Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Privacy Anxiety and Challenges in Mobile Ad Hoc Wireless Networks and its Solution

Mobile Ad hoc networks are recent wireless networking model for cellular phone hosts. Ad hoc networks do not rely on any stable infrastructure because they are independent. As an alternative, to remain network connected hosts rely on each other. It signifies complex distributed systems that encompass wireless mobile nodes. These nodes can freely and dynamically self-organize into uninformed and provisional, ''ad-hoc'' network topologies. This topology allows citizens to effortlessly interconnect in areas where no pre- existing communication infrastructure. In this paper, we talk about security issues, challenges and their solutions in the mobile ad hoc network. There are numerous security threats that disturb the development of mobile ad hoc network because of the exposed nature of the mobile ad hoc network. We have first studied the prime vulnerabilities in the mobile ad hoc networks, which have made our work much easier to endure from attacks than the usual wired network. The security criteria of the mobile ad hoc network and the main attack types that exist are explained in this paper. As a final point we analyzed the recent security solutions for the mobile ad hoc network (1).
Heart Rate Variability Analysis in General Medicine

Autonomic nervous system plays an integral role in homeostasis. Autonomic modulation can frequently be altered in patients with cardiac disorders as well as in patients with other critical illnesses or injuries. Assessment of heart rate variability is based on analysis of consecutive normal R-R intervals and may provide quantitative information on the modulation of cardiac vagal and sympathetic nerve input. The hypothesis that depressed heart rate variability may occur over a broad range of illness and injury, and may inversely correlated with disease severity and outcome has been tested in various clinical settings over the last decade. This article reviews recent literature concerning the potential clinical implications and limitations of heart rate variability assessment in general medicine.
Chapter 2 The New Culture of Software Development : Reflections on the practice of object-oriented design

Object-oriented techniques, when applied seriously and on a broad scale, reflect a new culture of software engineering. which may be called the component culture. After contrasting this new culture with the more traditional project culture, this article examines some of the technical. economical and managerial implications of the new approach. The discussion explores the fundamental object-oriented processes of abstraction and extraction (recognizing inheritance structures a posteriori). and introduces a new lifecyclemodel which seems to fit best with object-oriented development of reusable software: the Cluster Model.
VIAC: An out of ordinary experiment

This paper presents the preliminary results of VIAC, the VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge, a test of autonomous driving along an unknown route from Italy to China. It took 3 months to run the entire test; all data have been logged, including all data generated by the sensors, vehicle data, and GPS info. This huge amount of information has been packed during the trip, compressed, and transferred back to Parma for further processing. This data is now ready for a deep analysis of the various systems performance, with the aim of virtually running the whole trip multiple times with improved versions of the software. This paper discusses some preliminary figures obtained by the analysis of the data collected during the test. More information will be generated by a deeper analysis, which will take additional time, being the data about 40 terabyte in size.
Longevity in Slovenia: Past and potential gains in life expectancy by age and causes of death

Abstract Introduction In Slovenia, longevity is increasing rapidly. From 1997 to 2014, life expectancy at birth increased by 7 and 5 years for men and women, respectively. This paper explores how this gain in life expectancy at birth can be attributed to reduced mortality from five major groups of causes of death by 5-year age groups. It also estimates potential future gains in life expectancy at birth. Methods The importance of the five major causes of death was analysed by cause-elimination life tables. The total elimination of individual causes of death and a partial hypothetical adjustment of mortality to Spanish levels were analysed, along with age and cause decomposition (Pollard). Results During the 1997–2014 period, the increase in life expectancy at birth was due to lower mortality from circulatory diseases (ages above 60, both genders), as well as from lower mortality from neoplasms (ages above 50 years) and external causes (between 20 and 50 years) for men. However, considering the potential future gains in life expectancy at birth, by far the strongest effect can be attributed to lower mortality due to circulatory diseases for both genders. If Spanish mortality rates were reached, life expectancy at birth would increase by more than 2 years, again mainly because of lower mortality from circulatory diseases in very old ages. Discussion and conclusions Life expectancy analyses can improve evidence-based decision-making and allocation of resources among different prevention programmes and measures for more effective disease management that can also reduce the economic burden of chronic diseases.
Distribution of Circumferential Stress in Ruptured and Stable Atherosclerotic Lesions A Structural Analysis With Histopathological Correlation

Background. Although rupture of an atherosclerotic plaque is considered to be the cause of most acute coronary syndromes, the mechanism of plaque rupture is controversial. Methods and Results. To test the hypothesis that plaque rupture occurs at sites of high circumferential stress in the diseased vessel, the distribution of stress was analyzed in 24 coronary artery lesions. Histological specimens from 12 coronary artery lesions that caused lethal myocardial infarction were compared with those from 12 stable control lesions. A finite element model was used to calculate the stress distributions at a mean intraluminal pressure of 110 mm Hg. The maximum circumferential stress in plaques that ruptured was significantly higher than maximum stress in stable specimens (4,091±1,199 versus 1,444±485 mm Hg, p<0.0001). Twelve of 12 ruptured lesions had a total of 31 regions of stress concentration of more than 2,250 mm Hg (mean, 2.6±1.4 high stress regions per lesion); only one of 12 control lesions had a single stress concentration region of more than 2,250 mm Hg. In seven of 12 lethal lesions (58%), rupture occurred in the region of maximum circumferential stress; in 10 of the 12 lethal lesions (83%), rupture occurred in a region where computed stress was more than 2,250 mm Hg. Conclusions. These data suggest that concentrations of circumferential tensile stress in the atherosclerotic plaque may play an important role in plaque rupture and myocardial infarction. However, plaque rupture may not always occur at the region of highest stress, suggesting that local variations in plaque material properties contribute to plaque rupture. (Circulation 1993;87:1179‐1187)
A Survey on Trust Management for VANETs

There is an urgent need of effective trust management for vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs), given the dire consequences of acting on false information sent out by malicious peers in this context. In this paper, we first discuss the challenges for trust management caused by the important characteristics of VANET environments. We then survey existing trust models in multi-agent systems, mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) and VANETs, and point out their key issues. Based on these studies, we suggest desired properties towards effective trust management in VANETs, setting up clear goals for researchers in this area.
Expression analysis of BORIS during pluripotent, differentiated, cancerous, and non-cancerous cell states.

BORIS/CTCFL is an 11 zinc finger protein, which is the paralog of CTCF, a ubiquitously expressed protein with diverse roles in gene expression and chromatin organization. Several studies have shown that the expression of BORIS is restricted to normal adult testis, pluripotent cells, and diverse cancer cell lines. Thus, it is known as a cancer-testis (CT) gene that has been hypothesized to exhibit oncogenic properties and to be involved in cancer cell proliferation. On the contrary, other reports have shown that its expression is more widespread and can be detected in differentiated and normal somatic cells; hence, it might have roles in general cellular functions. The present study was aimed to analyze the expression of BORIS in different cell states of pluripotent, differentiated, cancerous and non-cancerous.We found that the two cell states of pluripotency and differentiation are not accompanied with significant variations of BORIS expression. Furthermore, Boris transcripts were detected at approximately the same level in cancer and non-cancer cell lines. These findings suggest that, in contrast to some previous reports, the expression of mouse BORIS is not limited to only cancerous cells or pluripotent cell states.
Review of psychosocial stress and asthma: an integrated biopsychosocial approach

Environmental stressors may impact asthma morbidity through neuroimmunological mechanisms which are adversely impacted and/or buffered y social networks, social support, and psychological functioning. In addition, life stress may impact on health beliefs and behaviours that may affect asthma management. Whereas earlier psychosomatic models have supported a role for psychological stress in contributing to variable asthma morbidity among those with existing disease, a growing appreciation of the interactions between behavioural, neural, endocrine, and immune processes suggest a role for these psychosocial factors in the genesis of asthma as well. While a causal link between stress and asthma has not bee established, this review provides a framework in which we can begin to see links between these systems that might provide new insights to guide future explorations. The complexity of these interactions underscore the need for a multidisciplinary approach which combines the idea that the origin of asthma is purely psychogenic in nature with the antithetical consideration that the biological aspects are all important. These distinctions are artificial, and future research that synthesizes biological, psychological, sociocultural, and family parameters is urgently needed to further our understanding of the rising burden of asthma.
Optimal power allocation method and outage probability analysis in AP-assisted inter-vehicular communications

This paper studies the relay-assisted inter-vehicular communications (IVCs) with double Rayleigh fading vehicle-to-vehicle links. The OPA (optimal power allocation) solution is derived through maximizing source-to-destination channel capacity assuming amplify-and-forward relaying. The outage performance is discussed and the lower bound on outage probability at medium to high SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) is presented. Simulation results manifest that the ergodic capacity can be improved by about 2 dB at low SNR through OPA method over EPA (equal power allocation) solution, whereas the outage probability decreases more than 2dB at high SNR compared to EPA. They also show that the lower bound on average outage probability approximates to the exact calculation result at medium to high SNR in the relay-assisted IVC system.
Microbial Pathogens Trigger Host DNA Double-Strand Breaks Whose Abundance Is Reduced by Plant Defense Responses

Immune responses and DNA damage repair are two fundamental processes that have been characterized extensively, but the links between them remain largely unknown. We report that multiple bacterial, fungal and oomycete plant pathogen species induce double-strand breaks (DSBs) in host plant DNA. DNA damage detected by histone γ-H2AX abundance or DNA comet assays arose hours before the disease-associated necrosis caused by virulent Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato. Necrosis-inducing paraquat did not cause detectable DSBs at similar stages after application. Non-pathogenic E. coli and Pseudomonas fluorescens bacteria also did not induce DSBs. Elevation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is common during plant immune responses, ROS are known DNA damaging agents, and the infection-induced host ROS burst has been implicated as a cause of host DNA damage in animal studies. However, we found that DSB formation in Arabidopsis in response to P. syringae infection still occurs in the absence of the infection-associated oxidative burst mediated by AtrbohD and AtrbohF. Plant MAMP receptor stimulation or application of defense-activating salicylic acid or jasmonic acid failed to induce a detectable level of DSBs in the absence of introduced pathogens, further suggesting that pathogen activities beyond host defense activation cause infection-induced DNA damage. The abundance of infection-induced DSBs was reduced by salicylic acid and NPR1-mediated defenses, and by certain R gene-mediated defenses. Infection-induced formation of γ-H2AX still occurred in Arabidopsis atr/atm double mutants, suggesting the presence of an alternative mediator of pathogen-induced H2AX phosphorylation. In summary, pathogenic microorganisms can induce plant DNA damage. Plant defense mechanisms help to suppress rather than promote this damage, thereby contributing to the maintenance of genome integrity in somatic tissues.
Effect of Natural and ARV-Induced Viral Suppression and Viral Breakthrough on Anti-HIV Antibody Proportion and Avidity in Patients with HIV-1 Subtype B Infection

Background Viral suppression and viral breakthrough impact the humoral immune response to HIV infection. We evaluated the impact of viral suppression and viral breakthrough on results obtained with two cross-sectional HIV incidence assays. Methods All samples were collected from adults in the US who were HIV infected for >2 years. Samples were tested with the BED capture enzyme immunoassay (BED-CEIA) which measures the proportion of IgG that is HIV-specific, and with an antibody avidity assay based on the Genetic Systems 1/2+ O ELISA. We tested 281 samples: (1) 30 samples from 18 patients with natural control of HIV-1 infection known as elite controllers or suppressors (2) 72 samples from 18 adults on antiretroviral therapy (ART), with 1 sample before and 2–6 samples after ART initiation, and (3) 179 samples from 20 virally-suppressed adults who had evidence of viral breakthrough receiving ART (>400 copies/ml HIV RNA) and with subsequent viral suppression. Results For elite suppressors, 10/18 had BED-CEIA values <0.8 normalized optical density units (OD-n) and these values did not change significantly over time. For patients receiving ART, 14/18 had BED-CEIA values that decreased over time, with a median decrease of 0.42 OD-n (range 0.10 to 0.63)/time point receiving ART. Three patterns of BED-CEIA values were observed during viral breakthrough: (1) values that increased then returned to pre-breakthrough values when viral suppression was re-established, (2) values that increased after viral breakthrough, and (3) values that did not change with viral breakthrough. Conclusions Viral suppression and viral breakthrough were associated with changes in BED-CEIA values, reflecting changes in the proportion of HIV-specific IgG. These changes can result in misclassification of patients with long-term HIV infection as recently infected using the BED-CEIA, thereby influencing a falsely high value for cross-sectional incidence estimates.
IWBase : Provenance Metadata Infrastructure for Explaining and Trusting Answers from the Web

If users are expected to depend on answers from applications and services on the web, they need to have methods for asking for information that will increase their understanding and their trust in the answers. One way of increasing a user’s understanding and trust is to provide a summarized or detailed description of how the answer was obtained. This process would typically depend on some kind of proof structure defending the answer but this alone (no matter how understandable and/or thorough the proof is) is not enough. Any presentation of why a user should depend on an answer also critically depends on metadata concerning elements used in the proof such as underlying data sources, their authoritativeness, reasoning methods used, any uncertainties, etc. In this paper, we introduce IWBase, a comprehensive OWL-based distributed and scalable infrastructure for effectively creating, storing, evolving, and using proof-related metadata for explanations. IWBase is currently in use by a number of DARPA and ARDA projects.
Re-Cracking the Nucleosome Positioning Code

Nucleosomes, the fundamental repeating subunits of all eukaryotic chromatin, are responsible for packaging DNA into chromosomes inside the cell nucleus and controlling gene expression. While it has been well established that nucleosomes exhibit higher affinity for select DNA sequences, until recently it was unclear whether such preferences exerted a significant, genome-wide effect on nucleosome positioning in vivo. This question was seemingly and recently resolved in the affirmative: a wide-ranging series of experimental and computational analyses provided extensive evidence that the instructions for wrapping DNA around nucleosomes are contained in the DNA itself. This subsequently labeled second genetic code was based on data-driven, structural, and biophysical considerations. It was subjected to an extensive suite of validation procedures, with one conclusion being that intrinsic, genome-encoded, nucleosome organization explains approximately 50% of in vivo nucleosome positioning. Here, we revisit both the nature of the underlying sequence preferences, and the performance of the proposed code. A series of new analyses, employing spectral envelope (Fourier transform) methods for assessing key sequence periodicities, classification techniques for evaluating predictive performance, and discriminatory motif finding methods for devising alternate models, are applied. The findings from the respective analyses indicate that signature dinucleotide periodicities are absent from the bulk of the high affinity nucleosome-bound sequences, and that the predictive performance of the code is modest. We conclude that further exploration of the role of sequence-based preferences in genome-wide nucleosome positioning is warranted. This work offers a methodologic counterpart to a recent, high resolution determination of nucleosome positioning that also questions the accuracy of the proposed code and, further, provides illustrations of techniques useful in assessing sequence periodicity and predictive performance.
A Multilevel Logit Estimation on the Determinants of Utilization of Preventive Health Care and Healthy Lifestyle Practice in China

The purpose of this study is to provide policy implications by estimating the individual and community level determinants of preventive health-care utilization in China based upon data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey. Two different frameworks, a human capital model and a psychological-behavioral model, are tested using a multilevel logit estimation. The results demonstrate different patterns for medical and nonmedical preventive activities. There is a strong correlation between having medical insurance and utilizing preventive health services. For the usage of medical-related preventive health care (MP), age, gender, education, urban residence, and medical insurance are strong predictors. High income did not provide much of an increase in the usage level of MP, but the lack of income was a huge obstacle for low-income people to overcome. Community variation in number of facilities accounted for about one third of the total variation in the utilization of MP. The utilization of MP in China remains dependent upon the individual's social-economic conditions.
Mapping with Stakeholders: An Overview of Public Participatory GIS and VGI in Transport Decision-Making

Transport decision-making problems are typically spatially based and involve a set of feasible alternatives with multiple evaluation criteria. Besides, transport decisions affect citizens’ quality of life, as well as specific interests of general stakeholders (e.g., transport companies), thus needing a participatory approach to decision-making. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have the ability to visualize spatial data and represent the impact of location based transport alternatives, thus helping experts to conduct robust assessments. Moreover, with the recent diffusion of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and development of Public Participatory GIS (PPGIS) platforms, the process can be enhanced thanks to the collection of a large amount of updated spatial data and the achievement of an active community participation. In this study, we provide an overview based on a structured literature review of the use of VGI and PPGIS in transport studies, exploring the fields of application, role played by GIS, level of public involvement and decision stage at which they are applied. From the overview’s results, we propose a general framework for the evaluation of transport alternatives using GIS from a multiple stakeholder point of view; the main conclusion is the usefulness of the integration between Public Participation, GIS and quantitative evaluation methods, in particular Multi Criteria Decision Analysis, in order to foster technically sound and shared decisions.
A Comparison of Face Detection Algorithms in Visible and Thermal Spectrums

Face Detection is the first step of facial recognition algorithms and has been widely researched in the visible spectrum. Current research has shown that thermal facial recognition is as accurate as the visible spectrum recognition algorithms. This paper presents three face detection algorithms in both long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) images and visible spectrum images. The paper compares the Viola-Jones algorithm, Gabor feature extraction and classification using support vector machines, and a Projection Profile Analysis algorithm. The Gabor feature extraction method can detect faces in both spectrums with separate training, but the algorithm is extremely slow. The Project Profile Analysis method can find faces in LWIR images, but is not applicable to visible spectrum images. Our experimental results show that the ViolaJones algorithm is the most reliable and efficient solution for the implementation of a real-time face detection system using either visible or thermal spectrum images. Index Terms – Face Detection, Object Detection, Thermal Imaging, Image Processing