Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Security Aspects of Soft Verified Messages Protected by Message Authentication Codes

The subject of this paper is the security analysis of soft verification. Soft verification is used, when messages protected by Message Authentication Codes (MAC) are transmitted over the noisy channel without Automatic Re-peat Request (ARQ) protocol. This situation is given with the secure real-time, satellite or broadband communication. Forward Error Correction (FEC) Codes are able to correct many errors, but not all of them. These remaining errors disable a successful authentication of messages protected by MACs. Many applications, multimedia or biometric for example, would accept messages with a few or local errors. Therefore, an authentication method is requested, which accepts messages as authentic, although they would be rejected by the standard verification. Such a method is supported by soft authentication. Two groups of soft authentication algorithms will be described: algorithms, which generate error tolerant MACs, whose security aspects were already published, and an soft verification, based on soft decision decoding, whose security aspects have not yet been published. The security level of soft verified messages is reduced. The risk of forgery and security loss will be calculated. Formulas will be presented for the extension of the lengths of MACs to compensate for the reduction of the security level. Results show remarkable coding gains. Many more messages can be accepted as authentic by soft verification at the same security level compared to standard verification without soft verification.
Four Technological Challenges in Ubiquitous Computing and their Influence on Interaction Design

While there has been much discussion about how people, tasks, and organizational and social context should shape the interactions in ubiquitous computing environments, little has been said about what effect technical constraints have. In this paper, we identify four essential technological challenges in ubicomp, that is ones that are unlikely to be overcome in the foreseeable future, and discuss their impact on interaction design.
Evaluation of Image Registration in PET/CT of the Liver and Recommendations for Optimized Imaging

Multimodality PET/CT of the liver can be performed with an integrated (hybrid) PET/CT scanner or with software fusion of dedicated PET and CT. Accurate anatomic correlation and good image quality of both modalities are important prerequisites, regardless of the applied method. Registration accuracy is influenced by breathing motion differences on PET and CT, which may also have impact on (attenuation correction–related) artifacts, especially in the upper abdomen. The impact of these issues was evaluated for both hybrid PET/CT and software fusion, focused on imaging of the liver. Methods: Thirty patients underwent hybrid PET/CT, 20 with CT during expiration breath-hold (EB) and 10 with CT during free breathing (FB). Ten additional patients underwent software fusion of dedicated PET and dedicated expiration breath-hold CT (SF). The image registration accuracy was evaluated at the location of liver borders on CT and uncorrected PET images and at the location of liver lesions. Attenuation-correction artifacts were evaluated by comparison of liver borders on uncorrected and attenuation-corrected PET images. CT images were evaluated for the presence of breathing artifacts. Results: In EB, 40% of patients had an absolute registration error of the diaphragm in the craniocaudal direction of >1 cm (range, −16 to 44 mm), and 45% of lesions were mispositioned >1 cm. In 50% of cases, attenuation-correction artifacts caused a deformation of the liver dome on PET of >1 cm. Poor compliance to breath-hold instructions caused CT artifacts in 55% of cases. In FB, 30% had registration errors of >1 cm (range, −4 to 16 mm) and PET artifacts were less extensive, but all CT images had breathing artifacts. As SF allows independent alignment of PET and CT, no registration errors or artifacts of >1 cm of the diaphragm occurred. Conclusion: Hybrid PET/CT of the liver may have significant registration errors and artifacts related to breathing motion. The extent of these issues depends on the selected breathing protocol and the speed of the CT scanner. No protocol or scanner can guarantee perfect image fusion. On the basis of these findings, recommendations were formulated with regard to scanner requirements, breathing protocols, and reporting.
Ocular Dominance and Activation Dynamics in a Unified Self-Organizing Modelof the Visual Cortex

A neural network model for the self-organization of lateral connections and ocular dominance columns from uncorrelated binocular input is presented. The self-organizing process results in a network where (1) afferent weights of each neuron organize into smooth hill-shaped receptive fields primarily on one of the retinas, (2) neurons with common eye preference form connected, intertwined patches, and (3) lateral connections primarily link regions of the same eye preference. Similar self-organization of cortical structures has been observed experimentally in strabismic kittens. The lateral connectivity in the model mediates activation dynamics that could explain, for example, why divergent squinters cannot form a single, binocular percept even for a completely binocular input. The model provides a basis for computational study of cortical self-organization and plasticity, as well as dynamic perceptual processes such as feature grouping and binding.
CLUSTERING TIME SERIES ONLINE IN A TRANSFORMED SPACE

Similarity-based retrieval has attracted an increas ing amount of attention in recent years. Although there are many different approaches , most are based on a common premise of dimensionality reduction and spatial acc ess methods. Relative change of the time series data provides more meaning and i nsight view of problem domain. This paper presents our efforts on consid ering the relative changes of time series during the time series matching process . A similarity distance measure that based on transformed difference space of a ser ies of critical points is proposed. Based on experiments with financial time series dat a, it can be concluded that our distance measure works as good as the Euclidean dis tance measure based normalized data without any shifting and scaling an d PAA approach. The distance measure proposed is a general distance metric and i s suitable to deal with online similarity matching because it does not maintain st ream statistics over data streams .
General human capital as a shared investment under asymmetric information

This paper examines the firm's optimal wage and layoff policies in situations where only general training is provided and the firm providing training has an advantage in information over other firms. The asymmetric information among firms creates adverse selection that seriously impairs the mobility of labor and consequently affects the firm's optimal policies. General human capital is shown to have the same layoff and cost-sharing implications as firm-specific human capital. Furthermore, the contracts prespecifying rigid wages are proven to be optimal.
Range-Doppler Imaging Via a Train of Probing Pulses

We consider range-Doppler imaging via transmitting a train of probing pulses. We present two methods for range-Doppler imaging. The first one is based on the instrumental variables (IV) filter and the second one is based on the iterative adaptive approach (IAA). Numerical results show that both methods can suppress interference from neighboring range and Doppler bins. An attractive feature of the IV filter is that it can be computed offline. IAA has better performance than IV and has super resolution, but at the cost of a higher computational complexity.
Loss of Serglycin Promotes Primary Tumor Growth and Vessel Functionality in the RIP1-Tag2 Mouse Model for Spontaneous Insulinoma Formation

The serglycin proteoglycan is mainly expressed by hematopoietic cells where the major function is to retain the content of storage granules and vesicles. In recent years, expression of serglycin has also been found in different forms of human malignancies and a high serglycin expression level has been correlated with a more migratory and invasive phenotype in the case of breast cancer and nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Serglycin has also been implicated in the development of the tumor vasculature in multiple myeloma and hepatocellular carcinoma where reduced expression of serglycin was correlated with a less extensive vasculature. To further investigate the contribution of serglycin to tumor development, we have used the immunocompetent RIP1-Tag2 mouse model of spontaneous insulinoma formation crossed into serglycin deficient mice. For the first time we show that serglycin-deficiency affects orthotopic primary tumor growth and tumor vascular functionality of late stage carcinomas. RIP1-Tag2 mice that lack serglycin develop larger tumors with a higher proliferative activity but unaltered apoptosis compared to normal RIP1-Tag2 mice. The absence of serglycin also enhances the tumor vessel functionality, which is better perfused than in tumors from serglycin wild type mice. The presence of the pro-angiogenic modulators vascular endothelial growth factor and hepatocyte growth factor were decreased in the serglycin deficient mice which suggests a less pro-angiogenic environment in the tumors of these animals. Taken together, we conclude that serglycin affects multiple aspects of spontaneous tumor formation, which strengthens the theory that serglycin acts as an important mediator in the formation and progression of tumors.
Kinetics of Expansion of Epitope-Specific T Cell Responses during Primary HIV-1 Infection1

Multiple lines of evidence support a role for CD8+ T cells in control of acute/early HIV replication; however, features of the primary HIV-specific CD8+ T cell response that may impact on the efficiency of containment of early viral replication remain poorly defined. In this study, we performed a novel, comprehensive analysis of the kinetics of expansion of components of the HIV-specific CD8+ T cell response in 21 acutely infected individuals. Epitope-specific T cell responses expanded asynchronously during primary infection in all subjects. The most rapidly expanded responses peaked as early as 5 days following symptomatic presentation and were typically of very limited epitope breadth. Responses of additional specificities expanded and contracted in subsequent waves, resulting in successive shifts in the epitope immunodominance hierarchy over time. Sequence variation and escape were temporally associated with the decline in magnitude of only a subset of T cell responses, suggesting that other factors such as Ag load and T cell exhaustion may play a role in driving the contraction of HIV-specific T cell responses. These observations document the preferential expansion of CD8+ T cells recognizing a subset of epitopes during the viral burst in acute HIV-1 infection and suggest that the nature of the initial, very rapidly expanded T cell response may influence the efficiency with which viral replication is contained in acute/early HIV infection.
Experimental constraints on mate preferences in Drosophila pseudoobscura decrease offspring viability and fitness of mated pairs

Using Drosophila pseudoobscura, we tested the hypothesis that social constraints on the free expression of mate preferences, by both females and males, decrease offspring viability and reproductive success of mating pairs. Mate preference arenas eliminated intrasexual combat and intersexual coercion. The time female and male choosers spent in arena tests near either of two opposite-sex individuals measured the preferences of choosers. We placed choosers in breeding trials with their preferred or nonpreferred discriminatee when they met the minimum criteria for showing the same preference in two consecutive tests. There was no statistically significant difference in the frequency of female and male choosers meeting minimal preference criteria. There was a significant difference between female and male choosers for offspring viability, with female choice having the greater effect, but there was not a significant difference in the overall reproductive success of male and female choosers. There were significant differences in fitness between matings to preferred and nonpreferred partners. Female and male choosers paired with their nonpreferred discriminatees had offspring of significantly lower viability, as predicted by the constraints hypothesis. Reproductive success, our measure of overall fitness, was greater when males or females mated with the partner they preferred rather than the one they did not prefer.
608 Semi-passive Biped Robot using Motion Control Combining Energy and PD Controls

This paper presents the method to control the motions of semi-passive walking by a biped robot. A passive walking robot can walk on the sloped ground without an actuator by using the potential energy. However, the robot without an actuator cannot walk on the horizontal ground. Therefore, two motors were installed on the hip of the passive-walking robot in order to load the torque for walking on the horizontal ground. A control law combining proportional – differential and energy ones was applied for a continuous walking motion. Computer simulations with its dynamic model were carried out to confirm the validity of the proposed control law and find out the optimal conditions for the walking motion. Based on the calculated results, the experiments have been performed to find the appropriate control gains for the continuous walking on the horizontal ground.
Question Answering System based on Question Classification and Sentential Level Ranking

and then using the portion of data that is significant for the user's question. For this purpose we need to summarize the data. Summarization is a technique used to extract sentences from a text document that best represent its content. Text summarization (TS) is the process of identifying the most salient information in a document or set of related documents and conveying it in less space (typically by a factor of five to ten) than the original text [1]. There are two types of summarization that is used; content based and context based summarization. The content-based summarization utilizes textual content of the web document while context-based makes use of the hypertext structure of the web and there are basically two known techniques for the summarization. Extractive summaries (extracts) are produced by concatenating several sentences taken exactly as they appear in the main document being summarized. Abstractive summaries (abstracts) are expressed in the words of the summary author. [2] In abstractive summaries the sentences can be rephrased. The proposed implementation uses content based extractive summarization. The techniques like stop word listing and stemming are used to increase the accuracy of the system. The proposed architecture focuses on factoid questions inducing entities and provides the short and relevant answer by using efficient searching and ranking techniques.
Arsenic in Drinking Water and Skin Lesions: Dose-Response Data from West Bengal, India

Background. Over 6 million people live in areas of West Bengal, India, where groundwater sources are contaminated with naturally occurring arsenic. The key objective of this nested case-control study was to characterize the dose-response relation between low arsenic concentrations in drinking water and arsenic-induced skin keratoses and hyperpigmentation. Methods. We selected cases (persons with arsenic-induced skin lesions) and age- and sex-matched controls from participants in a 1995–1996 cross-sectional survey in West Bengal. We used a detailed assessment of arsenic exposure that covered at least 20 years. Participants were reexamined between 1998 and 2000. Consensus agreement by four physicians reviewing the skin lesion photographs confirmed the diagnosis in 87% of cases clinically diagnosed in the field. Results. The average peak arsenic concentration in drinking water was 325 &mgr;g/liter for cases and 180 &mgr;g/liter for controls. The average latency for skin lesions was 23 years from first exposure. We found strong dose-response gradients with both peak and average arsenic water concentrations. Conclusions. The lowest peak arsenic ingested by a confirmed case was 115 &mgr;g/liter. Confirmation of case diagnosis and intensive longitudinal exposure assessment provide the basis for a detailed dose-response evaluation of arsenic-caused skin lesions.
Defibrillation Testing of the Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator: When, How, and by Whom?

The implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) has become an integral part of treatment for a variety of patients with symptomatic, or at risk for, ventricular tachyarrhythmias. The ICD's effectiveness is attributed to its ability to promptly detect and terminate ventricular tachycardia (VT) and fibrillation (VF). The clinical trials that established the positive role of ICD therapy were based on patients who underwent some form of defibrillation testing at the time of implantation. Therefore, since its advent, intraoperative defibrillation testing of the ICD to assure reliable detection and termination of VT/VF has been a standard practice. But because of advances in defibrillator and lead technology, which now facilitates successful device implantation (i.e., low defibrillation energy requirement to allow for an adequate programmed safety margin) in the majority of patients, the necessity of defibrillation testing has been called into attention. Despite substantial progress, it is not altogether clear whether a wholesale abandonment of intraoperative ICD testing is appropriate at this point. We review pertinent data regarding pros and cons of ICD testing and offer a suggestion as to when, how, and who should test ICDs.
Freeriding not (always) considered harmful

Measurements of real-world peer-to-peer systems have shown that up to 80% of the peers are so-called freeriders; they do not contribute any resources to the system but use resources from other peers. Freeriding is commonly considered a problem, yet no quantitative evaluation about its real effects has been performed. In this paper, we present a quantitative evaluation of the effects of freeriding on download times and service loads in a peer-to-peer content distribution system. Our results show that allowing freeriding in many cases significantly improves overall system performance. The improvement is more pronounced in realistic, heterogeneous environments.
Complex Network Model for Software System and Complexity Measurement

This paper proposes a new method for measuring the complexity of software systems based on complex network theory. We first construct the complex network model for software system. Then, the complexity of a homogeneous system is defined according to the entropy theory. With the experiments on open source software systems, we show that our method can reveal the complexity on different aspects of software systems,such as inheritance and understanding complexity.
Online Personal Data Processing and EU Data Protection Reform

This report sheds light on the fundamental questions and underlying tensions between current policy objectives, compliance strategies and global trends in online personal data processing, assessing the existing and future framework in terms of effective regulation and public policy. Based on the discussions among the members of the CEPS Digital Forum and independent research carried out by the rapporteurs, policy conclusions are derived with the aim of making EU data protection policy more fit for purpose in today’s online technological context. This report constructively engages with the EU data protection framework, but does not provide a textual analysis of the EU data protection reform proposal as such.
Intensive Rehabilitation Treatment in Parkinsonian Patients with Dyskinesias: A Preliminary Study with 6-Month Followup

A major adverse effect of levodopa therapy is the development of dyskinesia, which affects 30–40% of chronically treated Parkinsonian patients. We hypothesized that our rehabilitation protocol might allow a reduction in levodopa dosage without worsening motor performances, thus reducing frequency and severity of dyskinesias. Ten Parkinsonian patients underwent a 4-week intensive rehabilitation treatment (IRT). Patients were evaluated at baseline, at the end of the rehabilitation treatment and at 6-month followup. Outcome measures were the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale Sections II, III, and IV (UPDRS II, III, IV) and the Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale (AIMS). At the end of the IRT, levodopa dosage was significantly reduced (P = 0.0035), passing from 1016 ± 327 to 777 ± 333 mg/day. All outcome variables improved significantly (P < 0.0005 all) by the end of IRT. At followup, all variables still maintained better values with respect to admission (P < 0.02 all). In particular AIMS score improved passing from 11.90 ± 6.5 at admission to 3.10 ± 2.3 at discharge and to 4.20 ± 2.7 at followup. Our results suggest that it is possible to act on dyskinesias in Parkinsonian patients with properly designed rehabilitation protocols. Intensive rehabilitation treatment, whose acute beneficial effects are maintained over time, might be considered a valid noninvasive therapeutic support for Parkinsonian patients suffering from diskinesia, allowing a reduction in drugs dosage and related adverse effects.
Rab11 Helps Maintain Apical Crumbs and Adherens Junctions in the Drosophila Embryonic Ectoderm

Background Tissue morphogenesis and organogenesis require that cells retain stable cell-cell adhesion while changing shape and moving. One mechanism to accommodate this plasticity in cell adhesion involves regulated trafficking of junctional proteins. Methodology/Principal Findings Here we explored trafficking of junctional proteins in two well-characterized model epithelia, the Drosophila embryonic ectoderm and amnioserosa. We find that DE-cadherin, the transmembrane protein of adherens junctions, is actively trafficked through putative vesicles, and appears to travel through both Rab5-positive and Rab11-positive structures. We manipulated the functions of Rab11 and Rab5 to examine the effects on junctional stability and morphogenesis. Reducing Rab11 function, either using a dominant negative construct or loss of function alleles, disrupts integrity of the ectoderm and leads to loss of adherens junctions. Strikingly, the apical junctional regulator Crumbs is lost before AJs are destabilized, while the basolateral protein Dlg remains cortical. Altering Rab5 function had less dramatic effects, not disrupting adherens junction integrity but affecting dorsal closure. Conclusions/Significance We contrast our results with what others saw when disrupting other trafficking regulators, and when disrupting Rab function in other tissues; together these data suggest distinct mechanisms regulate junctional stability and plasticity in different tissues.
An empirical comparison of pie vs. linear menus

Menus are largely formatted in a linear fashion listing items from the top to bottom of the screen or window. Pull down menus are a common example of this format. Bitmapped computer displays, however, allow greater freedom in the placement, font, and general presentation of menus. A pie menu is a format where the items are placed along the circumference of a circle at equal radial distances from the center. Pie menus gain over traditional linear menus by reducing target seek time, lowering error rates by fixing the distance factor and increasing the target size in Fitts's Law, minimizing the drift distance after target selection, and are, in general, subjectively equivalent to the linear style.