Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
New challenges in teaching database security

Traditional Database Security has focused primarily on creating user accounts and managing user privileges to database objects. The wide spread use of databases over the web, heterogeneous client-server architectures, application servers, and networks creates an urgent need to widen this focus. This paper will provide an overview of the new and old database security challenges. Section one provides an overview of the Database Security concerns. It emphasizes Database Applications as the greatest concern and describes the SQL Slammer Worm, an example of not patching the Database Management System (DBMS) The second section explains in detail three Database topics: SQL injection [1], Multilevel Security [2] and Data Warehouse/Data Mining/Statistical security. The reason for focusing on these topics is because they are new Database Security issues (at least not taught in traditional database courses) and they are not topics that student will learn in any other course. The last topic provides guidelines for when to teach each Database Security topic and concludes by emphasizing the need for developing a Database Security Plan. Emphasis on a Database Security Plan resulted from interviewing Database Administrators and Security Specialists.
Containment of Nested Regular Expressions

Nested regular expressions (NREs) have been proposed as a powerful formalism for querying RDFS graphs, but research in a more general graph database context has been scarce, and static analysis results are currently lacking. In this paper we investigate the problem of containment of NREs, and show that it can be solved in PSPACE, i.e., the same complexity as the problem of containment of regular expressions or regular path queries (RPQs).
A Routing Metric Based On Channel Utilization for Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) integrate the advantages of WLAN and mobile ad hoc network and have become the key technique of next-generation wireless network. Routing plays a significant role in WMNs. The existed routing protocols used in ad hoc network cannot fully fit the characteristics of WMNs. Based on WCETT and channel cost metric (CCM) routing rules, this paper proposes a new multi-channel path metric named weighted cumulative CCM_L (WCCCM_L) for WMNs, which selects interference-aware paths to send packets mainly based on channel utilization. Analytic results show that the proposed routing metric WCCCM_L can obviously approve the network performance.
Research and Implement of an Encrypted File System Used to NAS

Data security has become an increasingly important factor in routine work with the development of applications, and users trend to obtain high security with maximum comfort. In this article a cryptographic file system called NAS_CFS used for NAS is designed. NAS_CFS has some characteristics as below: adding encryption function to file-system layer allows users to encrypt data transparently, obtaining high security by key management based on session ID and user ID, attachment and timeouts mechanisms, and NAS_CFS is an in-kernel file system of high performance using stackable mechanism.
SecureSwitch: BIOS-Assisted Isolation and Switch between Trusted and Untrusted Commodity OSes

Protecting commodity systems running commercial Operating Systems (OSes) without significantly degrading performance or usability still remains an open problem. To make matters worse, the overall security depends on complex applications that perform multiple inter-dependent tasks with Internet-borne code. Recent research has shown the need for context-dependent trustworthy environments that can segregate different user activities to lower risk of cross-contamination and safeguard private information. In this paper, we introduce a novel BIOS-assisted mechanism for secure instantiation and management of trusted execution environments. A key design characteristic of our system is usability: the ability to quickly and securely switch between operating environments without requiring any specialized hardware or code modifications. Our aim is to eliminate any mutable, non-BIOS code sharing while securely reusing existing hardware: even when an untrusted environment is compromised, there is no potential for exfiltration or inference attacks. To safeguard against spoofing attacks, we can force the user to physically set a hardware switch, an action that cannot be reproduced by software. In addition, we provide visible indication to the user about the current running environment leveraging one of the front panel Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). In our prototype, the entire switching process takes approximately six seconds on average. This empowers users to frequently and seamlessly alternate between trusted and untrusted environments. ∗This work was supported in part by the U.S. Army Research Office (ARO) through contract WF911NF-11-C-0048, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) through contract FA8650-10-C-7024, NSF grant CNS-TC 0915291, and a research gift from Google Inc. Opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government and sponsoring agencies. †Kun Sun and Jiang Wang contributed equally to this work.
Protein Kinase C-α Activity Is Required for Respiratory Syncytial Virus Fusion to Human Bronchial Epithelial Cells

ABSTRACT Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection activates protein kinase C (PKC), but the precise PKC isoform(s) involved and its role(s) remain to be elucidated. On the basis of the activation kinetics of different signaling pathways and the effect of various PKC inhibitors, it was reasoned that PKC activation is important in the early stages of RSV infection, especially RSV fusion and/or replication. Herein, the role of PKC-α during the early stages of RSV infection in normal human bronchial epithelial cells is determined. The results show that the blocking of PKC-α activation by classical inhibitors, pseudosubstrate peptides, or the overexpression of dominant-negative mutants of PKC-α in these cells leads to significantly decreased RSV infection. RSV induces phosphorylation, activation, and cytoplasm-to-membrane translocation of PKC-α. Also, PKC-α colocalizes with virus particles and is required for RSV fusion to the cell membrane. Thus, PKC-α could provide a new pharmacological target for controlling RSV infection.
SAR Automatic Target Recognition based on Slow Feature Analysis

This paper presents a new Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) method based on slow feature analysis. Slow feature analysis (SFA) is a method for learning invariant or slowly varying features from multi-dimensional input signal. The SFA-based SAR ATR system does not require any pre-processing, such as filtering or pose estimation of the image. The performance of the method is evaluated via three classification experiments on Moving and Stationary Target Acquisition and Recognition (MSTAR) database. The experiment results show the effectiveness of the proposed method on SAR ATR problem.
Nowhere-Zero (cid:2) k -Flows on Graphs

We introduce and study a multivariate function that counts nowhere-zero ﬂows on a graph G , in which each edge of G has an individual capacity. We prove that the associated counting function is a piecewise-deﬁned polynomial in these capacities, which satisﬁes a combinatorial reciprocity law that incorporates totally cyclic orientations of G
Design of Ternary COS/MOS Memory and Sequential Circuits

Ternary storage elements are realized using ternary operators and fundamental circuits, designed with the COS/MOS integrated circuits. Several ternary flip-flops (tri-flops) are constructed and described in detail: the PZN (set positive, set zero, and set negative), the clocked PZN, the D-type, and the T-type. Ternary shift registers and ring counter are formed by means of these tri-flops. A master-slave T-type tri-flop is used for the construction of a ternary up counter able to count from 0 to 3n using the normal ternary code or from -(3n-1)/2 to+(3n -1)/2 when the signed-ternary code is employed. With a small modification, a ternary down counter is also constructed. A divide-by-M ternary counter which can be programmed is described. A memory cell is designed for the construction of a ternary random-access-memory array (TRAM). A ternary decoder and encoder are presented to be the elements of a complete ternary read-only memory (TROM). A modified ternary inverter (MTI) is taken as a unit cell of the ternary memory matrix.
Enhanced authentication and key agreement procedure of next generation evolved mobile networks

The Long Term Evolution/ System Architecture Evolution (LTE/SAE) of UMTS is one of the latest steps in an advancing series of mobile telecommunication systems. For secure communication, authentication service is one of the most essential services in these networks and guarantee that he/she is authorized for particular services. With evolution mobile networks, authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocol also has been evolved. Evolved Packet System-AKA (EPS-AKA) marks as the enhancement protocol after UMTS-AKA of 3G. This paper first analyses evolved-AKA protocol for LTE/SAE networks and compared its enhancements in contrast with UMTS-AKA, then with respect to different authentication trigger in the integrated LTE networks including: handovers, Tracking Area Update(TAU), registration and service requests introduce a new advancement protocol, which the Serving Network (SN) will be allowed to share with Home Environment (HE) during authentication, whereas in the original one, SN just has the role of broker and it just receives and sends authentication messages between MS and HE. The current 3GPP EPS-AKA has some weaknesses, such as bandwidth consumption and authentication signaling overhead between SN and HN, storage space in serving network and number of complicated hash function which computed during authentication procedure and also incomplete mutual authentication made it vulnerable to some attacks. The new proposed EPS-AKA protocol removes above weaknesses by increasing a little computation in Mobility Management Entity (MME) and generated joined authentication vectors by both MME and Home Subscriber Server/Authentication Center (HSS/AuC). The proposed scheme can satisfy security requirements and its advantages have been verified by simulation which it shows our new proposed protocol caused considerable deduction of authentication traffic load for HSS when density of MS become more.
Adults With Poor Reading Skills and the Inferences They Make During Reading

ABSTRACT Millions of U.S. adults lack the literacy skills needed for most living-wage jobs. We investigated one particular comprehension process for these adults: generating predictive inferences. If a sentence says that someone falls from a 14th-story roof, a reader should infer almost certain death. On any test of comprehension, there are two dependent variables: the speed of the response to a test item and accuracy. To address both simultaneously, we used a decision model that separates how much information an individual understands from a text and the individual’s speed/accuracy trade-off settings. We found that adult literacy students do differentiate between predictive inference sentences and control sentences, a finding that illustrates how a decision-making model combined with tests of particular comprehension processes can lead to further understanding of low-literacy adults’ reading skills.
Maternal Responses to Infant Distress: Linkages Between Specific Emotions and Neurophysiological Processes

SYNOPSIS Objective. The goals of the current article were to test the presence of an association between mothers’ neural activity (measured by frontal cortical alpha asymmetry) and their specific emotions (measured by observed facial expressions) in response to infant distress and the moderation of this relation by mothers’ appraisal processes (measured by sense of parenting efficacy). Design. Mothers of 5- to 8-month-olds (n = 26) watched videos of their own infants expressing distress while their brain activity was recorded via electroencephalogram and their facial expressions were videotaped for later microcoding. Mothers also completed a questionnaire measure of parenting efficacy. Results. Greater neurophysiological withdrawal in response to infant distress videos, indexed by frontal alpha asymmetry, was associated with longer sad and tense expressions in mothers with average or below average parenting efficacy, but not in those with above average efficacy. Conclusions. Previous research showing that patterns of parents’ brain activity in response to child stimuli are associated with parenting behavior often interpret results in relation to parental emotion, but rarely measure specific concurrent emotions. The current study helps fill this gap in the literature by showing that maternal neurophysiological withdrawal (together with parenting efficacy) was associated with simultaneously measured facial expressions of negative emotion in response to infant distress stimuli.
Membrane nanotubes between peritoneal mesothelial cells: functional connectivity and crucial participation during inflammatory reactions

Peritoneal dialysis (PD) has attained increased relevance as continuous renal replacement therapy over the past years. During this treatment, the peritoneum functions as dialysis membrane to eliminate diffusible waste products from the blood-stream. Success and efficacy of this treatment is dependent on the integrity of the peritoneal membrane. Chronic inflammatory conditions within the peritoneal cavity coincide with elevated levels of proinflammatory cytokines leading to the impairment of tissue integrity. High glucose concentrations and glucose metabolites in PD solutions contribute to structural and functional reorganization processes of the peritoneal membrane during long-term PD. The subsequent loss of ultrafiltration is causal for the treatment failure over time. It was shown that peritoneal mesothelial cells are functionally connected via Nanotubes (NTs) and that a correlation of NT-occurrence and defined pathophysiological conditions exists. Additionally, an important participation of NTs during inflammatory reactions was shown. Here, we will summarize recent developments of NT-related research and provide new insights into NT-mediated cellular interactions under physiological as well as pathophysiological conditions.
Coloring squares of planar graphs with no short cycles

Wang and Lih conjectured that for every g ≥ 5, there exists a number M(g) such that the chromatic number of the square of every planar graph of girth at least g and maximum degree ∆ ≥ M(g) is ∆ + 1. We disprove the conjecture for g ∈ {5, 6} and prove the existence of the number M(g) for g ≥ 7. More generally, we show that every planar graph of girth at least 7 and maximum degree ∆ ≥ 190 + 2dp/qe has an L(p, q)-labeling of span at most 2p + q∆ − 2. For q = 1, the bound is tight for all pairs of ∆ and p. We also show that the square of every planar graph of girth at least six and sufficiently large maximum degree ∆ is (∆ + 2)-colorable.
Organophosphate-modulated cardiac membrane currents: computer study of the genesis of LQTS

An important clinical marker of organophosphate (OP) caused cardiac toxicity is long-QT syndrome (LQTS), elongation of the repolarization period in the ventricles, as measured in an electrocardiogram (ECG). The primary membrane currents responsible for this condition are two potassium currents, k/spl dot/r and i/spl dot//sub Ks/. This computer simulation investigated the effect of modulation of the cardiac membrane currents on the action potential in a two-dimensional slab of tissue affected by OP. We have shown that modulation of the sodium current and reduction of the potassium currents mimic the experimentally observed change in slope of depolarization in the presence of organophosphates as well as the prolongation and shape of repolarization, a precursor to the onset of Torsade de Pointes (TdP) and ventricular fibrillation (VF).
Discrete texture traces: Topological representation of geometric context

Modeling representations of image patches that are quasi-invariant to spatial deformations is an important problem in computer vision. In this paper, we propose a novel concept, the texture trace, that allows sparse patch representations which are quasi-invariant to smooth deformations and robust against occlusions. We first propose a continuous domain model, the profile trace, which is a function only of the topological properties of an image and is by construction invariant to any homeomorphic transformation of the domain. We analyze its theoretical properties and then derive a discrete-domain approximation, the Discrete Texture Trace (DTT). DTTs are designed to be computationally practical and shown by a set of controlled experiments to be quasi-invariant to smooth spatial deformations as well as common image perturbations. We then show how DTTs can be naturally adapted to the incremental tracking problem, yielding highly precise results on par with the state of the art on challenging real data without using heavy machine learning tools. Indeed, we show that with even just using one image at the start of a sequence (i.e. no incremental updating), our method already outperforms four of six state of the art methods of the recent literature on challenging sequences.
Pharmacogenetics and Human Molecular Genetics of Opiate and Cocaine Addictions and Their Treatments

Opiate and cocaine addictions are major social and medical problems that impose a significant burden on society. Despite the size and scope of these problems, there are few effective treatments for these addictions. Methadone maintenance is an effective and most widely used treatment for opiate addiction, allowing normalization of many physiological abnormalities caused by chronic use of short-acting opiates. There are no pharmacological treatments for cocaine addiction. Epidemiological, linkage, and association studies have demonstrated a significant contribution of genetic factors to the addictive diseases. This article reviews the molecular genetics and pharmacogenetics of opiate and cocaine addictions, focusing primarily on genes of the opioid and monoaminergic systems that have been associated with or have evidence for linkage to opiate or cocaine addiction. This evidence has been marshaled either through identification of variant alleles that lead to functional alterations of gene products, altered gene expression, or findings of linkage or association studies. Studies of polymorphisms in the μ opioid receptor gene, which encodes the receptor target of some endogenous opioids, heroin, morphine, and synthetic opioids, have contributed substantially to knowledge of genetic influences on opiate and cocaine addiction. Other genes of the endogenous opioid and monoaminergic systems, particularly genes encoding dopamine β-hydroxylase, and the dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine transporters have also been implicated. Variants in genes encoding proteins involved in metabolism or biotransformation of drugs of abuse and also of treatment agents are reviewed.
On the optimal policy for deterministic and exponential polling systems

In this paper, we consider deterministic (both fluid and discrete) polling systems with N queues with infinite buffers and we show how to compute the best polling sequence (minimizing the average total workload). With two queues, the best polling sequence is always periodic when the system is stable and forms a regular sequence. The fraction of time spent by the server in the first queue is highly non continuous in the parameters of the system (arrival rate and service rate) and shows a fractal behavior. Convexity properties are shown in Appendix as well as a generalization of the computations to the stochastic exponential case.
Token Based Authentication Using Mobile Phone

Digital identity is the key representation of user and getting most crucial subject for information security. The password based authentication is weak solution and no longer adequate. User select static password which is easy to guess and remember, relevant information or common for all authentication process. This simplicity makes weak authentication scheme, as so far, static passwords are known as easiest target for attackers. Further, Security Token based runtime interaction could extend the strength of authentication control. Security tokens can be used for strong authentication but inconvenient for user and costly for the service providers. To avoid the user inconvenient and extra cost mobile phone is an emerging alternative. These papers comprise the study of various digital identification schemes and give motivation to integrate mobile token. In order to establish standard for mobile token, work starts with the review of current schemes and explores the security architecture for strong authentication with mobile token. Password algorithm is derived to generate dynamic password for token authentication. Thereafter explore various authentication mechanisms to implement mobile token on different prospective. At the end, it describes the various test cases and evolutionary result of various attacks on suggested schemes.
Estimation of transactional reliability of object-oriented software of information and control systems

The problem of information and control system software reliability estimation has been studied in the paper. There are a lot of methods and models for the software reliability estimation and analysis. The distinctive aspect of the work is that a software functioning unit as a transaction is primarily considered for the reliability estimation. Transaction is an operation or group of logically combined sequential operations for the data handling, which is wholly processed or canceled. The algorithm for transactional reliability estimation of information and control system object-oriented software has been suggested in the paper. There has been given an example of transactional reliability estimation and analysis for the software developed in the frames of the Axapta system.
Simultaneous Direct and Indirect Calorimetry on Normoxic and Anoxic Goldfish

Simultaneous direct and indirect calorimetry together with biochemical determinations of metabolite concentrations were used to compare the normoxic and anoxic energy metabolism of goldfish at 20°C. The normoxic and anoxic heat production levels determined by direct calorimetry were in agreement with previous results: 700 and 200Jh−1MW−1, respectively (where MW is metabolic weight, kg0.85). Metabolite determinations during normoxia and after 3 and 8 h of anoxia showed that during anoxia a thermodynamic steady state is reached. By simultaneous calorimetry the amounts of oxidized substrates during normoxia and anoxia and the amount of excreted ethanol, the end product of incomplete anaerobic oxidation, as well as normoxic and anoxic carbon dioxide production were determined. During normoxia and anoxia the same substrates for oxidation are used (carbohydrate and protein) by small starving goldfish, but the end products are different. During normoxia oxidation is complete (to CO2 and H2O; protein oxidation also has ammonia as an end product, but this is considered physiologically as complete oxidation), whereas during anoxia oxidation is incomplete, with ethanol, which is excreted, and CO2 as end products. From the indirect calorimetric calculations it appeared that anoxic goldfish also produce fat. Glycogen storage appears to be crucial in the anoxia survival strategy.