Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Attacks on fitness trackers revisited: a case-study of unfit firmware security

Fitness trackers - wearables that continuously record a wearer's step count and related activity data - are quickly gaining in popularity. Apart from being useful for individuals seeking a more healthy lifestyle, their data is also being used in court and by insurance companies to adjust premiums. For these use cases, it is essential to ensure authenticity and integrity of data. Here we demonstrate a flaw in the way firmware for Withings' Activite is verified, allowing an adversary to compromise the tracker itself. This type of attack has so far not been applied to fitness trackers. Vendors have started mitigating previous attacks, which manipulated data by interfering with wireless channels, or by physically moving the tracker to fool sensors. Hardware similarities amongst different trackers suggest findings can be transferred to other tracker as well.
Diet-induced acidosis: is it real and clinically relevant?

The concept of diet-induced ‘acidosis’ as a cause of disease has been a subject of interest for more than a century. The present article reviews the history of our evolving understanding of physiological pH, the physiological support for the concept of ‘acidosis’, the causes of acidosis, how it is recognised, its short-term effects as well as the long-term clinical relevance of preventative measures, and the research support for normalisation of pH. Further, we suggest differentiation of the terms ‘acidosis’ and ‘acidaemia’ as a way to resolve the conflation of these topics which has led to confusion and controversy. The available research makes a compelling case that diet-induced acidosis, not diet-induced acidaemia, is a real phenomenon, and has a significant, clinical, long-term pathophysiological effect that should be recognised and potentially counterbalanced by dietary means.
Performance Evaluation of Load-Balanced Routing via Bounded Randomization

Future computer networks are expected to carry bursty traffic. Shortest -path routing protocols such as OSPF and RIP have t he disadvantage of causing bottlenecks due to their inherent single -path routing. That is, the uniformly selected shortest path between a source and a destination may become highly congested even when many other paths have low utilization. We propose a fam ily of routing schemes that distribute data traffic over the whole network via bounded randomization; in this way, they remove bottlenecks and consequently improve network performance. For each data message to be sent from a source s to a destination d, each of the proposed routing protocols randomly choose an intermediate node e from a selected set of network nodes, and routes the data message along a shortest path from s to e. Then, it routes the data message via a shortest path from e to d. Intuitively, we would expect that this increase the effective bandwidth between each source -destination pair. Our simulation results indicate that the family of proposed load -balanced routing protocols distribute traffic evenly over the whole network and, in consequenc e, increases network performance with respect to throughput, message loss, message delay and link utilization. Moreover, implementing our scheme requires only a simple extension to any shortest-path routing protocol.
Knockdown of the Inhibitor of Apoptosis BRUCE Sensitizes Resistant Breast Cancer Cells to Chemotherapeutic Agents

Background and objectives Management of patients with breast cancer often fails because of inherent or acquired resistance to chemotherapy. BRUCE (BIR repeat containing ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme) is a member of the inhibitor of apoptosis protein (IAP) family. It has various cellular functions including suppression of apoptosis and promotion of cytokinesis. Furthermore, it pays a critical role in promotion of DNA damage repair and preservation of genome stability, a new function recently reported by our group. Although BRUCE is expressed in breast cancer cell lines, its expression in human primary breast tumors and its contribution to chemoresistance in breast cancers has not been explored. Chemotherapeutic drugs are used in the treatment of breast cancer patients. However, they are not effective to all patients and patients often develop resistance. Consequently we explored if BRUCE protein level, as judged by immunohistochemistry (IHC), is higher in primary breast tumors than normal breast tissue. We also examined if depletion of BRUCE, using a lentiviral shRNA approach, enhances cell sensitivity to multiple chemotherapeutic agents, including cisplatin, an agent that induces DNA damage by generating DNA cross-links, and taxol, a microtubule stabilizer and mitotic inhibitor. The reason for including these two chemotherapeutic agents in this study is that they hit two essential cellular processes of DNA repair and cytokinesis in which BRUCE plays critical roles. Results and methods IHC analysis of BRUCE revealed significantly higher levels of BRUCE in primary breast tumors than normal breast tissue. Knockdown of BRUCE protein expression by lentiviral shRNA resulted in increased sensitivity to cisplatin in the resistant breast cancer MDB-MD-231 cell line. Moreover, depletion of BRUCE in this cell line achieved a more profound level of cell killing when coupled to low doses of cisplatin and taxol combined, rather than either drug used alone. Conclusions Our data suggest that elevated protein levels of BRUCE in breast tumors may contribute to chemoresistance in breast cancer patients. In support of this suggestion, our data demonstrate that a reduction in BRUCE expression in breast cancer cell lines increases the toxicity of several chemotherapeutic agents. In all likelihood, the contribution of increased BRUCE levels to chemoresistance are likely due to its roles in suppression of apoptosis, promotion of cytokinesis and facilitation of DNA damage repair. These observations suggest that therapeutic suppression of BRUCE could improve chemosensitivity in chemo-resistant breast cancer patients. Therefore, future development of effective inhibitors of BRUCE could benefit patients with high BRUCE expression and chemoresistance.
Noun Extraction Tool for ANLP Applications

Noun is a word representing an idea, a thing, a person or a place. Identifying nouns in Arabic texts is an important task in many Arabic Natural Language Processing (ANLP) applications. This paper presents a noun extraction system that extracts nouns according to Arabic grammar rules. The system was evaluated against the widely used Stanford Arabic Part of Speech (POS) tagger. The results show that our proposed method is more efficient and achieves benchmark accuracies
Pembrolizumab Plus Pegylated Interferon alfa-2b or Ipilimumab for Advanced Melanoma or Renal Cell Carcinoma: Dose-Finding Results from the Phase Ib KEYNOTE-029 Study

Purpose: Pembrolizumab monotherapy, ipilimumab monotherapy, and pegylated interferon alfa-2b (PEG-IFN) monotherapy are active against melanoma and renal cell carcinoma (RCC). We explored the safety and preliminary antitumor activity of pembrolizumab combined with either ipilimumab or PEG-IFN in patients with advanced melanoma or RCC. Experimental Design: The phase Ib KEYNOTE-029 study (ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT02089685) included independent pembrolizumab plus reduced-dose ipilimumab and pembrolizumab plus PEG-IFN cohorts. Pembrolizumab 2 mg/kg every 3 weeks (Q3W) plus 4 doses of ipilimumab 1 mg/kg Q3W was tolerable if ≤6 of 18 patients experienced a dose-limiting toxicity (DLT). The target DLT rate for pembrolizumab 2 mg/kg Q3W plus PEG-IFN was 30%, with a maximum of 14 patients per dose level. Response was assessed per RECIST v1.1 by central review. Results: The ipilimumab cohort enrolled 22 patients, including 19 evaluable for DLTs. Six patients experienced ≥1 DLT. Grade 3 to 4 treatment-related adverse events occurred in 13 (59%) patients. Responses occurred in 5 of 12 (42%) patients with melanoma and 3 of 10 (30%) patients with RCC. In the PEG-IFN cohort, DLTs occurred in 2 of 14 (14%) patients treated at dose level 1 (PEG-IFN 1 μg/kg/week) and 2 of 3 (67%) patients treated at dose level 2 (PEG-IFN 2 μg/kg/week). Grade 3 to 4 treatment-related adverse events occurred in 10 of 17 (59%) patients. Responses occurred in 1 of 5 (20%) patients with melanoma and 2 of 12 (17%) patients with RCC. Conclusions: Pembrolizumab 2 mg/kg Q3W plus ipilimumab 1 mg/kg Q3W was tolerable and provided promising antitumor activity in patients with advanced melanoma or RCC. The maximum tolerated dose of pembrolizumab plus PEG-IFN had limited antitumor activity in this population. Clin Cancer Res; 24(8); 1805–15. ©2018 AACR.
Deficits in Inhibitory Control in Smokers During a Go/NoGo Task: An Investigation Using Event-Related Brain Potentials

Introduction The role of inhibitory control in addictive behaviors is highlighted in several models of addictive behaviors. Although reduced inhibitory control has been observed in addictive behaviors, it is inconclusive whether this is evident in smokers. Furthermore, it has been proposed that drug abuse individuals with poor response inhibition may experience greater difficulties not consuming substances in the presence of drug cues. The major aim of the current study was to provide electrophysiological evidence for reduced inhibitory control in smokers and to investigate whether this is more pronounced during smoking cue exposure. Methods Participants (19 smokers and 20 non-smoking controls) performed a smoking Go/NoGo task. Behavioral accuracy and amplitudes of the N2 and P3 event-related potential (ERP), both reflecting aspects of response inhibition, were the main variables of interest. Results Reduced NoGo N2 amplitudes in smokers relative to controls were accompanied by decreased task performance, whereas no differences between groups were found in P3 amplitudes. This was found to represent a general lack of inhibition in smokers, and not dependent on the presence of smoking cues. Conclusions The current results suggest that smokers have difficulties with response inhibition, which is an important finding that eventually can be implemented in smoking cessation programs. More research is needed to clarify the exact role of cue exposure on response inhibition.
Molecular Mechanisms of Proteinuria in Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis

Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) is the most common primary glomerular disease resulting in end-stage renal disease in the USA and is increasing in prevalence worldwide. It is a diverse clinical entity with idiopathic, genetic, metabolic, infectious, and other causes that culminate in a characteristic histologic pattern of injury. Proteinuria is a hallmark of FSGS as well as other primary and secondary glomerular disorders. The magnitude of proteinuria at disease onset and during treatment has prognostic implications for renal survival as well as associated cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Significant advances over the last two decades have shed light on the molecular architecture of the glomerular filtration barrier. The podocyte is the target cell for injury in FSGS. A growing list of disease-causing gene mutations encoding proteins that regulate podocyte survival and homeostasis has been identified in FSGS patients. Several pathogenic and regulatory pathways have been uncovered that result in proteinuria in rodent models and human FSGS. The recurrence of proteinuria and FSGS after kidney transplantation is supporting evidence for the role of a circulating permeability factor in disease pathogenesis. These advances reviewed herein have significant implications for disease classification and therapeutic drug development for FSGS.
A Deep Learning Approach to the Citywide Traffic Accident Risk Prediction

With the rapid development of urbanization, the boom of vehicle numbers has resulted in serious traffic accidents, which led to casualties and huge economic losses. The ability to predict the risk of traffic accident is important in the prevention of the occurrence of accidents and to reduce the damages caused by accidents in a proactive way. However, traffic accident risk prediction with high spatiotemporal resolution is difficult, mainly due to the complex traffic environment, human behavior, and lack of real-time traffic-related data. Based on the quantitative analysis of big traffic accident data, this paper first introduced an important characteristic of traffic accidents - the spatiotemporal correlation, and then constructed a high accurate deep learning model for traffic accident risk prediction based on spatiotemporal correlation pattern. The predictive accident risk can be potential applied to the traffic accident warning system. The proposed method can be integrated into an intelligent traffic control system toward a more reasonable traffic prediction and command organization.
Identification of the IgE-Binding Cross-Reacting Allergen Repertoir of dible Insects

Allergic manifestations to the ingestion of edible insects have been reported, especially in countries where edible insects are traditionally consumed. However, to date, allergens of edible insects have been poorly investigated. The AllergenOnline server was used for assessing the allergenic character of the putative IgE-binding crossreactive allergens from the consumed yellow mealworm, silkworm, house fly maggot, migratory locust, house cricket, greater wax moth, black soldier fly, American grasshopper and Indian mealmoth. Positive hits correspond to allergens exhibiting >35% identity over an 80-residue sliding window and 100% identity over an 8-residue sliding window, respectively. Most of the hits consist of allergens from arthropods such as dust mites, crustaceans and insects, and more rarely, of allergens from mollusks, nematodes, and fungi. All the identified allergens share conserved amino acid sequences and three-dimensional structures. Accordingly, the allergens of edible insects form clusters closely related to crustacean, mollusk and nematode clusters into the phylogenetic trees built up from the sequence alignments. Our computational investigations suggest edible insects possess a large repertoire of IgE-binding allergens they share with phylogenetically related groups of arthropods, mollusks, and nematodes. These cross-reacting allergens are susceptible to trigger allergic reactions in individuals previously sensitized to shellfish or mollusks.
A pressure measurement for pull test validation in postural instability assessment

The pull test (PT) is a common maneuver used by neurologist to assess the postural instability of patients with iatrogenic forms or Parkinson's disease. Postural instability is one of the main causes of the incident of falls in elderly and people with neurological disease. The pull test (PT) consists in observing the user response after providing a tug to the patients' shoulders, in order to displace the center of gravity from its neutral position. With a nonstandard backward tug, the validity of the test can be seriously compromised; this problem became more serious when the test must be supplied to the same patient alter a given period of time to assess the time evolution of the disease. In this paper is presented a preliminary analysis on the usability of pressure sensing elements, connected in a matrix 4×4, for the pull strength evaluation. A static characterization has been carried out in order to assess the measurement range along with its uncertainty band (experimentally found). Results obtained demonstrate a good force measurement range (0.242 Kg–0.642 Kg), measured in a single sensing element.
Assessment of Canine Mast Cell Tumor Mortality Risk Based on Clinical, Histologic, Immunohistochemical, and Molecular Features

Mast cell tumor (MCT) is a frequent cutaneous neoplasm in dogs that is heterogeneous in clinical presentation and biological behavior, with a variable potential for recurrence and metastasis. Accurate prediction of clinical outcomes has been challenging. The study objective was to develop a system for classification of canine MCT according to the mortality risk based on individual assessment of clinical, histologic, immunohistochemical, and molecular features. The study included 149 dogs with a histologic diagnosis of cutaneous or subcutaneous MCT. By univariate analysis, MCT metastasis and related death was significantly associated with clinical stage (P < .0001, r P = –0.610), history of tumor recurrence (P < .0001, r P = –0.550), Patnaik (P < .0001, r P = –0.380) and Kiupel grades (P < .0001, r P = –0.500), predominant organization of neoplastic cells (P < .0001, r P = –0.452), mitotic count (P < .0001, r P = –0.325), Ki-67 labeling index (P < .0001, r P = –0.414), KITr pattern (P = .02, r P = 0.207), and c-KIT mutational status (P < .0001, r P = –0.356). By multivariate analysis with Cox proportional hazard model, only 2 features were independent predictors of overall survival: an amendment of the World Health Organization clinical staging system (hazard ratio [95% CI]: 1.824 [1.210-4.481]; P = .01) and a history of tumor recurrence (hazard ratio [95% CI]: 9.250 [2.158-23.268]; P < . 001]. From these results, we propose an amendment of the WHO staging system, a method of risk analysis, and a suggested approach to clinical and laboratory evaluation of dogs with cutaneous MCT.
Matchbox: a framework for dynamic configuration of service matching processes

Service discovery in global software markets is performed by brokers who act as intermediaries between service requesters and service providers. In order to discover services, brokers apply service matching for determining whether the specification of a provided service satisfies the requester's requirements. Brokers can already choose between a lot of different service matching approaches considering different service properties (structural, behavioral, and non-functional properties). Different matching approaches can be combined into configurable matching processes leading to a high matching quality (e.g., accurate matching results). However, this combination and configuration is a manual procedure and has to be repeated for different requesters' or market requirements regarding matching quality. In this paper, we propose our framework MatchBox, which supports a broker in reusing existing matching approaches and combining them in a model-driven way based on a reconfigurable model of the matching process. Using this reconfigurable model, MatchBox takes care of control and dataflow between matching approaches and executes the modeled processes automatically. As a case study, we integrated eleven matchers into MatchBox to demonstrate that it remains flexibility and reduces effort for a broker at the same time.
Ultraviolet Detector Based on TiO2 Thin Film

In this paper, TiO2 thin film with MSM (metal-semiconductor-metal) structure was used to fabricate ultraviolet (UV) detector. The film was fabricated via sol-gel method on silicon wafer with 300nm oxide layer and annealed at four different temperatures (400oC, 500oC, 600oC and 800oC). The quality of the thin films was characterized by means of X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscope. Then a pair of symmetric Ag electrodes were deposited by thermal evaporation through a shade mask of interdigital structure. The photo-electric properties of the device including I-V characteristic, transfer characteristic and time response et.al. were studied with or without explored to 254nm UV light. The electrical measurements of the device show a big increase of current when explored the device to 254nm UV light, and the rise time of the device is very quick, but the fall time is relatively long. The detector with simple fabrication process, low cost, and superior performance would provide a potential application in UV detectors.
Autoimmunity and Immunotherapy of Type 1 Diabetes

Type 1 diabetes, formerly termed insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM), is a chronic organ-specific autoimmune disorder thought to be caused by proinflammatory autoreactive CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, which mediate progressive and selective damage of insulinproducing pancreatic beta-cells (Atkinson & Eisenbarth, 2001). The reduction of beta-cell mass leads to a lack of insulin and thereby loss of blood glucose control (Boettler & von Herrath, 2010). The worldwide prevalence of T1D was estimated to be 171 million cases among the adult population (Wild et al., 2004). Its annual incidence varies widely from one country to another (from less than 1 per 100,000 inhabitants in Asia to approximately up to 25/100,000 population/year in North America, more than 30 per 100,000 in Scandinavia and up to 41/100,000 population/year in Europe). It is in steady increase across the globe, especially among children aged less than five years (Kajander et al., 2000; Vija et al., 2009). According to the European Diabetes (EURODIAB) study group, the prevalence of T1D in Europe will increase significantly in children younger than 15 years of age to reach 160,000 cases in 2020 (Patterson et al., 2009). These data will result in an increasing number of patients with longstanding diabetes and with a risk of serious complications (Kessler, 2010). These include heart diseases and strokes, high blood pressure, renal failure and ketoacidosis (DKA) (Boettler & von Herrath, 2010). To date, it has not been possible to prevent the autoimmune response to beta-cells in human, due probably to its unknown aetiology, although it is known that development of T1D is genetically controlled and thought to be initiated in susceptible individuals by environmental factors such as virus infections (Luo et al., 2010; Mukherjee & DiLorenzo, 2010; von Herrath, 2009). It is now evident that targeted destruction may go undetected for many years, but antibodies to various beta-cell antigens can be easily demonstrable in the sera of patients at risk before clinical onset (Achenbach et al., 2005). Additionally, some endogenous insulin secretion is generally present at the onset of clinical diabetes (Scheen, 2004), during which time, immunotherapeutic intervention may be effective (Staeva-Vieira et al., 2007). This chapter emphasizes the principal immunological risk markers of T1D and especially the role of cell-mediated immune response leading to pancreatic beta-cells destruction, as well as the most promising immunotherapeutic approaches for prevention and treatment of the disease.
Assessment of Dynamic Responses of Skin Simulant in a Drop Weight Penetration Test

Skin laceration injury caused by a penetration of small curvature edge frequently occurs in a domestic accident. An assessment method for this injury is necessary in order to develop a safer manufactured product. To assess the risk of skin laceration injury in a penetration accident, a skin simulant made from silicone rubber was proposed. However, mechanical responses of this skin simulant under dynamic penetration loading have not yet been investigated. In this study, a drop weight penetration test device was developed in order to simulate penetration accidents under impact velocities of over 1 m/s. The device was then used for investigating the dynamic responses of skin simulant against several blades with different tip curvature radii. Load, penetration depth, impulse and energy at rupture were then determined from the test results. Load and penetration depth at rupture increased with the increase of tip curvature radius of the blades. Furthermore, the drop weight test result showed larger response compared to the quasi-static test result which might be caused by the viscous effect and the polymer characteristics such as cross-linking of the skin simulant.