Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Concurrent Bounded Model Checking

We introduce a methodology, based on symbolic execution, for Concurrent Bounded Model Checking. In our approach, we translate a program into a formula in a disjunctive form. This design enables concurrent verification, with a main thread running symbolic execution, without any constraint solving, to build subformulas, and a set of worker threads running a decision procedure for satisfiability checks. We have implemented this methodology in a tool called JCBMC, the first bounded model checker for Java. JCBMC is built as an extension of Java Pathfinder, an open-source verification platform developed by NASA. JCBMC uses Symbolic PathFinder (SPF) for the symbolic execution, Z3 as the solver and implements concurrency with multi-threading. For evaluation, we compare JCBMC against SPF and the Bounded Model Checker CBMC. The results of the experiments show that we can achieve significant advantages of performance over these two tools.
Towards Mitigation of Low and Slow Application DDoS Attacks

Distributed Denial of Service attacks are a growing threat to organizations and, as defense mechanisms are becoming more advanced, hackers are aiming at the application layer. For example, application layer Low and Slow Distributed Denial of Service attacks are becoming a serious issue because, due to low resource consumption, they are hard to detect. In this position paper, we propose a reference architecture that mitigates the Low and Slow Distributed Denial of Service attacks by utilizing Software Defined Infrastructure capabilities. We also propose two concrete architectures based on the reference architecture: a Performance Model-Based and Off-The-Shelf Components based architecture, respectively. We introduce the Shark Tank concept, a cluster under detailed monitoring that has full application capabilities and where suspicious requests are redirected for further filtering.
On Design of Metal-Matrix Composites Lighter than Air

This paper discusses some theoretical aspects of design of ultralight metallic materials using analytical and heuristic arguments. Potential application of syntactic foams to obtain metal-matrix composites lighter than air is also analyzed. Carbon allotropes (fullerenes, colossal carbon tubes) and some non-carbon materials are considered as components of ultralight metal-matrix composites. Calculations for the size of fullerenes, number of atoms in their structure, and coating thickness required to produce ultralight composites are presented. It is concluded that 3D carbon molecules (fullerenes) and colossal carbon tubes are the most promising components to design ultralight metallic materials which can be lighter than air.
Time and intensity cues are processed independently in the auditory system of the owl

Space-specific neurons, found in the barn owl's inferior colliculus, respond selectively to a narrow range of interaural time and intensity differences. We show that injecting a local anesthetic into one cochlear nucleus, nucleus magnocellularis, alters the space-specific cell's selectivity for interaural time difference, leaving its selectivity for interaural intensity difference intact. Anesthetizing the other cochlear nucleus, nucleus angularis, has the converse effects. We show also that the space-specific neuron's selectivity for one interaural cue is the same for all effective values of the other cue. We conclude that time and intensity cues are processed in separate neural channels of the barn owl's auditory system and that the two cues operate independently.
Energy-efficient Optimization of Reorganization-Enabled Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper studies the target tracking problem in wireless sensor networks where sensor nodes are deployed randomly. To achieve tracking accuracy constrained by energy consumption, an energy-efficient optimization approach that enables reorganization of wireless sensor networks is proposed. The approach includes three phases which are related to prediction, localization and recovery, respectively. A particle filter algorithm is implemented on the sink node to forecast the future movement of the target in the first prediction phase. Upon the completion of this phase, the most energy efficient sensor nodes are awakened to collaboratively locate the target. Energy efficiency is evaluated by the ratio of mutual information to energy consumption. The recovery phase is needed to improve the robustness of the approach. It is performed when the target is missed because of the incorrect predicted target location. In order to recapture the target by awakening additional sensor nodes as few as possible, a genetic-algorithm-based mechanism is introduced to cover the recovery area. We show that the proposed approach has excellent tracking performance. Moreover, it can efficiently reduce energy consumption, prolong network lifetime and reduce network overheads.
Correlation of Structural and Optical Properties of nc-Ge/a-Si Multilayers Grown by Ion Beam Sputtering

The nc-Ge/a-Si multilayer structures were fabricated by ion beam sputtering technique on silicon substrates at temperature of 400 °C. Raman scattering spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and room temperature photoluminescence were used to characterize the structure and optical property of the samples. It was found that the nc-Ge/a-Si multilayer sample can be obtained when the Ge sublayer is 3 nm. The room temperature photoluminescence was observed and the luminescent peak is located at 685 nm. Compared with the a-Ge/a-Si film, the intensity of PL of the nc-Ge/a-Si multilayer film becomes stronger due to the higher volume fraction of crystallized component.
A study on lattice rescoring with knowledge scores for automatic speech recognition

Abstract We study lattice rescoring with knowledge scores for automaticspeech recognition. Frame-based log likelihoodratio is adopted asa score measure of the goodness-of-ﬁt between a speech segmentand the knowledge sources. We evaluate our approach in two dif-ferent applications: phone recognition, and connected digit con-tinuous recognition. By incorporating knowledge scores obtainedfrom 15 attribute detectors for place and manner of articulation,we reduced phone error rate from 40.52% to 35.16% using mono-phone models. The error rate can be further reduced to 33.42% fortriphone models. The same lattice rescoring algorithm is extendedto connected digit recognition using the TIDIGITS database, andwithout using any digit-speciﬁc training data. We observed thedigit error rate can be effectively reduced to 4.03% from 4.54%which was obtained with the conventional Viterbi decoding algo-rithm with no knowledge scores.Index Terms: detection-based automatic speech recognition, lat-tice rescoring, domain-independent speech recognition.
Genetic and structural validation of Aspergillus fumigatus N-acetylphosphoglucosamine mutase as an antifungal target

Aspergillus fumigatus is the causative agent of IA (invasive aspergillosis) in immunocompromised patients. It possesses a cell wall composed of chitin, glucan and galactomannan, polymeric carbohydrates synthesized by processive glycosyltransferases from intracellular sugar nucleotide donors. Here we demonstrate that A. fumigatus possesses an active AfAGM1 (A. fumigatus N-acetylphosphoglucosamine mutase), a key enzyme in the biosynthesis of UDP (uridine diphosphate)–GlcNAc (N-acetylglucosamine), the nucleotide sugar donor for chitin synthesis. A conditional agm1 mutant revealed the gene to be essential. Reduced expression of agm1 resulted in retarded cell growth and altered cell wall ultrastructure and composition. The crystal structure of AfAGM1 revealed an amino acid change in the active site compared with the human enzyme, which could be exploitable in the design of selective inhibitors. AfAGM1 inhibitors were discovered by high-throughput screening, inhibiting the enzyme with IC50s in the low μM range. Together, these data provide a platform for the future development of AfAGM1 inhibitors with antifungal activity.
Machine Hearing: An Emerging Field

If we had machines that could hear as humans do, we would expect them to be able to easily distinguish speech from music and background noises, to pull out the speech and music parts for special treatment, to know what direction sounds are coming from, to learn which noises are typical and which are noteworthy. Hearing machines should be able to organize what they hear; learn names for recognizable objects, actions, events, places, musical styles, instruments, and speakers; and retrieve sounds by reference to those names. These machines should be able to listen and react in real time, to take appropriate action on hearing noteworthy events, to participate in ongoing activities, whether in factories, in musical performances, or in phone conversations.
Life cycle studies of the hexose transporter of Plasmodium species and genetic validation of their essentiality

A Plasmodium falciparum hexose transporter (PfHT) has previously been shown to be a facilitative glucose and fructose transporter. Its expression in Xenopus laevis oocytes and the use of a glucose analogue inhibitor permitted chemical validation of PfHT as a novel drug target. Following recent re‐annotations of the P. falciparum genome, other putative sugar transporters have been identified. To investigate further if PfHT is the key supplier of hexose to P. falciparum and to extend studies to different stages of Plasmodium spp. , we functionally analysed the hexose transporters of both the human parasite P. falciparum and the rodent parasite Plasmodium berghei using gene targeting strategies. We show here the essential function of pfht for the erythrocytic parasite growth as it was not possible to knockout pfht unless the gene was complemented by an episomal construct. Also, we show that parasites are rescued from the toxic effect of a glucose analogue inhibitor when pfht is overexpressed in these transfectants. We found that the rodent malaria parasite orthologue, P. berghei hexose transporter (PbHT) gene, was similarly refractory to knockout attempts. However, using a single cross‐over transfection strategy, we generated transgenic P. berghei parasites expressing a PbHT–GFP fusion protein suggesting that locus is amenable for gene targeting. Analysis of pbht‐gfp transgenic parasites showed that PbHT is constitutively expressed through all the stages in the mosquito host in addition to asexual stages. These results provide genetic support for prioritizing PfHT as a target for novel antimalarials that can inhibit glucose uptake and kill parasites, as well as unveiling the expression of this hexose transporter in mosquito stages of the parasite, where it is also likely to be critical for survival.
Co-morbidities and 90-day Outcomes in Hospitalized COPD Exacerbations

COPD exacerbations resulting in hospitalization are accompanied by high mortality and morbidity. The contribution of specific co-morbidities to acute outcomes is not known in detail: existing studies have used either administrative data or small clinical cohorts and have provided conflicting results. Identification of co-existent diseases that affect outcomes provides opportunities to address these conditions proactively and improve overall COPD care. Cases were identified prospectively on admission then underwent retrospective case note audit to collect data including co-morbidities on up to 60 unselected consecutive acute COPD admissions between March and May in each hospital participating in the 2008 UK National COPD audit. Outcomes recorded were death in hospital, length of stay, and death and readmission at 90 days after index admission. 232 hospitals collected data on 9716 patients, mean age 73, 50% male, mean FEV1 42% predicted. Prevalence of co-morbidities were associated with increased age but better FEV1 and ex-smoker status and with worse outcomes for all four measures. Hospital mortality risk was increased with cor pulmonale, left ventricular failure, neurological conditions and non-respiratory malignancies whilst 90 day death was also increased by lung cancer and arrhythmias. Ischaemic and other heart diseases were important factors in readmission. This study demonstrates that co-morbidities adversely affect a range of short-term patient outcomes related to acute admission to hospital with exacerbations of COPD. Recognition of relevant accompanying diseases at admission provides an opportunity for specific interventions that may improve short-term prognosis.
Reactome: a database of reactions, pathways and biological processes

Reactome (http://www.reactome.org) is a collaboration among groups at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York University School of Medicine and The European Bioinformatics Institute, to develop an open source curated bioinformatics database of human pathways and reactions. Recently, we developed a new web site with improved tools for pathway browsing and data analysis. The Pathway Browser is an Systems Biology Graphical Notation (SBGN)-based visualization system that supports zooming, scrolling and event highlighting. It exploits PSIQUIC web services to overlay our curated pathways with molecular interaction data from the Reactome Functional Interaction Network and external interaction databases such as IntAct, BioGRID, ChEMBL, iRefIndex, MINT and STRING. Our Pathway and Expression Analysis tools enable ID mapping, pathway assignment and overrepresentation analysis of user-supplied data sets. To support pathway annotation and analysis in other species, we continue to make orthology-based inferences of pathways in non-human species, applying Ensembl Compara to identify orthologs of curated human proteins in each of 20 other species. The resulting inferred pathway sets can be browsed and analyzed with our Species Comparison tool. Collaborations are also underway to create manually curated data sets on the Reactome framework for chicken, Drosophila and rice.
Inherited prion disease with 5-OPRI

Background: Humanprion diseases have sporadic, acquired and inherited etiologies and show considerable phenotypic heterogeneity. An individual inherited prion disease offers an opportunity to study the determinants of this clinicopathologic heterogeneity among individuals with the same causal mutation. Methods: We report clinical and pathologic data from three families with different 5-octapeptide repeat insertion (5-OPRI) mutations of the prion protein gene (PRNP), extending the reported phenotypic range of this mutation. Results: The proband of a South African family presented with a rapidly progressive dementia and atypical pathology associated with kuru-like prion protein plaques. The original mutation in this family probably occurred on a PRNP allele encoding a 1-octapeptide repeat deletion polymorphism. This has not been previously reported as a precursor allele in over 30 other OPRI mutation kindreds. An English family with a genetically distinct mutation but identical protein product showed clinical onsets that varied 30 years between father and daughter, an effect that may be explained by their genotypes at PRNP codon 129. A patient from Northern Ireland with a phenotype of sporadic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease presenting with visual disturbance was unexpectedly found to have a 5-OPRI. Conclusions: When these cases were combined with the existing world literature, the mean age at onset for patients with 5-octapeptide repeat insertion (5-OPRI) was significantly later than that for patients with 6-OPRI, but both mutations exhibit a similar powerful disease modifying effect of PRNP codon 129.
Intrapreneurship in SMEs: about the role of management and R&D

ntrapreneurship is a research subject for over 30 years. Research focuses mainly on internal factors that stimulate intrapreneurship in large corporations. This paper reports a study on intrapreneurship in organizations of different sizes. Two indicators for intrapreneurship were developed. A first indicator to measure the perception of the organizational conditions, and the second indicator for intrapreneurial behaviour. A questionnaire was set out among 711 companies of different sizes of which 156 valid responses were received (response rate 22%). The results of this study shows that in organizations with an interest of management for intrapreneurship there are higher levels of intrapreneurship perceived as well as that the organizational conditions are more favourable. Higher budgets for RD in other words, perceived better conditions does not lead to higher levels or more intrapreneurship. I
Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports Bank Capital and Value in the Cross Section

We address two questions: (i) Are bank capital structure and value correlated in the cross section, and if so, how? (ii) If bank capital does affect bank value, how are the components of bank value affected by capital? We first develop a dynamic model with a dissipative cost of bank capital that is traded off against the benefits of capital: strengthened incentives for the bank to engage in value-enhancing loan monitoring and a higher probability of avoiding regulatory closure due to loan delinquencies. The model predicts that (i) the total value of the bank and its equity capital are positively correlated in the cross section, and (ii) the various components of bank value―the synergies among the bank’s assets and liabilities and the net present value to the shareholders of investing capital in the bank―are also positively cross-sectionally related to bank capital. When we confront the predictions with the data on bank acquisitions, we find strong support. The results are robust to a variety of alternative explanations―growth prospects, desire to acquire toe-hold positions, desire of capital-starved acquirers to buy capital-rich targets, market timing, pecking order, the effect of banks with binding capital requirements, toobig-to-fail, target profitability, risk, and mechanical effects.
Citizens' Health Information Privacy Concerns: A Multifaceted Approach

The increasing prevalence of ICTs in healthcare is transforming the health services received by patients. This transformation is in part facilitated by healthcare providers’ utilization of eHealth technologies, which provide physicians with access to the health data required to treat patients. The recent emergence of mobile health (mHealth) technologies such as mHealth applications and personal health records (PHRs) enable citizens to play a role in this transformation by presenting them with the opportunity to manage their own health. The success of both eHealth and mHealth technologies is contingent on acceptance and adoption by both physicians and citizens. However in order to ensure success, the factors driving or inhibiting acceptance and adoption of these technologies must be understood. In the existing literature, factors driving citizen acceptance of health ICTs are under-examined. This paper focuses on citizens’ health information privacy concerns (HIPC), which are regularly cited as a barrier to health ICT implementation. The paper presents a framework to investigate the influence of citizens’ HIPC on their acceptance and adoption of health ICTs. An upcoming study which tests this framework and the hypotheses presented in the paper is also outlined.
Plasma Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Dysregulation in Defining Aggressiveness of Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Background. High circulating vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) levels tend to reflect tumor aggressiveness for being associated with tumor progression and prognosis. Measurement of soluble VEGF receptor-1 (sVEGFR-1) may improve diagnostic power of VEGF assay. Methods. This study investigated regulation of plasma VEGF by sVEGFR-1 in 82 patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma compared with 32 healthy subjects to obtain information for assay characterization. Results. Normality or abnormality of VEGF/sVEGFR-1secretion patterns was rated into five diagnostic levels from definitely abnormal (likelihood ratios) (LRs = 4–∞) to definitely normal (LRs = 0–0.17). Because of ineffective VEGF regulation, high grade tumor had a greater chance (62.5%) than low grade tumor (20%) in expressing a definitely abnormal pattern and a lower chance to express the normal pattern (P = 0.007). VEGF alone had much lower diagnostic power in differentiating between normal (LRs = 0.3–0.9) and abnormal secretion patterns (LRs = 2.2–2.4). Conclusions. VEGF dysregulation is suggestive of tumor aggressiveness for causing persistent plasma VEGF elevation. sVEGFR-1 improves diagnostic power of VEGF assay particularly in identifying subset of low grade tumor with underlying aggressive disease and ruling out aggressiveness in subset of high grade tumor.
Scaling Up Agroecology TOWARD THE REALIZATION

food price crisis, it was that it prompted governments and international donors to reexamine their priorities for agricultural development. They committed to invest in agriculture and food security in a manner that prioritizes small-scale producers (especially women), enhances the environment and contributes to the development of rural economies. While their promises to spend more received media attention , the focus of countless other debates at the United Nations, among donors and even at the World Bank, refocused attention on how those funds would actually be spent. Choices about production methods, farming systems, types of aggregators and value chains, etc., will lead to very different kinds of outcomes for communities engaged in food production , harvesting and processing. This is borne out by past experiences in international development aid. All through the second half of the twentieth century, agricultural development aid supported export-oriented production , rather than local food security. Donor support for agricultural food production and processing methods that simultaneously help small-scale producers realize their food sovereignty and protect the environment, would lead to a different outcome. Toward this end, we outline a set of principles and practices of agroecology. Those debates highlighted the environmental concerns associated with industrial monocultures, but all too often, agricultural development programs and projects still choose from a very limited array of seeds and plants, and opt for chemical-intensive agriculture (involving high use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers). In a world confronting an increasingly chaotic climate, this kind of agriculture offers little stability either for food producers or for consumers, and results in high social costs. 1 Instead, the investments could support a more holistic approach that integrates improvements in productivity with enhancements of the natural environment, crop-nutrient value, local livelihoods and local control. That alternative approach is agroecology, which has the potential to increase both the resiliency and sustainability of agroecosystems and not only " provides the principles for rural communities to reach food sovereignty, but also energy and technological sovereignty. " 2 In the lead up to Rio+20, civil society organizations ranging from the global farmers movement La Via Campesina to development and environmental organizations made a concerted effort to gain political support for agroecology