Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of Enterprise Information Security - An Architecture Theory Diagram Definition -

In order to manage and improve something, it is normally necessary to be able to assess the current state of affairs. A problem with assessment, however, is that in order to assess, it is normally necessary to be able to define the assessment topic. These general statements are also true within the area of Enterprise Information Security. Although much has been written on the topic, there is little consensus on what Enterprise Information Security really is. The lack of consensus lessens the credibility of existing assessment approaches. This paper presents a well-defined, transparent, and quantified method for the assessment of Enterprise Information Security. The method is based on the consolidation of the most prominent sources on the topic and results in a single quantitative estimate of the level of Enterprise Information Security in a company. The usefulness of the presented method has been verified by a case study at a large European electric utility. The present paper is a part of an ongoing research project on a credible and cost-effective method for Enterprise Information Security assessment.
Sensory Motor Coordination in Robonaut

As a participant of the year 2000 NASA Summer Faculty Fellowship Program, I worked with the engineers of the Dexterous Robotics Laboratory at NASA Johnson Space Center on the Robonaut project. The Robonaut is an articulated torso with two dexterous arms, left and right five-fingered hands, and a head with cameras mounted on an articulated neck. This advanced space robot, now driven only teleoperatively using VR gloves, sensors and helmets, is to be upgraded to a thinking system that can find, interact with and assist humans autonomously, allowing the Crew to work with Robonaut as a (junior) member of their team. Thus, the work performed this summer was toward the goal of enabling Robonaut to operate autonomously as an intelligent assistant to astronauts. Our underlying hypothesis is that a robot can develop intelligence if it learns a set of basic behaviors (i.e., reflexes - actions tightly coupled to sensing) and through experience learns how to sequence these to solve problems or to accomplish higher-level tasks. We describe our approach to the automatic acquisition of basic behaviors as learning sensory-motor coordination (SMC). Although research in the ontogenesis of animals development from the time of conception) supports the approach of learning SMC as the foundation for intelligent, autonomous behavior, we do not know whether it will prove viable for the development of autonomy in robots. The first step in testing the hypothesis is to determine if SMC can be learned by the robot. To do this, we have taken advantage of Robonaut's teleoperated control system. When a person teleoperates Robonaut, the person's own SMC causes the robot to act purposefully. If the sensory signals that the robot detects during teleoperation are recorded over several repetitions of the same task, it should be possible through signal analysis to identify the sensory-motor couplings that accompany purposeful motion. In this report, reasons for suspecting SMC as the basis for intelligent behavior will be reviewed. A robot control system for autonomous behavior that uses learned SMC will be proposed. Techniques for the extraction of salient parameters from sensory and motor data will be discussed. Experiments with Robonaut will be discussed and preliminary data presented.
Techniques for compressing program address traces

A technique for generating consistent, reproducible traces with about an order of magnitude better compression than standard general-purpose compression programs is described. With this approach, the trace is read once, an intermediate form is generated and then read as the input to the second pass over the address stream. No program source code is required, and this technique will work on address streams that include OS calls. As a result of the way the address trace is encoded and processed, representing each reference requires only a fraction of a bit, between 0.00114 to 0.878 bits per reference. For example, the roughly 1.6 billion references generated by the xlisp benchmark from the SPEC92 suite can be stored using only about 48.6 million bytes. Depending on the benchmarks, more or less bits per references may be needed.
How Welfare Reform Act Affects Elderly Immigrants' Health and Healthcare Service Utilization: Comparisons Before and After Welfare Reform

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------vi LIST OF TABLES ----------------------------------------------------------------------------xvii LIST OF FIGURES--------------------------------------------------------------------------xviii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION --------------------------------------------------------------1 1-1 PROLOGUE------------------------------------------------------------------------1 1-2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM--------------------------------------------------8 1-3 CONCEPT AND LOGIC MODELS-------------------------------------------------12 1-4 WAYS TO ADVANCE KNOWLEDGE---------------------------------------------19 1-5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY --------------------------------------------------22 1-6 RESEARCH QUESTIONS----------------------------------------------------------26 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW -------------------------------------------------------30 2-1 U.S. IMMIGRATION POLICY AND FAMILY REUNIFICATION PROGRAM-----30 2-2 WELFARE REFORM ACT AND STATES’ RESPONSE----------------------------36 2-3 MEDICAID AND HEALTH INSURANCE------------------------------------------41 2-4 CITIZENSHIP AND EXCLUSION--------------------------------------------------45 2-5 ACCULTURATION AND DURATION OF RESIDENCE----------------------------55 2-6 CULTURAL DIFFERENCE IN HELP-SEEKING BEHAVIORS AND HEALTH BELIEFS--------------------------------------------------------------------------------59 2-7 ELDERLY IMMIGRANTS’ HEALTH AND HEALTH DISPARITIES---------------62
Adaptable , Adaptive and Perceptual Concepts for UI-On-Demand-and-Within-Reach Configurations

The digital ink environment is unlike the desktop metaphor that we know and have grown used to. A digital board is more personal than a monitor, in a way that it allows us to directly touch it and see the immediate reaction through the digital pen. In classrooms where huge wall-mounted digital boards are utilised, it is impossible to have a bird's eye view of the whole environment when we are so near their proximity to impose the conventional desktop interfaces. We present an alternative solution that seeks to combine three classical UI-design concepts involving adaptable, adaptive and perceptual ideas for an on-demand-and-within-reach interface that monopolizes the single-stroke digital ink inputs. We show that by maintaining an active background tracking system on the temporal and spatial information of every input ink data, we can anticipate convincingly what users are trying to do to achieve their goals when working on the boards, and provide them with assistance within predictable contexts. Our methods maintain that users must always feel in control no matter how adaptive the assistance from the system may be.
Effect of Leaf Water Potential on Internal Humidity and CO2 Dissolution: Reverse Transpiration and Improved Water Use Efficiency under Negative Pressure

The pull of water from the soil to the leaves causes water in the transpiration stream to be under negative pressure decreasing the water potential below zero. The osmotic concentration also contributes to the decrease in leaf water potential but with much lesser extent. Thus, the surface tension force is approximately balanced by a force induced by negative water potential resulting in concavely curved water-air interfaces in leaves. The lowered water potential causes a reduction in the equilibrium water vapor pressure in internal (sub-stomatal/intercellular) cavities in relation to that over water with the potential of zero, i.e., over the flat surface. The curved surface causes a reduction also in the equilibrium vapor pressure of dissolved CO2, thus enhancing its physical solubility to water. Although the water vapor reduction is acknowledged by plant physiologists its consequences for water vapor exchange at low water potential values have received very little attention. Consequences of the enhanced CO2 solubility to a leaf water-carbon budget have not been considered at all before this study. We use theoretical calculations and modeling to show how the reduction in the vapor pressures affects transpiration and carbon assimilation rates. Our results indicate that the reduction in vapor pressures of water and CO2 could enhance plant water use efficiency up to about 10% at a leaf water potential of −2 MPa, and much more when water potential decreases further. The low water potential allows for a direct stomatal water vapor uptake from the ambient air even at sub-100% relative humidity values. This alone could explain the observed rates of foliar water uptake by e.g., the coastal redwood in the fog belt region of coastal California provided the stomata are sufficiently open. The omission of the reduction in the water vapor pressure causes a bias in the estimates of the stomatal conductance and leaf internal CO2 concentration based on leaf gas exchange measurements. Manufactures of leaf gas exchange measurement systems should incorporate leaf water potentials in measurement set-ups.
Dynamic Changes of Neuroskeletal Proteins in DRGs Underlie Impaired Axonal Maturation and Progressive Axonal Degeneration in Type 1 Diabetes

We investigated mechanisms underlying progressive axonal dysfunction and structural deficits in type 1 BB/Wor-rats from 1 week to 10 month diabetes duration. Motor and sensory conduction velocities were decreased after 4 and 6 weeks of diabetes and declined further over the remaining 9 months. Myelinated sural nerve fibers showed progressive deficits in fiber numbers and sizes. Structural deficits in unmyelinated axonal size were evident at 2 month and deficits in number were present at 4 mo. These changes were preceded by decreased availability of insulin, C-peptide and IGF-1 and decreased expression of neurofilaments and β-III-tubulin. Upregulation of phosphorylating stress kinases like Cdk5, p-GSK-3β, and p42/44 resulted in increased phosphorylation of neurofilaments. Increasing activity of p-GSK-3β correlated with increasing phosphorylation of NFH, whereas decreasing Cdk5 correlated with diminishing phosphorylation of NFM. The data suggest that impaired neurotrophic support results in sequentially impaired synthesis and postranslational modifications of neuroskeletal proteins, resulting in progressive deficits in axonal function, maturation and size.
Optimal Reactive Power Flow using Fuzzy logic Controller Technique

Optimal reactive power flow is an optimization problem with one or more objective of minimizing the real power losses. The ancillary service for a generator has two components that have been recently recognized, i.e., one for sustaining its own real power communication and the other for providing reactive demand, enhancing system security, and scheming system voltage; and that only the next part should get financial compensation in aggressive power markets. In this paper planned incorporated technique will be united with fuzzy logic controller. This paper discusses the estimation of post-outage reactive power generation and flows using Linear estimation method for deregulated power system. One of the knowledge base intelligence techniques which will be utilized for verifying the generator reactive power operating limits and the power loss was the fuzzy logic. Representative results are presented using the IEEE 14 bus system by using MATLAB working platform and the ORPF presentation will be estimated.
Genipin Attenuates Sepsis by Inhibiting Toll-Like Receptor Signaling

The pathogenesis of sepsis is characterized by overwhelming inflammatory responses that lead to tissue damage and organ failure. Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling is crucial for induction of hyperinflammatory responses and tissue injury during sepsis. Genipin, an aglycon of geniposide, has antiinflammatory and antimicrobial activities. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that genipin reduces multiple organ dysfunction and mortality during sepsis through inhibition of TLR signaling. Male ICR were subjected to sepsis by cecal ligation and puncture (CLP) or endotoxemia by lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Various doses of genipin (1),2.5 and 5 mg/kg) or a vehicle were administered intravenously immediately after CLP or intraperitoneally after LPS treatment. In another set of survival tests, mice were treated with 2.5 mg/kg of genipin 0 and 24 h after CLP. Genipin was found to improve survival and to attenuate multiple organ dysfunction. Genipin attenuated production of proinflammatory cytokines and release of high-mobility group box 1 (HMGB1). Genipin prevented TLR2 and TLR4, myeloid differentiation factor 88 and the Toll/interleukin-1 receptor domain-containing adaptor protein, inducing interferon-β overexpression. Phosphorylation of mitogen-activated protein kinases and interferon regulatory factor 3 and translocation of nuclear factor (NF)-κB were prevented by genipin. Moreover, genipin attenuated increases in serum tumor necrosis factor-α and HMGB1 in LPS-induced endotoxemia. Pam3CSK4- and LPS-mediated production of nitrites and proinflammatory cytokines was suppressed by genipin in RAW264.7 cells. Genipin attenuated mortality and organ injuries during sepsis through interference with TLR signaling. Therefore, genipin might be useful as a potential therapeutic agent for treatment of sepsis.
A General Framework for Optimum Iterative Blockwise Equalization of Single Carrier MIMO Systems and Asymptotic Performance Analysis

The paper proposes a general framework for both time-domain (TD) and frequency-domain (FD) iterative blockwise equalization in single carrier (SC) wideband multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels. First, a novel turbo blockwise operating equalizer structure is proposed by jointly optimizing the feed-forward and feedback filters at each iteration based on the minimum mean squared error (MMSE) criterion. Optimization of the filter coefficients, utilized for feed-forward equalization and decision feedback, is performed in both time and frequency domains, and the equivalence between them is established by unifying the iterative block equalization with the feed-forward and feedback filters in various domains. The corresponding filters are obtained analytically in a closed form as a solution of the constrained Wiener-Hopf equation with the use of average reliability information. Second, asymptotic performance and diversity analysis of the proposed single carrier frequency domain equalizer (SC-FDE) is carried out that leads to insights on the structures of the filters in the high SNR regime. Furthermore, we elaborate on the rate and diversity tradeoff of the space-time coded SC-FDE based on the proposed equalizer structure and the space-frequency coded OFDM systems. Performance comparison between the proposed SC-FDE scheme and OFDM is made. The proposed SC-FDE scheme performs very close to the genie-aided performance bounds and better than OFDM based transmission.
Opsin synthesis and mRNA levels in dystrophic retinas devoid of outer segments in retinal degeneration slow (rds) mice

Opsin gene regulation, as a function of outer segment structure, was studied in normal and mutant retinal degeneration slow (rds) mice. We investigated the level of expression of the opsin gene in the rds mutant to determine if the reduced opsin content observed in this mutation (around 3% of normal) is a consequence of lowered expression of its gene. Normal BALB/c and rds mice were analyzed for levels of opsin mRNA and opsin content by Northern and immunoblot analysis, respectively. The rate of opsin synthesis in isolated retinas was measured by 35S-methionine incorporation in vitro, followed by analysis of the radiolabeled opsin by SDS-gel electrophoresis and autoradiography. Photoreceptor cell loss at various stages of degeneration was determined by quantitation of surviving photoreceptor nuclei. Opsin was localized in the mutant photoreceptors by immunoelectron microscopy of LR gold-embedded retinas using anti-opsin and antibody gold conjugates. The results indicate that 11- and 30-d- old mutant mice have considerable levels of opsin mRNA (60–70% of normal) and opsin synthetic rates (76–92% of normal), after the data from mutant mice are corrected for photoreceptor cell loss. We conclude, therefore, that the very low level of opsin observed in rds mice (approximately 3%) is not a result of greatly reduced expression of the opsin gene. Rather, continuous turnover of newly synthesized opsin as a result of its failure to become sequestered into an intact outer segment appears to account for the low levels of opsin in the rds mutant.
Do ‘locally grown’ claims influence artisanal food purchase? Evidence from a natural field experiment

We conducted a natural field experiment in an artisanal sit-down ice-cream shop in Italy to investigate whether consumer choices are affected by information regarding locally grown products. Two aspects of locally grown products are investigated: (i) quality due to terroir (i.e., quality with a link to the territory) and (ii) reduced carbon emissions due to short transportation distance. Contrary to the evidence emerging from the majority of the stated-preference literature, our results suggest that consumer behavior is not significantly affected by information regarding quality due to terroir. We also find that consumers positively respond to information concerning reduced carbon emissions, although the estimated average WTP is small (10 Euro cents). Finally, we offer a contribution to the literature on sustainable food consumption by documenting a gender gap and a cohort effect and by providing evidence that social pressure, as proxied by the size of the party and the presence of kids at the table, fosters environmentally friendly consumption.
Exploring a swarm intelligence methodology to identify command and control flow

Botnet poses a significant threat to the Internet today. Reactive techniques that try to detect such an attack and throttle down malicious traffic prevail today but seem not to be very effective. In this paper we present an approach to Botnet detection that is based on the methodology of swarm intelligence. Specifically, particle swarm optimization, a robust stochastic evolutionary algorithm based on the movement and intelligence of swarms, is applied to track the remote controls activities, namely C&C. There exist in literature a few papers in which PSO is used to face the optimization problem. However, no paper exists showing the effectiveness of PSO on this problem. Therefore, PSO is examined in this paper to face the identification of C&C flow. Comparing with other classification techniques, PSO performs a high accuracy.
Analytical Study on Bandwidth Efficiency of Heterogeneous Memory Systems

Heterogeneous memory systems integrate different memory technologies to balance design requirements such as bandwidth, capacity, and cost. Performance of these systems depends heavily on memory hierarchy organization, memory attributes, and application characteristics. In this paper, we present analytical bandwidth models for a range of heterogeneous memory systems composed of DRAM and non-volatile memory (NVM). Our models enable exploring heterogeneous memory systems with different organizations and attributes. Using the models, we study the bandwidth efficiency of heterogeneous memory systems to provide insights into the bandwidth bottlenecks of these systems under different application characteristics. Our analytical results highlight the importance of NVM read-write bandwidth asymmetry and DRAM-NVM bandwidth asymmetry in bandwidth efficiency. Specifically, in flat non-uniform memory access (NUMA) systems, the read bandwidth is maximized when a certain portion of bandwidth is delivered by DRAM and that portion depends on multiple factors including DRAM and NVM bandwidth attributes and application bandwidth characteristics. In DRAM-cache-based systems, when the hit rate is low, the impact of the DRAM cache organization on the read bandwidth is minimal. However, at higher hit rates and NVM bandwidths, the impact of the cache organization on sustained read bandwidth becomes pronounced.
Towards an H.264/AVC HW/SW Integrated Solution: An Efficient VBSME Architecture

This paper presents an efficient real-time variable block size motion estimation architecture. The proposed architecture provides motion vectors for each 16 times 16 block and its 40 sub-blocks. The proposed architecture is a single-instruction multiple-data architecture integrated with embedded SRAMs on one chip. The architecture has been prototyped using Xilinx Virtex-4 XC4VSX35-10 field-programmable gate array. It processes 30-CIF fps using 71-MHz clock frequency. Its maximum clock frequencyuency is 187.7 MHz and the maximum throughput is 20 4CIF fps. The prototyped architecture has 175 k gates and 18 kbits embedded SRAM.
Molecular Characterization of Gβ-Like Protein CpcB Involved in Antifungal Drug Susceptibility and Virulence in A. fumigatus

Aspergillus fumigatus is an airborne human fungal pathogen that can survive in a wide range of environmental condition. G protein complex transduces external signals from a variety of stimuli outside a cell to its interior effectors in all eukaryotes. Gβ-like CpcB (cross pathway control B) belongs to a WD40 repeat protein family with the conserved G–H and W–D residues. Previous studies have demonstrated that Gβ-like proteins cooperate with related signal transduction proteins to function during many important developmental processes in A. fumigatus. However, the molecular characteristics of Gβ-like CpcB have not yet been identified. In this study, we demonstrated that the G–H residues in WD repeat 1, 2, 3, and the W–D residue in WD repeat 2 of CpcB are required not only to control normal hyphal growth and conidiation but also to affect antifungal drug susceptibility. The enhanced drug resistance might be due to reduced intracellular drug accumulation and altered ergosterol component. Moreover, we find that the first G–H residue of CpcB plays an important role in the virulence of A. fumigatus. To our knowledge, this is the first report for finding the importance of the conserved G–H and W–D residues for a Gβ-like protein in understanding of G protein functions.