Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
${\sf FedRLChain}$: Secure Federated Deep Reinforcement Learning With Blockchain

This article introduces <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\sf FedRLChain}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi mathvariant="sans-serif">FedRLChain</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="chowdhury-ieq2-3294063.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>, a novel framework for blockchain-based secure federated deep reinforcement learning, which allows users to securely and collaboratively train a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) model by plugging appropriate aggregation and verification algorithms for specific problems. Unlike existing systems, <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\sf FedRLChain}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi mathvariant="sans-serif">FedRLChain</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="chowdhury-ieq3-3294063.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> adopts 1) a novel verification algorithm to prevent malicious clients, 2) an aggregation weight scheme from preventing the global model from getting biased toward any client, and 3) a variant of traditional FedAverage algorithm to accelerate the convergence process. We perform a rigorous experimental evaluation of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\sf FedRLChain}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi mathvariant="sans-serif">FedRLChain</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="chowdhury-ieq4-3294063.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> considering the classic cart-pole problem, and we show a significant improvement in the number of epochs and time required for model convergence w.r. t. the state-of-the-art frameworks – DDQL, BAFFLE, and BASE-PIoT.
Exploring Factors for Learning Through Social Cognitive Theory

This quantitative study is done to explore factors for learning Mandarin among undergraduates. A purposive sample of 168 participants responded to the survey. The participants are non-native speakers who were learning Mandarin language as a foreign language. They consisted of 48% diploma students and 52 % of degree students in a Malaysian public university. The instrument used is a 5 Likert-scale survey and is rooted from learning strategies by (Wenden and Rubin, 1987). The survey has 4 sections which include items on participants’ demographic profile, cognitive components, metacognitive self -regulation component and resource management component. Findings of the studies show that factors for language learning for instance attention, reproduction, retention and motivation show significant correlation among each others which indicated that these factors have significant influence on Mandarin language learning among learners. However, help-seeking in motivation factor is the strategies most preferred by learners to improve language learning.
Modeling irregular and complex forms

Computational technologies provide arguably the first real opportunity architectural design has had for a comprehensive description of built form. With the advent of affordable computer-aided design systems (including drafting, modeling, visualization and simulation tools), architects believe they can be in full control of geometric aspects and, through these, of a wide spectrum of other aspects that are implicit or explicit in the geometric representation. This belief is based primarily on the efficiency and effectiveness of computer systems, ranging from the richness and adaptability of geometric primitives to the utility of geometric representations in simulations of climatic aspects. Such capabilities support attempts to design and construct more irregular or otherwise complex forms. These fall under two main categories: (1) parsing of irregularity into elementary components, and (2) correlation of the form of a building with complex geometric structures.The first category takes advantage of the compactness and flexibility of computational representations in order to analyse the form of a design into basic elements, usually elementary geometric primitives. These are either arranged into simple, unconstrained configurations or related to each other by relationships that define e.g. parametric relative positioning or Boolean combinations. In both cases the result is a reduction of local complexity and an increase of implicit or explicit relationships, including the possibility of hierarchical structures.The second category attempts to correlate built form with constraints that derive usually from construction but can also be morphological. The correlation determines the applicability of complex geometric structures (minimally ruled surfaces) to the description of a design. The product of this application is generally variable in quality, depending upon the designer's grounding in geometry and his ability to integrate constraints from different aspects in the definition of the design's geometry.Both categories represent a potential leap forward but are also equally hampered by the rigidity of the implementation mechanisms upon which they rely heavily. The paper proposes an approach to making these mechanisms subordinate to the cognitive and technical aspects of architectural thinking through fuzzy modeling. This way of modeling involves a combination of (a) canonical forms, (b) tolerances around canonical forms and positions, (c) minimal and maximal values, (d) fuzzy boundaries, and (e) plastic interaction between elements based on the dual principles of local intelligence and autonomy. Fuzzy models come therefore closer to the intuitive manners of sketching, while facilitating transition to precise and complex forms. The paper presents two applications of fuzzy modeling. The first concerns the generation of schematic building layouts, including adaptive control of programmatic requirements. The second is a system for designing stairs that can adapt themselves to changes in their immediate environment through a fuzzy definition of geometric and topological parametrization.
W-shaped Eight-port Wideband MIMO Antenna

|The main challenges of designing an antenna for modern wireless communication are size reduction and mutual coupling. An ultra-wideband (UWB) multiple input multiple outputs (MIMO) antennae with four elements is suggested by this paper. Each element has two ports with dual-polarized patches to reduce the result of reciprocal coupling, increase the capacity, and keep a proper size. A circular geometric shape is in front of the patch of the proposed antenna to reduce the impact of mutual coupling. The CST STUDIO 2019 program simulates the single antenna element and MIMO antenna using four integrated elements, eight integrated ports, and an Fr-4 insulating layer in an area of (70 (cid:2) 70) mm 2 . The MIMO antenna’s operating frequency, which has a band of 2.85 (3.15{6) GHz at (cid:0) 10 dB, is 3.67 GHz while the operating frequency of a single antenna element, which has a band of 2.8 (3.1{5.9) GHz at (cid:0) 10 dB and a resonance return loss of 36 dB, is 3.64 GHz. The MIMO antennas obtained a diversity gain (DG) of about 10 with a good gain of about 8 dB while the envelope correlation coeﬃcient (ECC) was equal to or less than 0.0001.
Touching and being touched: where knowing and feeling meet

Philosophers maintain that touch confers a sense of reality or grounding to perceptual experience. In touching oneself, one is simultaneously both subject and object of touch, a template for experiencing oneself as subject and object of intentions, feelings, and motivations, or intersubjectivity. Here, I explore a form of self-touch carefully documented by Winnicott in observing how the infant engages the transitional object. I compare the processes of self-loss in transitional states, including absorption in art, empathic immersion, drug-induced ego dissolution, and depersonalization. I use examples drawn from Rodin, Dante, and the Beatles; research correlating neurophysiological findings with aspects of self-representation; predictive processing-based models; Hohwy’s concepts of minimal and narrative self; Clark’s notion of the extended mind; and phenomenological perspectives on touch, to postulate a role for self-touch in the pre-reflective sense of mine-ness, or grounding, in transitional states.
Deterministic Algorithms for Four-Dimensional Imaging in Colocated MIMO OFDM-Based Radar Systems

In this manuscript, the problem of detecting multiple targets and jointly estimating their spatial coordinates (namely, the range, the Doppler and the direction of arrival of their electromagnetic echoes) in a colocated multiple-input multiple-output radar system employing orthogonal frequency division multiplexing is investigated. It is well known its optimal solution, namely the joint maximum likelihood estimator of an unknown number of targets, is unfeasible because of its huge computational complexity. Moreover, until now, sub-optimal solutions have not been proposed in the technical literature. In this manuscript a novel approach to the development of reduced complexity solutions is illustrated. It is based on the idea of separating angle estimation from range-Doppler estimation, and of exploiting known algorithms for solving these two sub-problems. A detailed analysis of the accuracy and complexity of various detection and estimation methods based on this approach is provided. Our numerical results evidence that one of these methods is able to approach optimal performance in the maximum likelihood sense with a limited computational effort in different scenarios.
Multi-Discriminator Active Adversarial Network for Multi-Center Brain Disease Diagnosis

Multi-center analysis has attracted increasing attention in brain disease diagnosis, because it provides effective approaches to improve disease diagnostic performance by making use of the information from different centers. However, in practical multi-center applications, data uncertainty is more common than that in single center, which brings challenge to robust modeling of diagnosis. In this article, we proposed a multi-discriminator active adversarial network (MDAAN) to alleviate the uncertainties at the center, feature, and label levels for multi-center brain disease diagnosis. First, we extract the latent invariant representation of the source center and target center to reduce domain shift by adversarial learning strategy. Second, the proposed method adaptively evaluates the contribution of different source centers in fusion by measuring data distribution difference between source and target center. Moreover, only the hard learning samples in target center are identified to label with low sample annotation cost. Finally, we treat the selected samples as the auxiliary domain to alleviate the negative transfer and improve the robustness of the multi-center model. We extensively compare the proposed approach with several state-of-the-art multi-center methods on the five-center schizophrenia dataset, and the results demonstrate that our method is superior to the previous methods in identifying brain disease.
Anonymous Authentication Protocol Based on Physical Unclonable Function and Elliptic Curve Cryptography for Smart Grid

Smart grid (SG) achieves more convenient and efficient power transmission through the rapid development of the information and communication technology. In addition to the transmission of electrical energy, the SG system also involves privacy and control information of service providers, which is closely related to people's livelihood. However, at present, the data in the SG system are transmitted in the form of plaintext, which does not have complete protection measures for entity privacy and communication data security. Focusing on preserving entity privacy and data security, this article proposes an anonymous secure authentication protocol (ASAP-SG) for the SG environment. Based on elliptic curve cryptography and physical unclonable function, ASAP-SG can realize authentication and key agreement between smart meters and service providers. The security of ASAP-SG has been verified with proverif tool and proven strictly under the real-or-random model. Furthermore, heuristic analysis manifests that ASAP-SG can successfully resist known security attacks. Finally, a fully comparison with the other five most advanced schemes reveals that ASAP-SG consumes the optimal computation cost on both smart meters and service providers and reduces the communication overhead by 33.3%–45.8%, on the basis of satisfying ten security objectives. These features make ASAP-SG more suitable for resource-constrained SG environment.
Io plasma torus ion composition: Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini

The Io torus produces ultraviolet emissions diagnostic of plasma conditions. We revisit data sets obtained by the Voyager 1, Galileo, and Cassini missions at Jupiter. With the latest version (8.0) of the CHIANTI atomic database we analyze UV spectra to determine ion composition. We compare ion composition obtained from observations from these three missions with a theoretical model of the physical chemistry of the torus by Delamere et al. (2005). We find ion abundances from the Voyager data similar to the Cassini epoch, consistent with the dissociation and ionization of SO2, but with a slightly higher average ionization state for sulfur, consistent with the higher electron temperature measured by Voyager. This reanalysis of the Voyager data produces a much lower oxygen:sulfur ratio than earlier analysis by Shemansky (1988), which was also reported by Bagenal (1994). We derive fractional ion compositions in the center of the torus to be S+/Ne ~ 5%, S++/Ne ~ 20%, S+++/Ne ~ 5%, O+/Ne ~ 20%, O++/Ne ~ 3%, and Σ(On+)/Σ(Sn+) ~ 0.8, leaving about 10–15% of the charge as protons. The radial profile of ion composition indicates a slightly higher average ionization state, a modest loss of sulfur relative to oxygen, and Σ(On+)/Σ(Sn+) ~ 1.2 at about 8 RJ, beyond which the composition is basically frozen in. The Galileo observations of UV emissions from the torus suggest that the composition in June 1996 may have comprised a lower abundance of oxygen than usual, consistent with observations made at the same time by the EUVE satellite.
Development and Validation of Total Pain Scale for Evaluation of Total Pain in Cancer Patients

Objectives: Cancer pain has all the components of total pain such as physical, social, psychological, and spiritual. These components contribute to the overall pain experience in cancer patients. Many instruments have been developed till date to assess the effect of pain in cancer patients but none of the instruments include all components of total pain. In this article, we describe the development and validation of the total pain scale (TPS) for the evaluation of total pain in cancer patients with pain. This study aimed to develop and validate a questionnaire for the evaluation of total pain in cancer patients with pain. Material and Methods: This study included a review of existing pain questionnaires for cancer pain for item pool generation. Items were generated in the Hindi language by six stakeholders to create 23 items to develop TPS. TPS was applied to 300 Hindi-speaking cancer patients. Bivariate correlation was used to reduce the number of items as well as construction of the domain followed by factor analysis to finalise TPS. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed for testing the validity and reliability of TPS. Results: TPS is an 18-item scale composed of four domains (physical, social, spiritual and psychological domain). The internal consistency of TPS and its subscales was found to be very good (a = 0.84–0.88). CFA and structural equation modeling Goodness of fit has confirmed that model 4 is the best fit as it yielded a lesser root-mean-squared error of approximation value of 0.062 and a greater comparative fit index, Tucker-Lewis index value of 0.944. The convergent and divergent validity of TPS and its domain was good. Conclusion: This study reports TPS to be a brief (18-item), valid, and reliable questionnaire in the Hindi language for assessment of all components of total pain in cancer patients with pain.
Alcohol drinking in male patients with chronic schizophrenia: prevalence and its relationship to clinical symptoms

Background It is common practice to associate schizophrenia (SCZ) patients with substance use. The most commonly used substances in China are tobacco and alcohol. However, few studies have focused on alcohol consumption itself in patients with SCZ. Thus the purpose of this study was to detect the prevalence of alcohol use and associated clinical factors in Chinese patients with SCZ. Methods A total of 616 male inpatients who met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) criteria for SCZ participated in this study. A detailed questionnaire, including data on alcohol consumption was used to collect demographic and clinical information on all patients. The five-factor model of the positive and negative syndrome scale (PANSS) was adopted to assess psychiatric symptoms. Results In this study, 31.49% of SCZ inpatients had a history of alcohol use, and 82.9% of these patients abstained from alcohol use after the onset of SCZ. Compared to nondrinkers, patients who drank were more likely to smoke (p = 0.004), more likely to have suicide attempts (p = 0.002) and suicidal ideation (p = 0.001), more severe positive (p < 0.001) and depressive symptoms (p = 0.034), but less severe negative symptoms (p = 0.04). Conclusion These findings suggest that alcohol use is common during the lifetime of SCZ patients and that alcohol use may be associated with clinical symptoms in SCZ patients.
The Mediating Effect of Organizational Memory on Social Media and Hotel Reputation in Jordan

Purpose: This study analyzed the mediating effect of organizational memory on the relationship between social media and hotel reputation in Jordan. Theoretical framework: The study employed the theory of organizational memory to clarify the mediating effect of organizational memory on social media and hotel reputation. It is a theoretical construct that explains how knowledge production, preservation, distribution, and application occur across time in an organization and how the cumulative impact affects the organization's current as well as its planned actions and decisions. Design/methodology/approach: The study surveyed 600 participants from hotels in Amman. They were selected randomly according to Westland’s sampling criteria. They were asked to rate their responses on a seven-point Likert scale. Moreover, the (PLS-SEM) is adopted in this research to analyze the collected data. Findings: The result reflected that the social media significantly influences hotel reputation in Jordan. Besides, social media positively impacts organizational memory and organizational memory positively impacts hotel reputation. It is also noted that organizational memory partially affects the relationship between social media and hotel reputation in Jordan. Research, Practical & Social implications: The results of this study will be a policy recommendation between the department of human resources, regulators, researchers and policy makers. Originality/value: This is the first research in Jordan to address the mediating effect of organizational memory on the relationship between social media and hotel reputation.
Antimicrobial susceptibility patterns and molecular phylogenetics of Proteus mirabilis isolated from domestic rats: An environmental driver to antimicrobial resistance in public health in Arusha Tanzania

Proteus mirabilis (P. mirabilis) is a bacterial pathogen contributing to opportunistic infections, nosocomial outbreaks, and mostly hematogenous ascending urinary tract infections. It has repeatedly been found in rats. Due to rat-human interaction, rats are likely responsible for spreading these bacteria and their antimicrobial-resistant. This study was performed to genetically characterize and assess antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of P. mirabilis isolated from rats cohabiting with humans in Arusha municipality, Tanzania. A total of 139 rats were trapped from March to May 2021 and identified at the species level using morphological and morphometric features. Deep-intestinal swabs were obtained and pre-enriched in buffered peptone water. P. mirabilis was isolated by conventional culture and biochemical methods and confirmed by 16S rRNA polymerase chain reaction and sequencing. Phylogenetics was used to assess the similarities of the isolates. Antimicrobial susceptibility test was done by disk diffusion method using seven antibiotics, including tetracycline, ciprofloxacin, gentamicin, cefotaxime, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, azithromycin, and ampicillin. Resistance genes blaTEM, tetA, tetB, mphA, blaSHV, blaCTX-M, sul1, and sul2 were traced in each isolate using PCR. Mixed rat species, Rattus rattus (55.4%), Mus musculus (15.8%), and Mastomys natalensis (28.8%), were captured. P. mirabilis was isolated from four (2.9%) Rattus rattus samples. By PCR and sequencing, all were confirmed as P. mirabilis and 100% similar to strains from GenBank. Three isolates showed multidrug resistance (MDR) against trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, azithromycin, and ampicillin, while all isolates were resistant to azithromycin and ampicillin, and susceptible to ciprofloxacin, gentamicin, and cefotaxime. Three were resistance to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and intermediate to tetracycline. PCR analysis detected tetA, blaTEM, sul1, and sul2 resistance genes. Constructed phylogenetic tree showed that all isolates from this study were closely related to isolates from Tunisia. The study has discovered the first P. mirabilis isolates from rats in Tanzania with antimicrobial resistance traits that could be of public health concern.
Advances in stray light characterization by ultrafast time-of-flight imaging

Stray light characterization using ultrafast time of flight imaging was demonstrated recently for the testing of refractive telescopes, using a streak tube with a femtosecond laser. It was shown that individual contributors such as ghost reflections and scattering features can be measured individually and identified, allowing unprecedented understanding of stray light properties in telescopes. This opens the door to the development of higher performing instruments, with stray light properties significantly reduced compared to the state of the art. In this paper, we will present the latest advances in the domain of stray light characterization by ultrafast time-of-flight imaging. This includes the characterization of imaging instruments, and the use of the time-of-flight measurements for reverse engineering instruments properties. In addition of using the time-of-flight approach for characterizing instruments, we will show that this method can be used to validate and improve conventional stray light measurement devices and facilities. In the case of large facilities, the typical optical path lengths is of the order of several centimeters to tens of meters. Therefore, in that case streak cameras can be replaced by a less expensive alternative, namely SPAD detectors. We will present the dedicated SPAD detector that we developed and the results obtain in the validation and improvement of the stray light facility for the FLEX Earth observation instrument. This system will be also used in the near future also for the NAC instrument in the ERO mission to Mars