Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Improved Clustering-Based Approach for Wormhole Attack Detection in MANET

Advancement in wireless technologies and improved use of wireless devices demand more and more infrastructure less networks like Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET). MANETs are becoming common, since they can be deployed easily in a cost effective manner wherever needed. The high usage of MANET demands more security and confidentiality of the data communicated through MANET. These networks are inherently vulnerable to various attacks due to the absence of concealed channel. Wormhole attack is a great threat to MANET, as it is capable of launching several other types of attacks like black-hole attack, gray-hole attack, sink-hole attack, DDoS, etc. A strategically placed wormhole node can disrupt the entire communication in the network. In this paper, wormhole attack launched by exploiting AODV protocol in MANET, is detected and eliminated in two phases. The preliminary phase in the process of identifying wormhole attack is done, based on timing analysis and hop count. After suspecting the attack, a Clustering based approach is used to confirm the presence of attack, and also to identify the attacker nodes. The entire network is divided into different clusters and each cluster will have a Cluster Head, which controls all the nodes in the cluster and plays the role of a controlling authority in MANET.
Relationships between Lymph Node Metastasis and Expression of CD31, D2-40, and Vascular Endothelial Growth Factors A and C in Papillary Thyroid Cancer

Objectives To investigate the relationships between lymph node metastasis (LNM) and expression of CD31, D2-40 and vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGF)-A and -C in patients with papillary thyroid cancer (PTC). Methods Paraffin-embedded thyroid tissues of 72 patients were evaluated, which included 25 patients with thyroid nodular hyperplasia (TNH), 24 PTC patients without LNM, and 23 PTC patients with LNM. Three pathologists, who were blinded to the patient's clinical information, assessed the immunohistochemical staining results. The amount of expression was scored as high (>25% of cells stained) or low (0-25%). Results A higher level of VEGF-A expression was observed in the PTC groups regardless of LNM when compared to the group with TNH (91.3%, 79.2%, 4.0%, respectively). VEGF-C expression in the PTC with LNM group was significantly higher than the other two groups (P<0.05). No difference in microvessel density (MVD) scores was observed using CD31 among the three groups. The lymphatic vessel density (LVD) score using D2-40 was significantly higher in patients having PTC with LNM than the other groups (P<0.05). Conclusion VEGF-C and D2-40 were more highly expressed in patients having PTC with LNM than in patients having PTC without LNM or in those having TNH. Analysis of VEGF-C level and LVD using D2-40 may be helpful in the diagnosis of PTC and the evaluation of LNM potential in patients with PTC.
Overview of algorithms for face detection and tracking

The human face is central to our identity. It plays an essential role in everyday interaction, communication and other routine activities. Thus, face detection and tracking algorithms are of great importance for human-machine interaction. It is an extensively studied field and a large body of research has been done. This paper gives a a broad overview of basic principles and some representative methods for face detection, tracking and facial feature extraction.
A method for converting a smiling face to a neutral face with applications to face recognition

The human face displays a variety of expressions, like smile, sorrow, surprise, etc. All these expressions constitute nonrigid motions of various features of the face. These expressions lead to a significant change in the appearance of a facial image which leads to a drop in the recognition accuracy of a face-recognition system trained with neutral faces. There are other factors like pose and illumination which also lead to performance drops. Researchers have proposed methods to tackle the effects of pose and illumination; however, there has been little work on how to tackle expressions. We attempt to address the issue of expression invariant face-recognition. We present preprocessing steps for converting a smiling face to a neutral face. We expect that this would in turn make the vector in the feature space to be closer to the correct vector in the gallery, in an appearance-based face recognition. This conjecture is supported by our recognition results which demonstrate that the accuracy goes up if we include the expression-normalization block.
Male perceptions of and attitudes toward the Human Papillomavirus vaccine : effective promotional strategies

The Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is one of the most prevalent sexually transmitted diseases among American men and women. When first licensed by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the HPV vaccine was originally only approved for use in females ages 9-26 years. Promotional communications reflected this, using messaging strategies that effectively positioned the vaccine as a “women’s vaccination. ” In 2010, the FDA approved the HPV vaccine for use in males ages 9-26, though advertising and marketing of the vaccine for this new population was limited. This study evaluated males’ knowledge of and attitudes toward HPV and the HPV vaccine, as well as message tactics for promotion of the HPV vaccine to male populations. Using an online survey and a convenience sampling technique, this study reached a young, highly educated sample of males within the “catch up” program age range. The results of the study indicated a basic understanding o HPV, but a limited understanding of the health-risks associated with the disease. Communication efforts using fact-based tactics were found to be the most effective at persuading males to seek vaccination.
Risk factors and basic mechanisms of chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension: a current understanding

All available evidence today indicates that chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) is primarily caused by venous thromboembolism, as opposed to primary pulmonary vascular in situ thrombosis. Both the initial magnitude of clot and pulmonary embolism (PE) recurrence may contribute to the development of CTEPH. Only few specific thrombophilic factors, such as phospholipid antibodies, lupus anticoagulant and elevated factor VIII, are statistically associated with CTEPH. A mechanistic view of CTEPH as a disease caused by obliteration of central pulmonary arteries by pulmonary emboli is too simplistic. Based on available data one may speculate that PE may be followed by a pulmonary vascular remodelling process modified by infection, immune phenomena, inflammation, circulating and vascular-resident progenitor cells, thyroid hormone replacement or malignancy. Both plasmatic factors (hypercoagulation, “sticky” red blood cells, high platelet counts and uncleavable fibrinogens) and a misguided vascular remodelling process contribute to major vessel and small vessel obliteration. Endothelial dysfunction and endothelial–mesenchymal transition may be important, but their precise roles remain obscure. There exists no animal model for CTEPH; therefore, experimentation in the future must include human tissues and clinical data in parallel.
The viscosity bound conjecture and hydrodynamics of M2-brane theory at finite chemical potential

Kovtun, Son and Starinets have conjectured that the viscosity to entropy density ratio η/s is always bounded from below by /(4πkB) for all forms of matter. The proposed viscosity bound appears to be saturated in all computations done whenever a supergravity dual is available. We consider the near horizon limit of a stack of M2-branes in the grand canonical ensemble at finite R-charge densities, corresponding to non-zero angular momentum in the bulk. The corresponding four-dimensional R-charged black hole in Anti-de Sitter space provides a holographic dual in which various transport coefficients can be calculated. We find that the shear viscosity increases as soon as a background R-charge density is turned on. We compute numerically the first few corrections to the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio η/s and discover that up to fourth order all corrections originating from a non-zero chemical potential vanish, leaving the bound saturated. This is a sharp signal in favor of the saturation of the viscosity bound for event horizons even in the presence of some finite background field strength. We discuss implications of this observation for the conjectured bound.
Send Orders of Reprints at Reprints@benthamscience.org Neuronal-glial Interactions Define the Role of Nitric Oxide in Neural Functional Processes

Nitric oxide (NO) is a versatile cellular messenger performing a variety of physiologic and pathologic actions in most tissues. It is particularly important in the nervous system, where it is involved in multiple functions, as well as in neuropathology, when produced in excess. Several of these functions are based on interactions between NO produced by neurons and NO produced by glial cells, mainly astrocytes and microglia. The present paper briefly reviews some of these interactions, in particular those involved in metabolic regulation, control of cerebral blood flow, axonogenesis, synaptic function and neurogenesis. Aim of the paper is mainly to underline the physiologic aspects of these interactions rather than the pathologic ones.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Exploring Age-related Brain Degeneration in Meditation Practitioners

A growing body of research suggests that meditation practices are associated with substantial psychological as well as physiological benefits. In searching for the biological mechanisms underlying the beneficial impact of meditation, studies have revealed practice-induced alterations of neurotransmitters, brain activity, and cognitive abilities, just to name a few. These findings not only imply a close link between meditation and brain structure, but also suggest possible modulating effects of meditation on age-related brain atrophy. Given that normal aging is associated with significant loss of brain tissue, meditation-induced growth and/or preservation might manifest as a seemingly reduced brain age in meditators (i.e., cerebral measures characteristic of younger brains). Surprisingly, there are only three published studies that have addressed the question of whether meditation diminishes age-related brain degeneration. This paper reviews these three studies with respect to the brain attributes studied, the analytical strategies applied, and the findings revealed. The review concludes with an elaborate discussion on the significance of existing studies, implications and directions for future studies, as well as the overall relevance of this field of research.
Gonadotrophin stimulation of non-luteinized granulosa cells increases steroid production and the expression of enzymes involved in estrogen and progesterone synthesis.

BACKGROUND In regular IVF treatment, mature oocytes are collected with their luteinized granulosa cells (GCs). When in vitro maturation (IVM) of the oocytes is performed, non-luteinized GCs can be collected. We have investigated how these cells respond to gonadotrophin stimulation in culture. METHODS GCs were collected from patients undergoing IVM treatment and compared with GCs from IVF patients. The cells were stimulated with FSH and/or hCG. After 48 h, culture media were collected for hormone analysis, and RNA was isolated for gene expression analysis. RESULTS In IVM GCs, hCG and FSH alone and in combination induced significantly increased progesterone production, and FSH alone and in combination with hCG increased estrogen production. We also studied the gene expression of P-450aromatase and P-450scc and the receptors for FSH and LH. In non-luteinized GCs, the expression levels of P-450aromatase increased with all treatments, and P-450scc expression increased with the combined FSH and hCG treatment. LHR expression increased with FSH treatment, but the FSH receptor expression did not change with different treatments. CONCLUSIONS Non-luteinized GCs behaved differently from luteinized GCs in culture. The data help understand the final stages of maturation of human oocytes and follicles.
Are Pharmaceuticals with Evolutionary Conserved Molecular Drug Targets More Potent to Cause Toxic Effects in Non-Target Organisms?

The ubiquitous use of pharmaceuticals has resulted in a continuous discharge into wastewater and pharmaceuticals and their metabolites are found in the environment. Due to their design towards specific drug targets, pharmaceuticals may be therapeutically active already at low environmental concentrations. Several human drug targets are evolutionary conserved in aquatic organisms, raising concerns about effects of these pharmaceuticals in non-target organisms. In this study, we hypothesized that the toxicity of a pharmaceutical towards a non-target invertebrate depends on the presence of the human drug target orthologs in this species. This was tested by assessing toxicity of pharmaceuticals with (miconazole and promethazine) and without (levonorgestrel) identified drug target orthologs in the cladoceran Daphnia magna. The toxicity was evaluated using general toxicity endpoints at individual (immobility, reproduction and development), biochemical (RNA and DNA content) and molecular (gene expression) levels. The results provide evidence for higher toxicity of miconazole and promethazine, i.e. the drugs with identified drug target orthologs. At the individual level, miconazole had the lowest effect concentrations for immobility and reproduction (0.3 and 0.022 mg L−1, respectively) followed by promethazine (1.6 and 0.18 mg L−1, respectively). At the biochemical level, individual RNA content was affected by miconazole and promethazine already at 0.0023 and 0.059 mg L−1, respectively. At the molecular level, gene expression for cuticle protein was significantly suppressed by exposure to both miconazole and promethazine; moreover, daphnids exposed to miconazole had significantly lower vitellogenin expression. Levonorgestrel did not have any effects on any endpoints in the concentrations tested. These results highlight the importance of considering drug target conservation in environmental risk assessments of pharmaceuticals.
Journal of Translational Medicine Identification of a Public Cdr3 Motif and a Biased Utilization of T-cell Receptor V Beta and J Beta Chains in Hla-a2/melan-a-specific T-cell Clonotypes of Melanoma Patients

Background: Assessment of T-cell diversity, besides giving insights about the molecular basis of tumor antigen recognition, has clinical implications since it provides criteria for evaluating antigen-specific T cells clinically relevant for spontaneous and vaccine-induced anti-tumor activity. Melan-A is one of the melanoma antigens most frequently recognized by peripheral and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in HLA-A2+ melanoma patients. Many clinical trials involving anti-tumor vaccination have been conducted using modified versions of this peptide.
RISKS TO TELECOMMUNICATION EQUIPMENT UNDER FREE AIR COOLING CONDITIONS AND THEIR MITIGATION

The telecommunication industry is concerned about the energy costs of its operating infrastructure, and the associated greenhouse gas emissions. At present, more than half of the total energy consumption of data centers is for the power and cooling infrastructure that supports the storage and communication equipment. One method of reducing energy consumption is an approach called ―free air cooling,‖ where the ambient air is used to cool the equipment directly, thereby reducing the energy consumed in cooling and conditioning the air. However, the impacts of this approach on the performance and reliability of telecommunication equipment need to be identified. The implementation of free air cooling changes the operating environment, including temperature, humidity and airborne contamination, which may have a significant impact on the performance and reliability of telecom equipment. This paper presents the challenges posed by free air cooling and presents a multi-stage process for evaluating and mitigating the potential risks arising from this new operating environment.
Explore click models for search ranking

Recent advances in click model have positioned it as an effective approach to estimate document relevance based on user behavior in web search. Yet, few works have been conducted to explore the use of click model to help web search ranking. In this paper, we focus on learning a ranking function by taking the results from a click model into account. Thus, besides the editorial relevance data arising from the explicit manually labeled search result by experts, we also have the estimated relevance data that is automatically inferred from click models based on user search behavior. We carry out extensive experiments on large-scale commercial datasets and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.
Grouping maintenance strategy with availability constraint under limited repairmen

The paper deals with a development of the rolling horizon approach introduced recently for grouping maintenance strategies of multi-component systems by integrating two efficient optimization algorithms. The proposed approach can help to construct an optimal maintenance planning with a given availability constraint under limited repairmen. Thanks to the rolling horizon spirit, the maintenance planning can be updated to take into account short-term information which could be changed with time. A numerical example of a multi-component system is finally introduced to illustrate the use and the advantages of the proposed approach in the maintenance optimization framework.
Synchronizing the motion of a quadrocopter to music

This paper presents a quadrocopter flying in rhythm to music. The quadrocopter performs a periodic side-to-side motion in time to a musical beat. Underlying controllers are designed that stabilize the vehicle and produce a swinging motion. Synchronization is then achieved by using concepts from phase-locked loops. A phase comparator combined with a correction algorithm eliminate the phase error between the music reference and the actual quadrocopter motion. Experimental results show fast and effective synchronization that is robust to sudden changes in the reference amplitude and frequency. Changes in frequency and amplitude are tracked precisely when adding an additional feedforward component, based on an experimentally determined look-up table.
A tale of two cities (and one vowel): Sociolinguistic variation in Swedish

Abstract Previous studies of language contact in multilingual urban neighborhoods in Europe claim the emergence of new varieties spoken by immigrant-background youth. This paper examines the sociolinguistic conditioning of variation in allophones of Swedish /ε:/ of young people of immigrant and nonimmigrant background in Stockholm and Gothenburg. Although speaker background and sex condition the variation, their effects differ in each city. In Stockholm there are no significant social differences and the allophonic difference appears to have been neutralized. Gothenburg speakers are divided into three groups, based on speaker origin and sex, each of which orients toward different norms. Our conclusions appeal to dialectal diffusion and the desire to mark ethnic identity in a diverse sociolinguistic context. These results demonstrate that not only language contact but also dialect change should be considered together when investigating language variation in modern-day cities.
Ambiguous queries: test collections need more sense

Although there are many papers examining ambiguity in Information Retrieval, this paper shows that there is a whole class of ambiguous word that past research has barely explored. It is shown that the class is more ambiguous than other word types and is commonly used in queries. The lack of test collections containing ambiguous queries is highlighted and a method for creating collections from existing resources is described. Tests using the new collection show the impact of query ambiguity on an IR system: it is shown that conventional systems are incapable of dealing effectively with such queries and that current assumptions about how to improve search effectiveness do not hold when searching on this common query type.
NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-AFSC-203 Re-analysis of Gray Whale Southbound Migration Surveys 1967-2006 by

Between 1967 and 2007, 23 seasons of shore-based counts of the Eastern North Pacific (ENP) stock of gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) were conducted throughout all or most of the southbound migration near Carmel, California. Population estimates have been derived from these surveys using a variety of techniques that were adapted as the data collection protocol evolved. The subsequent time series of estimates was used to evaluate trend and population status, resulting in the conclusion that the population was no longer endangered and had achieved its optimum sustainable population (OSP) level. We re-evaluated the data from all of the surveys using a common estimation procedure and an improved method for treatment of error in pod size and detection probability estimation. The newly derived abundance estimates between 1967 and 1987 were generally larger (-2.5% to 21%) than previous abundance estimates. However, the opposite was the case for survey years 1992 to 2006, with estimates declining from -4.9% to -29%. This pattern is largely explained by the differences in the correction for pod size bias which occurred because the pod sizes in the calibration data over­ represented pods of two or more whales and underrepresented single whales relative to the estimated true pod size distribution
Improving the Output from Software that Generates Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) Test Items Automatically using Controlled Rhetorical Structure Theory

A combination of established theories [1]. [2]. [3]. [4] are applied in an attempt to improve the output from a system [5],[6] which automatically generates MCQ (Multiple Choice Question) test items from source documents. The literature observes that NLG (Natural Language Generation) system evaluation is non-trivial [7] and so the method is evaluated using a process suited to the featured domain [8]. The experiment intersperses 38 MCQ test items whose question stems have been generated using Controlled Rhetorical Structure Theory (CRST) with 62 manually created MCQ test items to form an item bank. A usability score is assigned to each item by a domain expert and these scores are used in the evaluation of the effectiveness of the method. The results provide some evidence to support the incorporation of CRST into future versions of the software.
Does a Single Intravenous Injection of the 5HT3 Receptor Antagonist Ondansetron Have an Analgesic Effect in Neuropathic Pain? A Double-Blinded, Placebo-Controlled Cross-Over Study

Neurokinin–1-expressing neurones in lamina I to III of the spinal cord are intimately involved in the regulation of ascending and spino-bulbal pathways that regulate excitatory transmission. In experimental animals, ablation of these neurones reduces the responses to a variety of nociceptive stimuli. Furthermore, in animals, spinal application of the selective 5HT3 receptor antagonist ondansetron mimics these effects, indicating that 5HT3 receptors play a pronociceptive role and mediate descending excitatory controls that allow spinal neurones to fully code peripheral stimuli. In this study, we examined the potential analgesic effect of a single IV injection of ondansetron in humans with chronic neuropathic pain. Each consenting subject received a single IV injection of 8 mg ondansetron and placebo in varying order at least 1 wk apart with pain scores being recorded for the 48 h preceding and after each injection. Pain scores were significantly reduced 2 h after ondansetron injection (but at no other time point). This suggests that ondansetron can have an analgesic effect in neuropathic pain. Side effects were minor and infrequent.