Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
BotOnus: AnOnline UnsupervisedMethod for Botnet Detection

Botnets are recognized as one of the most dangerous threats to the Internet infrastructure. They are used for malicious activities such as launching distributed denial of service attacks, sending spam, and leaking personal information. Existing botnet detection methods produce a number of good ideas, but they are far from complete yet, since most of them cannot detect botnets in an early stage of their lifecycle; moreover, they depend on a particular command and control (C&C) protocol. In this paper, we address these issues and propose an online unsupervised method, called BotOnus, for botnet detection that does not require a priori knowledge of botnets. It extracts a set of flow feature vectors from the network traffic at the end of each time period, and then groups them to some flow clusters by a novel online fixed-width clustering algorithm. Flow clusters that have at least two members, and their intra-cluster similarity is above a similarity threshold, are identified as suspicious botnet clusters, and all hosts in such clusters are identified as bot infected. We demonstrate the effectiveness of BotOnus to detect various botnets including HTTP-, IRC-, and P2P-based botnets using a testbed network. The results of experiments show that it can successfully detect various botnets with an average detection rate of 94.33% and an average false alarm rate of 3.74%. c © 2012 ISC. All rights reserved.
Subjective health complaints in adolescence. A cross-national comparison of prevalence and dimensionality.

BACKGROUND The purpose of this work was to study the prevalence and dimensionality of subjective health complaints in a cross-national population of adolescents. METHODS The analyses were based on data from a WHO cross-national survey, Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC). The study included a representative sample of 11, 13 and 15-year-old adolescents from Finland, Norway, Poland and Scotland. Data were collected in 1993-1994 and the total sample included 20,324 adolescents. Subjective health complaints were measured by the HBSC Symptom Checklist (HBSC-SCL), including headaches, abdominal pain, backache, feeling low, irritability, nervousness, sleeping difficulties and dizziness. Descriptive analyses, MANOVA and structural equation modelling (EQS) were conducted. RESULTS Patterns of reporting were consistent for all four countries. A large number of students reported a high level of symptoms. The reporting of most symptoms increased with age. Girls reported significantly more symptoms than boys and the gender differences also increased with age. Structural equation modelling suggests a model of two correlated factors, which can be labelled psychological and somatic. CONCLUSION The findings of this study indicate that students report a high level of subjective health complaints already at the age of 11 years. The reporting of most symptoms increases with age and more so for girls than for boys. The finding of two dimensions that differ qualitatively, suggests that these dimensions may have different etiologies.
Traceable Block Ciphers : Requirements and Operation

In this paper we propose a new symmetric block cipher with the following paradoxical traceability properties: it is computationally easy to derive many equivalent secret keys providing distinct descriptions of the same instance of the block cipher. But it is computationally difficult, given one or even up to k equivalent keys, to recover the so called meta-key from which they were derived, or to find any additional equivalent key, or more generally to forge any new untraceable description of the same instance of the block cipher. Therefore, if each legitimate user of a digital content distribution system based on encrypted information broadcast (e.g. scrambled pay TV, distribution over the Internet of multimedia content, etc.) is provided with one of the equivalent keys, he can use this personal key to decrypt the content. But it is conjectured infeasible for coalitions of up to k traitors to mix their legitimate personal keys into untraceable keys they might redistribute anonymously to pirate decoders. Thus, the proposed block cipher inherently provides an efficient traitor tracing scheme [4]. The new algorithm can be described as an iterative block cipher belonging to the class of multivariate schemes. It has advantages in terms of performance over existing traitor tracing schemes and furthermore, it allows to restrict overheads to one single block (i.e. typically 80 to 160 bits) per encrypted content payload. Its strength relies upon the difficulty of the “Isomorphism of Polynomials” problem [17], which has been extensively investigated over the past years. An initial security analysis is supplied.
Comparison of statistical Holt-Winter models for forecasting the ionospheric delay using GPS observations

The ionosphere is a notable source of error that disrupts the accuracy of the global position system (GPS) signal to the ground by changing the speed and direction of the signal propagation and in the process causing a delay in the signal. Therefore, forecasting the ionospheric delay is very important to reduce the GPS positioning error. In this work, statistical Holt-Winter method was chosen due to its suitability in forecasting time series with repeated seasonal patterns. This involved the forecast of ionospheric delays covering the period from October 2009 to December 2010 using GPS Ionospheric Scintillation and TEC Monitor (GISTM) over Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) station, at geographic coordinate of 2.55 °N, 101.46 °E. The comparisons of Additive and Multiplicative Holt-Winter models were done in terms of month-to-month error measurement, the difference of the actual and forecasting delay and the monthly average of the forecast. The maximum difference between actual and forecasting delay was estimated to be about 2 m. The accuracy of each model resulted in 77-91% for Additive and 78-92% for the multiplicative model during the period from morning to noon, while during the afternoon to nighttime period, the accuracy resulted in 68-92% and 70-93% for Additive and Multiplicative models, respectively. These results showed that the accuracy of the Multiplicative model in forecasting the ionospheric delay is better than that of Additive model going by its small error values and higher accuracy.
Retractions from altmetric and bibliometric perspectives

Abstract In the battle for better science, the research community must obliterate, at times, works from the publication record, a process known as retraction. Additionally, publications and papers accumulate an altmetric attention score, which is a complementary metric to citation-based metrics. We used the citations, Journal Impact Factor, time between publication and retraction and the reasons behind retraction in order to find determinants of the retracted papers´ altmetric attention score. To find these determinants we compared two samples, one of retractions with top altmetric attention scores and one of retractions with altmetric attention scores chosen at random. We used a binary choice model to estimate the probability of being retracted due to misconduct or error. The model shows positive effects of altmetric scores and the time between publication and retraction on the probability to be retracted due to misconduct in the top sample. We conclude that there is an association between retraction due to misconduct and higher altmetric attention scores within the top sample.
Effects of 4′-Chloro-3α-(diphenylmethoxy)-tropane on Mesostriatal, Mesocortical, and Mesolimbic Dopamine Transmission: Comparison with Effects of Cocaine

Increase in dopamine (DA) neurotransmission resulting from blockade of the DA transporter (DAT) after administration of cocaine is believed to play a major role in mediating its behavioral and reinforcing effects. Since it was hypothesized that drugs that block the DAT have cocaine-like behavioral effects, it was of interest to study in the present article the stimulant effects of cocaine on locomotor activity and on pattern of activation of DA neurotransmission in different DAergic terminal areas in rats and compare these effects with those of 4′-chloro-3α-(diphenylmethoxy)-tropane (4-Cl-BZT), a benztropine analog showing higher affinity for the DAT, but reduced behavioral effects compared with cocaine. Administration of cocaine resulted in a dose-dependent stimulation of locomotor activity and DA neurotransmission in the nucleus accumbens shell and core, dorsal caudate, and in the medial prefrontal cortex (PFCX) measured by microdialysis. At comparable doses, the effects of 4-Cl-BZT on DA levels in all brain areas except the PFCX were generally reduced compared with those of cocaine, as were the effects on locomotor activity. The differences in behavioral effects corresponded generally to differences between the drugs with regard to their stimulation of extracellular DA levels, although the mechanism(s) for the differences in extracellular DA may involve effects mediated by sites other than the DAT or differences in the efficiency of the two drugs in blocking DA uptake. Nonetheless, the present results suggest that the differences in behavioral effects between cocaine and 4-Cl-BZT are related to differences in their patterns of activation of DA transmission.
An Embodied Model for Sensorimotor Grounding and Grounding Transfer: Experiments With Epigenetic Robots

The grounding of symbols in computational models of linguistic abilities is one of the fundamental properties of psychologically plausible cognitive models. In this article, we present an embodied model for the grounding of language in action based on epigenetic robots. Epigenetic robotics is one of the new cognitive modeling approaches to modeling autonomous mental development. The robot model is based on an integrative vision of language in which linguistic abilities are strictly dependent on and grounded in other behaviors and skills. It uses simulated robots that learn through imitation the names of basic actions. Robots also learn higher order action concepts through the process of grounding transfer. The simulation demonstrates how new, higher order behavioral abilities can be autonomously built on previously grounded basic action categories following linguistic interaction with human users.
Assessing the usability of system-initiated and user-initiated security events

The increasing deployment of security-oriented software, as well as the inclusion of related functionality within general tools and applications, means that end-users are increasingly likely to encounter security-related events. However, the way in which security is conveyed can often serve to complicate matters, which may ultimately prevent users from using security as they desire or expect. This paper presents the results from an initial study involving 26 endusers in order to assess the extent to which systemand user-initiated security events occur during their day-to-day use of their system, and the extent to which these events are understood. The results expose issues of difficulties on the security events, with more intense when actually end users make use of security intentionally.
Role of Air-Sea Interaction in the Long Persistence of El Nino-Induced North Indian Ocean Warming*

El Nino induces a basin-wide increase in tropical Indian Ocean (TIO) sea surface temperature (SST) with a lag of one season. The north IO (NIO), in particular, displays a peculiar double-peak warming with the second peak larger in magnitude and persisting well through the summer. Motivated by recent studies suggesting the importance of the TIO warming for the Northwest Pacific and East Asian summer monsoons, the present study investigates the mechanisms for the second peak of the NIO warming using observations and general circulation models. This analysis reveals that internal air-sea interaction within the TIO is key to sustaining the TIO warming through summer. During El Nino, anticyclonic wind curl anomalies force a downwelling Rossby wave in the south TIO through Walker circulation adjustments, causing a sustained SST warming in the tropical southwest IO (SWIO) where the mean thermocline is shallow. During the spring and early summer following El Nino, this SWIO warming sustains an antisymmetric pattern of atmospheric anomalies with northeasterly ( northwesterly) wind anomalies north ( south) of the equator. Over the NIO as the mean winds turn into southwesterly in May, the northeasterly anomalies force the second SST peak that persists through summer by reducing the wind speed and surface evaporation. Atmospheric general circulation model experiments show that the antisymmetric atmospheric pattern is a response to the TIO warming, suggestive of their mutual interaction. Thus, ocean dynamics and Rossby waves in particular are important for the warming not only locally in SWIO but also on the basin-scale north of the equator, a result with important implications for climate predictability and prediction.
Survivability Quantification of Wireless Ad Hoc Network Taking Account of Border Effects

Border effect in communication network area is one of the most important problems to quantify accurately the performance/dependability of wireless ad hoc networks (WAHNs), because the assumption on uniformity of network node density is often unrealistic to describe the actual communication area. This problem appears in modeling the node behavior of WAHNs and in quantification of their network survivability. In this paper we focus on the border effects, and reformulate the network survivability models based on a semi-Markov process, where two kinds of communication network areas are considered, square area and circular area. Based on some geometric ideas, we improve the quantitative network survivability measures for three stochastic models taking account of the border effects. In numerical examples, we compare our new models with the existing ones without border effects in both steady-state and transient network survivability analyses. We show through a simulation study that the border effects are significant factors in quantifying network survivability.
Wet Web Rheology on A Paper Machine

The runnability of a wet web is the sum of many factors, ranging from furnish variables to papermaking running parameters (speed, draws, distance from wet pressing etc). The relative importance of these factors was studied using several different experimental methods. The dynamic stress-strain relationship was determined in situ by measuring it on a wet web winder installed on a pilot paper machine. It was then compared with values obtained by testing the wet rolls on a separate running device. The comparison suggests that tensile strength is a more fundamental characteristic of the stress-strain curve than the dynamic stiffness affected by creep. Tensile strength is dominated by moisture content in a transition region where free water enters the ﬁber network. Its sensitivity to moisture content weakens as the paper becomes very wet. The location of the transition region depends on the ﬁber saturation point. This leads to complex changes in ranking when different pulps are compared at different moisture contents. The ﬁnes content of the furnish has a signiﬁcant impact on wet web strength, whereas the ﬁber stiffness affects the measured dynamic stiffness but not tensile strength.
The Evolution of Tidal Debris

Galaxy interactions expel a significant amount of stars and gas into the surrounding environment. I review the formation and evolution of the tidal debris spawned during these collisions, and describe how this evolution depends on the large scale environment in which the galaxies live. In addition to acting as a long-lived tracer of the interaction history of galaxies, the evolution of this material -- on both large scales and small -- has important ramifications for galactic recycling processes, the feeding of the intracluster light and intracluster medium within galaxy clusters, and the delayed formation of galactic disks and dwarf galaxies.
Towards a definition of ‘ Music ’ Taken from provisional course text

Although no society of which we have any knowledge has ever been without what we call music, the concept of music is by no means universal. Many cultures have no word equivalent to what we seem to mean by it. For example, the Tiv nation of West Africa and the Ewe of Togo and Eastern Ghana do not seem to have had much need to single out music as something needing a special word of its own any more than we Brits seem to be in need of three different words for the basic types of snow, each of which the Inuktitut language refines conceptually into several subcategories.1 To be fair, it should be said that the Ewe do actually use the English word ‘music’, but only as an untranslated loan word to denote foreign phenomena like singing hymns or the sounds issuing from a cassette player or the radio. The music (in our sense of the word) they make themselves in traditional village life has no equivalent in the Ewe language.
Multicast Rate Control under Discrete Bandwidth Constraints

In this paper, we address the rate control problem for layered multicast sessions, with the objective of solving a generalized throughput/fairness objective. Our approach is based on a combination of Lagrangian relaxation and dynamic programming. Unlike previously proposed dual-based approaches, the algorithm presented in this paper scales well as the number of multicast sessions in the network increases. Moreover, unlike all existing approaches, our approach takes into account the discreteness of the receiver rates that is inherent in layered multicasting. We show analytically that our algorithm converges to rates that are approximately optimal. Simulations carried out in an asynchronous network environment also demonstrate that the algorithm quickly converges to rates that are close-to-optimal.
A mobile learning system for scaffolding bird watching learning

This paper develops a mobile learning system for scaffolding students learning about bird-watching. The aim is to construct an outdoor mobile-learning activity using up-to-date wireless technology. The proposed Bird-Watching Learning (BWL) system is designed using a wireless mobile ad-hoc network. In the BWL system, each learner has a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) with a Wi-Fi-based (IEEE 802.11b) wireless network card. The BWL system offers a mobile learning system which supports the students learning through scaffolding. The aim of a formative evaluation was twofold: to explore the possible roles and scaffolding aids that the mobile learning device offers for bird-watching activities and to investigate whether student learning benefited from the mobility, portability, and individualisation of the mobile learning device.
CT Angiography Source Images Predict Final Infarct Extent in Patients with Basilar Artery Occlusion

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The posterior circulation Acute Stroke Prognosis Early CT Score (pc-ASPECTS) is a 10-point grading system to quantify ischemic changes in the posterior circulation. We analyzed whether pc-ASPECTS on CT angiography (CTA) source images (CTASI) predicted the final infarct extent and hemorrhagic transformation (HT) rate in patients with basilar artery occlusion. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A pc-ASPECTS score of 10 indicates absence of visible ischemic changes in the posterior circulation, and pc-ASPECTS score of 0 indicates ischemic changes in the midbrain, pons, and bilateral thalami, posterior circulation territories, and cerebellar hemispheres. We retrospectively studied patients with basilar artery occlusion on CTA within 24 hours from symptom onset. We applied pc-ASPECTS to noncontrast CT (NCCT), CTASI, and follow-up images by 3-reader-consensus and assessed HT on follow-up images. We calculated Spearman correlation coefficients and performed linear regression analysis. Final infarct extent and HT rates were compared across dichotomized CTASI pc-ASPECTS groups (≥ 8 vs < 8). RESULTS: Among 43 patients, median (range) onset to CTA time was 5.0 hours (range, 0.7–24 hours). Pc-ASPECTS on CTASI (r = 0.75; P < .001) but not NCCT (r = 0.29; P = .063) correlated with pc-ASPECTS on follow-up scans. Linear regression demonstrated a significant positive relationship between pc-ASPECTS on CTASI and follow-up scans (R2 = 0.58; P < 01). Median follow-up pc-ASPECTS was lower in patients with a CTASI pc-ASPECTS < 8 compared with patients with a CTASI pc-ASPECTS of 8 or more, respectively (P < .001). HT rates were 27.3% vs 9.5%, respectively (P = .24). None of 8 patients without thrombolysis had HT on follow-up scans. CONCLUSIONS: The extent of hypoattenuation on CTASI predicts the final infarct extent in patients with basilar artery occlusion.
Challenges of Governing Interorganizational Value Chains: Insights from a Case Study

Existing research has shown that both IT and data within an organization need to be governed appropriately in order to achieve business value from IT and to ensure data quality, compliance, and privacy. For achieving a high level of maturity in IT and Data Governance functions, a combination of governance structures, processes, and mechanisms as well as their establishment within the organization is seen as vital. However, organizations today usually act within bigger networks of organizations to achieve value gains usually consisting of a set of heterogeneous stakeholders pursuing their own goals and having their own IT infrastructures. Especially the way data is exchanged through IT and the quality of this data is of high relevance for inter-organizational business processes. Based on a comparative case study approach, we analyze the challenges of governing IT and data within buyer-supplier relationships drawing upon findings from both IT governance and transaction cost economics. The identified challenges are then used to derive implications for an organization’s governance framework based on a maturity model. This can help organizations to assess their maturity in terms of value chain governance concerning both IT infrastructures and data exchange processes.
On the Monogamy of Holographic n-partite Information

We investigate the monogamy of holographic n-partite information for a system consisting of n disjoint parallel strips with the same width and separation in AdS and AdS black brane geometries. More precisely, we study the sign of this quantity, e.g. for n = 4; 5, in various dimensions and for dierent parameters. Our results show that for quantum eld theories with holographic duals, the holographic 4-partite information is always positive and the sign of holographic 5-partite information is found to be negative in the dual strongly coupled 1 + 1 dimensional CFT. This latter result indicates that the holographic 4-partite information is monogamous. We also nd the critical points corresponding to the possible phase transitions of these quantities.