Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Digital security algorithm for GSM incorporated virtual e-banking protocol using watermarking technique

Cashless electronic transaction is getting immense popularity nowadays due to its procedural and bureaucratic simplicity. Almost each and every organization and financial institutes prefers electronic transaction in lieu of pen-paper based banking approach, which depends on high speed internet technology. However, this online monetary transaction is a long cherished blessing for the developed countries. In developing and underdeveloped countries, SMS banking gets rapid popularity over the internet banking via mobile phone, since internet based m-banking suffers from several limitations of internet connectivity, such as inaccessibility, slow speed, intermittent disruptions, and need for costly handset. In this paper, we propose a scheme where even without having an internet connection within the mobile handset, a client can virtually get the advantage of high speed internet banking via a GSM incorporated SMS transaction. Moreover, security over internet is a burning issue irrespective of the type of transaction, especially when the internet based transactions are operated at the user end. In the proposed scheme, we also offer a newly dimensioned security protocol using digital watermarking technique.
IEEE 802.11 packet delay-a finite retry limit analysis

The contribution of this paper is on the study of packet delays for the IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network DCF MAC protocol. A method is presented capable of taking into account retransmission delays with or without retry limits. We present an analytical model based on a Markov chain which allows us to derive closed form expressions for the packet delays, the probability of a packet being discarded when it reaches the maximum retransmission limit and the average time to drop such a packet for the basic and RTS/CTS access mechanisms. The results presented are for standard protocol parameters versus the number of contention stations. Finally, the accuracy of the analytical model is verified by simulations.
Nomophobia:The Problem Lies at our Fingertips

This study is an attempt to understand the modern age mobile phone addiction-nomophobia and its relationship with impulsiveness in youngsters. Nomophobia is on the rise in the population on account of technology dependence and penetration of mobile phones in the society. The literal meaning of nomophobia is the no-mobile-phone phobia. It is an anxiety experienced by an individual when he/she is not having access to their mobile phone. Impulsiveness is lack of impulse control and inability to delay gratification. This paper also examines gender differences in nomophobia and impulsiveness. For this purpose, sample was drawn from college students. The sample comprised two hundred bachelors and masters degrees students (N=200) i.e. one hundred males and one hundred females from the age range of 18-23 years. The questionnaire was administered to them after procuring informed consent. The techniques of Pearson Product Moment Correlation and student's t-test were employed for the analysis of data.
Estimating Urban Households’ Willingness-to-Pay for Upland Forest Restoration in Vietnam

Increased urbanization coupled with increased reliance of urban communities on rural areas for ecosystem service provision is a challenge faced by many nations. The ability of urban households to directly support restoration efforts in surrounding rural regions represents an underappreciated funding stream for ecological restoration. This study explored the willingness of urban households to support forest restoration in Vietnam. We surveyed 211 households (HHs) in the capital city Hanoi, Vietnam. A Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) model allowed us to obtain the parameters of our model and quantify mean Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) for a program of forest restoration in addition to identifying factors influencing the decision of WTP. Generally, over forty percent of the households surveyed are willing to pay for forest restoration and the mean value of WTP is 37,830 VND ($1.73) per household per month. WTP depends on endogenous and exogenous factors including level of education, income, female-to-male ratio in the household, attitude toward payment for monthly electricity consumption, and awareness of payment for environmental service. Our results suggest that urban household’s demand for forest restoration is real, and represents an untapped source of restoration funding. Policy-makers should take actions to apply charges on water bills to turn this potential into reality for restoration projects in Vietnam if the benefits from restoration outweigh the costs based on our findings.
A hierarchical approach to the out-of-order arrival of frames in video streaming applications on clustered MPSoC

We consider video streaming applications written in the form of coarse-grained parallel threads which are mapped onto a multi processor system-on-chip. For performance reasons, the threads are replicated, organized into several parallel pipelines, and mapped onto a clustered architecture. This type of architecture has non uniform memory access so that latencies vary strongly. As a consequence, data items potentially arrive at the join task in an arbitrary order, but have to leave in-order. We extend an algorithm initially conceived for networking applications. This algorithm re-establishes the order while using minimal buffer space for a given throughput. Data items are either stored in a buffer or discarded if their earliness or lateness exceeds a limit previously fixed by experimentation. The extended algorithm handles the notion of hierarchy which is typical for video streaming: several blocks make up a stripe, several stripes make up a frame and so forth. We show first experimental results for a multi-pipeline Motion JPEG decoder on a multi-cluster SoC and compare with an existing implementation.
Trends in prevalence of atopic diseases and allergic sensitization in children in Eastern Germany

Trends in prevalence of atopic diseases and allergic sensitization in children from Eastern Germany during the 1990s were analysed. The study consisted of three regional cross-sectional surveys of a total of 7,632 children (aged 5–14 yrs) in 1992–1993, 1995–1996, and 1998–1999. Information was gathered on atopic diseases and potential predictors by a parental questionnaire. Allergic sensitization for birch, grass, mite, cat, and cladosporium were assessed by radioallergosorbent test (RAST). After adjustment for age, sex and the study area of the participants, prevalence increased between the first and third survey for hay fever, for asthma and for atopic eczema. The adjusted prevalence of allergic sensitization (RAST >0.35 kU·L−1) showed a decrease, whereas the prevalence of strong sensitization (RAST ≥17.5 kU·L−1) increased significantly, specifically in cohorts born after 1989. Further adjustment for possible determinants of these atopic diseases did not change the trend estimates. A clear increase in the prevalence of atopic diseases, with the exception of hay fever, was observed as well as a shift towards a stronger allergic sensitization, which might affect the onset of clinical manifestations of atopic diseases. Differences in the epidemiology of respiratory symptoms, illnesses and allergies between populations living in the former East Germany and those living in the former West Germany have been reported. Among East German children, lower prevalence rates of asthma, and positive skin-prick tests were observed compared to West German children in the early 1990s 1–5. Similarly, among East German adults, lower specific immunoglobulin (Ig) E levels and lower prevalence rates of asthma, wheezing, positive methacholine-challenge tests, allergic rhinitis, and positive skin-prick tests have been reported compared to those of West German adults 6, 7.
Fingerprint subclassification using rotation-invariant features

A new method for fingerprint subclassification is proposed. First, a rotation-invariant feature is generated by rotation-invariant distance between orientation features. Then, fuzzy methods are adopted in both clustering step and classification step. With an introduced parameter, the balance between accuracy and average comparison times is made. The results show that the clustered subclasses are reasonable and the classification accuracy outperforms the combinations of crisp methods and fuzzy methods.
Reflex Regulation of Sympathetic Activity in the Spontaneously Hypertensive Rat

The influence that the pressure-sensitive receptors in the cardiovascular system have on renal nerve activity and on heart rate was compared in normotensive rats (NTR) and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). The cardiovascular receptors were stimulated by raising the blood pressure (BP) with intravenous phenylephrine. The duration of silence in the record of renal sympathetic nerve activity produced by a number of different rises in BP was measured. We found that the pressure that was just able to produce a silence in the nerve activity (threshold pressure) was higher in the SHR (170 mm Hg) than in the NTR (130 mm Hg). Also, comparable rises in BP above the threshold pressure in the SHR and NTR were less effective in the SHR in producing a complete inhibition of sympathetic nerve activity as judged by the short duration of inhibition. In contrast, we found that the changes in heart rate produced by rises in BP above threshold pressure were similar in NTR and SHR although the threshold pressure was somewhat higher in the latter. It was, therefore, concluded that the cardiovascular pressure receptors, apart from being reset to operate at a higher pressure level in the SHR, are less able to inhibit ongoing sympathetic activity than in the NTR. It is suggested that this is most likely due to a high sympathetic activity in the SHR.
X-inactivation: quantitative predictions of protein interactions in the Xist network

The transcriptional silencing of one of the female X-chromosomes is a finely regulated process that requires accumulation in cis of the long non-coding RNA X-inactive-specific transcript (Xist) followed by a series of epigenetic modifications. Little is known about the molecular machinery regulating initiation and maintenance of chromosomal silencing. Here, we introduce a new version of our algorithm catRAPID to investigate Xist associations with a number of proteins involved in epigenetic regulation, nuclear scaffolding, transcription and splicing processes. Our method correctly identifies binding regions and affinities of protein interactions, providing a powerful theoretical framework for the study of X-chromosome inactivation and other events mediated by ribonucleoprotein associations.
PUNO : Predictive Unicast and Notification towards Efficient Transactional Memory Execution

Hardware Transactional Memory (HTM) schemes usually piggyback onto the cache coherence protocol to detect data access conflicts between transactions. We identify an intrinsic mismatch between the coherence scheme and transaction execution which causes a sizable amount of unnecessary transaction aborts. This pathological behavior is called false aborting and increases the amount of wasted computation and on-chip communication, manifesting itself as a performance and energy pitfall in HTM designs. For the TM applications we examined, 41% of the transactional write requests incur false aborting. We propose Predictive Unicast and Notification (PUNO), a novel hardware mechanism to combat false aborting. PUNO reduces transaction aborts by 61% and network traffic by 32% in workloads representative of future TM applications. The improvement is achieved with a meager 0.41% area overhead.
Zinc asparaginate supplementation induces redistribution of toxic trace elements in rat tissues and organs

Abstract The primary objective of the current study was the investigation of the influence of zinc asparaginate supplementation for 7 and 14 days on toxic metal and metalloid content in rat organs and tissues. Rats obtained zinc asparaginate in doses of 5 and 15 mg/kg/day for 7 and 14 days. At the end of the experiment rat tissues and organs (liver, kidney, heart, m. gastrocnemius, serum, and hair) were collected for subsequent analysis. Estimation of Zn, Al, As, Li, Ni, Sn, Sr content in the harvested organs was performed using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry at NexION 300D. The obtained data showed that intragastric administration of zinc significantly increased liver, kidney and serum zinc concentrations. Seven-day zinc treatment significantly affected the toxic trace element content in the animals’ organs. Zinc supplementation significantly decreased particularly liver aluminium, nickel, and tin content, whereas lead tended to increase. Zinc-induced changes in kidney metal content were characterized by elevated lithium and decreased nickel concentration. Zinc-induced alteration of myocardical toxic element content was multidirectional. Muscle aluminium and lead concentration were reduced in response to zinc supplementation. At the same time, serum and hair toxic element concentrations remained relatively stable after 7-day zinc treatment. Zinc asparaginate treatment of 14 days significantly depressed liver and elevated kidney lithium content, whereas a significant zinc-associated decrease was detected in kidney strontium content. Zinc supplementation for 14 days resulted also in multidirectional changes in the content of heart toxic elements. At the same time, significant zinc-associated decrease in muscle lithium and nickel levels was observed. Fourteen-day zinc treatment resulted in significantly increased serum arsenic and tin concentrations, whereas hair trace element content remained relatively stable. Generally, the obtained data indicate a significant redistribution of toxic metals in the animal organism under zinc supplementation.
An Evaluation of IP-Address Lookup Algorithms

Due to the manyfold increase in Internet traffic, backbone links and routers of multigigabit capacity are commonly deployed. One of the major bottlenecks in the optimum performance of such high-speed routers is address lookup while performing longest prefix match. The problem is further compounded by the introduction of 128 bit addresses in IPv6 technology. Due to the importance of the address lookup problem several algorithms have been proposed in recent years. This paper presents an evaluation of state-of-art IP address lookup algorithms. Both software and hardware based algorithms are discussed in terms of space/time complexity, lookup speed, scalability and update overheads
Strategy for processing and analyzing social media data streams in emergencies

People are using social media to a greater extent, particularly in emergency situations. However, approaches for processing and analyzing the vast quantities of data produced currently lag far behind. In this paper we discuss important steps, and the associated challenges, for processing and analyzing social media in emergencies. In our research project EmerGent, a huge volume of low-quality messages will be continuously gathered from a variety of social media services such as Facebook or Twitter. Our aim is to design a software system that will process and analyze social media data, transforming the high volume of noisy data into a low volume of rich content that is useful to emergency personnel. Therefore, suitable techniques are needed to extract and condense key information from raw social media data, allowing detection of relevant events and generation of alerts pertinent to emergency personnel.
The power of friction: Quantifying the "goodness" of frictional grasps

This paper attempts to quantify the trade-oos that exist among the number of ngers, coeecient of friction and the goodness of a grasp. In particular, we give a general framework for deening a grasp metric that takes friction into account. We contrast our approach to an older metric that was proposed by Ferrari and Canny FC92] for the frictional case. In addition, we discuss several algorithmic solutions related to fric-tional grasps.
"Associação entre Rede e Apoio Social com Auto-Avaliação da Saúde em Idosos Residentes do Município do Rio de Janeiro "

The concept of health for elderly people must incorporate social aspects apart from the occurrence of diseases. Although the elderlies tend to a higher familial and social isolation, few studies investigated if social relations are related to subjective measures of health in elderly people. The aim of this study was to investigate the association of social networks and social support with self-rated health in elderlies by sex. The data used were from the 1 Survey of Health and Living Conditions of Elderly People, performed in 2006 by the Municipal Secretary of Health of the city of Rio de Janeiro. It was a cross-sectional study involving elderlies aged 60 years or more using a probabilistic sample in two-stages of selection during the Flu vaccination campaign in 2006. The outcome was self-rated health (good and poor) and the independent variables were organized into six blocks: 1) social network and social support, 2) socio-economic characteristics, 3) health-related behaviors, 4) access to health services, 5) functional capacity and self-reported diseases and 6) age. The data analysis was performed by sex. Hierarchical multivariate logistic regression was used (p<0.05) after bi-variate analysis to select the independent variables (p<0.20). Odds Ratio (OR) and 95% Confidence Intervals were obtained (95%CI). The sample comprised 3,649 elderlies and the predominant age group was between 60 and 69 years. Most of participants have low schooling, did not work, have no health insurance and lived with other people. The poor self-rated health was associated with the lack of social support in females (OR 1.70 CI95% 1.26-2.30), and with the absence of social network in males (OR 1.56 CI95% 1.10-2.20). Other associated factors with poor self-rated health were income (both), current job (females), food habit (males), functional capacity (both), number of selfreported diseases (both) and depression (both). The hypothesis of association of social network and social support with self-rated health was confirmed, showing differences regarding sex. Strategies and public policies to improve health of elderly people must consider social dimensions in order to promote a healthy aging.
General-purpose Graphics Processing Units Deliver New Capabilities to the Embedded Market

Today’s graphics processors are highly programmable, massively parallel compute engines. With the development of open, industry standards, parallel programming languages such as OpenCLTM and the continued evolution of heterogeneous computing, general-purpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs) offer exciting new capabilities for the embedded market. This paper examines some of the industry factors driving GPGPU adoption and the associated challenges, describes AMD and NVIDIA® GPGPU architectures, and then compares some competing parallel processing alternatives. From a programming perspective, the paper introduces the reader to key concepts behind heterogeneous OpenCL computing and illustrates a simple OpenCL programming example.
Effects of temperature on maximum acceleration, deceleration and power output during vertical running in geckos

SUMMARY We studied performance and kinematics of the diurnal gekkonid lizard Phelsuma dubia while running vertically on a smooth surface at different temperatures. Trials were conducted at 5°C intervals from 15°C to 35°C. High-speed video recordings and digitization were used to obtain measures of instantaneous velocity, acceleration, deceleration and mass-specific power output and maximal values for each were taken as performance measures. Kinematic variables were also obtained from high-speed video recordings and included stride length and duration, step (stance phase) length and duration, and duty factor. Maximal instantaneous velocity, acceleration and deceleration increased by a factor of approximately 1.7 between 15°C and 25°C, and less so (∼1.2×) between 25°C and 35°C. Mass-specific power output was more temperature-sensitive, increasing 2.5× up to 25°C and a further 1.4× above that temperature. Stride length increased 1.5× over the entire temperature interval studied, while stride duration decreased by a factor of 1.9, suggesting that velocity is modulated by changes in both stride length and duration in P. dubia. Duty factor was not significantly influenced by temperature. Stride length was the only kinematic measure to be influenced by stride number, with second steps from a standstill being longer than first steps. We discuss the significance of velocity and acceleration being affected in a similar manner by temperature, and that speed is modulated by both changes in stride length and duration.
A Model Approach to the Estimation of Peer-to-Peer Traffic Matrices

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications have witnessed an increasing popularity in recent years, which brings new challenges to network management and traffic engineering (TE). As basic input information, P2P traffic matrices are of significant importance for TE. Because of the excessively high cost of direct measurement, many studies aim to model and estimate general traffic matrices, but few focus on P2P traffic matrices. In this paper, we propose a model to estimate P2P traffic matrices in operational networks. Important factors are considered, including the number of peers, the localization ratio of P2P traffic, and the network distance. Here, the distance can be measured with AS hop counts or geographic distance. To validate our model, we evaluate its performance using traffic traces collected from both the real P2P video-on-demand (VoD) and file-sharing applications. Evaluation results show that the proposed model outperforms the other two typical models for the estimation of the general traffic matrices in several metrics, including spatial and temporal estimation errors, stability in the cases of oscillating and dynamic flows, and estimation bias. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research on P2P traffic matrices estimation. P2P traffic matrices, derived from the model, can be applied to P2P traffic optimization and other TE fields.
Detection of composite forged image

With the development of digital technology, original analog photograph has been increasingly replaced by digital image, and the forgery of digital image has become more and more easy and diversiform. For the most common blur operations of composite forged image, this paper presents a localization approach of forged region based on detection of image edge. First of all, we process the image, which is to be detected, with a smoothing filter, and then use the LOG (Laplace-Gaussian Operator) edge detector for edge detection, finally, we make judgment on missed edge: if the forged region is connected and its size is not less than 0.85% of the whole image's size, we can judge this forgery is significative. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach can accurately detect the blur operation traces of composite forged images, and can precisely locate the forged region.
Mirror Movements Identified in Patients with Moebius Syndrome

Background Moebius syndrome is a rare disorder with minimum clinical criteria of congenital facial weakness in association with impairment in abduction of one or both eyes. Mirror movements are not known to be associated with Moebius syndrome. Case Report We present three patients who meet minimum criteria for a diagnosis of Moebius syndrome and who also display mirror movements. Discussion This case series suggests that Moebius syndrome may be associated with mirror movements. Further investigation to delineate the genetic etiologies of Moebius syndrome is ongoing. Patients with Moebius syndrome and mirror movements may represent a specific subclass of this disorder.