Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Secure Datastructures based on Multiparty Computation

The problem of secure multiparty computation – performing some computation based on distributed, private inputs – has been studied intensively for more than twenty years. This work includes both “one shot” applications as well as reactive tasks, where the exact computation is not known in advance. We extend this line of work by asking whether it is possible to efficiently both update and query secret data. A clearer formulation is, perhaps, to ask whether is it possible to construct efficient datastructures based on secure multiparty computation primitives. It is possible to construct arbitrary secure datastructures based on an oblivious RAM (ORAM). However, current state of the art information theoretically secure solutions incur a poly-logarithmic overhead on both secure computation and memory. The overhead is much smaller when considering computationally secure solutions, however, this requires secure evaluation of a one-way function as a primitive, which may reintroduce a considerable overhead. By constructing a secure priority queue we show that practical datastructures are possible. The ideas are radically different than those used in any ORAM implementation: The present solution accesses data in a deterministic manner, whereas all ORAMs randomize the access pattern in order to hide it. The priority queue operations – insertion into the structure and deletion of the minimal element contained therein – both require O(log n) invocations of the cryptographic primitives (secure arithmetic and comparison) amortized in O(1) rounds amortized, where n is the overall number of operations performed.
Essay Review: The Philosophy of Human Evolution

When I first picked up Michael Ruse’s The Philosophy of Human Evolution, I thought for a moment that this was a text primarily addressing the evolution of human cognition. I was wrong. While the evolution of cognition is part of the focus of the text, it really does do what it says on the tin: it addresses a very broad range of philosophical questions connected to human evolution. The book’s primary topic areas can be roughly divided into three main types, as follows: (a) how certain problems in general philosophy of biology apply to the evolution of humans, (b) how the evolutionary origins of humans affect the answers to certain sorts of important general philosophical questions, and (c) how evolutionary biology answers certain socially problematic questions about the nature of humans. Chapters 1–4, for example, address questions of type a: Ruse considers the evidence for evolution and the evidence for human evolution in chapters 1 and 2, questions about whether the sciences of human evolution are good sciences in chapter 3, and questions about whether evolutionary processes are progressive (especially in the sense that humans are the pinnacle of evolution) in chapter 4. Chapters 5 and 6 address questions about the nature of knowledge and the nature of morality from an evolutionary perspective and hence primarily address questions of type b. Chapters 7 and 8 address questions of sex and race and eugenics and evolutionary medicine, respectively, and hence primarily address questions of type c. Ruse structures most of these chapters historically: he usually starts with Darwin’s views on a topic (or occasionally the views of pre-Darwinian evolutionary thinkers) and then works through major histor-
Rate Command of Robot Joint Shaped by Fuzzified Weighting and Error-Projected Gradient-Descent

Using autonomous position of end effector of articulated robotic arm, angular rates of robot joints are structed by fuzzy-based weighting and error-projected gradient descent. The assignment of angular rate for robot joint guarantees the control stability due to a decreasing of error potential. A method of error projection helps to implement gradient descent, i.e. a ratio of perturbed translation of end effector to perturbed rotation of joint angle. Fuzzified weighting surface is shaped to a hyper paraboloid via fuzzy logic.
Some Notes on Parallel Quantum Computation

We exhibit some simple gadgets useful in designing shallow parallel circuits for quantum algorithms. We prove that any quantum circuit composed entirely of controlled-not gates or of diagonal gates can be parallelized to logarithmic depth, while circuits composed of both cannot. Finally, while we note the Quantum Fourier Transform can be parallelized to linear depth, we exhibit a simple quantum circuit related to it that we believe cannot be parallelized to less than linear depth, and therefore might be used to prove that QNC
What Drives Financial Crises in Emerging Markets?

The study examines the reasons for financial crises in 31 emerging market countries during 1980-2001. It estimates a probit model using 23 macroeconomic and financial sector variables. Traditional variables such as unemployment and inflation, as well as several indicators of indebtedness such as private sector liabilities and the foreign liabilities of banks explain currency crises rather well, and it appears currency crises occur in tandem with banking crises. Indeed, in emerging market countries vulnerability to crisis is exacerbated by situations involving large liabilities that permit sudden capital outflows. Increases in indebtedness followed the liberalisation of capital flows and domestic financial sectors.
The Potential of Combination Therapeutics for More Complete Repair of Volumetric Muscle Loss Injuries: The Role of Exogenous Growth Factors and/or Progenitor Cells in Implantable Skeletal Muscle Tissue Engineering Technologies

Despite the robust regenerative capacity of skeletal muscle, there are a variety of congenital and acquired conditions in which the volume of skeletal muscle loss results in major permanent functional and cosmetic deficits. These latter injuries are referred to as volumetric muscle loss (VML) injuries or VML-like conditions, and they are characterized by the simultaneous absence of multiple tissue components (i.e., nerves, vessels, muscles, satellite cells, and matrix). There are currently no effective treatment options. Regenerative medicine/tissue engineering technologies hold great potential for repair of these otherwise irrecoverable VML injuries. In this regard, three-dimensional scaffolds have been used to deliver sustained amounts of growth factors into a variety of injury models, to modulate host cell recruitment and extracellular matrix remodeling. However, this is a nascent field of research, and more complete functional improvements require more precise control of the spatiotemporal distribution of critical growth factors over a physiologically relevant range. This is especially true for VML injuries where incorporation of a cellular component into the scaffolds might provide not only a source of new tissue formation but also additional signals for host cell migration, recruitment, and survival. To this end, we review the major features of muscle repair and regeneration for largely recoverable injuries, and then discuss recent cell- and/or growth factor-based approaches to repair the more profound and irreversible VML and VML-like injuries. The underlying supposition is that more rationale incorporation of exogenous growth factors and/or cellular components will be required to optimize the regenerative capacity of implantable therapeutics for VML repair.
Secular Changes in Size and Maturity: Causes and Effects

Secular changes in body size, proportions and composition, in maturation rates during childhood and adolescence, and in adult size have been considered in the preceding chapters. This chapter addresses possible causes and effects of the secular trend evident over about the past 150 years. Before considering the causes and effects of the secular trend, one can inquire as to what may have operated to delay maturation and depress growth before the secular trend became apparent. Backman (1948) estimated the mean age at menarche at about 14 years from ancient through medieval times in Europe, while Amundsen and Diers (1969, 1973a) estimated the mean age at menarche in Classical Greece and Rome and in Europe from the sixth to the fifteenth century at about 12-15 years. These estimated ages are not appreciably different from average ages for some contemporary European populations (12.5-14.0 years; Eveleth & Tanner 1976). Yet, menarche was later in Europe during the nineteenth century; earlier estimates vary between 15.5 and 17.4 years for several European countries (Backman 1948; Tanner 1962). More recent estimates for the earlier data give an average age at menarche of about 16 years in nineteenth-century Norway (Brundtland & Wall0e 1976) and about 15.5 years in nineteenth-century England (Tanner 1966). The apparent discrepancy among the estimates relates to the interpretation of age; for example, does the thirteenth year refer to the thirteenth year of life (12.0-12.99 years) or to the year after the thirteenth birthday (13.0-13.99 years)? Brundtland and Walloe (1976) consider this problem in the early Norwegian data. Since the early-nineteenth century in Europe, there has been a marked decrease not only in age at menarche in girls but also in the age of breaking of the voice in boys (Backman 1948; Daw 1970; Tanner 1966; Taranger, Engstr6m, Lichtenstein, & Svennberg-Redegren 1976).
Helping Students Manage Learning Behavior in Self-initiated Learning Scenarios

Students engage in many learning activities outside of class such as doing homework, conducting research or simply investigating an interesting topic. Learning on one’s own is not easy because apart from the learning task itself, students also need to identify what activities to perform, to decide how long to engage in them, to evaluate their progress, to shift to other activities if needed and to avoid distractions aside from others. In this research, we identified different processes that affect learning in self-initiated learning scenarios. We then designed and developed a methodology that added a retrospection phase after a students’ learning session to help them analyze their behavior and adapt it based on their realizations. We implemented this methodology by developing a learning tool that collected information regarding students’ learning behavior, asked them to annotate their behavior and provided them with policy-based feedback to help them evaluate the effectiveness of their activities. We conducted naturalistic experiments wherein students used the software and received automated feedback based on their learning behavior. The results from the experiment showed that retrospection can help students discover aspects of their behavior which they are unaware of and can help them adapt their behavior accordingly. We also observed that students who were more intrinsically motivated seemed to change their learning behavior faster and more systematically than students who were extrinsically motivated.
Pitch Processing in Children with Williams Syndrome: Relationships between Music and Prosody Skills

Williams syndrome (WS), a genetic neurodevelopmental disorder, has been taken as evidence that music and language constitute separate modules. This research focused on the linguistic component of prosody and aimed to assess whether relationships exist between the pitch processing mechanisms for music and prosody in WS. Children with WS and typically developing individuals were presented with a musical pitch and two prosody discrimination tasks. In the musical pitch discrimination task, participants were required to distinguish whether two musical tones were the same or different. The prosody discrimination tasks evaluated participants’ skills for discriminating pairs of prosodic contours based on pitch or pitch, loudness and length, jointly. In WS, musical pitch discrimination was significantly correlated with performance on the prosody task assessing the discrimination of prosodic contours based on pitch only. Furthermore, musical pitch discrimination skills predicted performance on the prosody task based on pitch, and this relationship was not better explained by chronological age, vocabulary or auditory memory. These results suggest that children with WS process pitch in music and prosody through shared mechanisms. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of cognitive modularity. The implications of these results for intervention programs for individuals with WS are also discussed.
Texture and color feature extraction for classification of melanoma using SVM

Feature plays a vital in the domain of image processing. The various features of an image are color, texture, shape or domain specific features. Texture is considered as one of the main feature of any image. The second order statistical features for an image is obtained by Gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) and it operates on spatial domain. The haralick texture features are energy, entropy, homogeneity, correlation, contrast, dissimilarity and maximum probability. The aim of the paper is to classify the dermoscopy images into melanoma and non-melanoma by considering the texture and color features of an image. GLCM is used to extract the texture features of an image. Color histograms are used to extract the color features in three color spaces namely RGB, HSV and OPP. Support vector machine (SVM) is used for the process of classification. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated by the metrics sensitivity and specificity. The experimental result shows that the texture combined with RGB color space provides better classification accuracy.
Expression of luciferase plasmid (pCMVLuc) entrapped in DPPC/Cholesterol/DDAB liposomes in HeLa cell lines

The luciferase gene expression of lipoplexes, a liposome containing luciferase plasmid (pCMVLuc), in HeLa cell lines, was investigated. Cationic liposomes were prepared by the chloroform film method with sonication. The lipoplex was formed by loading the liposome with pCMVLuc. The lipoplex with an optimal weight ratio of dimethyl dioctadecyl ammonium bromide (DDAB)/pCMVLuc protected from DNaseI was determined by an agarose gel electrophoresis. The selected lipoplexes were assayed for luciferaase activity by using a luminometer. The effect on cell proliferation was evaluated by WST-1 assay. The highest luciferase activity of 1.5 × 106 RLU was observed in the cholesterol (Chol)/DDAB (2:1 molar ratio) lipoplex at the DDAB/pCMVLuc weight ratio of 10:1 at 48 hours, which was about 10, 100, and 1,000 times higher than the DDAB, L-alpha-dipalmitoyl phosphatidylcholine (DPPC)/Chol/DDAB (1:2:1 molar ratio), and DPPC/Chol/DDAB (2:2:1 molar ratio) lipoplexes, respectively. The liposome with the smallest particle size was obtained from the cationic liposome composed of DPPC/Chol/DDAB (7:1:1 molar ratio) with the ζ potential of 7.17 ± 0.73. The optimal weight ratio of DDAB/pCMVLuc that protected pCMVLuc from DNaseI digestion was 4:1 in the DDAB formulation. The Chol/DDAB (2:1 molar ratio) lipoplex with the DDAB/pCMVLuc of 10:1 showed the highest luciferase activity of 1.5 × 106 RLU and the highest cytotoxicity as well. DPPC/Chol/DDAB (1:1:1 molar ratio)-lipoplex (DDAB/pCMVLuc = 14:1), which had the amount of DPPC and cholesterol not exceeding 33 and 50% mol, respectively, gave the lower gene expression of about 4 times, but lower cytoxicity of about 14 times, than the Chol/DDAB lipoplex (2:1 molar ratio) and was considered to be the most suitable formulation. The results from this study can be applied as a model for the development of a gene-therapeutic dosage form.
ErbB‐4 mRNA expression is decreased in non‐metastatic pancreatic cancer

The erbB‐4 gene encodes a detected receptor protein that possesses intrinsic tyrosine kinase activity and belongs to the family of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR); erbB‐4 is stimulated by the heregulins and betacellulin, which enables this receptor to form heterodimers with erbB‐2, a prerequisite for erbB‐2 activation. Because the expression of erbB‐4 mRNA is generally low in the pancreas, quantitative reverse transcriptase‐polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) was used to determine the erbB‐4 levels in human normal and cancerous pancreatic tissue. Our results show that the mRNA expression of this receptor is 6‐fold decreased in the non‐metastatic stages of pancreatic cancer when compared to tumors with lymph node or distant metastases or to the normal pancreas. In addition, immunohistochemistry demonstrated that in the normal pancreas, the erbB‐4 antigen was predominantly present in the cell membrane and cytoplasm of the ductal and acinar cells and at a much lower level, in islet cells. In pancreatic cancer, 61 of 75 samples exhibited weak to moderate immunoreactivity for erbB‐4 in the tumor cells. Moreover, in the peri‐tumorous region with chronic pancreatitis‐like morphological changes, there was weak‐to‐moderate erbB‐4 immunostaining in small ductules and degenerating acinar cells. Uni‐ and multivariate survival analyses using as variables age, sex, stage of cancer, histo‐pathological grading, and erbB‐4 immunoreactivity, revealed a significant effect for stage of cancer (p < 0.01) whereby the risk of dying was 2.3 times higher in patients with metastases than in patients without. However, the level of erbB‐4 immunoreactivity in pancreatic cancer cells had no influence on patient survival. Int. J. Cancer (Pred. Oncol.) 84:24–27, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Using Patient Medical Records for Medical Research

Medical research is composed of two main parts, basic research and clinical research. This editorial will address several issues concerning clinical research which usually uses patient data to improve the outcome of general medical practice. In Korea, use of electronic medical records (EMRs) among health care providers is relatively high. However, there are lots of pitfalls in the EMR system and greater care in using rich sources of EMR data is needed even in locations where the same EMR system is used. Because EMRs are designed for health care services, not for research, they are not structured to facilitate the research process. First, the quality of EMR data is one of the most important problems to take into account when conducting research, as poor quality data can lead to biased results.1,2) EMR data can better reflect co-morbid conditions than data from diagnosis for service or medical history acquired from the patient, and can be easily linked to national data sets such as mortality rates. The complete coding of all presenting diagnoses and symptoms might reduce biased results in case ascertainments, however it is not always feasible in actual practice. Most creative research questions of clinicians using EMR data might originate from the experience of clinicians in medical practice, and would be shown in case series or case-control studies at the outset. If the important issues in medical recording are summarized in a standardized format, user-predefined templates in a predefined space are created, and physicians are regularly educated in EMR input methods, the data in the same EMR system might be easily converted to and used in evolving new research.3) The second principal concern is where the patient's records cannot be completely anonymised, for example, in the case of data linkage, informed consent must be acquired. Obtaining informed consent is desirable, however, it can be expensive, time-consuming, produce bias in terms of responders and non-responders.3) In addition, it can reduce the generalizability of research findings. Therefore, governance committees (institutional review board) have tended to take a strict position regarding medical research involving human subjects, based on the declaration of Helsinki. There are a few limitations to using EMR data as one of the first steps in identifying individuals with a specific condition and proving simple and more complex research questions. Care is required when using EMR data for research due to variability in the level of quality. Despite these challenges, there are many benefits including access to data that are not easily available, size of the data sets which might be created. Therefore, evolving appropriate technologies and continuing education for physicians will support further research using EMR data efficiently.
Enamel Defect Restoration of the Left Mandibular First Molar Tooth

Restorative dentistry is often performed to treat defects including caries, fractures, access sites for endodontic therapy, and enamel lesions. Restorative materials can reestablish tooth function, restore esthetics, or do both. The objectives of restorative dentistry are to return (restore) teeth to optimum form and function, prevent further breakdown of the remaining tooth structure, to protect pulp tissue from thermal, mechanical, and bacterial insult, and to create a proper or aesthetic tooth appearance. Enamel defects in dogs can affect one or multiple teeth. This case report will focus on a single enamel defect affecting the non-occlusal surface of a mandibular first molar tooth. This case report includes descriptions of proper defect preparation and application of a flowable composite, and a review of composite materials used in restorative dentistry.
High-Performance Massive Subgraph Counting using Pipelined Adaptive-Group Communication

Subgraph counting aims to count the number of occurrences of a subgraph T (aka as a template) in a given graph G. The basic problem has found applications in diverse domains. The problem is known to be computationally challenging - the complexity grows both as a function of T and G. Recent applications have motivated solving such problems on massive networks with billions of vertices. In this chapter, we study the subgraph counting problem from a parallel computing perspective. We discuss efficient parallel algorithms for approximately resolving subgraph counting problems by using the color-coding technique. We then present several system-level strategies to substantially improve the overall performance of the algorithm in massive subgraph counting problems. We propose: 1) a novel pipelined Adaptive-Group communication pattern to improve inter-node scalability, 2) a fine-grained pipeline design to effectively reduce the memory space of intermediate results, 3) partitioning neighbor lists of subgraph vertices to achieve better thread concurrency and workload balance. Experimentation on an Intel Xeon E5 cluster shows that our implementation achieves 5x speedup of performance compared to the state-of-the-art work while reduces the peak memory utilization by a factor of 2 on large templates of 12 to 15 vertices and input graphs of 2 to 5 billions of edges.