Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High-extensible scene graph framework based on component techniques

In this paper, a novel component-based scene graph is proposed, in which all objects in the scene are classified to different entities, and a scene can be represented as a hierarchical graph composed of the instances of entities. Each entity contains basic data and its operations which are encapsulated into the entity component. The entity possesses certain behaviours which are responses to rules and interaction defined by the high-level application. Such behaviours can be described by script or behaviours model. The component-based scene graph in the paper is more abstractive and high-level than traditional scene graphs. The contents of a scene could be extended flexibly by adding new entities and new entity components, and behaviour modification can be obtained by modifying the model components or behaviour scripts. Its robustness and efficiency are verified by many examples implemented in the Virtual Scenario developed by Peking University.
Forecasting Performance and Influence of Communicating Central Banks

This paper focuses on five central banks, which communicate their forecasts in real-time and for which information asymmetry should therefore be minimized, to assess whether the central bank has a better forecasting performance than private agents. Results challenge the findings of the seminal paper by Romer and Romer (2000), in which they evidence the informational advantage of the Fed, a central bank which publishes its forecasts with a 5year lag. One out of five communicating central banks, the Swedish one, has a robust superior forecasting performance, which reveals a paradox as information is supposed to be symmetric since central banks’ forecasts are available to private agents. It appears that the Riksbank benefits from a specific competence in gathering new private information between each forecast’s release. Furthermore, since forecasts are published in real-time, this paper is able to assess whether central banks influence private agents. It is shown that three out of five central banks have influential power on private agents through forecasts’ publication. This paper shows central banks need not be more competent or informed to be influential, and then proposes to distinguish endogenous credibility due to informational advantage from exogenous credibility.
Initiating academic development - insights from a teaching portfolio pilot project at the University of Graz

In 2015, a teaching portfolio pilot project was conducted at the University of Graz. This workshop report aims at sharing insights and lessons learned from that project, but also tries to outline changes in the European higher education landscape which indicate the usefulness of teaching portfolios as an instrument to support the development of academics. Selected overall project findings are complemented by in-depth reflections of one of the authors who participated in the workshop. This approach was chosen because of the importance of reflection for academic development, but it also affirms the pilot project's success as it shows how a main objective of the teaching portfolio - to initiate reflection - has been achieved. 30.09. 2016 | Lisa Scheer, Gudrun Salmhofer & Eva Seidl (Graz)
Understanding the Emerging Threat of DDoS-as-a-Service

In this paper, we investigate the phenomenon of lowcost DDoS-As-a-Service also known as Booter services. While we are aware of the existence of the underground economy of Booters, we do not have much insight into their internal operations, including the users of such services, the usage patterns, the attack infrastructure, and the victims [6]. In this paper, we present a brief analysis on the operations of a Booter known as TwBooter based on a publicly-leaked dump of their operational database. This data includes the attack infrastructure used for mounting attacks, details on service subscribers, and the targets of attacks. Our analysis reveals that this service earned over $7,500 a month and was used to launch over 48,000 DDoS attacks against 11,000 distinct victims including government websites and news sites in less than two months of operation.
Quantitative analysis of tissue deformation dynamics reveals three characteristic growth modes and globally aligned anisotropic tissue deformation during chick limb development

Tissue-level characterization of deformation dynamics is crucial for understanding organ morphogenetic mechanisms, especially the interhierarchical links among molecular activities, cellular behaviors and tissue/organ morphogenetic processes. Limb development is a well-studied topic in vertebrate organogenesis. Nevertheless, there is still little understanding of tissue-level deformation relative to molecular and cellular dynamics. This is mainly because live recording of detailed cell behaviors in whole tissues is technically difficult. To overcome this limitation, by applying a recently developed Bayesian approach, we here constructed tissue deformation maps for chick limb development with high precision, based on snapshot lineage tracing using dye injection. The precision of the constructed maps was validated with a clear statistical criterion. From the geometrical analysis of the map, we identified three characteristic tissue growth modes in the limb and showed that they are consistent with local growth factor activity and cell cycle length. In particular, we report that SHH signaling activity changes dynamically with developmental stage and strongly correlates with the dynamic shift in the tissue growth mode. We also found anisotropic tissue deformation along the proximal-distal axis. Morphogenetic simulation and experimental studies suggested that this directional tissue elongation, and not local growth, has the greatest impact on limb shaping. This result was supported by the novel finding that anisotropic tissue elongation along the proximal-distal axis occurs independently of cell proliferation. Our study marks a pivotal point for multi-scale system understanding in vertebrate development. Summary: Chick limb morphogenesis occurs through issue elongation independently of cell proliferation, with three tissue growth modes correlated with SHH expression.
Pulsed power system for wireless underground sensor networks

In wireless underground sensor networks (WUSNs), electronic magnetic waves undergo severe fading due to the underground environment, which is a challenging environment. Magnetic-induction (MI) communication is been used as an optional technique in the communications of WUSNs, which is not so suitable for information transfer in the underground domain due to high path loss, and the need for large antenna size to increase transmission range. There is a high path loss in magnetic induction technique, and as a result, limiting its transmission range. In order to increase the transmission range, an option is to raise the transmitting power level. However, in the underground environment, the power supply level must not be too high because of the limited size of apparatus. This paper proposed a novel method termed Pulse Power Magnetic Induction (PPMI) to solve the problem of high path loss in underground wireless communication so as to increase the transmission range in the environment. Comparative analysis results of the path loss and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with varying distance and operating frequency of our proposed PPMI system in the underground communication to the ordinary MI system showed an improvement in the transmission range of the underground network.
Tomorrow ’ s Newspaper : Linking News Articles to Television Programs

In this paper we introduce a new approach to linking news articles from the NRC news archive to television programs from Sound and Vision (S&V), the Dutch national audio-visual archive. Our approach to the linking process consists of two steps: First, the content from a news article and its metadata fields are used to obtain a description of the article. Second, the description is used as a query to an index of the S&V program documents to obtain a ranked list of programs relevant to the article. The top ranked program serves as the link target for the article. We evaluate using a manually created test set of news articles and associated programs. In this paper we focus on methods for generating suitable article descriptions by experimenting with using specific combinations of metadata fields and article content. We also experiment with a keyword extraction method for the title and body of the article. We find that while using the full news article content and metadata as a query yields useful results, using the body of a news article performs best. We also find that the topic of the news article does not have a large influence on which query type works best.
Adaptive Input Traffic Prediction Scheme for Absolute and Proportional Delay Differentiated Services in Broadband Convergence Network

In this paper, an algorithm that provides absolute and proportional differentiation of packet delays is proposed with the objective of enhancing quality of service in future packet networks. It features an adaptive scheme that adjusts the target delay for every time slot to compensate the deviation from the target delay, which is caused by prediction error on the traffic to arrive at the next time slot. It predicts the traffic to arrive at the beginning of a time slot and measures the actual arrived traffic at the end of the time slot. The difference between them is utilized by the delay control operation for the next time slot to offset it. Because the proposed algorithm compensates the prediction error continuously, it shows superior adaptability to bursty traffic and exponential traffic. Through simulations we demonstrate that the algorithm meets the quantitative delay bounds and is robust to traffic fluctuation in comparison with the conventional non‐adaptive mechanism. The algorithm is implemented with VHDL on a Xilinx Spartan XC3S1500 FPGA, and the performance is verified under the test board based on the XPC860P CPU.
The coexistence of the nucleosome positioning code with the genetic code on eukaryotic genomes

It is known that there are several codes residing simultaneously on the DNA double helix. The two best-characterized codes are the genetic code—the code for protein production, and the code for DNA packaging into nucleosomes. Since these codes have to coexist simultaneously on the same DNA region, both must be degenerate to allow this coexistence. A-tracts are homopolymeric stretches of several adjacent deoxyadenosines on one strand of the double helix, having unusual structural properties, which were shown to exclude nucleosomes and as such are instrumental in setting the translational positioning of DNA within nucleosomes. We observe, cross-kingdoms, a strong codon bias toward the avoidance of long A-tracts in exon regions, which enables the formation of high density of nucleosomes in these regions. Moreover, long A-tract avoidance is restricted exclusively to nucleosome-occupied exon regions. We show that this bias in codon usage is sufficient for enabling DNA organization within nucleosomes without constraints on the actual code for proteins. Thus, there is inter-dependency of the two major codes within DNA to allow their coexistence. Furthermore, we show that modulation of A-tract occurrences in exon versus non-exon regions may result in a unique alternation of the diameter of the ‘30-nm’ fiber model.
Role of early repeated renal biopsies in lupus nephritis

Objectives A renal biopsy is generally recommended for diagnosis and is necessary for classification of lupus nephritis (LN), but second biopsies after immunosuppressive therapy are seldom a routine procedure. We investigated how repeat biopsies contribute to the evaluation of treatment response and long-term outcome in LN. Methods Sixty-seven patients with active LN were included. Renal biopsies were performed at diagnosis and after standard induction immunosuppressive therapy in all patients (median 8 months), regardless of clinical outcome. Biopsies were evaluated according to the International Society of Nephrology/Renal Pathology Society classification. Clinical response was defined as complete (CR), partial (PR) or non-response (NR) according to recent definitions. Histological response (HR) was defined as Class I, II or III/IV-C on repeat biopsies. Long-term renal outcome was determined in 55 patients after a median of 10 years. Results CR was demonstrated in 25%, PR in 27% and NR in 48% of patients. HR was shown in 42% and histopathological non-response (HNR) in 58% of patients. Twenty-nine per cent of CR and 61% of patients with PR had active lesions on repeat biopsies, that is, were HNR. Poor long-term renal outcome was associated with high chronicity index at repeated biopsies, but not with clinical or histological response. Conclusions Despite apparent clinical response to immunosuppressive therapy, repeated biopsies revealed persisting active nephritis in almost half of the patients, thus providing additional information to clinical response criteria. Repeated renal biopsies may be a tool to improve the evaluation of treatment response in LN.
Prevalence and risk factors for hepatitis C virus infection in Mongolian children: Findings from a nationwide survey

Although the hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is one of the major causes of chronic hepatitis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in Mongolia, its prevalence among children and routes of transmission are largely unknown. The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence of anti‐HCV antibodies and the possible risk factors for transmission among school children using representative national data. A nationwide cross‐sectional survey among elementary school children was conducted in four main geographical regions and the metropolitan area of Mongolia, through multistage, stratified, random cluster sampling. Serum samples from 1,145 children (response rate, 93%; 592 boys and 553 girls; age range, 7–12 years), which represented nearly 2% of the second grade population in Mongolia, were tested for HCV antibodies with a third‐generation immunoradiometric assay (IRMA). Positive samples were further evaluated by a third‐generation immunoblot assay (RIBA). A standardized questionnaire concerning the socio‐demographic characteristics and potential risk factors was used. Overall, seven subjects were confirmed to be anti‐HCV seropositive, giving a prevalence of 0.6% (95% CI: 0.15–1.0%). The prevalence of anti‐HCV increased with age. In the multivariate logistic regression analysis, adjusted for age, sex, and residence, the history of dental manipulation (odds ratio [OR] = 15.4; 95% CI: 1.4–164.8) and surgery (OR = 8.3; 95% CI: 1.5–45.6) were associated independently with the presence of anti‐HCV. These findings suggest that contaminated equipment used in the dental and surgical manipulations probably played a predominant role in HCV transmission among Mongolian children. Strict guidelines on disinfection and sterilization procedures of medical instruments have to be introduced and should be followed to improve the control of HCV infection in Mongolia. J. Med. Virol. 78:466–472, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Cyberbullying em adolescentes brasileiros

O cyberbullying e entendido como uma forma de comportamento agressivo que ocorre atraves dos meios eletronicos de interacao (computadores, celulares, sites de relacionamento virtual), sendo realizado de maneira intencional por uma pessoa ou grupo contra alguem em situacao desigual de poder e, ainda, com dificuldade em se defender. Os estudos disponiveis ate o presente momento destacam que o cyberbullying e um fator de risco para o desenvolvimento de sintomas de ansiedade, depressao, ideacao suicida, abuso de substâncias psicoativas, dentre outras situacoes potencialmente danosas ao desenvolvimento. Todavia, pouca atencao tem sido dada em relacao ao fenomeno no Brasil e na America Latina. Assim, o objetivo dessa dissertacao foi investigar o cyberbullying, atraves de dois estudos distintos, sendo um de natureza teorica e outro empirico. O estudo teorico, apresentado na secao 1, traz dados sobre a prevalencia do fenomeno em distintos paises, alem de discutir as consequencias e aspectos conceituais que diferenciam o bullying do cyberbullying. Do mesmo modo, fatores de risco e de protecao em relacao ao cyberbullying sao tratados e estudos atuais sobre o tema sao amplamente revisados e discutidos. Ja a investigacao empirica, que compoe a secao 2, foi realizada com adolescentes com idades variando entre 13 a 17 anos (N=367), provenientes de escolas publicas e privadas da regiao metropolitana de Porto Alegre, RS. O objetivo principal foi de analisar a prevalencia do cyberbullying e suas relacoes com sintomatologia depressiva, verificando possiveis diferencas entre meninos e meninas e as diferencas em relacao a faixa etaria dos participantes. Um percentual elevado de adolescentes referiu estar envolvido com o processo (72,7% com cyber agressao e 75,6% com cyber vitimizacao), nao havendo diferenca significativa entre meninos e meninas. Associacoes positivas e significativas entre o envolvimento com cyberbullying com a idade dos participantes, o tempo gasto na internet e sintomas de depressao foram identificadas. Constatou-se tambem que os adolescentes caracterizados como vitimas-agressores do processo de cyberbullying apresentaram niveis mais elevados de depressao quando comparados aos estudantes nao envolvidos com o fenomeno. Dados sociodemograficos e relacionados a interacao dos adolescentes com as ferramentas tecnologicas e virtuais sao descritos e discutidos. Foi possivel verificar que o cyberbullying e um fenomeno de extrema relevância e que ainda necessita ser largamente estudado no contexto brasileiro. Estudos apontam o quanto este processo pode ser fator de risco para o desenvolvimento de jovens e ressaltam a importância de pesquisas que subsidiem intervencoes. Dados do estudo empirico corroboram achados da literatura, assim como 14 apontam para diferencas culturais no que tange a este fenomeno. Tambem se apresentam, ao final dessa investigacao, sugestoes para estudos futuros, bem como sao ressaltadas as limitacoes da mesma.
Mixing Type Checking and Symbolic Execution (Extended Version)

Static analysis designers must carefully balance precision and efficiency. In our experience, many static analysis tools are built around an elegant, core algorithm, but that algorithm is then extensively tweaked to add just enough precision for the coding idioms seen in practice, without sacrificing too much efficiency. There are several downsides to adding precision in this way: the tool’s implementation becomes much more complicated; it can be hard for an end-user to interpret the tool’s results; and as software systems vary tremendously in their coding styles, it may require significant algorithmic engineering to enhance a tool to perform well in a particular software domain. In this paper, we present MIX, a novel system that mixes type checking and symbolic execution. The key aspect of our approach is that these analyses are applied independently on disjoint parts of the program, in an off-the-shelf manner. At the boundaries between nested type checked and symbolically executed code regions, we use special mix rules to communicate information between the offthe-shelf systems. The resulting mixture is a provably sound analysis that is more precise than type checking alone and more efficient than exclusive symbolic execution. In addition, we also describe a prototype implementation, MIXY, for C. MIXY checks for potential null dereferences by mixing a null/non-null type qualifier inference system with a symbolic executor.
Passive sensor object motion estimation

In this paper, we present the problem of estimation of the three dimensional motion of an object from a sequence of noisy projections onto a two-dimensional screen given by a moving camera. The study of this problem constitutes a necessary preliminary step towards design of control systems ensuring vehicles following that is useful in many practical applications in the defence industry and automotive industry. This paper derives an estimator on the basis of the proposed mathematical model of the sensor, wheeled carrier of the camera and moving object. Experimental results is presented to show the effectiveness of the estimator, especially with respect to estimation of the required velocities of the object and demonstrate good performance of the estimator.
Spatial Patterns, Spatial Chaos, and Traveling Waves in Lattice Differential Equations

We survey recent results in the theory of lattice diierential equations. Such equations yield continuous-time, usually innnite-dimensional, dynamical systems , which possess a discrete spatial structure modeled on a lattice. The systems we consider, generally over a higher-dimensional lattice such as Z Z D IR D , are the simplest nontrivial ones which incorporate both local nonlinear dynamics and short range interactions. Of particular interest are stable equilibria, and the regular patterns, or lack thereof, that are displayed. Traveling wave solutions in such systems are also discussed.
Image analysis in dual modality tomography for material classification

A dual modality tomographic system is described for material classification in a simulated multi-component flow regime. It combines two tomographic modalities, electrical current and light, to image the interrogated area. Derived image parameters did not allow material classification. PCA analysis was performed on this data set producing a new parameter set, which allowed material classification. This procedure reduces the dimensionality of the data set and also offers a pre-processing technique prior to analysis by another classifier.
Extraversion as a moderator for resilience factors among gay men

ABSTRACT The present study examined the moderating role of extraversion on the relationship between depressive symptoms and the resilience factors of social support and emotional openness (the ability to accept and process one's emotion) among gay men. Extraversion, social support, and emotional openness were all associated with lower depressive symptoms. Extraversion did not moderate the relationship between social support and depressive symptoms among gay men. Extraversion moderated the relationship between emotional openness and depressive symptoms, such that emotional openness was associated with fewer depressive symptoms, particularly among gay men with a lower level of extraversion. Clinical implications are discussed.
Aiming High

This study investigates how veteran status influences earnings for working-age American women. Recent increases in women’s participation in the U.S. military mean that the proportion of female veterans is rising and is forecast to increase over the next 30 years. Yet we still know relatively little about the relationship between women’s military experience and later labor-market outcomes. Drawing on American Community Survey data from 2008 to 2010 and employing a new set of occupational categories better suited to veterans, we investigate how occupation and race/ethnicity influence the effect of veteran status on women’s earnings. Findings corroborate previous support for the “bridging hypothesis” in two ways. First, veterans are overrepresented in higher paying occupations and underrepresented in the lowest paying ones, partially accounting for their higher earnings. Second, military experience particularly enhances the earnings of disadvantaged race/ethnic minority women.