Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Secure Identification of Actively Executed Code on a Generic Trusted Component

Code identity is a fundamental concept for authenticated operations in Trusted Computing. In today's approach, the overhead of assigning an identity to a protected service increases linearly with the service code size. In addition, service code size continues to grow to accommodate richer services. This trend negatively impacts either the security or the efficiency of current protocols for trusted executions. We present an execution protocol that breaks the dependency between the code size of the service and the identification overhead, without affecting security, and that works on different trusted components. This is achieved by computing an identity for each of the code modules that are actually executed, and then building a robust chain of trust that links them together for efficient verification. We implemented and applied our protocol to a widely-deployed database engine, improving query-processing time up to 2× compared to the monolithic execution of the engine.
Kernel Sammon Map

We extend the visualization technique of high-dimensional patterns conceived by Sammon to the case when the patterns have been previously mapped to an implicitly defined Hilbert feature space in which distances can be measured by kernels. The principal benefit of our technique is the possibility to gain insight into the distribution of the patterns, even in this generally non-accessible feature space.
The 6-min walk distance in healthy subjects: reference standards from seven countries

The 6-min walk distance (6MWD) predicted values have been derived from small cohorts mostly from single countries. The aim of the present study was to investigate differences between countries and identify new reference values to improve 6MWD interpretation. We studied 444 subjects (238 males) from seven countries (10 centres) ranging 40–80 yrs of age. We measured 6MWD, height, weight, spirometry, heart rate (HR), maximum HR (HRmax) during the 6-min walk test/the predicted maximum HR (HRmax % pred), Borg dyspnoea score and oxygen saturation. The mean±sd 6MWD was 571±90 m (range 380–782 m). Males walked 30 m more than females (p<0.001). A multiple regression model for the 6MWD included age, sex, height, weight and HRmax % pred (adjusted r2 = 0.38; p<0.001), but there was variability across centres (adjusted r2 = 0.09–0.73) and its routine use is not recommended. Age had a great impact in 6MWD independent of the centres, declining significantly in the older population (p<0.001). Age-specific reference standards of 6MWD were constructed for male and female adults. In healthy subjects, there were geographic variations in 6MWD and caution must be taken when using existing predictive equations. The present study provides new 6MWD standard curves that could be useful in the care of adult patients with chronic diseases.
A comparison of multirate robust track-following control synthesis techniques for dual-stage and multisensing servo systems in hard disk drives

This paper presents the system modeling, design, and analysis of multirate robust track-following controllers for a dual-stage servo system with a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) microactuator (MA) and an instrumented suspension. A generalized model is constructed which includes a nominal plant, disturbances, uncertainties, and multirate sensing and control. Two major categories of controller design methodologies are considered. The first includes synthesis methodologies that are based on single-input single-output (SISO) design techniques, and includes the sensitivity decoupling (SD) and the PQ methods. In this case, a high sampling-rate inner loop damping control is first implemented using the auxiliary sensor signals. Subsequently, a low-rate outer loop controller is designed for the damped plant using either the SD or PQ design methods. The second category of design methodologies includes those based on multirate, multi-input multi-output (MIMO) design techniques, including mixed H/sub 2//H/sub /spl infin//, mixed H/sub 2///spl mu/, and robust H/sub 2/ synthesis. In this case, a set of controllers, which is periodically time-varying due to multirateness, is designed by explicitly considering plant uncertainty and hence robust stability. Comparisons are made between all the design techniques in terms of nominal H/sub 2/ performance, robust stability, and robust performance between these controllers, when the feedback controller is closed around the full order, perturbed plant. The advantages and disadvantages of each of these methods are discussed, as well as guidelines for their practical implementation.
Assessment of Antibiogram of Multidrug-Resistant Isolates of Enterobacter aerogenes after Biofield Energy Treatment

Enterobacter aerogenes (E. aerogenes) has been reported as the versatile opportunistic pathogen associated with the hospital infections worldwide. The aim of the study was to determine the impact of Mr. Trivedi’s biofield energy treatment on multidrug resistant clinical lab isolates (LSs) of E. aerogenes. The MDR isolates of E. aerogenes (i.e., LS 45 and LS 54) were divided into two groups, i.e., control and treated. Samples were analyzed for antimicrobial susceptibility pattern, minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), biochemical study, and biotype number using MicroScan Walk-Away® system, on day 10 after the biofield treatment. The antimicrobial sensitivity assay showed 14.28% alteration out of twenty eight tested antimicrobials with respect to the control. The cefotetan sensitivity changed from intermediate (I) to inducible β-lactamase (IB), while piperacillin/tazobactam changed from resistant to IB in the treated LS 45. Improved sensitivity was reported in tetracycline, i.e., from I to susceptible (S) in LS 45, while chloramphenicol and tetracycline sensitivity changed from R to I in treated LS 54. Four-fold decrease in MIC value was reported in piperacillin/tazobactam, and two-fold decrease in cefotetan and tetracycline in the biofield treated LS 45 as compared to the control. MIC results showed an overall decreased MIC values in 12.50% tested antimicrobials such as chloramphenicol (16 μg/mL) and tetracycline (8 μg/mL) in LS 54. The biochemical study showed an overall 45.45% negative reaction in the tested biochemical in both the treated isolates as compared to the control. A change in biotype number was reported in MDR isolates (LS 45 and LS 54), while in LS 54, altered biotype number, i.e., 0406 0374 as compared to the control (7770 4376), with identification of the new species as Stenotrophomonas maltophilia with brown color as special characteristic. The study findings suggest that Mr. Trivedi’s biofield energy treatment on clinical MDR isolates of E. aerogenes has the significant effect on altering the sensitivity of antimicrobials, decreasing the MIC values, changed biochemical reactions, and biotype number.
Gender Differences in Fat Distribution and Inflammatory Markers among Arabs

Recent studies from the Gulf region suggest that compared to men, women have a greater risk of developing metabolic syndrome (MeS). Objective. To investigate gender differences in body composition, adipokines, inflammatory markers, and aerobic fitness in a cohort of healthy Qatari adults. Participants. Healthy Qatari (n = 58) were matched for age, gender, and body mass index. Methods. Body composition and regional fat distribution were determined by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry and computerized tomography. Laboratory assessments included serum levels of fasting glucose, insulin, lipid profile analysis, adipokines, and inflammatory markers. Subjects were also evaluated for aerobic fitness. Results. Women had more adipose tissue in the total abdominal (P = 0.04) and abdominal subcutaneous (P = 0.07) regions compared to men. Waist circumference and indices of insulin sensitivity were similar; however, women had a more favourable lipid profile than men. Serum adiponectin and leptin levels were significantly higher in women, whereas inflammatory profiles were not different between men and women. Aerobic fitness was lower in women and was associated with abdominal fat accumulation. Conclusion. In premenopausal women, higher levels of adiponectin may support maintenance of insulin sensitivity and normolipidemia despite greater adiposity. However, poor aerobic fitness combined with abdominal fat accumulation may explain their greater future risk of MeS compared with men.
Role of Phosphorylation in the Control of Clathrin-Mediated Internalization of GPCR

The process by which G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are internalized through the clathrin-coated vesicles involves interactions of multifunctional adaptor proteins. These interactions are tightly controlled by phosphorylation and dephosphorylation mechanisms resulting in the regulation of receptor endocytosis. However, the identities of the kinases involved in this process remained largely unknown until recently. This paper discusses advances in our knowledge of the important role played by protein phosphorylation in the regulation of the endocytic machinery and how phosphorylation controls the coated vesicle cycle.
Trading off perception with internal state: reinforcement learning and analysis of Q-Elman networks in a Markovian task

A Markovian reinforcement learning task can be dealt with by learning a direct mapping from states to actions or values, or from state-action pairs to values. However, this may involve a difficult pattern recognition problem when the state space is large. This paper shows that using internal state, called "supportive state", may alleviate this problem presenting an argument against the tendency to almost automatically use a direct mapping when the task is Markovian. This point is demonstrated in simulation experiments of an agent controlled by a neural network capable of learning the strategy of direct mapping as well as internal state, combining Q(/spl lambda/) learning and recurrent neural networks in a new way. The trade-off between the two strategies is investigated in more detail, focusing particularly on border cases.
MPI-Parallelization of a Structured Grid CFD Solver including an Integrated Octree Grid Generator

An existing Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solver is parallelized by means of MPI. The solver includes a dynamic and adaptive grid generator for Cartesian Quadtree and Octree grids, which therefore also have to be parallelized. The grid generator generates grids fulfilling a specific set of rules, that have to be enforced also in parallel. The assembly of the large sparse matrices resulting from the implicit discretization of Navier-Stokes equations is done in parallel, as is the solving process. The parallel performance of both of these processes depends heavily on a good load balancing in order to reach satisfactory speedup. Two versions of load balancing are demonstrated, one based on block swapping, and the other by utilizing the Metis or Parmetis software packages for load balancing of graphs. Results are presented for load balancing and for the parallel speedup of solving the linear algebra system of equations.
PCTV: a biologically- and psychologically-inspired edge and line detection

A novel method for detecting edges and lines simultaneously and automatically is proposed. This method, based on phase congruency and tensor voting (hence PCTV), makes use of the properties of how edges and lines are built from the Fourier decomposition of an image, and how the primary visual cortex responds to them, instead of making assumptions on the intensity profiles of the regions near a feature. Experiments showed that the detection results were more consistent to the “ground truth” manually drawn by humans. For detecting edges, this method is superior to three commonly used detectors in that it reduces the production of false detections.
Bat Chirps With Good Properties: Zak Space Construction of Perfect Polyphase Sequences

Previously, a discretization of the linear FM chirp of length N=KL 2, L and KL isin Z, was given and the conditions for its minimal Zak space support were derived. Chirps satisfying these conditions are known as finite chirps. In this work, subsets of finite chirps of length N=L 2, L a prime, are examined. The investigation leads to a new, Zak space construction of general polyphase sequence sets of size L-1 with optimal auto and cross-correlation properties, known as perfect sequence sets. It is shown that perfect sequence sets are closely related to sets of finite chirps and, in particular, include the sets of Zadoff-Chu sequences (which are identical with subsets of finite chirps) and the sets of generalized Frank sequences (which are identical with sets of modulations of finite chirps), as special cases. The entire collection of perfect sequence sets is then given by a partition of the set of perfect auto correlation sequences, obtained by right coset decomposition of the group of all permutations with respect to a certain cyclic group. The construction suggests several further generalizations that can be obtained by operating exclusively on subgroups of the permutation group.
Necessary and sufficient conditions in the problem of optimal investment in incomplete markets

Following [10] we continue the study of the problem of expected utility maximization in incomplete markets. Our goal is to nd minimal conditions on a model and a utility function for the validity of several key assertions of the theory to hold true. In [10] we proved that a minimal condition on the utility function alone, i.e. a minimal market independent condition, is that the asymptotic elasticity of the utility function is strictly less than 1. In this paper we show that a necessary and sucient condition on both, the utility function and the model, is that the value function of the dual problem is nite.
Differences in the Curing of [PSI+] Prion by Various Methods of Hsp104 Inactivation

[PSI +] yeast, containing the misfolded amyloid conformation of Sup35 prion, is cured by inactivation of Hsp104. There has been controversy as to whether inactivation of Hsp104 by guanidine treatment or by overexpression of the dominant negative Hsp104 mutant, Hsp104-2KT, cures [PSI +] by the same mechanism– inhibition of the severing of the prion seeds. Using live cell imaging of Sup35-GFP, overexpression of Hsp104-2KT caused the foci to increase in size, then decrease in number, and finally disappear when the cells were cured, similar to that observed in cells cured by depletion of Hsp104. In contrast, guanidine initially caused an increase in foci size but then the foci disappeared before the cells were cured. By starving the yeast to make the foci visible in cells grown with guanidine, the number of cells with foci was found to correlate exactly with the number of [PSI+] cells, regardless of the curing method. Therefore, the fluorescent foci are the prion seeds required for maintenance of [PSI+] and inactivation of Hsp104 cures [PSI+] by preventing severing of the prion seeds. During curing with guanidine, the reduction in seed size is an Hsp104-dependent effect that cannot be explained by limited severing of the seeds. Instead, in the presence of guanidine, Hsp104 retains an activity that trims or reduces the size of the prion seeds by releasing Sup35 molecules that are unable to form new prion seeds. This Hsp104 activity may also occur in propagating yeast.
A note on the redundancy of reversible variable length codes

An improved upper bound on the redundancy of the optimal reversible variable length code (RVLC), is presented in terms of the largest symbol probability p<sub>1</sub>. The improvement is achieved for 2/9 <; p<sub>1</sub> <; 1/4 and for 2/5 ≤ p<sub>1</sub> ≤ 1/2. The bound guarantees that in these two regions, the redundancy of the optimal RVLC is less than 1 bit per symbol.
Evidence for the Strong Effect of Gas Removal on the Internal Dynamics of Young Stellar Clusters

We present detailed luminosity profiles of the young massive clusters M82-F, NGC 1569-A and NGC 1705-1 which show significant departures from equilibrium (King and Elson, Fall & Freeman) profiles. We compare these profiles with those from N-body simulations of clusters that have undergone the rapid removal of a significant fraction of their mass as a result of gas expulsion. We show that the observations and simulations agree very well with each other, suggesting that these young clusters are undergoing violent relaxation and are also losing a significant fraction of their stellar mass. That these clusters are not in equilibrium can explain the discrepant mass-to-light ratios observed in many young clusters with respect to simple stellar population models without resorting to non-standard initial stellar mass functions as claimed for M82-F and NGC 1705-1. We also discuss the effect of rapid gas removal on the complete disruption of a large fraction of young massive clusters ('infant mortality'). Finally, we note that even bound clusters may lose >50 per cent of their initial stellar mass as a result of rapid gas loss ('infant weight-loss').
FIT Position Paper on Machine Translation

Machine Translation (MT), i.e. fully automatic translation using computers, which is viewed by some as the solution for obtaining more or less satisfactory translations quickly and cheaply, has been gaining considerable ground in recent times. FIT, as the voice of associations of translators, interpreters and terminologists around the world, would therefore like to provide some information on this subject and draw attention to diverse consequences for the users as well as professional translators and their associations. In the past, MT mainly used a rule-based approach, i.e. a set of rules for the language combination processed by the MT engine. This RbMT came up against certain limitations and has largely been superseded by a statistical approach (SMT), which is probability-based and relies on large corpora of source texts and their human translations. This has been made possible by the greater processing power of computers now available. In some cases, hybrid systems incorporating both RbMT and SMT or other models are employed. Furthermore, a distinction has to be made between free online MT systems which – depending on the language pairs – often produce rather poor-quality or incomprehensible texts and offer practically no confidentiality, on the one hand, and customised systems which are trained, maintained and used by professionals and which are able to cope with highly confidential texts, on the other hand. The texts or other content to be subjected to MT may need pre-editing, i.e. human modification to remove complex or ambiguous structures, for example. Unless specified otherwise, the raw MT output in turn requires post-editing, i.e. human correction of errors, or some other human involvement.
The vasodilator action of insulin. Implications for the insulin hypothesis of hypertension.

T he last several years have witnessed tremendous interest in the hypothesis that insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia contribute to the patho-genesis of hypertension. This hypothesis was stimulated by epidemiological studies that demonstrated an association between obesity, insulin resistance, and hyper-tension. 1-2 Subsequent studies suggested that even lean individuals with essential hypertension have insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia. 3 ' 4 Because hyperinsu-linemia persists during antihypertensive therapy and is not found in secondary renovascular hypertension, the hyperinsulinemia does not appear to be secondary to elevated arterial pressure. 5 In addition to effects on glucose metabolism, insulin has sympathetic and renal actions. 6-7 In obesity and hypertension, there is resistance to the actions of insulin on glucose uptake but no resistance to the renal and sympathetic actions of insulin. These "secondary" actions of insulin form the basis of the insulin hypothesis of hypertension. 8-9 The insulin hypothesis proposes that the compensatory hyperinsulinemia that occurs with insulin resistance increases sodium reabsorption and sympathetic activity, which combine to cause elevated arterial pressure. 8-9 An implicit and important assumption of this hypothesis is that, because insulin increases sympathetic noradrenergic activity, it increases vascular resistance and arterial pressure. This editorial will discuss the vasodilator (depressor) action of insulin and the role that this action plays in offsetting the sympathetic and antinatriuretic (pressor) actions of insulin in regulating arterial pressure. The vasodilator actions of insulin have important implications for the insulin hypothesis of hypertension. The Vasodilator Action of Insulin In this issue of Hypertension, Baron et al 10 report on a vasodilator action of insulin and its relation to the link between insulin resistance and hypertension. Baron and colleagues 11-14 have previously contributed several findings and concepts. First, insulin-mediated glucose uptake occurs principally in skeletal muscle. Second, insulin produces vasodilation and capillary recruitment in skeletal muscle. Third, insulin-induced increases in blood flow and glucose and insulin delivery to skeletal muscle contribute substantially to insulin-induced glucose uptake. Although recognized for years, the vasodilator action of insulin has been relatively neglected in the recent literature, which has focused on the sympathetic and antinatriuretic actions of insulin. The importance of the vasodilation in the influence of insulin on arterial pressure is indicated by studies from John Hall's laboratory. 15-17 This group has repeatedly demonstrated that physiological increases in plasma insulin levels fail to increase arterial pressure in dogs. This occurs because increases in cardiac output are offset by substantial decreases in …
Nostalgia Serves as a Psychological Resource for Mothers of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Pilot Study

The current study examined whether nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, serves as a psychological resource for mothers of children with ASD (autism spectrum disorder). Twenty-six mothers of children with ASD were asked to complete measures of well-being during an initial visit. Over eight weeks, mothers were asked to write about their experiences with raising a child with ASD, which were coded for the use of nostalgic language. The results revealed that mothers who reported being lower in positive affect and parental well-being had increased nostalgic narratives over time. There were no significant findings for negative affect and life satisfaction. THis work provides a first step in understanding the relationship between nostalgia and mental health. Specifically, nostalgia may serve as a potential intervention to improve the well-being of parents and children with ASD.
What students need to know about good talk: Be BRAVE

Abstract This study explores the effectiveness of a workshop and accompanying conceptual framework designed to help middle school students become better participants in group work. The framework is designated BRAVE (build on ideas, risk tentative thoughts, ask good questions, value other perspectives, and use evidence). The framework is based on research identifying the features of effective group participation. The workshop, through a variety of experiences, introduces this framework to students. Two fifth- and two sixth-grade classes participated in the workshop. During the workshop, students articulate and record their ideas about group work. The article describes the workshop in detail. The article also examines evidence of learning that indicates students are able to meaningfully incorporate the BRAVE framework into their thinking about groups and group work.