Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Harnessing the power of blockchain technology to solve IoT security & privacy issues

In this paper, we examine the possibility of using blockchain technology, mainly the second-generation of blockchain and smart contract, to create a new version of our decentralized pseudonymous & privacy preserving authorization management framework. Our framework relies on pseudonymous digital identity to ensure unlinkability, Smart contract to express access control policies and Blockchain technology to manage access control enforcement.
Research on the Dynamic Hysteresis Loop Model of the Residence Times Difference (RTD)-Fluxgate

Based on the core hysteresis features, the RTD-fluxgate core, while working, is repeatedly saturated with excitation field. When the fluxgate simulates, the accurate characteristic model of the core may provide a precise simulation result. As the shape of the ideal hysteresis loop model is fixed, it cannot accurately reflect the actual dynamic changing rules of the hysteresis loop. In order to improve the fluxgate simulation accuracy, a dynamic hysteresis loop model containing the parameters which have actual physical meanings is proposed based on the changing rule of the permeability parameter when the fluxgate is working. Compared with the ideal hysteresis loop model, this model has considered the dynamic features of the hysteresis loop, which makes the simulation results closer to the actual output. In addition, other hysteresis loops of different magnetic materials can be explained utilizing the described model for an example of amorphous magnetic material in this manuscript. The model has been validated by the output response comparison between experiment results and fitting results using the model.
Age‐related differences in effective neural connectivity during encoding and recall

AGE-RELATED differences in brain activity may reflect local neural changes in the regions involved or they may reflect a more global transformation of brain function. To investigate this issue, we applied structural equation modeling to the results of a positron emission tomography (PET) study in which young and old adults encoded and recalled word pairs. In the young group there was a shift from positive interactions involving the left prefrontal cortex during encoding to positive interactions involving the right prefrontal cortex during recall, whereas in the old group frontal interactions were mixed during encoding and bilaterally positive during recall. The present results suggest that age-related changes in neural activation are partly due to age-related changes in effective connectivity in the neural network underlying the task.
Infectious Disease and the Creation of Culture

The study of cultural psychology is a massive scientific enterprise. Cultural psychology is defined by two conceptually distinct bodies of scientific research, each of which explores a different set of causal connections between psychology and culture. One body of research examines the influence of psychology on culture. That is, it addresses questions about exactly how psychological processes (defined at an individual level of analysis) exert causal consequences on cultural outcomes (measured at a collective level of analysis). There are many different investigations that, in one way or another, fit into this broad program of research. In doing so, they provide many different insights into the effects of individual-level psychological processes on the rituals and norms and collective beliefs that define cultures in the first place (e.g., Conway & Schaller, 2007 ; Heath, Bell, & Sternberg, 2001 ; Latane, 1996 ; for an overview, see Schaller & Crandall, 2004 ). Of course, when people think about “cultural psychology,” this is not typically the first body of research that comes to mind. Rather, for most people, the concept of “cultural psychology” conjures up a rather different body of research, in which the arrow of causality reverses and the research questions pertain to the influence of culture on psychology. The results of these investigations describe the myriad ways in which
Performance Comparison of Various Image Denoising Filters Under Spatial Domain

Image denoising is very important during enhancement of image. Original Image is generally corrupted with various types of noise. The noise present in the images may appear as additive or multiplicative components. The most challenging problem is removing that noise from an Image while preserving its details. Several noise removal techniques have been developed so far each having its own advantages and disadvantages. The focus of this paper is to study various spatial filters and to compare their performance in removing different types of noise. Here quantitative measure of comparison is provided by the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) parameter. General Terms Image Denoising, Spatial filtering.
NF-κB Signaling Regulates Expression of Epstein-Barr Virus BART MicroRNAs and Long Noncoding RNAs in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

ABSTRACT Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) expresses few viral proteins in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) but high levels of BamHI-A rightward transcripts (BARTs), which include long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) and BART microRNAs (miRNAs). It is hypothesized that the mechanism for regulation of BARTs may relate to EBV pathogenesis in NPC. We showed that nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) activates the BART promoters and modulates the expression of BARTs in EBV-infected NPC cells but that introduction of mutations into the putative NF-κB binding sites abolished activation of BART promoters by NF-κB. Binding of p50 subunits to NF-κB sites in the BART promoters was confirmed in electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA) and further demonstrated in vivo using chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) analysis. Expression of BART miRNAs and lncRNAs correlated with NF-κB activity in EBV-infected epithelial cells, while treatment of EBV-harboring NPC C666-1 cells with aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid [ASA]) and the IκB kinase inhibitor PS-1145 inhibited NF-κB activity, resulting in downregulation of BART expression. Expression of EBV LMP1 activates BART promoters, whereas an LMP1 mutant which cannot induce NF-κB activation does not activate BART promoters, further supporting the idea that expression of BARTs is regulated by NF-κB signaling. Expression of LMP1 is tightly regulated in NPC cells, and this study confirmed that miR-BART5-5p downregulates LMP1 expression, suggesting a feedback loop between BART miRNA and LMP1-mediated NF-κB activation in the NPC setting. These findings provide new insights into the mechanism underlying the deregulation of BARTs in NPC and identify a regulatory loop through which BARTs support EBV latency in NPC. IMPORTANCE Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) cells are ubiquitously infected with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Notably, EBV expresses very few viral proteins in NPC cells, presumably to avoid triggering an immune response, but high levels of EBV BART miRNAs and lncRNAs which exhibit complex functions associated with EBV pathogenesis. The mechanism for regulation of BARTs is critical for understanding NPC oncogenesis. This study provides multiple lines of evidence to show that expression of BARTs is subject to regulation by NF-κB signaling. EBV LMP1 is a potent activator of NF-κB signaling, and we demonstrate that LMP1 can upregulate expression of BARTs through NF-κB signaling and that BART miRNAs are also able to downregulate LMP1 expression. It appears that aberrant NF-κB signaling and expression of BARTs form an autoregulatory loop for maintaining EBV latency in NPC cells. Further exploration of how targeting NF-κB signaling interrupts EBV latency in NPC cells may reveal new options for NPC treatment.
The Social and Intellectual Dimensions in the Construction of Scientific Knowledge: The Institutional Theory in Organization Studies in Brazil

Based on the assumption that scientific knowledge is a social construction, (re)produced by a community of practicing researchers, in this article we seek to delineate two dimensions of this process. The first, which we have called the social dimension, has to do with the social interactions among researchers in a determined scientific field, being evaluated as a co-authorship network. The second, the intellectual dimension, defined as the programmatic profile expressed by its substantive content and provided references, is constituted in relational citation structures. With this analytical division in mind, we set out to research how the intellectual structure is conditioned by the social relationships among researchers, with a focus on the institutional analysis perspective in organizational studies in Brazil. For this purpose, we empirically evaluated the phenomenon from the convergence of the social network analysis with the scientometric analysis, seeking support for these analyses within the structurationist perspective of the institutional theory. The results point toward a conditioning of the intellectual dimension by the social dimension since there is significant evidence from individual relationships and relationships at the group level that support the argument for a recursive relationship between the two dimensions.
Designing Graph Database Models from Existing Relational Databases

n this paper, a method for transforming a relational database to a graph database model is described. In this approach, the dependency graphs for the entities in the system are transformed into star graphs. This star graph model is transformed into a hyper graph model for the relational database, which, in turn, can be used to develop the domain relationship model that can be converted in to a graph database model.
Leakage power reduction for reactive computation

Because of device scaling, leakage power is becoming a consistent fraction of the total power dissipated in CMOS circuits. In particular, it is dominant in reactive systems characterized by burst computations followed by long periods of inactivity. To reduce leakage power during such periods, we propose a new methodology that, di erently from existing techniques, does not require process or electrical level modi cations, but only the use of two additional power supplies.
Massive multi-user MIMO with DFT spreading for antenna mutual coupling and interference

A massive MIMO technique uses more than 100 antennas. According to several recent results, it can increase 10 times or more channel capacity than a conventional MIMO system with small number of antennas. However, one critical problem of this system is that it should overcome channel correlations such as spatial correlation and antenna mutual coupling. In order to overcome these problems, a new massive multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) with Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) spreading is proposed. The proposed scheme includes additional DFT/IDFT block and distributes symbols into large size MIMO antennas. When some antennas of a massive MIMO are mutually coupled or interferences occur, the corrupted symbols are distributed in different domain by DFT spreading. It is shown with simulation that the proposed scheme obtains significant performance improvement under the given simulation configuration.
Magic desk: bringing multi-touch surfaces into desktop work

Despite the prominence of multi-touch technologies, there has been little work investigating its integration into the desktop environment. Bringing multi-touch into desktop computing would give users an additional input channel to leverage, enriching the current interaction paradigm dominated by a mouse and keyboard. We provide two main contributions in this domain. First, we describe the results from a study we performed, which systematically evaluates the various potential regions within the traditional desktop configuration that could become multi-touch enabled. The study sheds light on good or bad regions for multi-touch, and also the type of input most appropriate for each of these regions. Second, guided by the results from our study, we explore the design space of multi-touch-integrated desktop experiences. A set of new interaction techniques are coherently integrated into a desktop prototype, called Magic Desk, demonstrating potential uses for multi-touch enabled desktop configurations.
Generation of Conceptual-Level Text Cloud with Graph Diffusion

In this paper, we explore a novel framework to generate a well-known text cloud visualization with the conceptual sense. The traditional text cloud is usually generated according to the word occurrence, possibly including the idf-based concept for word weight. The solution is applicable for the long articles. However, for a set of short sentences such as daily news titles, we cannot easily understand the weight of each keyword and its importance to users since the idf value and occurrence in short sentences are diﬃcult to be both well discriminative. In this paper, we propose a graph-based diﬀusion model to generate conceptual level keyword cloud. We utilize the RDF-based Wikipedia word relation and apply in the Chinese news titles from diﬀerent news sources. The result shows that our visualization can easily capture the importance concept revealed in a set of news titles.
Solving the High School Scheduling Problem Modelled with Constraints Satisfaction Using Hybrid Heuristic Algorithms

Constraint Programming is a methodology for problem solving which allows the user to describe data and constraints of the problem without explicitly solving in the declarative phase. Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSP) can simply be defined as a set of variables and a set of constraints among the values of the variables. Typical method of solving CSP models is building the solution by backtracking approach in which a partial assignment to the variables is incrementally extended, while maintaining feasibility of the current solution. The constraints are kept satisfied throughout the solving process. Many optimization problems of practical as well as theoretical significance consist of finding "the best" configuration of values for a set of variables. Such problems where the solution is modelled using discrete variables belong to combinatorial optimization (CO). The problems of combinatorial optimization consist of a set of variables, their domains, constraints among variables and a goal function that requires to be optimized. School scheduling is a typical example of a CO problem. High school schedule generation includes both temporal and spatial scheduling. It is a computation demanding and usually a complex task. It is a NP hard optimization problem that requires a heuristic solving approach (Zhaohui & Lim, 2000). It is interesting to note that educational institutions rarely use automated tools for schedule generation, although the area has been researched for a long time. A survey in British universities (Zervoudakis 2001) showed that only 21% of the universities use a computer in the generation of exam timetables. Only 37% of the universities use the computer as assistance in the process, while 42% do not use a computer at all. Generation of schedules in some schools in Japan takes up to 100 man hours a year. In bigger schools, schedule generation begins in April and does not end until June, two months after the beginning of the school year, almost 150 work days. Constraint satisfaction is usually not the first choice for modelling scheduling problems, due to their high complexity. Only the final schedule (hopefully) satisfies all imposed constraints. During schedule generation, most of the constraints will be dissatisfied at some point. We created a system where the extent of constraint satisfaction is measured and compared, so CSP can be successfully used in scheduling (Chorbev et al. 2007). When a measurement of constraint satisfaction is included, the system becomes a Constraint Optimization Problem (COP). O pe n A cc es s D at ab as e w w w . in te ch w eb . o rg
Teaching language through literature at the early stages : An NEH model for proficiency in French

As part of an NEH Project to foster proficiency, nine CUNY French professors developed modules incorporating literary selections at all levels of language study, starting with first and second year French. Pre-reading activities such as brainstorming, word association, and role-playing lay the foundation for in-depth reading probes. Students working in small groups tackle a new text directly in class, skimming, scanning, analyzing idioms, and guessing possible outcomes. Post-reading activities, designed for three different levels of proficiency, range from dramatic recitations to the writing of stories, poems, and imaginary sequels. This article gives a practical account of the methodology devised to teach poems by Eluard, Prevert, Apollinaire, and Verlaine
Distortionary Taxation , Debt , and Immigration

In this paper we investigate the behavior of an overlapping dynasties growth model with factor taxation to determine how much the natives of a country absorbing a flow of immigrants can use shifts in factor taxation or deficit finance to redistribute immigrant income to themselves. In an economy in which government expenditure is a fixed share of net national product, policy-makers can minimize the deadweight loss from factor taxation by equalizing the long-run tax rates on capital and work. However when the native population of a country expect immigrants to arrive in the future they can choose to shift some of the tax burden away from their own sources of income and on to the income of future immigrants without explicitly imposing discriminatory taxes. Instead, because natives are capital owners but immigrants are not they may choose to shift the burden of taxation from capital to labor. Alternatively, by temporarily lowering taxes they can shift the burden of present day government consumption to immigrants that have not yet arrived. Our results suggest that because of the steep dead weight loss incurred when factor taxes deviate from equality the scope for redistribution through intratemporal shifts from capital to labor is very small–the optimal tax on capital drops by approximately a percentage point for each percent inflow of immigrants. Much greater benefits are achieved by shifting taxes across time. JEL Classification: E62, J61, H60, O41.
A Non-Synonymous Coding Variant (L616F) in the TLR5 Gene Is Potentially Associated with Crohn's Disease and Influences Responses to Bacterial Flagellin

Background and Objectives Although numerous studies have implicated TLR5, or its ligands, bacterial flagellins, in the pathogenesis of Crohn's disease (CD), genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have not reported associations with the TLR5 gene. We aimed to examine potential CD-associated TLR5 variants and assess whether they modified inflammatory responses to bacterial flagellins. Methods and Principal Results A two-stage study was carried out. In stage 1, we genotyped tagging single-nucleotide polymorphisms (tag-SNPs) in the TLR5 gene in a sample of CD cases (<20 years of age, N = 566) and controls (N = 536). Single SNP and haplotype analysis was carried out. In Stage 2, we assessed the functional significance of potential CD-associated variant(s) vis-à-vis effects on the inflammatory response to bacterial flagellin using HEK293T cells. We observed marginal association between a non-synonymous coding SNP rs5744174 (p = 0.05) and CD. Associations between SNP rs851139 that is in high linkage disequilibrium (LD) with SNP rs5744174 were also suggested (p = 0.07). Haplotype analysis revealed that a 3 marker haplotype was significantly associated with CD (p = 0.01). Functional studies showed that the risk allele (616F) (corresponding to the C allele of SNP rs5744174) conferred significantly greater production of CCL20 in response to a range of flagellin doses than the comparator allele (616L). Conclusions Our findings suggest that a non-synonymous coding variation in the TLR5 gene may confer modest susceptibility for CD.
Finding Terminology Translations from Non-parallel Corpora

We present a statistical word feature, the Word Relation Matrix, which can be used to find translated pairs of words and terms from non-parallel corpora, across language groups. Online dictionary entries are used as seed words to generate Word Relation Matrices for the unknown words according to correlation measures. Word Relation Matrices are then mapped across the corpora to find translation pairs. Translation accuracies are around 30% when only the top candidate is counted. Nevertheless, top 20 candidate output give a 50.9% average increase in accuracy on human translator performance.
Optimal Boundary Control of a Tracking Problem for a Parabolic Distributed System using Hierarchical Fuzzy Control and Evolutionary Algorithms

In this paper we examine the application of hierarchical fuzzy control and evolutionary algorithms to find closed-loop control solutions of the optimal control problem arising from semi-discretisation of a linear parabolic tracking problem with boundary control. The solution is compared with that obtained by closedloop methods based upon the variational equations of the Minimum Principle and the finite element method.
A low-complexity implementation of QC-LDPC encoder in reconfigurable logic

Low Density Parity Check(LDPC) codes are a special class of error correction codes widely used in communication and disk storage systems, due to their Shannon limit approaching performance and their favorable structure. In this paper, a methodology for optimized hardware multiplication by constant matrices in GF(2) is introduced and then applied to the Quasi-Cyclic LDPC encoding algorithm. Taking advantage of the fact that the parity check matrix rarely changes, the signals in many cases are hard-wired into the LUTs and thus the cyclic-shifters and block-memories conventionally used are eliminated. Therefore, the proposed framework leads to less complex, mapped to reconfigurable logic designs, whereas it combines the performance of hard-wired solutions (high throughput, low latency) and the flexibility of the software and its hardware counterparts. These advantages in terms of hardware savings and throughput prove that the proposed encoder scheme is suitable for high-speed applications, such as long-haul optical transmission, where speed and resources utilization are a major issue.
The Ratio of Estimated Average Glucose to Fasting Plasma Glucose Level Is Superior to Glycated Albumin, Hemoglobin A1c, Fructosamine, and GA/A1c Ratio for Assessing β-Cell Function in Childhood Diabetes

Objective. This study investigated the use of the estimated average glucose to fasting plasma glucose ratio (eAG/fPG ratio) to screen for β-cell function in pediatric diabetes. Methods. Glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), glycated albumin (GA), fructosamine, insulin, and C-peptide levels were measured. The ratio of GA to HbA1c (GA/A1c ratio) was calculated, and the homeostasis model assessment of β-cell function (HOMA-β) was determined. Results. Median values of C-peptide, insulin, and HOMA-β levels were significantly higher in patients with an increased eAG/fPG ratio than in those with a decreased eAG/fPG ratio. C-peptide and HOMA-β levels were more closely correlated with the eAG/fPG ratio than with GA, HbA1c, the GA/A1c ratio, and fructosamine. In contrast, body mass index was significantly associated with GA, GA/A1c ratio, and fructosamine, but not with the eAG/fPG ratio and HbA1c levels. To test the diagnostic accuracies of the eAG/fPG ratio for identifying HOMA-β > 30.0% in patients with type 2 diabetes, the area under the ROC curve of the eAG/fPG ratio was significantly larger than that of the GA/A1c ratio [0.877 (95% CI, 0.780–0.942) versus 0.775 (95% CI, 0.664–0.865), P = 0.039]. Conclusions. A measurement of the eAG/fPG ratio may provide helpful information for assessing β-cell function in pediatric patients with diabetes.