variable RBE model predicts a dose increase of approximately 3.3 ± 1.7 Gy at the end of beam range. NTCP parameters for the vagina are incomplete in the current literature, however, inferring value ranges from the existing data we use D50 = 50 Gy and LKB model parameters a=1-2 and m=0.2-0.4. We estimate the NTCP for the vagina to be 37-48% and 42-47% for the fixed and variable RBE cases, respectively. Additionally, a difference in the dose distribution was observed between the analytical calculation and Monte Carlo methods. We find that the target dose is overestimated on average by approximately 1-2%. CONCLUSION For patients treated with posterior beams, the vaginal wall may coincide with the distal end of the proton beam and may receive a substantial increase in dose if variable RBE models are applied compared to using the current clinical standard of RBE equal to 1.1. This could potentially lead to underestimating toxicities when treating with protons.
Indoor Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

Acknowledgments First, I would like to thank David Jansen for his valuable feedback and suggestions. With his knowledge on various subjects our discussions were always interesting, whether it concerned directional antennas, statistics or the German language. My gratitude also goes out to Martijn Vlietstra, whose quick and timely help throughout the project ensured I was able to continue my work at all times. With his unending enthusiasm, it has always been a pleasure working with him. Co Kooijman and Frits Vaandrager have provided me with useful suggestions and remarks on how to improve my thesis in various ways and for that I wish to thank them. Thanks also go to Serhat Gülçiçek, who has helped me understanding the architecture and workings of the previous WSN project. Further, I want to express my appreciation towards the scientific community. Help from TinyOS developers on how to solve a tough problem on serial communications has been much appreciated. Gratitude is also expressed to all the authors who kindly gave their permission to use their figures, and to Michael Thomas Flanagan, who has written a comprehensive scientific and numerical library in Java. And last but definitely not least, I would like to thank my parents Ger and Wies and sister Marcia for their continuous support – in every sense of the word – during my studies.