Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mitigating Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack with Deterministic Bit Marking

The Distributed Denial-of-Service attack is a serious threat in Internet and an effective method is needed for distinguishing the attack traffic from the legitimate traffic. We propose the concept of bit marking to identify and drop the attack packets. Bit marking is a variation of packet marking technique that modifies the packet header at each router. However bit marking differs from packet marking in its process and the purpose. Instead of storing the router information in the packets, bit marking alters one or more bits in the marking field at each router. The bit positions for each ingress line card are selected randomly only once at the initialization. Such bit marking is performed to all the packets, resulting in a common path signature in the marking field upon arriving at a destination for all the packets originating from the same location. Since the packets traversing different paths are likely to have different path signatures, the bit marking process generates quite unique path signature for different sources, roughly emulating the source IP. Such Path Signature allows an easy identification and blocking of the DDoS attack. We show that the PS becomes more diverse as the lengths of the distinct path increases. From an artificial and real Internet topology we observe that the sources are uniformly distributed over the path signature space. In our experiments, the attack traffic can be blocked up to 99.6% using PS. DBM can mitigate most known attack types, such as SYN flooding, reflection attack, UDP flooding, etc. and it is robust to various attack patterns. DBM can also be extended to source address traceback with the topology information of participating routers. This method is simpler to implement than PPM and only small number of routers needs to be upgraded. The deployment can be done gradually without any impact on non-participating routers. Keyword: Denial-of-Service Attack, Internet, Network Security Mitigating Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack with Deterministic Bit Marking Yoohwan Kim, Ju-Yeon Jo, Frank Merat, Mei Yang, and Yingtao Jiang School of Computer Science, University of Nevada Las Vegas, NV, 89052-4019, USA Email: yoohwan@cs.unlv. edu Computer Science Department, California State University Sacramento, CA, 95819-6021, USA Email: joj@ecs.csus. edu Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, OH, 44106-7071, USA Email: flm@po.cwru. edu Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Nevada Las Vegas, NV, 89052-4019, USA Email: {meiyang, yingtao}@egr.unlv. edu
J an 2 01 5 Borrowing strengh in hierarchical Bayes : convergence of the Dirichlet base measure 1

This paper studies posterior concentration behavior of the bas probability measure of a Dirichlet measure, given observations asso ciated with the sampled Dirichlet processes, as the number of observations tend to infinity. The base measure itself is endowed with another Dirichlet pr ior, a construction known as the hierarchical Dirichlet processes [Teh et a l. , 2006]. Convergence rates are established in transportation distance s (i.e. Wasserstein metrics) under various conditions on the geometry of the sup port of the true base measure. As a consequence of the theory we demonstrate t he b nefit of “borrowing strength” in the inference of multiple grou ps of data — a powerful insight often invoked to motivate hierarchical mo deling. In certain settings, the gain in efficiency due to the latent hierarchy c an be dramatic, improving from a standard nonparametric rate to a parametri c rate of convergence. Tools developed include transportation distances f or nonparametric Bayesian hierarchies of random measures, the existence of t ests for Dirichlet measures, and geometric properties of the support of Dirich let measures.
Multi-level locking with deadlock avoidance

The existence of multiple levels of resources in data base systems presents a problem when resources must be shared among contending users. For example, some users may be interested in an entire file while others are only interested in one or a few records of the file. Intention locks have previously been introduced to permit multiple levels of locking in conjunction with deadlock detection methods[1,2]. These intention locks can be view as housekeeping entries to record the pattern of usage of resources. When viewed in this way, no new locking modes need be exposed to a system user. Further, the basic idea behind intention locks can then be directly applied to systems which use deadlock avoidance methods[3,4].
An Exploratory Study into IT Governance Implementations and its Impact on Business/IT Alignment

Abstract IT governance is one of these concepts that suddenly emerged and became an important issue in the information technology area. Many organisations started with the implementation of IT governance to achieve a better alignment between business and IT. This paper carries interpretations regarding important existing theories, models, and practices in the IT governance domain and presents research questions derived from it. Next, multiple research strategies are triangulated in order to explore how organisations are implementing IT governance and to analyse the relationship between these implementations and business/IT alignment. The major finding is that business/IT alignment maturity is higher when organisations are applying a mix of mature IT governance practices.
The psychology of prejudice, sterotyping, and discrimination: An overview.

It is hard to imagine more classic examples of prejudice than the statements of Osama Bin Laden. Although social scientists often differ in the precise way they define "prejudice," most agree that it involves a prejudgment, usually negative, about a group or its members (Fiske, 1998; Jones, 1997; Nelson, 2002). As commonly used in psychology, prejudice is not merely a statement of opinion or belief, but an attitude that includes feelings such as contempt, dislike, or loathing. For Osama Bin Laden, non-Muslim Americans are the main target of prejudice, and his hatred is so great that he would like to see them die. Where prejudices lurk, stereotypes are seldom far behind. The term "stereotype," coined in 1798 by the French printer Didot, originally referred to a printing process used to create reproductions (Ashmore & Del Boca, 1981). Journalist Walter Lippmann (1922) later likened stereotypes to "pictures in the head," or mental reproductions of reality, and from there, the term gradually came to mean generalizations -or, quite often, overgeneralizations -about the members of a group. As with prejudice, these generalizations can at times be positive (e.g., women are nurturing, Japanese excel at math), but for the most part, they tend to be negative and resistant to change. For example, until the 1960s the Encyclopædia Britannica entry for "Races of Mankind" relied on centuries-old pseudoscientific stereotypes of Black people as unevolved and childlike. In its 1964 edition, the encyclopedia described "woolly-haired groups" as having:
Statistical features and classification of normal and abnormal mammograms

Breast cancer affects many women. Early detection and timely medical intervention is the key to long term survival and life quality for patients. The algorithm proposed in this paper contains four steps: Image DATA, preprocessing, features extraction and classification. Images samples are acquired with X-ray or new technique Terahertz imaging, noise removal is performed in preprocessing, statistical method is used for feature extraction process and classification.
A Practical Continuous-time Nonlinear Generalised Predictive Controller

Builded on earlier work on the Open-Loop Intermittent Feedback Optimal (OLIFO) controller, a practical continuous time Generalised Predictive Controller (GPC) is introduced. On-line integration of the model equation is used for the prediction. Only two parameters of a bounded and smooth open-loop control structure have to be opti-mised each time instant. An intermittent receding horizon strategy is used to ensure a suucient time interval to allow for the optimisation. The previously optimised open-loop controller is applied while a new optimisation is taking place. The capability and practical robustness of this approach are illustrated through the control of a power system.
PENGURUSAN PRIVASI FACEBOOK PENJAWAT AWAM: PENGARUH INTENSITI PENGGUNAAN, KEMAHIRAN SWAAWAS DAN ORIENTASI PRIVASI ORGANISASI

Facebook adalah medium kegemaran majoriti pengguna media sosial termasuklah penjawat awam di Malaysia. Namun, penjawat awam kini berhadapan dengan isu pengurusan privasi maklumat dalam Facebook yang semakin bercampur aduk antara maklumat organisasi dengan maklumat peribadi. Kajian ini bertujuan mengenal pasti pengaruh intensiti penggunaan Facebook, kemahiran swaawas, dan orientasi privasi organisasi terhadap pengurusan privasi Facebook penjawat awam. Kajian tinjauan keratan rentas dijalankan terhadap penjawat awam yang berkhidmat di agensi kerajaan negeri, persekutuan dan badan berkanun di negeri Kedah. Seramai 138 responden dipilih melalui kaedah persampelan rawak sistematik. Borang soal selidik mengandungi empat instrumen iaitu Skala Intensiti Facebook, Skala Swaawas, Orientasi Privasi Organisasi dan Skala Pengurusan Privasi Facebook. Data dianalisis secara deskriptif dalam bentuk min dan sisihan piawai berbantukan perisian SPSS. Manakala analisis inferensi melibatkan analisis Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) berbantukan perisian SmartPLS 3.0. Hasil kajian menunjukkan orientasi privasi organisasi dan kemahiran swaawas memberi pengaruh yang signifikan terhadap intensiti penggunaan Facebook. Selain itu, intensiti penggunaan Facebook, orientasi privasi organisasi dan kemahiran swaawas turut memberi pengaruh yang siginifikan terhadap pengurusan privasi Facebook. Kajian ini menjelaskan peranan faktor individu dan persekitaran sosial organisasi dalam menentukan pengurusan privasi Facebook. Dapatan kajian ini boleh digunakan bagi merangka program untuk meningkatkan pengurusan privasi maklumat dalam talian bagi penjawat awam.
Dynamic Access Control Prediction for Ordered Service Sequence in Grid Environment

When facing the emerging circumstance that the Internet and business globalization have replaced the separation that was typical of the traditional business paradigm, especially the workflow and grid environment, challenges have been made to the traditional static access control model. To solve these challenges, we present a dynamic access control prediction mechanism for service workflow base on Markov chain. We abstract the service workflow in workflow and/or grid to an ordered service sequence and through calculating the executable probability of service in OSS, we create an authorization policy based on the probability value dynamically. A simulation method of the mechanism is presented and practiced in ChinaGrid project
Late propagation in software clones

Two similar code segments, or clones, form a clone pair within a software system. The changes to the clones over time create a clone evolution history. In this work we study late propagation, a specific pattern of clone evolution. In late propagation, one clone in the clone pair is modified, causing the clone pair to become inconsistent. The code segments are then re-synchronized in a later revision. Existing work has established late propagation as a clone evolution pattern, and suggested that the pattern is related to a high number of faults. In this study we examine the characteristics of late propagation in two long-lived software systems using the Simian and CCFinder clone detection tools. We define 8 types of late propagation and compare them to other forms of clone evolution. Our results not only verify that late propagation is more harmful to software systems, but also establish that some specific cases of late propagations are more harmful than others. Specifically, two cases are most risky: (1) when a clone experiences inconsistent changes and then a re-synchronizing change without any modification to the other clone in a clone pair; and (2) when two clones undergo an inconsistent modification followed by a re-synchronizing change that modifies both the clones in a clone pair.
A Spitzer IRAC Census of the Asymptotic Giant Branch Populations in Local Group Dwarfs. I. WLM

We present Spitzer IRAC observations at 3.6 and 4.5 μm along with optical data from the Local Group Galaxies Survey to investigate the evolved stellar population of the Local Group dwarf irregular galaxy WLM. These observations provide a nearly complete census of the AGB stars. We find that 39% of the infrared-detected AGB stars are not detected in the optical data, even though our 50% completeness limit is 3 mag fainter than the red giant branch tip. An additional 4% of the infrared-detected AGBs are misidentified in the optical, presumably due to reddening by circumstellar dust. We also compare our results with those of a narrowband optical carbon star survey of WLM and find the latter study sensitive to only 18% of the total AGB population. We detect objects with infrared fluxes consistent with them being mass-losing AGB stars and derive a present-day total mass-loss rate from the AGB stars of Ṁ = (0.7-2.4) × 10-3 M☉ yr-1. The distributions of mass-loss rates and bolometric luminosities of AGBs and red supergiants are very similar to those in the LMC and SMC, and the empirical maximum mass-loss rate observed in the LMC and SMC is in excellent agreement with our WLM data.
Measuring Social-Emotional Skills to Advance Science and Practice.

Title Page Title: Abstract Body Background / Context The ability to understand and effectively interact with others is a critical determinant of academic, social, and life success (DiPerna & Elliott, 2002). This fact is increasingly recognized in educational policy and practice Recognizing that these skills are critical for school and life, a growing number of states have adopted standards requiring school systems to assess and address children's social-emotional learning, or SEL (Dusenbury, Zadrazil, Mart, & Weissberg, 2011). Despite calls to treat SEL as a critical component of academic learning, and despite the expansion of SEL standards, few tools are available for educators to assess SEL skill and to use assessment results to inform educational practice. Appropriate SEL assessment should help educators to: (a) evaluate student and classroom progress towards meeting SEL standards, (b) clarify students' strengths and instructional needs, (c) understand the needs of students who are considered for intensive SEL instruction, and (d) decide what skills to teach to which students. An area in particular need of scalable, feasible, usable, and scientifically sound assessment tools is social-emotional comprehension, which includes mental processes enlisted to encode, interpret and reason about social and emotional information. Social-emotional comprehension includes the abilities to infer others emotions from nonverbal cues, to take others' perspectives, to solve social problems, and to enlist cognitive strategies involved in self-control. Well developed social-emotional comprehension is associated with academic, social, behavioral, and other important life outcomes). However, there are few tools educators can use to evaluate their students' social-emotional comprehension and use findings to guide instruction. Purpose / Objective / Research Question / Focus of Study As defined here, social-emotional comprehension comprises mental skills that may not have straightforward behavioral correlates. An important issue, then, concerns the optimal method to assess these skills. Although teacher report is widely used, because social-emotional comprehension involves mental processes, observers must make a high level of inference, potentially attenuating validity. Furthermore, self-report is only modestly correlated with skill level (Shrauger & Osberg, 1981) and vulnerable to social desirability response bias (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960). An alternative that addresses these limitations is direct assessment, defined here as a method of measuring social-emotional comprehension through performance on items that demonstrate mastery of skills (McKown, 2015). This is distinct from and complementary to teacher report and self-report. Our work is guided by the premise that direct assessments are optimal for assessing social-emotional comprehension. To address the …
Alcohol drinking and risk of renal cell carcinoma: results of a meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND The role of alcohol consumption in relation with renal cell carcinoma is still unclear; a few studies have reported a beneficial effect of moderate levels of alcohol consumption, whereas it remains still under debate whether there is a dose-response association. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twenty observational studies (4 cohort, 1 pooled and 15 case-control) reporting results on at least three levels of alcohol consumption were selected through a combined search with PubMed and EMBASE of articles published before November 2010. Overall relative risks (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated using random-effects models, and both second-order fractional polynomials and random effect meta-regression models were implemented for the study of dose-risk relation. RESULTS The estimated RRs were 0.85 (95% CI: 0.80-0.92) for any alcohol drinking, 0.90 (95% CI: 0.83-0.97) for light drinking (0.01-12.49 g/day), 0.79 (95% CI: 0.71-0.88) for moderate drinking (12.5-49.9 g/day) and 0.89 (95% CI: 0.58-1.39) for heavy drinking (≥50 g/day), respectively. CONCLUSION Our meta-analysis supports the hypothesis of a negative effect of moderate alcohol consumption on the risk of renal cell cancer.
The gravitational lensing nature of the Cloverleaf unveiled in CO (7-6) line emission.

We report 0.5′′ resolution imaging of the Cloverleaf quasar in the CO(7-6) line and 1.3mm continuum,, as well as 1′′ resolution imaging in the CO(3-2) line, performed with the IRAM interferometer. The CO(7-6) image is clearly resolved into 4 spots, demonstrating that the CO emission is also gravitationally lensed. We do not find any convincing evidence for a velocity gradient in the maps. As compared to the optical spots from a V band HST image, some of the CO spots are found to be stretched along the Einstein ring. Using the available lens model for the Cloverleaf, this suggests an intrinsic radius of ∼ 600 pc for the CO emitting region. No continuum emission is detected: the measured flux density is 5 ± 3mJy, consistent with a spectral index larger than 3.
Resolving the Diplodia complex on apple and other Rosaceae hosts

Diplodia species are known as pathogens on many woody hosts, including fruit trees, worldwide. In this study a collection of Diplodia isolates obtained mostly from apple and other Rosaceae hosts were identified based on morphological characters and DNA sequence data from ITS and EF1-α loci. The results show that the diversity of species associated with twig and branch cankers and fruit rot of apples is larger than previously recognised. Four species were identified, namely D. seriata and D. malorum (which is here reinstated for isolates with D. mutila-like conidia). Diplodia intermedia sp. nov. is closely related to D. seriata, and D. bulgarica sp. nov. is morphologically and phylogenetically distinct from all Diplodia species reported from apples.
F eb 2 00 4 Solvent-induced symmetry breaking and second order phase transitions

The triiodide ion is an example of a system where symmetry-breaking may be induced by a solvent. The Landau free energy is expected to have a similar form to that for the mean field Ising model, but with solvent strength rather than temperature as the control parameter determining whether there is symmetry breaking. In order to examine the possibility of critical phenomena we have studied the properties of the ion in solvents based on a model for water with charges scaled by a factor λ. As λ is increased the system changes from one with no symmetry breaking to one with strong symmetry breaking. The behavior of various quantities, including the Shannon entropy, as a function of λ show only weak maxima near the critical value of λ = λc. We examine the behavior of a simple model and show that divergences would only be expected in the limit of low temperatures, and the essential difference between the solvent-induced symmetry breaking and the mean field Ising model is that in the latter the observed quantity is an average over many spins, while in the former observations are made on individual molecules.
Development and Validation of Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry Method for Quantification of Plasma Metanephrines for Differential Diagnosis of Adrenal Incidentaloma

High-resolution imaging techniques have increased the detection rate of adrenal incidentaloma. We developed a method of liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) for detection of plasma free metanephrine (MN) and normetanephrine (NMN) and evaluated its analytical performance and clinical efficacy in differential diagnosis of adrenal incidentaloma. After solid-phase extraction, chromatographic isolation of the analytes and internal standard was achieved by column elution in the LC-MS/MS system. The analytes were detected in multiple-reaction monitoring mode by using positive electrospray ionization: MN, transition m/z 180.1→165.1; NMN, m/z 166.1→134.1. This method was validated for linearity, precision, accuracy, lower limits of quantification and detection, extraction recovery, and the matrix effect. Plasma concentrations of MN and NMN of 14 patients with pheochromocytoma were compared with those of 17 healthy volunteers, 10 patients with essential hypertension, and 60 patients with adrenal adenoma. The assay's linear range was 0.04-50.0 and 0.08-100.0 nmol/L for MN and NMN, respectively. Assay imprecision was 1.86-7.50%. The accuracy ranged from -7.50% to 2.00%, and the mean recovery of MN and NMN was within the range 71.5-95.2%. Our LC-MS/MS method is rapid, accurate, and reliable and useful for differential diagnosis of adrenal incidentaloma.
Optimal wavelet reconstructions from Fourier samples via generalized sampling

—We consider the problem of computing wavelet coefﬁcients of compactly supported functions from their Fourier samples. For this, we use the recently introduced framework of generalized sampling in the context of compactly supported orthonormal wavelet bases. Our ﬁrst result demonstrates that using generalized sampling one obtains a stable and accurate reconstruction, provided the number of Fourier samples grows linearly in the number of wavelet coefﬁcients recovered. We also present the exact constant of proportionality for the class of Daubechies wavelets. Our second result concerns the optimality of generalized sampling for this problem. Under some mild assumptions generalized sampling cannot be outperformed in terms of approximation quality by more than a constant factor. Moreover, for the class of so-called perfect methods, any attempt to lower the sampling ratio below a certain critical threshold necessarily results in exponential ill-conditioning. Thus generalized sampling provides a nearly-optimal solution to this problem.
The Transition from Welfare to Work and the Role of Potential Labor Income

It is often argued that the high level of welfare claims in Germany causes little incentive for workers with low productivity to seek for a job. We examine the influence of the ratio between estimated potential labor income and the welfare payment level on the probability of leaving social welfare. Using the GSOEP, we estimate a discrete time hazard rate model with competing risks and unobserved heterogeneity. Our results show that the ratio has a positive effect on the probability of leaving social welfare. This effect is especially relevant for households with a potential labor income higher than their welfare payment level.