Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cryptanalysis of matrix conjugation schemes

Abstract. In this paper we cryptanalyze two protocols: the Grigoriev–Shpilrain authentication protocol and a public key cryptosystem due to Wang, Wang, Cao, Okamoto and Shao. Both of these protocols use the computational hardness of some variations of the conjugacy search problem in a class of noncommutative monoids. We devise a practical heuristic algorithm solving those problems. As a conclusion we claim that these protocols are insecure for the proposed parameter values.
Stochastic Learning via Optimizing the Variational Inequalities

A wide variety of learning problems can be posed in the framework of convex optimization. Many efficient algorithms have been developed based on solving the induced optimization problems. However, there exists a gap between the theoretically unbeatable convergence rate and the practically efficient learning speed. In this paper, we use the variational inequality (VI) convergence to describe the learning speed. To this end, we avoid the hard concept of regret in online learning and directly discuss the stochastic learning algorithms. We first cast the regularized learning problem as a VI. Then, we present a stochastic version of alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMMs) to solve the induced VI. We define a new VI-criterion to measure the convergence of stochastic algorithms. While the rate of convergence for any iterative algorithms to solve nonsmooth convex optimization problems cannot be better than O(1/√t), the proposed stochastic ADMM (SADMM) is proved to have an O(1/t) VI-convergence rate for the l1-regularized hinge loss problems without strong convexity and smoothness. The derived VI-convergence results also support the viewpoint that the standard online analysis is too loose to analyze the stochastic setting properly. The experiments demonstrate that SADMM has almost the same performance as the state-of-the-art stochastic learning algorithms but its O(1/t) VI-convergence rate is capable of tightly characterizing the real learning speed.
The Stability of p Preferential Attachment Networks

In this paper, we investigate networks grow in time according to an attachment rule that is either random or preferential. Based on Markov chain theory, paper provides a rigorous proof for the existence of the steady-state degree distribution of the network generated by this model and gets its corresponding exact formulas. In particular, if attachment rule has preferential attachment, degree distribution of networks obeys power-law form with the exponent adjustable with p.
c-Abl forces YAP to switch sides

Cancer research has been significantly accelerated by viewing cancer as a functional collision between 2 dichotomous sets of genes: oncogenes and tumor suppressors. Signaling pathways turn oncogenes and tumor suppressors on and off to dictate cell fate decisions. We contend that signaling also dictates opposing behaviors of a given effector.
Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology Open Access Syndecans in Tumor Cell Adhesion and Signaling

Anchorage of cells to "heparin" – binding domains that are prevalent in extracellular matrix (ECM) components is thought to occur primarily through the syndecans, a four-member family of transmembrane heparan sulfate proteoglycans that communicate environmental cues from the ECM to the cytoskeleton and the signaling apparatus of the cell. Known activities of the syndecans trace to their highly conserved cytoplasmic domains and to their heparan sulfate chains, which can serve to regulate the signaling of growth factors and morphogens. However, several emerging studies point to critical roles for the syndecans' extracellular protein domains in tumor cell behavior to include cell adhesion and invasion. Although the mechanisms of these activities remain largely unknown, one possibility involves "co-receptor" interactions with integrins that may regulate integrin function and the cell adhesion-signaling phenotype. Thus, alterations in syndecan expression, leading to either overexpression or loss of expression, both of which take place in tumor cells, may have dramatic effects on tumor cell invasion. The invasive and metastatic potential of a tumor cell relies on recognition of a variety of ECM ligands that control proliferation, dynamic cytoskeletal remodeling, apoptosis and gene expression. This recognition involves complex molecular mechanisms, beginning with the expression of specific matrix receptors, regulation of their activity, and reception and channeling of their signals into specific intracellular pathways. Additional complexity arises in that matrix ligands contain multiple adhesion receptor binding sites including sites recognized by both prote-oglycans and integrins. In this sense, matrix ligands may be considered as "informational arrays" that function to modulate tumor cell phenotype by engaging specific combinations of cell surface adhesion receptors. Integrins are well recognized as matrix-responsive signal-ing receptors. Comprised of non-covalent heterodimers, the α and β integrin subunits collaborate in "inside-out" signaling that leads to "activation" of the receptor, classically defined as an increase in affinity for the matrix ligand resulting from a change in conformation of the integrin extracellular domain. However, integrins are also subject to "outside-in" signaling in which the ligand-bound receptor initiates intracellular signaling through association of the β subunit cytoplasmic domain with a myriad of intracellular effectors including focal adhesion and Src family kinases, cytoskeletal components such as α-actinin and vinculin and the Rho family of cytoskeletal regulatory G-proteins. However, this may be a simplistic picture of integrin signaling, as integrins are also known to signal in the absence of ligand binding [1-9] and integrin activity on cells is subject to cross-talk between …
Exploring Ontologies for Semantic Documentation in Project Management

Although there are several tools devoted to support project management, documents are widely used as an instrument to record information regarding projects. However, retrieving information from documents is usually not trivial and depends on human effort. In this paper we discuss the use of semantic annotation of desktop documents in the project management context. The main results of a study that investigated initiatives involving semantic annotation to support project management aspects are presented, as well as an ongoing work in which we explore a software project management domain ontology to annotate desktop documents and extend a semantic document management platform.
Essays in international macroeconomics

This thesis is composed of two parts. Part I contains two essays on capital flows and, in particular, on the phenomenon of global imbalances. Part II includes an essay on the determination of exchange rates. In the first part, I provide a framework to analyse the trade imbalances between the United States and East Asian countries. In a two-country OLG model with production, I investigate the relationship between East Asian economies' high propensity to save and global imbalances. It is suggested that the absence of pay-as-you-go pension systems can rationalize the saving behaviour of emerging economies and capital outflows to the United States. The model supports the view that there is a "global saving glut" in the world economy. The analysis implies that the introduction of a pay-as-you-go system in China would have the effect of reducing the imbalances. In Chapter 2, I propose a two-country model to capture output per capita inequalities across countries. My motivation is that global imbalances involve countries at different stages of development. Consistently with empirical evidence, I assume that the East Asian country has a higher capital share in the aggregate production function. The analysis shows that technological differences provide incentives for capital to flow to the developing country. Given that the net foreign assets position of the United States is negative, I conclude that differences in social security systems is the most important basis for trade between the two countries. In the second part, I develop a theory of nominal exchange rate determination. The model under study is a stochastic OLG economy with multiple currencies and goods. Currencies serve as stores of value and are also required to buy the country-specific good. Portfolios and nominal exchange rates can be pinned down at the stochastic steady state. The model makes a first step towards understanding changes in countries' net foreign assets positions as due to both portfolio adjustments and valuation effects driven by fluctuations of nominal exchange rates.
Cranial Visceral Afferent Pathways through the Nucleus of the Solitary Tract to Caudal Ventrolateral Medulla or Paraventricular Hypothalamus: Target-Specific Synaptic Reliability and Convergence Patterns

Cranial visceral afferents activate central pathways that mediate systemic homeostatic processes. Afferent information arrives in the brainstem nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS) and is relayed to other CNS sites for integration into autonomic responses and complex behaviors. Little is known about the organization or nature of processing within NTS. We injected fluorescent retrograde tracers into two nuclei to identify neurons that project to sites involved in autonomic regulation: the caudal ventrolateral medulla (CVLM) or paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN). We found distinct differences in synaptic connections and performance in the afferent path through NTS to these neurons. Anatomical studies using confocal and electron microscopy found prominent, primary afferent synapses directly on somata and dendrites of CVLM-projecting NTS neurons identifying them as second-order neurons. In brainstem slices, afferent activation evoked large, constant latency EPSCs in CVLM-projecting NTS neurons that were consistent with the precise timing and rare failures of monosynaptic contacts on second-order neurons. In contrast, most PVN-projecting NTS neurons lacked direct afferent input and responded to afferent stimuli with highly variable, intermittently failing synaptic responses, indicating polysynaptic pathways to higher-order neurons. The afferent-evoked EPSCs in most PVN-projecting NTS neurons were smaller and unreliable but also often included multiple, convergent polysynaptic responses not observed in CVLM-projecting neurons. A few PVN-projecting NTS neurons had monosynaptic EPSC characteristics. Together, we found that cranial visceral afferent pathways are structured distinctly within NTS depending on the projection target. Such, intra-NTS pathway architecture will substantially impact performance of autonomic or neuroendocrine reflex arcs.
RSR-tree: A Dynamic Multi-dimensional Index Structure

A new dynamic multi-dimensional index structure called RSR-tree is proposed, in which splitting operations of leaf nodes and non-leaf nodes are performed separatively. RSR-tree retains the sequence ordering of index records in a leaf node of RS-tree and thus reduces the addressing time cost of disk access while reading data files. In addition, it integrates the characteristic of reducing the overlap between brother nodes of R-tree to reduce the query time. The accuracy test and parameter sensitivity test are done on different data sets and the experimental results show that RSR-tree is a dynamic multi-dimensional structure which can efficiently improve query performance and does not bring extra cost of creating index at the same time.
Adaptive Timing of Motor Output in the Mouse: The Role of Movement Oscillations in Eyelid Conditioning

To survive, animals must learn to control their movements with millisecond-level precision, and adjust the kinematics if conditions, or task requirements, change. Here, we examine adaptive timing of motor output in mice, using a simple eyelid conditioning task. Mice were trained to blink in response to a light stimulus that was always followed by a corneal air-puff at a constant time interval. Different mice were trained with different intervals of time separating the onset of the light and the air-puff. As in previous work in other animal species, mice learned to control the speed of the blink, such that the time of maximum eyelid closure matched the interval used during training. However, we found that the time of maximum eyelid speed was always in the first 100 ms after movement onset and did not scale with the training interval, indicating that adaptive timing is not accomplished by slowing down (or speeding up) the eyelid movement uniformly throughout the duration of the blink. A new analysis, specifically designed to examine the kinematics of blinks in single trials, revealed that the underlying control signal responsible for the eyelid movement is made up of oscillatory bursts that are time-locked to the light stimulus at the beginning of the blink, becoming desynchronized later on. Furthermore, mice learn to blink at different speeds and time the movement appropriately by adjusting the amplitude, but not the frequency of the bursts in the eyelid oscillation.
Cluster and Double Star observations of dipolarization

We studied two types of dipolarization events with different IMF conditions when Cluster and Double Star (TC-1) were located in the same local time sector: 7 August 2004, 18:00-24:00 UT, during a disturbed southward/northward IMF interval, and 14 August 2004, 21:00-24:00 UT, when the IMF was stably northward. Cluster observed dipolarization as well as fast flows during both intervals, but this was not the case for TC-1. For both events the satellites crossed near the conjugate location of the MIRACLE stations. By using multi-point analysis techniques, the direction/speed of the propagation is determined using Cluster and is then compared with the disturbances at TC-1 to discuss its spatial/temporal scale. The propagation direction of the B Z disturbance at Cluster was mainly dawnward with a tailward component for 7 August and with a significant Earthward component for 14 August associated with fast flows. We suggest that the role of the midtail fast flows can be quite different in the dissipation process depending on the condition of the IMF and resultant configuration of the tail.
The Anti-spoofing Study of Vein Identification System

The vein identification systems identify a certain person by acquiring the local infrared image of hand (dorsa, palm and finger) and extracting vein pattern. The vein identification systems are widely used in security and surveillance field, but most of them ignore the liveness detection requirement or only check the temperature to prevent spoofing. After studying the spoofing method for vein identification systems in the market, this paper presents a kind of liveness detection method based on an optical measurement for sequence infrared images. The vein images are related with vital signs such as oxygen saturation in human blood and heart rate. Two kinds of different algorithm are used for feature extraction, one for vital signs detection, the other for identification. The distinguish processor can integrate all kinds of information data to make an estimation. This method can prevent the identification spoofing and improve the security capability of vein identification system.
Extraordinary optical transmission property of gold umbrella-like tap blocked nanohole arrays

A novel umbrella-like structure is proposed with cap and additional plasmonic gold pillar blocking the nanohole arrays. We observed that the transmission efficiency is not reduced while the nanohole is blocked though the total light transmission area is reduced due to the additional gold pillar inside the hole. It can realize a giant transmission efficiency in the order of 87% that is much larger than the blocked one only by nanocap, which is due to the stronger coupling effect.
Unequal Sacrifice: Income Inequality and Willingness to Fight Wars

Does economic inequality diminish the capacity of democracies to extract voluntary sacrifice? And does inequality undermine citizen’s willingness to do their civic duty when the state is under threat? We address these questions by linking income inequality with people’s willingness to fight for their country with the help of individual-level data from the World Values Survey alongside country-level data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) and the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) dataset for 16 OECD countries. We find that people are less willing to fight in more unequal countries. More importantly, the impact of income inequality on the willingness to fight is asymmetrical: while lower income individuals’ willingness to fight is insensitive to the distribution of income in society, richer individuals are less willing to fight as the distribution of incomes becomes more unequal. Moreover, these effects exist only for citizens likely to face the risk of conscription in times of war – i.e., men.
Single-walled carbon nanotubes functionalized with sodium hyaluronate enhance bone mineralization

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of sodium hyaluronate (HY), single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and HY-functionalized SWCNTs (HY-SWCNTs) on the behavior of primary osteoblasts, as well as to investigate the deposition of inorganic crystals on titanium surfaces coated with these biocomposites. Primary osteoblasts were obtained from the calvarial bones of male newborn Wistar rats (5 rats for each cell extraction). We assessed cell viability using the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl-2H-tetrazolium bromide assay and by double-staining with propidium iodide and Hoechst. We also assessed the formation of mineralized bone nodules by von Kossa staining, the mRNA expression of bone repair proteins, and the deposition of inorganic crystals on titanium surfaces coated with HY, SWCNTs, or HY-SWCNTs. The results showed that treatment with these biocomposites did not alter the viability of primary osteoblasts. Furthermore, deposition of mineralized bone nodules was significantly increased by cells treated with HY and HY-SWCNTs. This can be partly explained by an increase in the mRNA expression of type I and III collagen, osteocalcin, and bone morphogenetic proteins 2 and 4. Additionally, the titanium surface treated with HY-SWCNTs showed a significant increase in the deposition of inorganic crystals. Thus, our data indicate that HY, SWCNTs, and HY-SWCNTs are potentially useful for the development of new strategies for bone tissue engineering.
Magnetic particle imaging: current developments and future directions

Magnetic particle imaging (MPI) is a novel imaging method that was first proposed by Gleich and Weizenecker in 2005. Applying static and dynamic magnetic fields, MPI exploits the unique characteristics of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs). The SPIONs’ response allows a three-dimensional visualization of their distribution in space with a superb contrast, a very high temporal and good spatial resolution. Essentially, it is the SPIONs’ superparamagnetic characteristics, the fact that they are magnetically saturable, and the harmonic composition of the SPIONs’ response that make MPI possible at all. As SPIONs are the essential element of MPI, the development of customized nanoparticles is pursued with the greatest effort by many groups. Their objective is the creation of a SPION or a conglomerate of particles that will feature a much higher MPI performance than nanoparticles currently available commercially. A particle’s MPI performance and suitability is characterized by parameters such as the strength of its MPI signal, its biocompatibility, or its pharmacokinetics. Some of the most important adjuster bolts to tune them are the particles’ iron core and hydrodynamic diameter, their anisotropy, the composition of the particles’ suspension, and their coating. As a three-dimensional, real-time imaging modality that is free of ionizing radiation, MPI appears ideally suited for applications such as vascular imaging and interventions as well as cellular and targeted imaging. A number of different theories and technical approaches on the way to the actual implementation of the basic concept of MPI have been seen in the last few years. Research groups around the world are working on different scanner geometries, from closed bore systems to single-sided scanners, and use reconstruction methods that are either based on actual calibration measurements or on theoretical models. This review aims at giving an overview of current developments and future directions in MPI about a decade after its first appearance.
The CD8+ T cell repertoire in beta 2-microglobulin-deficient mice is biased towards reactivity against self-major histocompatibility class I

Beta 2-Microglobulin-deficient (beta 2m -/-) mice are reported to lack cell surface expression of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules, CD8+ T cells, and the ability to mount MHC class I- specific T cell responses. We have observed that beta 2m -/- mice possess CD8+ T cells that can be induced to perform strong allospecific cytotoxic responses against nonself-MHC class I by in vivo priming. We report that these beta 2m -/- cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) differ from those induced in beta 2m-positive littermates in that they cross-react and kill cells expressing self-MHC class I at normal ligand density with beta 2m. beta 2m -/- CTL could even be induced in primary mixed lymphocyte culture by self-MHC class I expressing stimulator cells, whereas allogeneic stimulator cells failed to elicit a response under similar conditions. Cells with a reduced cell surface MHC class I expression were less sensitive, while syngeneic beta 2m -/- cells were resistant to the beta 2m -/- CTL. This antiself-MHC reactivity could not be induced when beta 2m -/- T cells matured in an environment with normal MHC class I expression in bone marrow chimeric mice. Antiself- MHC reactivity was also observed against human peptide loading- deficient cells expressing the appropriate murine class I molecules, suggesting that affinity to self-MHC class I may occur irrespective of peptide content. The results fit with a model where positive and negative selection of CD8+ T cells in beta 2m -/- mice is mediated by low levels of MHC class I free heavy chains. In this model, low ligand density on selecting cells leads to positive selection of rare T cells that bind to low levels of MHC class I free heavy chains, resulting in a very small peripheral CD8+ compartment. Due to low density of the selecting ligand, negative selection does not remove T cells recognizing beta 2m-positive cells expressing self-MHC class I at normal ligand density, which generates a T cell repertoire that would be autoreactive in a beta 2m-positive littermate. The first "MHC deficient" animals thus paradoxically provide a tool for direct demonstration and analysis of self MHC bias in the T cell repertoire.