Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Author ' s personal copy PIN selection policies : Are they really effective ?

Users have conflicting sets of requirements when it comes to choosing Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) for mobile phones or other systems that use PINs for authentication: the conflict lies between the ‘easy to remember’ usability requirement and the ‘hard to guess’ security requirement. Users often ignore the security requirement and choose PINs that are easy to remember and reuse, making it also easy for attackers to guess and compromise them. Just as the password strength is controlled through various password policies, PIN selection policies may be used to help users choose stronger PINs and meet various security requirements. An example policy would not allow the use of the most commonly selected PINs. An online user study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of such PIN selection policies, requesting the participants to choose PINs under some carefully designed policies. The participants were also asked to record the memorability (remembrance difficulty) score of each PIN, indicating how easy/hard it was to remember the selected PIN. Based on the entropies calculated on the collected PINs and their memorability scores, this paper demonstrates that restricting some number of commonly used PINs (e.g. restricting the 200 most commonly used ones) is beneficial: this type of policy would significantly increase the randomness of PINs without incurring significant memorability overhead. Our results also showed that any PINor PIN-pattern-based blacklisting policy should be constructed with caution since the total PIN space may become too small, making it easier for attackers to guess PINs. a 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The Effect of Correlated Observations on the Performance of Distributed Estimation

Estimating unknown signal in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) requires sensor nodes to transmit their observations of the signal over a multiple access channel to a Fusion Center (FC). The FC uses the received observations, which is corrupted by observation noise and both channel fading and noise, to find the minimum Mean Square Error (MSE) estimate of the signal. In this paper, we investigate the effect of the source-node correlation (the correlation between sensor node observations and the source signal) and the inter-node correlation (the correlation between sensor node observations) on the performance of the Linear Minimum Mean Square Error (LMMSE) estimator for three correlation models in the presence of channel fading. First, we investigate the asymptotic behavior of the achieved distortion (i.e., MSE) resulting from both the observation and channel noise in a non-fading channel. Then, the effect of channel fading is considered and the corresponding distortion outage probability, the probability that the distortion exceeds a certain value, is found. By representing the distortion as a ratio of indefinite quadratic forms, a closed-form expression is derived for the outage probability that shows its dependency on the correlation. Finally, the new representation of the outage probability allows us to propose an iterative solution for the power allocation problem to minimize the outage probability under total and individual power constraints. Numerical simulations are provided to verify our analytic results.
Simulation of continuous-time P systems using descriptive rewriting timed Petri nets

In this paper we propose a new approach to express the components of continuous-time P systems throughout the components of descriptive rewriting timed Petri nets. We introduce the notion of macronode, which maps a subnet, to modify dynamically the rewriting timed Petri nets structure. A macronode is specified by a marking-controlled descriptive expression. As example the P transducer model of the gene switching in the living cell is analyzed.
Neutrophil Gelatinase‐Associated Lipocalin in Cats with Naturally Occurring Chronic Kidney Disease

Background Neutrophil gelatinase‐associated lipocalin (NGAL) is a biomarker for the early prediction of renal damage and the progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in humans and dogs. Hypothesis Neutrophil gelatinase‐associated lipocalin also may play a role in the progression of CKD in cats. Animals Eighty CKD and 18 control cats. Methods Cats were categorized into different stages according to the International Renal Interest Society (IRIS) staging system. Urine and plasma samples were collected and tested for NGAL concentrations using an in‐house sandwich ELISA system and urinary NGAL (uNGAL)‐to‐creatinine ratio (UNCR) was determined. Cats in which serum creatinine concentration increased by >0.5 mg/dL from baseline within 30 days were defined as exhibiting progression. Results The urinary NGAL and UNCR of CKD cats were significantly higher than those of healthy cats (P < .05) and were highly correlated with serum creatinine concentration. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) for uNGAL, when predicting the progression of CKD, was 0.71 and the best cutoff value was 2.06 ng/mL with a sensitivity of 76.9% and a specificity of 75%. The AUROC for UNCR when predicting the progression of CKD was 0.79 and the best cutoff value was 4.08 × 10−6 with a sensitivity of 76.9% and specificity of 79.2%. Cats with UNCR values higher than their cutoffs experienced significantly faster deterioration with a median of 19 days. Conclusions Both urinary NGAL and UNCR are useful markers for the prediction of CKD progression in cats.
Modeling and multiple representation systems in the design of a computer environment for the learning of programming and C by beginners

This study considers a modeling methodology for the design of a computer based problem-solving environment (named L.E.C.G.O: Learning Environment for programming and C using Geometrical Objects) for the learning of computer programming and the programming language C by beginners. For this design, constructivist and social learning theories were taken into account. The general design has taken into consideration models of the learning process and subject matter as well as potential learner behavior in dealing with fundamental tasks. The main emphasis was placed on the role of: a) multiple external representations in student learning, b) motivation through performing problem-solving activities taken from the familiar and meaningful context of drawing and using simple geometrical objects, c) the active participation of students in their learning by using hands-on experience and d) visual feedback on the actions taken by students for their self-correction.
Performance of Delay Tolerant Mobile Networks under propagation and buffer capacity constraints

The performance of Delay Tolerant Mobile Networks (DTMNs) depends on the mobility pattern through the nodes encounter process which constitutes opportunities for exchange of information between nodes. The effective exchange of information depends also on the routing/replication protocol and on several network resources such as buffer capacity, radio propagation conditions and energy. We focus in this work on those two concepts: encounter and exchange, and evaluate them along with resulting network performance for different synthetic mobility patterns and routing protocols, as well as under several constraints on the radio conditions and buffer space. We also propose the use of additional, mobile, dedicated relays so as to enhance the performance of the DTMN in cases of ill-behaved mobility schemes.
The Impact of Music Instruction on Attention in Kindergarten Children

Investigating the effects of instrumental music instruction on cognitive processes with kindergarten children can offer more information on the benefits of learning a musical instrument. To add to this body of research, in a randomized pretest–posttest control group design, the present study explored the effects of 5 weeks/15 hours of instrumental instruction using the violin Suzuki Method on (a) working memory efficiency, (b) visual-spatial processing, and (c) controlled attention among kindergarten students. Assessments were made using the Stanford-Binet 5 (SB-5) working memory and visual spatial subscales and the Kiddie Connor’s Continuous Performance Test Version 5 (K-CPT) attention subscales. A MANOVA followed by a univariate ANOVA was conducted on the means of the prepost change scores between the Suzuki violin treatment group and the control group. Results indicated there was a multivariate effect (p < .05) for the combined K-CPT measures and 1 univariate effect (p < .01) for the specific K-CPT subtest of Hit Response Time between the treatment and control group. There were no statistically significant differences in the means of prepost change scores between the groups on the SB-5 subscales. These findings demonstrate that attentional control, a psychological process necessary in academic learning, may be enhanced with instrumental music instruction when presented in early childhood.
A Definition of Entropy based on Qualitative Descriptions

A new concept of generalized absolute orders of magnitude qualitative spaces is introduced in this paper. The new stru cture makes it possible to define sets of qualitative labels of any cardinality, and is consistent with the classical struc ture of qualitative spaces of absolute orders of magnitude and with the classical interval algebra. In addition, the al gebraic structure of these spaces ensures initial conditio ns for adapting measure theory to a qualitative environment. This theory provides the appropriate framework in which to introduce the concept of entropy and, consequently, the opportunity to measure the gain or loss of information when working within qualitative spaces. The results obtained are signifi cant in terms of situations which arise naturally in many real applications when dealing with different levels of precision .
BG9719 (CVT-124), an A1 Adenosine Receptor Antagonist, Protects Against the Decline in Renal Function Observed With Diuretic Therapy

Background—Adenosine may adversely affect renal function via its effects on renal arterioles and tubuloglomerular feedback, but effects of adenosine blockade in humans receiving furosemide and ACE inhibitors is unknown. Methods and Results—This was a randomized, double-blind, ascending-dose, crossover study evaluating 3 doses of BG9719 in 63 patients with congestive heart failure. Patients received placebo or 1 of 3 doses of BG9719 on 1 day and the same medication plus furosemide on a separate day. Renal function and electrolyte and water excretion were assessed. BG9719 alone caused an increase in urine output and sodium excretion (P <0.05). Although administration of furosemide alone caused a large diuresis, addition of BG9719 to furosemide increased diuresis, which was significant at the 0.75-&mgr;g/mL concentration. BG9719 alone improved glomerular filtration rate (GFR) at the 2 lower doses. Furosemide alone caused a decline in GFR. When BG9719 was added to furosemide, however, creatinine clearance remained at baseline at the 2 lower doses. Conclusions—In patients with congestive heart failure on standard therapy, including ACE inhibitors, BG9719 increased both urine output and GFR. In these same patients, furosemide increased urine output at the expense of decreased GFR. When BG9719 was given in addition to furosemide, urine volume additionally increased and there was no deterioration in GFR. A1 adenosine antagonism might preserve renal function while simultaneously promoting natriuresis during treatment for heart failure.
Factors Affecting Grazed Forage Intake Factors Affecting Selective Grazing

The control of feed intake by ruminants is complex, and developing a cohesive theory of intake control in ruminants continues to be a challenge. Because our understanding of factors that regulate intake by cattle is inadequate, predicting feed intake, even under the best of circumstances, is difficult. In grazing cattle, this difficulty is exacerbated by additional influences that can sway basic control mechanisms, including selective grazing, herbage mass, sward structure and composition, climatic and environmental factors, and the intricacies of the grazing process itself.
Values Education in 4th Grade Social Science Courses from the Perspectives of Teachers.

In today's changing and developing world, the most important elements that enable people to live together in society are values. The education of such values start in the family and the social environment that they are in, from the moment a person is born and do continue in school as the child starts to study. Schools teach values to their students through the programs they practice. One of the most important courses that these values are taught is the social sciences. Social sciences, which is formed to prepare the students for social life is also one of the fundamental courses for the education of values. This study was carried out in order to review the values taught in the 4th grade social science course program, from the vantage point of the teachers. In order to realize this, the achievements in the program were determined and a survey form was created. The study is in a screening model and is descriptive. The study group of the study is composed of 199 classroom teachers working in the province of Elazig in the academic year of 2016-2017. The data obtained from the research is analyzed using "arithmetic mean" "percentage" and "frequency"; The degree of influence of teacher opinions on variables based on demographic data was also tested using independent t test. According to the results of the research, teachers think that levels of most of the values taught in social sciences course fit the level of understanding of the students. Again, the vast majority of the teachers participated reported that they face a small amount of problems during the teaching of these values to student.
An LLL Algorithm with Quadratic Complexity

The Lenstra-Lenstra-Lovasz lattice basis reduction algorithm (called LLL or ${\rm L}^3$) is a fundamental tool in computational number theory and theoretical computer science, which can be viewed as an efficient algorithmic version of Hermite's inequality on Hermite's constant. Given an integer $d$-dimensional lattice basis with vectors of Euclidean norm less than $B$ in an $n$-dimensional space, the ${\rm L}^3$ algorithm outputs a reduced basis in $O(d^3n\,{\rm log}\,B\cdot\mathcal{M}(d\,{\rm log}\,B))$ bit operations, where $\mathcal{M}(k)$ denotes the time required to multiply $k$-bit integers. This worst-case complexity is problematic for applications where $d$ or/and ${\rm log}\,B$ are often large. As a result, the original ${\rm L}^3$ algorithm is almost never used in practice, except in tiny dimension. Instead, one applies floating-point variants where the long-integer arithmetic required by Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization is replaced by floating-point arithmetic. Unfortunately, this is known to be unstable in the worst case: the usual floating-point ${\rm L}^3$ algorithm is not even guaranteed to terminate, and the output basis may not be ${\rm L}^3$-reduced at all. In this article, we introduce the ${\rm L}^2$ algorithm, a new and natural floating-point variant of the ${\rm L}^3$ algorithm which provably outputs ${\rm L}^3$-reduced bases in polynomial time $O(d^2n(d+{\rm log}\,B)\,{\rm log}\,B\cdot\mathcal{M}(d))$. This is the first ${\rm L}^3$ algorithm whose running time (without fast integer arithmetic) provably grows only quadratically with respect to ${\rm log}\,B$, like Euclid's gcd algorithm and Lagrange's two-dimensional algorithm.
Study on MC-CDMA for Underwater Acoustic Networks

In this paper, multiple access technique for the physical layer of underwater acoustic (UWA) networks is discussed. Considering the characteristics of acoustical channel and UWA networks, multi-carrier code division multiple access(MC-CDMA) method is chosen as the multiple access strategy in the design of an UWA network. On this basis, a MC-CDMA multiple access scheme is proposed. The preliminary results of simulation and lab pool testing indicate that MC-CDMA technique is a feasible multiple access method for the physical layer of UWA network.
Delayed Recovery of Skeletal Muscle Mass following Hindlimb Immobilization in mTOR Heterozygous Mice

The role of mTOR in regulating muscle protein balance was assessed in WT and mTOR heterozygous (+/−) mice after hindlimb immobilization and recovery, with data compared to the contralateral muscle. A gradual loss of muscle mass, which plateaued by day 7, was seen in WT mice. This response was associated with a sustained reduction in protein synthesis and increased proteasome activity. Atrogin‐1 and MuRF‐1 mRNA was transiently increased but returned to control values by day 7. The decreased muscle mass and protein synthesis and increased proteasome activity did not differ between WT and mTOR+/− mice after immobilization. After 10 days of recovery, WT mice showed no decrement in muscle mass and this accretion resulted from a sustained increase in protein synthesis and normalization of proteasome activity. In contrast, mTOR+/− mice failed to fully replete muscle mass. This defect was caused solely by the lack of a compensatory increase in protein synthesis. Delayed regrowth of the previously immobilized muscle in mTOR+/− mice was associated with a sustained inflammatory response the recovery period as well as a failure to increase IGF‐I. These data suggest mTOR activity is relatively more important in regulating the accretion of muscle mass during recovery than the loss of muscle during the atrophy phase, and that protein synthesis is more sensitive than degradation to the reduction in mTOR during muscle regrowth. (GM38021)
GLBTQ People Who Decided to Marry After the 2016 U.S. Election: Reasons for and Meanings of Marriage

ABSTRACT The goal of this study is to better understand the experiences of GLBTQ people who decided to marry, at least in part, because of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Participants (N = 158) responded to an online survey and described their reasons for marrying and the meanings that they associate with their marriage within the context of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Participants described 4 motivations to marry (personal, fearful, political, and hopeful) and 4 related meanings of their marriages (personal, material, political, and empowerment). Participants also perceived that their marriages had meaning as a rallying point to their social network members and as a threat to generalized heterosexual others. Results indicate that the 2016 election should be understood as part of the evolving socio-cultural context of marriage equality.
Unimodal and multimodal regions for logographic language processing in left ventral occipitotemporal cortex

The human neocortex appears to contain a dedicated visual word form area (VWFA) and an adjacent multimodal (visual/auditory) area. However, these conclusions are based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of alphabetic language processing, languages that have clear grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence (GPC) rules that make it difficult to disassociate visual-specific processing from form-to-sound mapping. In contrast, the Chinese language has no clear GPC rules. Therefore, the current study examined whether native Chinese readers also have the same VWFA and multimodal area. Two cross-modal tasks, phonological retrieval of visual words and orthographic retrieval of auditory words, were adopted. Different task requirements were also applied to explore how different levels of cognitive processing modulate activation of putative VWFA-like and multimodal-like regions. Results showed that the left occipitotemporal sulcus (LOTS) responded exclusively to visual inputs and an adjacent region, the left inferior temporal gyrus (LITG), showed comparable activation for both visual and auditory inputs. Surprisingly, processing levels did not significantly alter activation of these two regions. These findings indicated that there are both unimodal and multimodal word areas for non-alphabetic language reading, and that activity in these two word-specific regions are independent of task demands at the linguistic level.
Interpolation with pseudo-primaries

Large gaps exist in marine data, particularly at near offsets. I generate pseudo-primaries by cross-correlating a multiple model with the original data. These pseudo-primaries are used as training data for a non-stationary prediction- error lter , which is then used to interpolate the missing near offsets. This method yields good results, and also provides a quality control measure to judge the usefulness of the pseudo-primaries.
Design of current-controller with PR-regulator for LCL-filter based grid-connected converter

In the application of LCL-filter based converters, the structure and parameters of current-controller is very important for the system stability and output current quality. This paper presents a filter-capacitor current feedback control scheme for grid-connected converter. The controller is consisted of a proportional-resonance regulator and a proportional regulator. Unlike the existing control strategy with unit capacitor current feedback, the proposed method applies the proportional regulator to the feedback path, which can decouple these two regulators, and simplify the tuning process. Controller parameters are tuned with the aid of root-locus of system close-loop transfer function, which can provide better grasp of the influence of individual parameters and make the design process visible and holistic without any simplification and assumption. The validity, reasonability and feasibility of the control strategy and the proposed current controller design method are verified by the simulation results of a 50kVA grid-connected inverter.
Network Clock Frequency Synchronization

The emergence of network convergence emphasizes the need to support distributed synchronous servers such as TDMoIP (pseudo-wire) and 3G cellular gateways over a packet switched infrastructure. Consequently, we formalize the problem of network wide clock frequency synchronization and introduce novel and efficient algorithms to synchronize the frequency among all the clocks in the network with respect to a single frequency. The common thread of our solutions is that they take a network-wide view that accounts for all the clocks in the network and measurements taken over all links to estimate the frequency difference of each clock with respect to the reference clock. The various presented algorithms introduce different trade-offs between the accuracy and the computation complexity. While all our schemes are global, they employ simple pair-wise measurements between neighboring nodes. Consequently, all the algorithms presented in the paper, are simple, easy to implement and require a modest amount of measurement and control traffic.
The Nature of Cyber Bullying Behaviours

Digital technology has provided many benefits for young people. However, some of these benefits are offset against potential risk factors. For example, digital technology can be used as a mechanism to direct aggression towards another person, and this may take the form of cyber bullying. This chapter will review some of the current debates surrounding which behaviors constitute cyber bullying. The chapter will also discuss the various forms of cyber bullying and some of the motives for engaging in such behaviors. Finally, the chapter will provide some recommendations for researchers undertaking studies in the area of cyber bullying.