Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An En-route Bogus Filtering Mechanism for Secured Data Dissemination in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks are deprived of high memory requirements, high processing power, and are limited in usage of efficient security mechanisms. They are susceptible to possible node compromise, passive and active attacks. Most of the public key cryptographic techniques are found to be more work prone with the secure exchange of keys, lengthy hash operations with high processing rounds etc. Even though comprehensive surveys are made in disseminating sensor reports securely to the sink, those mechanisms do not provide adequate verification process of reports from source to destination nor do they completely mitigate false report injection attacks and Denial of Service attacks (DoS). Moreover these mechanisms concentrate on hop-by-hop security paradigms leaving end-to-end security at high risk. In this paper, we propose an en-route bogus filtering mechanism for secured data dissemination with the help of Nested HMAC structures. It filters bogus reports with the help of disseminated and disclosed key structures by the cluster head. The work also specifically addresses false report injection attacks and Denial of Services. The proposed work aims at decreasing the attackers malicious intent and activity compared to the existing mechanisms by the responsibility being taken by the cluster heads in finding the attackers within the clusters and marking them as malicious and later intimating to the base station. The legitimacy of the report being forwarded by the cluster head is collectively endorsed by Message authentication codes. We evaluate our mechanism through extensive analysis of relocating the position of malicious nodes in the event area and thereby analyzing its performance. I. Introduction Wireless Sensor Networks can be defined as a wireless network with nondeterministic routes, with multihop autonomous tiny sensor nodes which are helpful in collecting information and communicating them through short range radio communication device to sink or base stations. Since they operate on battery power [1], they cannot able to have high and long distant packet transmissions, sufficient memory capacity, high processing capacity and energy for prolonged functioning. When deployed in unattended terrains for critical military applications they have to config. themselves and must make use of the power efficiently to have an extended operating life time. Most of the battery's energy is consumed for communication and this is the reason why sensor nodes enter into sleep mode when they are idle. In addition to this, the rates of transmissions are expected to be minimal, because an adversary in a terrain can monitor the …
Determination of the constraints of bicycle use ın urban life Kent yaşamında bisiklet kullanım engellerinin belirlenmesi

The aim of this study is to determine the constraints of bicycle use in the cities and to propose solutions for the subject. The sample of the study was selected by using convenience sampling method. A total of 787 bicycle users ( M =30.66, SD =11.18, including 172 women ( M =29.08, SD =9.90) and 615 men ( M =31.10, SD =11.49), who used bicycles in daily life in the city participated in the research voluntarily. The data were collected with the Bicycle Handicap Scale developed by Balci et al. (2016). The scale consists of two parts that the personal information form and the participants' expressions about the factors preventing the use of bicycles. In the analysis of the data, t-test was used for the variables consisting of binary groups and one way ANOVA was used for the variables consisting of two groups. In the light of the collected data from the bicycle users participating in the survey; it was determined that the infrastructure deficiencies were the first among bicycle use obstacles. This is followed by lack of laws and regulations, physical and economic inadequacies, socio-cultural structure and individual deficiencies respectively. When participants rated the total score they received from the scale, it has been determined that cyclists have met with moderate contraints. Extended English summary is in the end of Full Text PDF (TURKISH) file . Ozet Bu calismanin amaci kentlerde bisiklet kullaniminin onundeki engellerin belirlenmesi ve konu ile ilgili cozum onerileri sunmaktir. Arastirmanin orneklemini kolayda ornekleme yontemi kullanilarak secilmistir. Kentlerde gundelik yasaminda bisiklet kullanan 172 kadin (Ort=29.08.±9.90), 615 erkek (Ort=31.10±11.49) olmak uzere toplam 787 bisiklet kullanicisi (Ort=30.66±11.18) arastirmaya gonullu olarak katilmistir. Arastirmada veriler; Balci ve arkadaslari (2016) tarafindan gelistirilen Bisiklet Engelleri Olcegi ile toplanmistir. Olcek, kisisel bilgi formu ve katilimcilarin bisiklet kullanimini engelleyen etmenlere yonelik ifadeler olmak uzere iki bolumden olusmaktadir. Verilerin analizinde, ikili gruptan olusan degiskenler icin t-testi, ikiden fazla gruptan olusan degiskenler icin ise tek yonlu varyans analizi (One Way Anova) kullanilmistir. Arastirmaya katilan bisiklet kullanicilarindan toplanan veriler isiginda; bisiklet kullanim engelleri arasinda ilk sirada alt yapi eksiklikleri oldugu saptanmistir. Bunu sirasiyla yasa ve mevzuattaki eksiklikler, fiziksel ve ekonomik yetersizlikler, sosyo-kulturel yapi ve bireysel eksikliklerin izledigi tespit edilmistir. Katilimcilarin olcek sorularina verdikleri yanitlar genel olarak degerlendirildiginde ise; bisiklet kullanicilarinin orta duzeyde bir engelle karsilastiklari belirlenmistir.
A fundamental study of structure-to-speech conversion

Speech acoustics vary due to differences in age, gender, vocal tract length, microphone, and so on. The authors recently have proposed a structural and abstract representation of speech, where these variations were effectively removed. In this study, a framework of speech synthesis based on this structural representation of speech is proposed. In the proposed framework, a system needs a “speech gestalt” of one utterance, properties of vocal tract length of speaker and properties of transmission of microphone. Using these information, acoustic signals to which hearers listen are generated. This framework can be regarded as a model of vocal imitation of infants. For a fundamental consideration of this framework, the authors considered this framework as a problem of searching cepstrum space for the solutions under some constraints in this report. As results of experiments, speech samples which have proper phonological characteristics were synthesized.
Genomewide Expression Profiling of Cryptolepine-Induced Toxicity in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

ABSTRACT We have used the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to identify genes that may confer sensitivity in vivo to the antimalarial and cytotoxic agent cryptolepine. Five S. cerevisiae strains, with different genetic backgrounds in cell permeability and DNA damage repair mechanisms, were exposed to several concentrations of cryptolepine. Cryptolepine showed a relatively mild toxicity for wild-type strains, which was augmented by either increasing cell permeability (Δerg6 or ISE2 strains) or disrupting DNA damage repair (Δrad52 strains). These results are compatible with the ability of cryptolepine to intercalate into DNA and thus promote DNA lesions. The effects of low concentrations of cryptolepine (20% and 40% inhibitory concentrations [IC20 and IC40]) were analyzed by comparing the gene expression profiles of treated and untreated Δerg6 yeast cells. Significant changes in expression levels were observed for 349 genes (117 upregulated and 232 downregulated). General stress-related genes constituted the only recognizable functional cluster whose expression was increased upon cryptolepine treatment, making up about 20% of upregulated genes. In contrast, analysis of the characteristics of downregulated genes revealed a specific effect of cryptolepine on genes related to iron transport or acid phosphatases, as well as a significant proportion of genes related to cell wall components. The effects of cryptolepine on the transcription of iron transport-related genes were consistent with a loss of function of the iron sensor Aft1p, indicating a possible disruption of iron metabolism in S. cerevisiae. Since the interference of cryptolepine with iron metabolism is considered one of its putative antimalarial targets, this finding supports the utility of S. cerevisiae in drug-developing schemes.
Providing hybrid block storage for virtual machines using object-based storage

This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of a multi-tiered storage system called MOBBS, which provides hybrid block storage for Virtual Machines (VMs) on top of object-based storage infrastructure. MOBBS is mainly motivated by the gap between the lack of studies on hybrid block storage for VMs and the increasing prevalence of hybrid storage systems. By stripping disk images into partitions and intelligently storing them on different storage tiers according to real-time workload patterns, MOBBS achieves efficient use of multiple storage devices and relieves the burden of data placement. Leveraging the benefits of object-based storage, MOBBS is able to dynamically perform non-disruptive and fine-grained data migration between storage tiers and distribute the complexity of data migration across entire storage nodes. Such designs enable our system to deliver storage for VMs with high scalability and availability under an efficient use of SSDs. We evaluated a Ceph implementation of MOBBS using both block and file system workloads. The results comprehensively demonstrate MOBBS's effectiveness in performance improvement as well as efficient utilization of different storage devices.
REFERENCE EXTRACTION AND COAUTHORSHIP VISUALIZATION OF SEMI-STRUCTURED BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA

This paper describes the steps taken to transform a semi-structured col- lection of documents containing bibliographic references of researchers from the Serbian province of Vojvodina into an information retrieval service which permits explicit visualization of publication coauthorhips. The process of information ex- traction consisting of reference recognition and coauthorship detection is presented first, together with an experimental evaluation on a representative subset of the data which demonstrates good values of precision and recall of extraction. Then, an overview of a program is given, which provides services for search and visual- ization of bibliographic data collected from the semi-structured source. Examples of program usage demonstrate how collaboration of researchers and organizations may be analyzed using the visualization functionalities of the software. Besides (co)authorships, the data collection contains other interesting information which may be utilized for social network analysis of Vojvodinian researchers and organi- zations in future work.
How Solid is Mass Support for Democracy—And How Can We Measure It?

A decade has passed since the Third Wave of democratization brought an avalanche of new, relatively unstable democracies into being, raising the question, “How solid is support for democracy in these countries? ” In the intervening years, public support for democracy has faded in some countries, many of which are democratic in name only. It is unclear how long even the pretense of electoral democracy will survive in the Soviet successor states, apart from the Baltics (Brzezinski 2001). The prospects for democracy in Islamic countries seem particularly poor, with some writers arguing that the basic values of Islamic publics may be incompatible with liberal democracy (Huntington 1993, 1996). This article examines this claim, using the 1999–2001 wave of the World Values Survey, which includes 10 Islamic countries, making it possible for the first time to compare the Islamic world with other major cultural zones. We find surprisingly widespread support for democracy among Islamic publics—at least by conventional measures.
Scheduling Gain in Spatial Diversity Systems: Asymptotic Analysis

In this paper, further in-depth asymptotic analysis on the interaction between spatial diversity and multiuser diversity in wireless networks is given, following our recent work [Zhou and Dai, ICC06] Rigorous proofs and necessarily stronger results in terms ot convergence are provided for some intuitions in this area. Equally important, explicit expressions of scheduling gain and average system capacity in various circumstances that reveal interesting inter-connections among key system parameters are given. Our results are general enough to cover many practical scenarios of interest
An intelligent model to construct specialized domain ontologies

Search engines and information retrieval (IR) systems provide a mechanism for users to access large amounts of information available through the Internet. However, in order to find the desired information, the user has to go through a staggering amount of information retrieved from highly dynamic resources. Experimental results show that the approach proposed for constructing specialized domains improves the precision of information retrieval. Our approach involves enriching the user's query with related linguistic semantic and statistical semantic related concept terms. We employ natural language process (NLP) techniques such as WordNet engine to enrich the user's query with semantic lexical synonymous terms and a probabilistic topic model such as latent dirichet allocation (LDA) to extract highly ranked topic from a query's retrieved information. Furthermore, an intelligent learning algorithm, reinforcement learning (RL) is integrated into the design to assist end users in selecting the concept domains that are most relevant to their needs.
Project : Bin Packing : A Survey and its Applications to Job Assignment and Machine Allocation

In this paper we present a survey of some common online heuristics to the single dimensional bin packing problem, and their analysis, including some offline variants, especially as it pertains to resource allocation. Through the lens of a case study of virtual hosting at a local university campus, we examine its applicability to the sizing of resources based on task demands and consider some multi dimensional variants as well as some takes on the problem from the perspective of some commercial applications.
Test pattern generation for worst-case crosstalk faults in DSM chips using Genetic Algorithm

Nowadays, aggressive scaling of transistor dimensions has led to the reduction of process geometries and thereby higher device density in DSM chips. Higher signal switching speeds and increased aspect ratios of interconnects in chips has enforced the attention towards non conventional faults due to the coupling noise between adjacent interconnects. Crosstalk is one such major Signal Integrity issue, that can occur intermittently or permanently, which may lead to functional problems and even occasionally for failure of the chip. Testing the chips for such faults is essential even after manufacturing with certain design constraints to ensure the quality of the chip. Predetermined test patterns are necessary for testing such crosstalk related faults. In this paper, an elitist genetic algorithm has been developed to determine the test patterns for worst-case crosstalk faults. Fitness functions for all basic gates also based on the level of the gates have been developed. The algorithm was performed on some benchmark circuits and the determined test patterns were also verified.
The boy problem in education and a 10-point proposal to do something about it

This article starts with an overview of how boys and young adult men fall behind in education in many countries (i.e., the “boy-problem” or “boy-crisis”), with a focus on British education. Follow- ing the overview, we review a selection of possible causes and some documented academic opposi- tion against approaches dealing with the boy-problem. We end with a proposal for a problem- focused 10-point plan to reduce the boy-problem. Our plan is “problem-focused” instead of “gender- focused”; that is, we focus on a set of problems from which boys suffer more than girls, but there is no reason why girls suffering from the same problems (e.g. excessive gaming) would not also benefit from the plan's implementation. We are optimistic that a solution of the boy-problem is possible, in particular because the proposed plan is affordable and straightforward, although it requires a major change in societal attitudes towards discipline and education.
Video Understanding and Content-Based Retrieval

This year, the joint team of UCF and the University of Mod-ena has participated in the following tasks: (1) shot bound-ary detection, (2) low-level feature extraction, (3) high-levelfeature extraction, (4) topic search and (5) BBC rushes man-agement. The shot boundary detection was contributed bythe Image Lab at the University of Modena. The other taskswere performed by the Computer Vision Team at UCF.
Quantification of steroid hormones with pheromonal properties in municipal wastewater effluent

Many fish use steroid hormones as pheromones to initiate behavioral and physiological changes during spawning. To assess the occurrence of steroid hormones with pheromonal properties in the aquatic environment and to evaluate the possibility that municipal wastewater discharges contain compounds that could affect fish reproduction by interfering with pheromones, several estrogens, androgens, and progestins were quantified by gas chromatography/tandem mass spectroscopy in effluent samples from 12 municipal wastewater treatment plants. Samples also were analyzed from an engineered treatment wetland, three groundwater wells, and one reservoir. Estrogens (17β‐estradiol and estrone) were detected in wastewater effluent at maximum concentrations of 4 and 12 ng/L, respectively. Androgens (testosterone and androstenedione) were detected at concentrations as high as 6.1 and 4.5 ng/L, respectively, whereas the synthetic progestin medroxyprogesterone was detected at concentrations up to 15 ng/L. Data from an effluent‐receiving engineered treatment wetland and shallow groundwater wells suggested that these compounds were not rapidly attenuated. The measured concentrations of steroids often exceeded olfactory detection thresholds at which fish detect these steroids, and in several cases, the steroid concentrations were comparable to levels at which pheromonal responses have been observed in fish.
A multitude of “lishes”: The nomenclature of hybridity

The present paper deals with portmanteau terms based on the word English , the bulk of which form a varied and extensive nomenclature used to describe hybrids of the English language with other languages. A citation database of over 3,500 entries was created containing 510 separate terms dating from the early 20th century to mid-2016. These figures indicate a widespread interest in the ways in which English hybridises with other languages and becomes localised in various parts of the globe. The results also show a trend of continuing increase in the coining of such terms to be expected in an increasingly globalised world. However, to date there has been no exhaustive examination of names for English-language hybrids. The present paper examines these portmanteau terms with regard to semantics, etymology, history, frequency, and pronunciation, and presents an alphabetical table of the complete set of terms in the Appendix.
Sustained increase of spontaneous input and spike transfer in the CA3-CA1 pathway following long-term potentiation in vivo

Long-term potentiation (LTP) is commonly used to study synaptic plasticity but the associated changes in the spontaneous activity of individual neurons or the computational properties of neural networks in vivo remain largely unclear. The multisynaptic origin of spontaneous spikes makes it difficult to estimate the impact of a particular potentiated input. Accordingly, we adopted an approach that isolates pathway-specific postsynaptic activity from raw local field potentials (LFPs) in the rat hippocampus in order to study the effects of LTP on ongoing spike transfer between cell pairs in the CA3-CA1 pathway. CA1 Schaffer-specific LFPs elicited by spontaneous clustered firing of CA3 pyramidal cells involved a regular succession of elementary micro-field-EPSPs (gamma-frequency) that fired spikes in CA1 units. LTP increased the amplitude but not the frequency of these ongoing excitatory quanta. Also, the proportion of Schaffer-driven spikes in both CA1 pyramidal cells and interneurons increased in a cell-specific manner only in previously connected CA3-CA1 cell pairs, i.e., when the CA3 pyramidal cell had shown pre-LTP significant correlation with firing of a CA1 unit and potentiated spike-triggered average (STA) of Schaffer LFPs following LTP. Moreover, LTP produced subtle reorganization of presynaptic CA3 cell assemblies. These findings show effective enhancement of pathway-specific ongoing activity which leads to increased spike transfer in potentiated segments of a network. They indicate that plastic phenomena induced by external protocols may intensify spontaneous information flow across specific channels as proposed in transsynaptic propagation of plasticity and synfire chain hypotheses that may be the substrate for different types of memory involving multiple brain structures.
Development of a 6 degree of freedom robotic micromanipulator for use in 3D MEMS microassembly

This paper describes the design and development of a 6 degree of freedom robotic manipulator used in the assembly of three-dimensional MEMS (micro electromechanical systems) microstructures. The robot employs a highly innovative mechanical design for the rotational axes to provide unprecedented access to a microchip substrate for microassembly operations. The first three axes of the robotic manipulator are orthogonally mounted linear stages providing Cartesian positioning of the chips beneath the end effector (microgripper). A rotational stage (alpha) mounted on the distal end of these three Cartesian axes allows the MEMS chip to be rotated. Two more degrees of freedom (beta and gamma) are serially mounted to the base frame, allowing for two degrees of rotation of the end effector. This configuration permits assembly of micro-parts on the surface of a MEMS chip at any orientation angle to the surface, within the limits of the workspace of the manipulator and the resolution of the motors. The end effector employs a standard tungsten probe with a passive microgripper bonded to it, which is used for grasping micro-parts. A software system has been developed to allow automatic operation of the manipulator. Preliminary assembly tests confirm the usefulness of the proposed design
Attacks and Defenses in Crowdsourced Mapping Services

Compared to traditional online maps, crowdsourced maps such as Waze are unique in providing real-time updates on traffic, congestion, accidents and points of interest. In this paper, we explore the practical impact of attacks against crowdsourced map systems, and develop robust defenses against them. Our experiments show that a single attacker with limited resources can cause havoc on Waze, reporting false congestion and accidents and automatically rerouting user traffic. We describe techniques to emulate Waze-enabled vehicles using lightweight scripts, and how to use these "ghost riders" to compromise user privacy by remotely tracking precise user movements while avoiding detection. A single attacker can control groups of ghost riders, overwhelming data from legitimate users and magnifying the impact of attacks. As defense, we propose a new approach based on {\em co-location edges}, authenticated records that attest to the one-time physical co-location of a pair of devices. Over time, co-location edges combine to form large {\em proximity graphs}, network that attest to physical interactions between devices. "Ghost-riders" cannot physically interact with real devices and can be detected using graph algorithms. We demonstrate the efficacy of this approach using large simulations, and discuss how they can be used to dramatically reduce the impact of attacks against crowdsourced mapping services.