Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Trajectory Control of a Computer Arm

This paper describes the programming of a computer controlled arm. The programming is divided logically into planning and execution Communication between planning and execution is by a data file which specifies the arm trajectory with reapect to time, and actions that the arm should perform. The servo program which moves the arm along the trajectory is based on Legrangian mechanics and takes into account coupling between links, and the variation of inertial loading with change of arm configuration.
"Is Our Children's Apps Learning?" Automatically Detecting COPPA Violations

In recent years, a market of games and learning apps for children has flourished in the mobile world. Many of these often ``free'' mobile apps have access to a variety of sensitive personal information about the user, which app developers can monetize via advertising or other means. In the United States, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) protects children's privacy, requiring parental consent to the use of personal information and prohibiting behavioral advertising and online tracking. In this work, we present our ongoing effort to develop a method to automatically evaluate mobile apps' COPPA compliance. Our method combines dynamic execution analysis (to track sensitive resource access at runtime) with traffic monitoring (to reveal private information leaving the device and recording with whom it gets shared, even if encrypted). We complement empirical technical observations with legal analysis of the apps' corresponding privacy policies. As a proof of concept, we scraped the Google Play store for apps distributed in categories specifically targeting users under than 13 years of age, which subjects these products to COPPA's regulations. We automated app execution on an instrumented version of the Android OS, recording the apps' access to and transmission of sensitive information. To contextualize third parties (e.g., advertising networks) with whom the apps share information, we leveraged a crowdsourced dataset collected by the Lumen Privacy Tool (formerly Haystack), an Android-based device-local traffic inspection platform. Our effort seeks to illuminate apps' compliance with COPPA and catalog the organizations that collect sensitive user information. In our preliminary results, we find several likely COPPA violations, including omission of prior consent and active sharing of persistent identifiers with third-party services for tracking and profiling of children. These results demonstrate our testbed's capability to detect different types of possible violations in the market for children's apps.
Proactive versus reactive motivations for patenting and their impact on patent production at universities

This paper deals with patenting behaviours of university researchers and distinguishes between two motivations that academic scientists may adopt when dealing with patents: a proactive one, where scientists are patent enthusiastic and a reactive one, where scientists are more reluctant to patent, even if they might be forced to do that anyway. We use an original dataset on 173 French academic inventors (in life sciences and electronics and engineering sciences) in order to test whether the scientist’s motivations to patent affect the number of patents she invents. Our econometric results indicate that a very positive perception of university patenting or a reported willingness to perform patentable research does not lead to more invented patents. Conversely, past patenting experiences seem to matter a lot: academic inventors, who already experienced successful technology transfer due to patents, are more likely to invent patents. Some slight differences emerge across scientific disciplines.
Structure‐Texture Decomposition of Images with Interval Gradient

This paper presents a novel filtering‐based method for decomposing an image into structures and textures. Unlike previous filtering algorithms, our method adaptively smooths image gradients to filter out textures from images. A new gradient operator, the interval gradient, is proposed for adaptive gradient smoothing. Using interval gradients, textures can be distinguished from structure edges and smoothly varying shadings. We also propose an effective gradient‐guided algorithm to produce high‐quality image filtering results from filtered gradients. Our method avoids gradient reversal in the filtering results and preserves sharp features better than existing filtering approaches, while retaining simplicity and highly parallel implementation. The proposed method can be utilized for various applications that require accurate structure‐texture decomposition of images.
Climbing Fibres as a Source of Nitric Oxide in the Cerebellum

Exposure of adult rat cerebellar slices to a moderately raised K+ concentration (15 mM) caused a large (30‐fold) rise in the levels of cyclic GMP. Excitatory amino acid antagonists failed to inhibit this response, nor could it be mimicked by agonists active at a number of other transmitter receptors. It was, however, inhibited by the nitric oxide (NO) synthase antagonist, l‐methylarginine (lC50= 10 μM), and also by tetrodotoxin (1 μM) implying that underlying the cyclic GMP response was an action potential‐dependent formation of NO. Prelesioning of climbing fibres resulted in a loss of ∼50% of the response to K+ but failed to influence the effects of glutamate receptor agonists or the NO‐donor, nitroprusside. These findings point to a new mechanism for the formation of NO in the central nervous system and suggest that, in the cerebellum, climbing fibres are a source of NO.
Multi-frequency activation of neuronal networks by coordinated reset stimulation

We computationally study whether it is possible to stimulate a neuronal population in such a way that its mean firing rate increases without an increase of the population's net synchronization. For this, we use coordinated reset (CR) stimulation, which has previously been developed to desynchronize populations of oscillatory neurons. Intriguingly, delivered to a population of predominantly silent FitzHugh–Nagumo or Hindmarsh–Rose neurons at sufficient stimulation amplitudes, CR robustly causes a multi-frequency activation: different Arnold tongues such as 1 : 1 or n : m entrained neuronal clusters emerge, which consist of phase-shifted sub clusters. Owing to the clustering pattern the neurons' timing is well balanced, so that in total there is no synchronization. Our findings may contribute to the development of novel and safe stimulation treatments that specifically counteract cerebral hypo-activity without promoting pathological synchronization or inducing epileptic seizures.
Embryonic Developmental Temperatures Modulate Thermal Acclimation of Performance Curves in Tadpoles of the Frog Limnodynastes peronii

Performance curves of physiological rates are not fixed, and determining the extent to which thermal performance curves can change in response to environmental signals is essential to understand the effect of climate variability on populations. The aim of this study was to determine whether and how temperatures experienced during early embryonic development affect thermal performance curves of later life history stages in the frog Limnodynastes peronii. We tested the hypotheses that a) the embryonic environment affects mean trait values only; b) temperature at which performance of tadpoles is maximal shifts with egg incubation temperatures so that performance is maximised at the incubation temperatures, and c) incubation temperatures modulate the capacity for reversible acclimation in tadpoles. Growth rates were greater in warm (25°C) compared to cold (15°C) acclimated (6 weeks) tadpoles regardless of egg developmental temperatures (15°C or 25°C, representing seasonal means). The breadth of the performance curve of burst locomotor performance (measured at 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30°C, representing annual range) is greatest when egg developmental and acclimation temperatures coincide. The mode of the performance curves shifted with acclimation conditions and maximum performance was always at higher temperatures than acclimation conditions. Performance curves of glycolytic (lactate dehydrogenase activities) and mitochondrial (citrate synthase and cytochrome c oxidase) enzymes were modulated by interactions between egg incubation and acclimation temperatures. Lactate dehydrogenase activity paralleled patterns seen in burst locomotor performance, but oxygen consumption rates and mitochondrial enzyme activities did not mirror growth or locomotor performance. We show that embryonic developmental conditions can modulate performance curves of later life-history stages, thereby conferring flexibilty to respond to environmental conditions later in life.
Multivariate statistical methods for modeling and analysis of wafer probe test data

Probe testing following wafer fabrication can produce extremely large amounts of data, which is often used to inspect a final product to determine if the product meets specifications. This data can be further utilized in studying the effects of the wafer fabrication process on the quality or yield of the wafers. Relationships among the parameters may provide valuable process information that can improve future production. This paper compares many methods of using the probe test data to determine the cause of low yield wafers. The methods discussed include two classes of traditional multivariate statistical methods, clustering and principal component methods and regression-based methods. These traditional methods are compared to a classification and regression tree (CART) method. The results for each method are presented. CART adequately fits the data and provides a "recipe" for avoiding low yield wafers and because CART is distribution-free there are no assumptions about the distributional properties of the data. CART is strongly recommended for analyzing wafer probe data.
The Action of Different Forms of Pure Silica on the Lungs of Rats

Pure silica (Si02 ) exists at room temperature in the four different modifications : quartz, tridymite, cristobalite, and fused silica. The first three are crystalline, but fused silica is a non-crystalline solid, a glass. Tridymite, cristobalite, and fused silica are metastable, but at room temperature they do not invert within measurable time to the only thermo dynamically stable modification, quartz. It can be regarded as proven that quartz can produce tissue changes in the lungs of animals similar to those found in human silicosis. It was also thought up to quite recently that silica was unique in producing such changes. Experiments with rand /quartz (King, Rogers, Gilchrist, and Nagelschmidt, 1945) had shown that there was no difference in the action of either of the optically active forms from the effect of the racemic type. It was thought desirable next to test the effect of the four different modifications of silica under comparable conditions. The only previous informa tion in this field came from Gardner (1938) who had injected rabbits by the ear vein with 1 g. lots and had found progressive nodular fibrosis of the liver with quartz and fused silica, but a more severe diffuse fibrosis with cristobalite and a still more rapid reaction with tridymite which resulted in the death of all his animals within three months or less. Gardner stated that his samples were analysed and were all below 3 micron diameter, but he did not give any results of analyses or counts. We decided to make comparable sized fractions of the four silica modifications and to use them for
Minimum-area sequential budgeting for FPGA

The constraint-based approach to timing-driven placement requires delay budgeting to define the delay upper bounds for nets. While most of the previous delay-budgeting works have been focused on optimizing combinational circuits, the work in introduces sequential budgeting, which combines budgeting and retiming to optimize sequential circuits better. However, the formulation does not consider flip-flop (FF) minimization, which is important in practical applications. Here, we propose a new sequential budgeting algorithm, C-SBGT, that not only controls the FF count, but also can be solved more efficiently compared. Our formulation has fewer constraints than and the procedure to realize retiming is also simpler. Our experiments show that our new min-area sequential budgeting algorithm produces a good trade-off between the area and budgeting optimization goals, as well as improving the timing of previous sequential budgeting method by 12%.
Weighted link graphs: a distributed IDS for secondary intrusion detection and defense

While a firewall installed at the perimeter of a local network provides the first line of defense against the hackers, many intrusion incidents are the results of successful penetration of the firewalls. One computer’s compromise often put the entire network at risk. In this paper, we propose an IDS that provides a finer control over the internal network. The system focuses on the variations of connection-based behavior of each single computer, and uses a weighted link graph to visualize the overall traffic abnormalities. The functionality of our system is of a distributed personal IDS system that also provides a centralized traffic analysis by graphical visualization. We use a novel weight assignment schema for the local detection within each end agent. The local abnormalities are quantitatively carried out by the node weight and link weight and further sent to the central analyzer to build the weighted link graph. Thus, we distribute the burden of traffic processing and visualization to each agent and make it more efficient for the overall intrusion detection. As the LANs are more vulnerable to inside attacks, our system is designed as a reinforcement to prevent corruption from the inside.
Hybrid Behavior Ant Colony Algorithm

In basic ant colony algorithm optimization process, for the ant colony algorithm in speeding up the convergence rate and avoiding stagnation, ant colony algorithm based on hybrid behavior is studied in this paper. By the ant behavior definition and implementation of the algorithm, the instance confirms that the ant colony algorithm based on hybrid behavior has a more stable solving performance than the basic ant colony algorithm.
Identification of QTLs for fruit quality traits in Japanese apples: QTLs for early ripening are tightly related to preharvest fruit drop

Many important apple (Malus × domestica Borkh.) fruit quality traits are regulated by multiple genes, and more information about quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for these traits is required for marker-assisted selection. In this study, we constructed genetic linkage maps of the Japanese apple cultivars ‘Orin’ and ‘Akane’ using F1 seedlings derived from a cross between these cultivars. The ‘Orin’ map consisted of 251 loci covering 17 linkage groups (LGs; total length 1095.3 cM), and the ‘Akane’ map consisted of 291 loci covering 18 LGs (total length 1098.2 cM). We performed QTL analysis for 16 important traits, and found that four QTLs related to harvest time explained about 70% of genetic variation, and these will be useful for marker-assisted selection. The QTL for early harvest time in LG15 was located very close to the QTL for preharvest fruit drop. The QTL for skin color depth was located around the position of MYB1 in LG9, which suggested that alleles harbored by ‘Akane’ are regulating red color depth with different degrees of effect. We also analyzed soluble solids and sugar component contents, and found that a QTL for soluble solids content in LG16 could be explained by the amount of sorbitol and fructose.
Experimental Characterization of Uncertainty Sources in a Software-Only Synchronization System

Over the past few decades, centralized computing systems have been replaced by decentralized systems, consisting of simple nodes interconnected by a communication network. The time reference of the distributed nodes must be synchronized in order to be able to coordinate the operation or compare the data collected by the different nodes. Several synchronization protocols have been developed to be used instead of global positioning system or dedicated synchronization systems. For example, the network time protocol (NTP) is a very popular synchronization protocol used to synchronize computers over wide area networks, like the Internet. In addition, IEEE 1588, a synchronization protocol dedicated to high-performance synchronization in local networks, was recently established. However, submicroseconds synchronization can be obtained only using dedicated hardware devices, thereby increasing the cost of each node. For these reasons, PTP software-only implementations are quite common in real systems, with a resulting synchronization uncertainty varying from a few to hundreds of microseconds and quite burdensome to estimate or measure. The work presented in this paper focuses on the analysis of the major uncertainty contributions in a software-only implementation. Particularly, a careful analysis of timestamp mechanism and time management in a PC platform is carried out. In addition, a method for the experimental evaluation of uncertainty contributions is proposed. A test case based on a software implementation of the IEEE 1588 (the so-called PTPd) is presented. The experimental tests presented in the paper highlight that the main uncertainty source of a software-only synchronization approach is the timestamp method. Timestamping accuracy can be affected by the computational load of the node itself: in normal conditions, the maximum uncertainty introduced by the timestamp mechanism is in the order of 10 , but in case of high computational load, it can raise up to 224 μs.
Comparison of serum human epididymis protein 4 with cancer antigen 125 as a tumor marker in patients with malignant and nonmalignant diseases.

BACKGROUND Human epididymis protein 4 (HE4), a precursor of human epididymis protein, has been proposed as a tumor marker for ovarian cancer. We evaluated HE4 in comparison with cancer antigen 125 (CA 125) in healthy individuals and in patients with benign and malignant diseases. METHODS CA 125 and HE4 serum concentrations were determined in 101 healthy individuals, 535 patients with benign pathologies (292 with benign gynecologic diseases) and 423 patients with malignant diseases (127 with ovarian cancers). CA 125 and HE4 cutoffs were 35 kU/L and 140 pmol/L, respectively. RESULTS HE4 and CA 125 results were abnormal in 1.1% and 9.9% of healthy individuals and in 12.3% and 37% of patients with benign diseases, respectively. Renal failure was the most common cause of increased HE4 in patients with benign disease, who had significantly higher HE4 concentrations (P = 0.001) than patients with other benign diseases. HE4 showed a higher specificity than CA 125 in patients with benign gynecologic diseases, with abnormal concentrations in 1.3% and 33.2% of the patients, respectively. HE-4 concentrations were abnormal primarily in gynecologic cancer and lung cancer. By contrast, CA 125 was increased in many different nonovarian malignancies, including nonepithelial tumors. A significantly higher area under the ROC curve was obtained with HE4 than with CA 125 for differentiating benign from malignant diseases (0.755 vs 0.643) and in the differential diagnosis of gynecologic diseases (0.874 vs 0.722). CONCLUSIONS HE4 has significantly higher diagnostic specificity than CA 125, and the combination of CA 125 and HE4 improved the detection of ovarian cancer in all stages and histological types.
The Comparison of Forwarding Strategies between Best Route, Multicast, and Access on Named Data Networking (NDN). Case Study: A Node Compromised by the Prefix Hijack

—Named Data Networking (NDN) is a new design of network architecture and becomes the leading trend of network architecture because of its packet carries the Name of data, it does not carry the information of a source or a destination address, such an IP address packet. In a network routing, a NDN network has an adaptive forwarding mechanism. A NDN router determines packets immediately which pass through the router by assigning the pending Interest and observe the Data which are sent. Each NDN router can measure a forwarding plane performance of each path. These information can be used to select the best path which is available, to detect and to recover forwarding problems which can be caused by a physical failure or a malicious attack, including a hijack attack. The NDN network has several forwarding strategies which can be used. Three of them are the Best Route, the Multicast, and the Access. According to those forwarding strategies, doing multipath mechanism for forwarding packets seems a good idea to send the packets as soon as possible to the Producer. However, there is an inconsistency with this argument that the Best Route can prevent its packets from dropping higher than others. This study is going to verifies that by making a comparison between those three forwarding strategies while there is a hijack attack on a node of the NDN network.
HoVer Erasure Codes For Disk Arrays

We present a new family of XOR-based erasure codes primarily targeted for use in disk arrays. These codes have a unique data/parity layout, with both horizontal and vertical parity arrangements giving rise to the name HoVer codes. We give constructions that tolerate up to four disk failures. Though the codes are only approximately maximum distance separable (MDS), they have performance advantages over other codes at many common array sizes. In addition, they have fewer parameter constraints than many other codes which enable greater choices and flexibility in efficiency and performance trade-offs
Rapid screening method for lameness in dairy cows

LAMENESS is a major problem in dairy cattle worldwide, both in relation to compromised animal welfare and financially for the farmer ([Warnick and others 2001][1], [Green and others 2002][2], [Whay 2002][3]). It is important to be able to identify individual lame cows for treatment. Additionally,
Parallel changes in large scale software development: an observational case study

An essential characteristic of large scale software development is parallel development by teams of developers. How this parallel development is structured and supported has a profound effect on both the quality and timeliness of the product. We conduct an observational case study in which me collect and analyze the change and configuration management history of a legacy system to delineate the boundaries of, and to understand the nature of, the problems encountered in parallel development. The results of our studies are: 1) that the degree of parallelism is very high-higher than considered by tool builders; 2) there are multiple levels of parallelism and the data for some important aspects are uniform and consistent for all levels and 3) the tails of the distributions are long, indicating the tail, rather than the mean, must receive serious attention in providing solutions for these problems.