Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Toward Governance of Cross-Cloud Application Deployment

In this article, the authors introduce the main ideas around the governance of cross-Cloud application deployment and their related concepts. It is argued that, due to the increasing complexity and nature of the Cloud market, an intermediary specialized in brokering the deployment of different components of a same application onto different Cloud products could both facilitate said deployment and in some cases improve its quality in terms of cost, security & reliability and QoS. In order to fulfill these objectives, the authors propose a high level architecture that relies on their previous work on governance of policy & rule driven distributed systems. This architecture aims at supplying five main functions of 1) translation of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and pricing into a common shared DSL, 2) correlation of analytical data (e.g. monitoring, metering), 3) combination of Cloud products, 4) information from third parties regarding different aspects of Quality of Service (QoS) and 5) cross-Cloud application deployment specification and governance.
Verification of Security Policies for Distributed Management of Collaboration Systems

In this paper, we present a methodology for administrative policy specification in distributed management of collaboration systems. The goal of the methodology is to ensure that sensitive security requirements cannot be violated by untrusted participants. A model of administrative roles for distributed management of collaboration systems is presented. Model checking based on finite-state techniques is used to verify that global security requirements cannot be violated by untrusted users managing policies in a decentralized management. Several verification models are developed based on possible types of violation of administrative privileges – such as role admission policies, coordination policies, and object access policies.
Human identification using heart sound

In this paper, we investigate the possibility of using heart sound as a biometric for human identification. The most significant contribution of using heart sound as a biometric is that it cannot be easily simulated or replicated as compared to other conventional biometrics. Our approach consists of a robust feature extraction scheme which is based on cepstral analysis with a specified configuration, combined with Gaussian mixture modeling. Various experiments have been conducted to determine the relationship between various parameters in our proposed scheme. The results suggest that parameter values appropriate for heart sounds should be significantly different for equivalent parameters used in conventional cepstral analysis for speech processing. In particular, heart sounds should be processed within segments of 0.5 second and using the full resolution in frequency domain. Secondly, higher order cepstral coefficients, carrying information on the excitation, are also useful. Preliminary results indicate that with well-chosen parameters, an identification rate of up to 96% is achievable for a database consisting of 7 individuals, with heart sounds collected over a period of 2 months.
A Mobile Based Remote User Authentication Scheme without Verifier Table for Cloud Based Services

The emerging Cloud computing technology, offering computing resources as a service is gaining increasing attention of both the public and private sector. For the whole hearted adoption of Cloud, the service providers need to ensure that only valid users gain access to the services and data residing within the provider's premises. Ensuring secure access to sensitive resources within the Cloud requires a strong user authentication mechanism using multiple authentication factors. The mechanisms should also consider the increasing needs of Internet access through smart phones and other mobile devices and facilitate access through a variety of devices. Traditionally, a user needs to maintain separate user accounts for each Service Provider whose service he/she desires to use and this may cause inconvenience to users. Single Sign on (SSO) addresses this issue by permitting users to create one login credential and access multiple services hosted in different domains. In this scenario, a compromise of the single credential can result in account take over at many other sites. This points out to the requirement of strengthening the authentication mechanism by using more than one factor. This paper proposes a SSO based remote user authentication scheme for a Cloud environment. The proposed protocol uses password and mobile token and does not require the server to maintain a verifier table. The protocol is verified using automated security Protocol verification tool, Scyther and the results prove that the protocol provides protection against man-in-the-middle attack, replay attack and secrecy of the user's credentials.
The Information Network: Exploiting Causal Dependencies in Online Information Seeking

The Internet has emerged as a leading source of information about the world and its daily occurrences. Platforms like Wikipedia act as information conduits through which informational elements (e.g. topic pages) cater to the information seeking needs of users worldwide. While usage data from these informational elements help us to predict the information seeking behavior of users, especially in reaction to external news events, what has been largely ignored in past literature is the predictive value of the underlying informational network that connects these elements. In this study, we uncover causal linkages in information seeking behavior among related informational elements on Wikipedia. We demonstrate that incorporating this causal information leads to better predictions of page view counts of relevant Wikipedia pages, when compared to models that ignore such underlying causal linkages. We also provide additional evidence about the efficacy of our approach from the real world, by performing a judgment study with human annotators. This research is among the first to investigate and uncover the value of understanding the underlying relationships among informational elements.
The Light Verb Jungle

The Light Verb is FunctionalSeveral approaches assume that the light verb simply serves as a licenser of predication:• Grimshaw and Mester 1988 — N-V complex predicates with Japanese suru ‘do’(assume a notion of Argument Transfer)• Cattell 1984 — V+NP phenomena in English.Light Verbs are a Type of Auxiliary• Hacker 1958 – Light verbs are essentially redundant elements:eine eigentu¨mliche, nicht nur bei den Hilfsverben [= light verbs] wirksame,sondern die ganze Sprache durchziehende stilistische Tendenz des Hindi inAktion: die Neigung zum Pleonasmus. • Hook 1974, 1991 — Light verbs are vector verbs that serve an explicating or aspectualfunction. • Abeill´e, Godard, and Sag 1998 — Tense auxiliaries and causative faire constructionsin French are both analyzed as complex predicates. • Most any GB/MP approach.Complex Predicates are a Variation on Control/Raising• Huang 1992 — Analyzes Chinese ba and de constructions as an instance of control.The Light Verb Systematically Contributes to the Argument StructureLight verbs are seen as contributing to the argument structure of a predicate they are syn-tactically and semantically dependent on. • Rosen 1989 — Posits light (empty), partial, and complete merger at the level of argu-ment structure for Romance restructuring verbs and causatives. • Alsina 1996, Mohanan 1994, Butt 1995 — Posit the notion of Predicate Composition,Argument Merger and Argument Fusion in order to account for Romance, Hindi andUrdu complex predicates, respectively.
Affordance matching predictively shapes the perceptual representation of others’ ongoing actions.

Recent predictive processing models argue that action understanding is a predictive process, in which goal inferences are constantly tested by comparing predictions of forthcoming behaviour against the actual perceptual input. In a recent series of studies, we showed that these predictions can be visible as a subtle shift in perceptual action judgments towards these inferred goals. Here we test whether this perceptual shift occurs even when goals are not explicitly given but have to be derived implicitly from the unfolding action kinematics. In two experiments, participants watched an actor reach towards a large object and a small object forming either a whole hand power grip or a precision grip. During its course, the hand suddenly disappeared, and participants made perceptual judgments about the last seen position on a touch screen. As predicted, judgments were consistently biased towards apparent action targets, such that power grips were perceived closer to large objects and precision grips closer to small objects, even if the actual kinematics were the same. Strikingly, perceptual shifts were independent of participants’ explicit goal judgments, and were of equal size when action goals were explicitly judged in each trial (Experiment 1) or not judged (Experiment 2). Moreover, across trials and across participants, explicit goal judgments and perceptual shifts were uncorrelated. This provides evidence, for the first time, that people make on-line adjustments of predicted actions based on the match between hand grip and object goals, distorting the perceptual representation of the action. These distortions may not reflect high-level goal assumptions, but emerge from relatively low-level processing of kinematic features within the perceptual system.
Efficacy of voriconazole in a murine model of acute Trypanosoma cruzi infection.

OBJECTIVES Antifungal triazole derivatives have been studied as possible alternatives for the treatment of Chagas' disease. Voriconazole has demonstrated in vitro activity against Trypanosoma cruzi, but its efficacy in vivo has not yet been tested. We aimed to determine the effect of voriconazole in a murine model of acute T. cruzi infection. METHODS Treatment efficacy was evaluated by comparing parasitaemia, mortality and organ involvement (by histological examination) of infected mice. RESULTS Treatment with voriconazole significantly lowered parasitaemia and mortality compared with controls, reduced the percentage of mice with amastigote nests in heart and skeletal muscle and moderately decreased myocardial inflammation. CONCLUSIONS Our findings support the potential of voriconazole for the treatment of acute Chagas' disease and motivate future animal studies using varying doses and treatment schemes. Further evaluation of voriconazole for clinical use in human Chagas' patients is warranted.
Liberalizing A Distribution System: The European Car Market

We quantify the competitive effects of removing vertical restraints, based on the recent proposals to liberalize the selective and exclusive distribution system in the European car market. We estimate a differentiated products demand system for new cars and specify a model of oligopoly pricing under the current distribution regime. We then perform several policy experiments: the creation of international intrabrand competition (cross-border trade) and a possible strengthening of national intrabrand competition. Our approach may also be useful to assess the competitive effects of vertical restraints in other applications.
A study of shape-based image retrieval

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) work includes feature selection, object representation, and matching. If a shape is used as feature, edge detection might be the first step to extract that feature. Invariance to translation, rotation, and scale is required by a good shape representation. Sustaining deformation contour matching is an important issue at the matching process. An efficient and robust shape-based image retrieval system is proposed. We use the Prompt edge detection method [H.J. Lin et al., (2001)] to detect edge points, which is compared with the Sobel edge detection method. We also introduce a shape representation method, the mountain-climbing sequence (MCS), that is invariant to translation, rotation, and scale problems. The results of our proposed method show a superior matching ratio even in the presence of a modest level of deformation.
Disrupted Homeostatic Cytokines Expression in Secondary Lymph Organs during HIV Infection

Research has firmly established that infection by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) leads to structural disruption in secondary lymph organs (SLOs) and that IL-7 expression by SLOs is downregulated in simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)-infected rhesus macaques. However, the foregoing has not been demonstrated in HIV-infected patients. As well, SLO-produced chemokines and cytokines, other than IL-7, have not been tested. In this study, SLOs in HIV-infected patients exhibit decreased levels of lymphoid cytokines, such as IL-7 and C–C motif chemokine ligand 21 (CCL21), due to lower expression of lymphotoxin (LT)-β. Previous research has shown that LT-β is produced mainly by CD4+T cells in rhesus macaques, while our study found the same level of LT-β expressed by CD4+T and CD8+T cells in humans. CD8+T cells substitute for depleted CD4+T cells LT-β production. Only the total number of CD3+T cells can account for the majority of LT-β in human SLOs. This study indicates a possible mechanism and a potential target for improvement of SLO function in HIV-infected patients, a novel adjuvant therapy for AIDS.
Object Oriented Versus Object Relational Main Memory Databases

Today with decreasing cost and increasing size and speed of RAM memories, many applications are emerging for memory resident databases in which all data are saved in main memory that increases speed and efficiency of the database. Main memory database can be used to run many query-intensive and realtime applications like data mining applications, OLAP, GIS and multimedia systems. In this paper we evaluate performance of two open source databases, an object relational main memory database, FastDB, and an object oriented main memory database, PerstDB, based on TPC-B benchmark. Experimental result shows that object oriented main memory databases can handle huge amount of data and outperform object relational main memory databases.
Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms in HSP17.8 and Their Association with Agronomic Traits in Barley

Small heat shock protein 17.8 (HSP17.8) is produced abundantly in plant cells under heat and other stress conditions and may play an important role in plant tolerance to stress environments. However, HSP17.8 may be differentially expressed in different accessions of a crop species exposed to identical stress conditions. The ability of different genotypes to adapt to various stress conditions resides in their genetic diversity. Allelic variations are the most common forms of genetic variation in natural populations. In this study, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the HSP17.8 gene were investigated across 210 barley accessions collected from 30 countries using EcoTILLING technology. Eleven SNPs including 10 from the coding region of HSP17.8 were detected, which form nine distinguishable haplotypes in the barley collection. Among the 10 SNPs in the coding region, six are missense mutations and four are synonymous nucleotide changes. Five of the six missense changes are predicted to be deleterious to HSP17.8 function. The accessions from Middle East Asia showed the higher nucleotide diversity of HSP17.8 than those from other regions and wild barley (H. spontaneum) accessions exhibited greater diversity than the cultivated barley (H. vulgare) accessions. Four SNPs in HSP17.8 were found associated with at least one of the agronomic traits evaluated except for spike length, namely number of grains per spike, thousand kernel weight, plant height, flag leaf area and leaf color. The association between SNP and these agronomic traits may provide new insight for study of the gene's potential contribution to drought tolerance of barley.
The significance of friendship in UK single mothers’ intimate lives

This article explores friendship as an aspect of the intimate lives of heterosexual single mothers. It has been argued that friendship holds an increasing significance in intimate lives, against a backdrop of increasing choice and declining emphasis on kinship ties. In this context, friendship has been viewed as displacing the centrality of heteronormative romantic relationships and, in this research, friendships were often accorded a higher status. In this narrative study, participants related shifts in their personal landscapes of intimacy on becoming single mothers. Friendships were narrated as multifaceted, offering practical and emotional support, alongside acceptance. Foregrounding friendship provided possibilities for positive identifications in a context in which single mothers are often subject to judgements. While friendships were not usually described as an alternative to couple-centred family life ‐ which retained its status as the ideal intimate form ‐ for some, single motherhood entailed an opening out of intimate possibilities beyond the couple.
Lessons for learning: How cognitive psychology informs classroom practice

The learning sciences span multiple fields, including psychology, computer science, and neuroscience. In particular, cognitive psychology focuses on complex operations that occur inside the brain. Attention to these hidden processes can reveal ways to promote lasting learning. Pooja Agarwal and Henry Roediger draw on research in both the laboratory and the classroom to identify four important strategies — retrieval practice, feedback, spaced practice, and interleaving — that have been shown to help students learn. The effects of these practices apply across multiple grade levels and subject areas, and teachers can often incorporate them by making minor tweaks to their current practices.
Handling interrupts with static scheduling in an automotive vehicle control system

The requirements of industrial applications only rarely permit the exclusive use of single paradigms in the development of real-time systems. Product cost, reuse of existing solutions, and efficiency require diverse, or even opposing methods to coexist or to be integrated. In this paper, we deal with one problem encountered during the development of a real-time system for motion control in automotive vehicles, the integration of static scheduling and interrupts. The user mandates pre run-time scheduling for a number of reasons, e.g., predictability, testability and low run-time overhead. However, the interrupt overhead cannot be ignored in a safety critical system, and therefore has to be accounted for when creating a static schedule. We propose a method that combines static scheduling and run-time interrupts by applying standard static scheduling techniques and exact analysis. The appropriateness of this method is underlined by successful industrial deployment.
Cyclic AMP-induced slow inward current: its synaptic manifestation in Aplysia neurons

Three presynaptic neurons, monosynaptically connected to the medial cells of the pleural ganglion of Aplysia californica and previously shown to elicit cAMP-mediated diminutions in K conductance in those cells (Kehoe, 1985a, b), were shown to elicit still another slow synaptic current that resembles the cAMP-induced cationic current described in the preceding paper (Kehoe, 1990). The synaptic current elicited by these so-called “blocking” neurons was compared, in hyperpolarized medial cells, with the current induced by an intracellular injection of cAMP. It was found that (1) both currents show an outward rectification, (2) both currents are enhanced and prolonged by phosphodiesterase inhibitors (as well as by intracellular acidification of the postsynaptic neuron and by bath-applied caffeine), and (3) both currents react in the same way to changes in (Ca)0, showing a net enhancement when (Ca)0 is reduced and, conversely, a marked diminution when extracellular (Ca)0 is increased. The increase in amplitude of the slow synaptic current in low-Ca solutions and its decrease in high-Ca seawater are contrary to the changes that would be expected from the known effects of Ca on transmitter release at chemical synapses, revealing the overriding importance of the postsynaptic block by Ca. The data presented here strongly suggest that both the slow inward current and the diminutions in K conductance induced by the firing of the 3 blocking neurons are mediated by cAMP. Like the 2 cAMP-mediated diminutions in K conductance (Kehoe, 1985a, b), the cAMP-activated slow inward current, because of its atypical voltage dependence, both depolarizes the medial cell and causes an increase in its input resistance at resting potential. Consequently, the synaptically activated increase in cAMP prolongs the excitability of the medial cells for up to tens of seconds after the end of presynaptic firing.
Ranking of Optical Character Prototypes in a Large Database Using Isothetic Chord Lengths

A novel algorithm for conferring a ranking system on the prototypes of a large database of optical/handwritten characters is proposed. The ranking system is designed using the (isothetic) chord lengths of the enclosing isothetic polygons corresponding to the prototypes, for a prescribed grid-size. As the derivation of structural information of a character by thinning or by edge detection is susceptible to its impurity during imaging or post-processing, an isothetic polygon is used that captures the geometric structure of the character in an elegant way. The proposed scheme has a striking potential in deciding the relative merit and usefulness of a particular prototype with respect to the other prototypes of the corresponding character in the concerned database. Several quantitative measures have been suggested, and supporting experimental results have been reported, which justify the strength and efficiency of the proposed method
Coreference analysis in clinical notes: a multi-pass sieve with alternate anaphora resolution modules

OBJECTIVE This paper describes the coreference resolution system submitted by Mayo Clinic for the 2011 i2b2/VA/Cincinnati shared task Track 1C. The goal of the task was to construct a system that links the markables corresponding to the same entity. MATERIALS AND METHODS The task organizers provided progress notes and discharge summaries that were annotated with the markables of treatment, problem, test, person, and pronoun. We used a multi-pass sieve algorithm that applies deterministic rules in the order of preciseness and simultaneously gathers information about the entities in the documents. Our system, MedCoref, also uses a state-of-the-art machine learning framework as an alternative to the final, rule-based pronoun resolution sieve. RESULTS The best system that uses a multi-pass sieve has an overall score of 0.836 (average of B(3), MUC, Blanc, and CEAF F score) for the training set and 0.843 for the test set. DISCUSSION A supervised machine learning system that typically uses a single function to find coreferents cannot accommodate irregularities encountered in data especially given the insufficient number of examples. On the other hand, a completely deterministic system could lead to a decrease in recall (sensitivity) when the rules are not exhaustive. The sieve-based framework allows one to combine reliable machine learning components with rules designed by experts. CONCLUSION Using relatively simple rules, part-of-speech information, and semantic type properties, an effective coreference resolution system could be designed. The source code of the system described is available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/ohnlp/files/MedCoref.