Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ALchemist: Fusing Application and Audit Logs for Precise Attack Provenance without Instrumentation

—Cyber-attacks are becoming more persistent and complex. Most state-of-the-art attack forensics techniques either require annotating and instrumenting software applications or rely on high quality execution proﬁling to serve as the basis for anomaly detection. We propose a novel attack forensics technique ALchemist . It is based on the observations that built-in application logs provide critical high-level semantics and audit logs provide low-level ﬁne-grained information; and the two share a lot of common elements. ALchemist is hence a log fusion technique that couples application logs and audit logs to derive critical attack information invisible in either log. It is based on a relational reasoning engine Datalog and features the capabilities of inferring new relations such as the task structure of execution (e.g., tabs in ﬁrefox ), especially in the presence of complex asynchronous execution models, and high-level dependencies between log events. Our evaluation on 15 popular applications including ﬁrefox , Chromium , and OpenOfﬁce , and 14 APT attacks from the literature demonstrates that although ALchemist does not require instrumentation, it is highly effective in partitioning execution to autonomous tasks (in order to avoid bogus dependencies) and deriving precise attack provenance graphs, with very small overhead. It also outperforms NoDoze and OmegaLog, two state-of-the-art techniques that do not require instrumentation.
Hey Alexa, is this Skill Safe?: Taking a Closer Look at the Alexa Skill Ecosystem

—Amazon’s voice-based assistant, Alexa, enables users to directly interact with various web services through natural language dialogues. It provides developers with the option to create third-party applications (known as Skills ) to run on top of Alexa. While such applications ease users’ interaction with smart devices and bolster a number of additional services, they also raise security and privacy concerns due to the personal setting they operate in. This paper aims to perform a systematic analysis of the Alexa skill ecosystem. We perform the ﬁrst large-scale analysis of Alexa skills, obtained from seven different skill stores totaling to 90,194 unique skills. Our analysis reveals several limitations that exist in the current skill vetting process. We show that not only can a malicious user publish a skill under any arbitrary developer/company name, but she can also make backend code changes after approval to coax users into revealing unwanted information. We, next, formalize the different skill-squatting techniques and evaluate the efﬁcacy of such techniques. We ﬁnd that while certain approaches are more favorable than others, there is no substantial abuse of skill squatting in the real world. Lastly, we study the prevalence of privacy policies across different categories of skill, and more importantly the policy content of skills that use the Alexa permission model to access sensitive user data. We ﬁnd that around 23.3% of such skills do not fully disclose the data types associated with the permissions requested. We conclude by providing some suggestions for strengthening the overall ecosystem, and thereby enhance transparency for end-users.
The Clinical Impact Of Respiratory Syncytial Virus A(H1N1)pdm09 in Children

Influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 caused a deadly pandemic in 2009, replaced the seasonal influenza A(H1N1) virus that circulated prior to 2009, and still causes a serious infectious disease among children and adults [1]. In addition, Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection remains a clinical burden on young children even though palivizumab has been effectively used for high-risk infants [2]. To compare the clinical impact of RSV infection with that of influenza in children, we retrospectively studied 2,375 children who presented to a hospital outpatient clinic between 2008 and 2010 with fever and/or symptoms of respiratory tract infection. The clinical aspects of RSV infection were compared with those of A(H1N1)pdm09 infection. After the influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 pandemic, 591 patients were diagnosed with influenza (Group 1), whereas 54 patients were diagnosed with RSV infection (Group 2). Before the pandemic, 203 patients were diagnosed with seasonal influenza (Group 3). All infections were diagnosed by using the rapid immunochromatography test, in which, prior to the pandemic, a positive test indicated seasonal influenza A(H1N1) exposure. However, during and after the pandemic, a positive test result suggested A(H1N1)pdm09 infection, which was confirmed by RT-PCR analysis of the sample and local etiological studies. In group 1, 31 children (average age 7.7 years, 5% of outpatients) required hospitalized for complications of the respiratory system (52%), central nervous system (16%), gastroenterological system (10%), and not specified (22%). In group 2, 33 children (average age 2.2 years, 60% of outpatients) were hospitalized, 27% of whom were administrated oxygen and 12% intravenous steroids. In group 3, 33 children (average age 6.8 years, 3% of outpatients) were hospitalized.
570-576 Ya-Biao Weng.pmd

This study was designed to assess the immune protective effects of the vaccine strain of a precocious line of Eimeria necatrix with different doses and at different immunization times. The immunizations had a negative effect on weight gains of chickens to a certain degree but could be compensated during the “compensatory growth period” after immunity was established in the chickens. The number of oocysts excreted was positively correlated with the immunization dose. All the immunized chickens, whether they were immunized once or twice or immunized with different doses of sporulated oocysts, were able to resist attack from 1x105 virulent sporulated oocysts of E. necatrix. The lesion scoring showed that no significant difference existed in the chicken groups immunized with different doses (300 and 600) of sporulated oocysts. However, a difference existed in the immune homogeneity established in the different immunized groups, and two artificial immunizations were superior to one artificial immunization, indicating that two could extend the duration of oocyst excretion and allow more chances for the immunized chickens to become repeatedly infected.
Osmotic stress in banana is relieved by exogenous nitric oxide

Drought is one of the severe environmental stresses threatening agriculture around the globe. Nitric oxide plays diverse roles in plant growth and defensive responses. Despite a few studies supporting the role of nitric oxide in plants under drought responses, little is known about its pivotal molecular amendment in the regulation of stress signaling. In this study, a label-free nano-liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry approach was used to determine the effects of sodium nitroprusside (SNP) on polyethylene glycol (PEG)-induced osmotic stress in banana roots. Plant treatment with SNP improved plant growth and reduced the percentage of yellow leaves. A total of 30 and 90 proteins were differentially identified in PEG+SNP against PEG and PEG+SNP against the control, respectively. The majority of proteins differing between them were related to carbohydrate and energy metabolisms. Antioxidant enzyme activities, such as superoxide dismutase and ascorbate peroxidase, decreased in SNP-treated banana roots compared to PEG-treated banana. These results suggest that the nitric oxide-induced osmotic stress tolerance could be associated with improved carbohydrate and energy metabolism capability in higher plants.
150-156 Ramos JM.pmd

This study aims to this study is to compare the co-infection Plasmodium falciparum + Plasmodium vivax and compare the detection of cases of mixed-species malaria using light microscopy versus semi-nested multiplex PCR (sPCR). Investigators collected 3060 samples at a rural health centre in Ethiopia from December 2010 to October 2011. Two capillary blood specimens were taken from each patient, one for diagnosis of Plasmodium infection by light microscopy and the other for sPCR-based diagnosis. LM detected 627 positive cases; these samples, together with 582 negatives by LM, were also subjected to sPCR testing. Of the 627 positive samples by LM, 68.4% were positive for P. vivax, 30.5% for P. falciparum, and 1.1% for P. falciparum + P. vivax co-infection. Using the sPCR technique, we identified 788 samples positive for Plasmodium: 33.0% for P. vivax, 26.5% for P. falciparum, 3.7% for P. falciparum + P. vivax co-infection, 2.0% for P. ovale and 0.8% for P. vivax + P. ovale co-infection. In the case of P. falciparum + P. vivax co-infection, light microscopy diagnosis showed a sensitivity of 11.1%, a specificity of 99.8%, a positive predictive value of 71.4% and a negative predictive value of 96.6%. The concordance rate for identifying P. falciparum + P. vivax co-infection (kappa statistic) with microscopy and sPCR was 0.184. The LM approach has low sensitivity for the detection of mixed-species infections, while sPCR is more useful.
37-44 Iqbal F.pmd

The present study was designed to report the prevalence of Anaplasma sp. in blood samples of Cholistan breed of cattle from Bahawalpur District and to determine the risk factors associated with the prevalence of this parasite. A total of 148 blood samples were randomly collected from apparently healthy cattle. On the sampling sites, data on the characteristics of the animals (species, gender, age) were collected through questionnaires. 47 blood samples (31.8% of total) produced the 577 base pairs DNA fragment specific for 16S rRNA gene of Anaplasma sp. by PCR amplification. Out of 47 Anaplasma sp. positive PCR products, 9 were found to be Anaplasma marginale by restriction with BssNa1 and 9 were confirmed to be Anaplasma phagocytophilum (A. phagocytophilum) as they amplified 550 bp fragment from the amplified MSP 2 gene of this species. Risk factor analysis indicated that the presence of parasite was not limited to a particular sex or age group of the infected animals. Comparison of hematological profile revealed that Anaplasma sp. positive cattle had significantly reduced levels of mean corpuscular volume (P=0.02) and eosinophils (P=0.02) than in parasite negative animals. While studied serum biochemical profile remain unaffected when compared between the two groups.
EFFECT OF TOTAL SOLID CONTENT TO BIOGAS PRODUCTION RATE FROM VINASSE

Vinasse that has high COD and total solid content is bottom product of distillation from unit of bioethanol production. Vinasse treatment using anaerobic digestion produced biogas. The purpose of this research was investigation the effect of total solid content to biogas production rate from vinasse, pH profile and COD removal. This research used anaerobic digester-laboratory scale at room temperature and batch system. Initial pH for all media was adjusted at 7 with the aid of NaOH 10 N solution. The result showed that vinasse:water ratio of 1:3 (TS 7.015±0.007%) produced the most total biogas (37.409 mL/g COD) however vinasse:water ratio of 1:2 (TS 9.310±0.014%) had the biggest COD removal (23.580±0.532%) than others. Variables with TS more than 7.015±0.007% caused the overloading in the digester whereas below of that caused unstable in decomposition process. Total solid that was in high level indicated COD content of substrates in high level. The more of COD concentration of substrates in the digester caused the more of COD removal after fermentation process at anaerobic condition. Vinasse:water of 1:3 that was the best variable in this research had kinetic model of biogas production which was P = 37.485× exp(-exp(((6.665 × e/37.485)/37.485) × (0.959- t)+1)). Kinetic constants of A (biogas production potential), U (maximum biogas production rate), λ (minimum time to produce biogas) were 37.485 mL/g COD, 6.665 mL/g COD.day, 0.959 days respectively
Structural polymorphism and substrate promiscuity of a ribosome-associated molecular chaperone

Abstract Trigger factor (TF) is a highly conserved multi-domain molecular chaperone that exerts its chaperone activity at the ribosomal tunnel exit from which newly synthesized nascent chains emerge. TF also displays promiscuous substrate binding for a large number of cytosolic proteins independent of ribosome binding. We asked how TF recognizes a variety of substrates while existing in a monomer–dimer equilibrium. Paramagnetic nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy were used to show that dimeric TF displays a high degree of structural polymorphism in solution. A series of peptides has been generated to quantify their TF binding affinities in relation with their sequence compositions. The results confirmed a previous predication that TF preferentially binds to peptide fragments that are rich in aromatic and positively charged amino acids. NMR paramagnetic relaxation enhancement analysis showed that TF utilizes multiple binding sites, located in the chaperone domain and part of the prolyl trans–cis isomerization domain, to interact with these peptides. Dimerization of TF effectively sequesters most of the substrate binding sites, which are expected to become accessible upon binding to the ribosome as a monomer. As TF lacks ATPase activity, which is commonly used to trigger conformational changes within molecular chaperones in action, the ribosome-binding-associated disassembly and conformational rearrangements may be the underlying regulatory mechanism of its chaperone activity.
New insights from cardiac muscle applied to skeletal muscle

I have recently described the origin of the second Ca2+ binding in the triggering of contractile activity in cardiac myo ibrils that is the origin of the Ca2+ Hill coef icient of 2 for the ATPase. This site is not a simple protein binding site and cannot be measured by 45Ca2+ binding. The myo ibril protein unit requirements are described by me and so are the consequences of disruption of the function of these units and the related medical outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to review the topic and extend the reasoning to the function of skeletal muscle and cite the literature that supports this.
Machine Learning-based VNF Deployment

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) deals with dynamic changes in traffic with appropriate deployment and scaling of Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs). Determining and applying the optimal VNF deployment in consideration of the cost and Quality of Service (QoS) is a complicated and challenging task. In particular, it is necessary to predict the situation at a future point of time when the deployment decision is applied because a certain amount of processing time is required to apply the deployment decision to the actual NFV environment. In this thesis, we randomly generate service requests in a Multiaccess Edge Computing (MEC) environment, and then obtain the optimal VNF deployment and Service Function Chaining (SFC) result from an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) solution. We use the simulation data to train a machine learning model that predicts the optimal VNF deployment at a predefined future point of time. The prediction model shows an accuracy of over 90% compared to the optimal ILP solution for the five-minute future time point. In addition, we
YouTube Video Recommendations: Analysis and Link Prediction

Link prediction is a common problem in networks and has broad applications, ranging from predicting unobserved interactions to recommending related items. In this paper, unlike most previous works that have focused on social networks, we investigate link prediction over YouTube video network. More speciﬁcally, given a speciﬁc query video in the graph, we want to ﬁnd videos that are most relevant to the query. We start by introducing existing work in link predictions and some supervised models as our baseline. We then talk about a weighted random walk algorithm that predicts top related videos for a given video in the network.
Linear Array Synthesis for Wireless Power Transmission Based on Brain Storm Optimization Algorithm

Based on the brain storm optimization algorithm, this paper proposed a new method to optimize the beam collection efficiency of the linear antenna array. In the process of optimization, constraints such as aperture size and minimum antenna spacing are considered. In this paper, the optimization with different antenna apertures, different antenna angles, and different array numbers are studied. A series of representative data and simulation results are given and the superiority of the brainstorming algorithm is demonstrated by comparing with the genetic algorithm.
EFFECTS OF SULFURIZATION TIME ON MOS2 ABSORBER LAYER FOR THIN FILMS SOLAR CELLS APPLICATIONS

Thin films of MoS2 were prepared on top of soda lime glass by using RF magnetron sputtering technique and further sulfurized under different timing profiles with static gas pressure of Nitrogen in growth chamber set at 370 torr at room temperature (RT). Four different time intervals i.e. 60 min, 90 min, 120 min and 150 min were considered at 597 °Σ. The effects of this parameter change were studied on absorber layer properties for photovoltaic solar cell applications. The structural, topographical and morphological properties as well as cross sectional thickness of MoS2 layers were analysed. MoS2 films were grown at RT at 100W RF power by sputtering. As-deposited films exhibited two XRD peaks corresponding to (100) HEX and (110) HEX planes at 2θ = 33.4° and 59.5° respectively, whereas post-deposition treatment (sulfurization) revealed four diffraction peaks corresponding to (002)HEX, (100)HEX, (103)HEX and (110) HEX at 14.3°, 33.7°, 39.9° and 59.4° respectively. Thickness of sulfurized films was measured within the range of 446.6 nm to 595.5 nm during FESEM while as-deposited film was measured 419.5 nm and surface was observed to be rough for films sulfurized for 60 min and 90 min. EDX results showed S/Mo ratio as 3.01 for films sulfurized for 120 minutes whereas as-deposited film was with 2.44 ratio. Film morphology was found to be very smooth with a low average surface roughness value of 0.98 nm for films sulfurized for 150 min. Enriched ratio of S/Mo, XRD peaks validation and surface morphological results encouraged its potential suitability for the use of MoS2 as absorber layer material for solar photovoltaic applications.
The Karhunen-Loève Theorem

The univariate Karhunen-Loève Expansion is the decomposition of a continuous-parameter second-order stochastic process into uncorrelated random coe cients. In the present dissertation, the expansion is achieved analytically by projecting the process, considered over a nite time interval [a; b], onto a deterministic orthonormal basis obtained from the covariance HilbertSchmidt operator's eigenfunctions, which correspond to positive eigenvalues. Basically, the idea of the method is to rst nd the positive eigenvalues of the Hilbert-Schmidt integral operator, with the covariance function of the process as a kernel. At every time of the interval, the process is projected onto an orthonormal basis for the space spanned by the eigenfunctions corresponding to positive eigenvalues. This procedure generates random coe cients, which turn to be uncorrelated centered random variables. The expansion series, a countably in nite linear combination of the eigenfunctions together with the random projections, converges in mean square to the process, uniformly over the time interval. Furthermore, in the probability space ( ;F ; P ) the convergence gets almost surely if the process is Gaussian. Many other expantions exist, however the peculiarity of the KarhunenLoève basis is that the expantion is optimal in terms of the total mean square error resulting from the truncation of the series. Such feature has made this method and its generalizations very successful in applied disciplines. La trasformata di Karhunen-Loève monodimensionale è la decomposizione di un processo stocastico del secondo ordine a parametrizzazione continua in coe cienti aleatori scorrelati. Nella presente dissertazione, la trasformata è ottenuta per via analitica, proiettando il processo, considerato in un intervallo di tempo limitato [a; b], su una base deterministica ottenuta dalle autofunzioni dell'operatore di Hilbert-Schmidt di covarianza corrispondenti ad autovalori positivi. Fondamentalmente l'idea del metodo è, dal primo, trovare gli autovalori positivi dell'operatore integrale di Hilbert-Schmidt, che ha in kernel la funzione di covarianza del processo. Ad ogni tempo dell'intervallo, il processo è proiettato sulla base ortonormale dello span delle autofunzioni dell'operatore di Hilbert-Schmidt che corrispondono ad autovalori positivi. Tale procedura genera coe cienti aleatori che si rivelano variabili aleatorie centrate e scorrelate. L'espansione in serie che risulta dalla trasformata è una combinazione lineare numerabile di coe cienti aleatori di proiezione ed autofunzioni convergente in media quadratica al processo, uniformemente sull'intervallo temporale. Se inoltre il processo è Gaussiano, la convergenza è quasi sicuramente sullo spazio di probabilità ( ;F ; P ). Esistono molte altre espansioni in serie di questo tipo, tuttavia la trasformata di Karhunen-Loève ha la peculiarità di essere ottimale rispetto all'errore totale in media quadratica che consegue al troncamento della serie. Questa caratteristica ha conferito a tale metodo ed alle sue generalizzazioni un notevole successo tra le discipline applicate. 4 Section
Conceptual and methodological issues relating to pain assessment in mammals : the 1 development and utilisation of pain facial expression scales . 2

17 Effective management of pain is critical to the improvement of animal welfare. For this to happen 18 pain must be recognised and assessed in a variety of contexts. Pain is a complex phenomenon, making 19 reliable, valid, and feasible measurement challenging. The use of facial expressions as a technique to 20 assess pain in non-verbal human patients has been widely utilised for many years. More recently this 21 technique has been developed for use in a number of non-human species: rodents, rabbits, ferrets, 22 cats, sheep, pigs and horses. Facial expression scoring has been demonstrated to provide an effective 23 means of identifying animal pain and in assessing its severity, overcoming some of the limitations of 24 other measures for pain assessment in animals. However, there remain limitations and challenges to 25 the use of facial expression as a welfare assessment tool which must be investigated. This paper 26 reviews current facial expression pain scales (“Grimace Scales"), discussing the general conceptual 27 and methodological issues faced when assessing pain, and highlighting the advantages of using facial 28 expression scales over other methods of pain assessment. We provide guidance on how facial 29 expression scales should be developed so as to be valid and reliable, but we also provide guidance on 30 how they should be used in clinical practice. 31