Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Poster : Protecting Campus Networks with Cost-effective DDoS Defense

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have been a serious threat to many public services [1], including those running on campus networks [2][3]. On November 1st, 2018, our department’s mail server was attacked and the service was disrupted for several hours, causing widespread inconvenience. Despite sending low-volume attack traffic, the attack quickly saturated the mail server’s connection state by exploiting an application-layer bottleneck [4]1. However, protecting campus networks from DDoS is challenging due to two main reasons: limited budget and diverse applications managed by individual departments or laboratories. Since campus networks are often operated under tight budget, it might be infeasible to deploy DDoS defense solutions that require substantial upgrade of the infrastructure (e.g., upgrading the infrastructure to support software-defined networking) or that depend on expensive cloud-based or onpremise appliances. In addition, because each department or laboratory may host its own public services, it is difficult for the security operations center of the school or the upstream provider to detect attacks targeting applicationlayer bottlenecks. In this work, we propose a cost-effective solution that is designed to mitigate application-layer DDoS attacks on campus networks. We observe that because campus networks (at the department or laboratory level particularly) are smaller and simpler than enterprise networks, we can achieve similar results of lightweight on-demand defenses [5], [6] without needing to change the infrastructure. Specifically, our proposed solution dynamically reroutes potential attack traffic for further inspection by modifying ARP tables, which can be reliably performed by administrators who have permission to control layer 2 switching. Our preliminary results show that the proposed solution can successfully block and recover from the attack in 10 seconds, which we believe is sufficient for most departmentor lab-operated services. We plan to deploy the proposed solution to protect critical services in our department. Additionally, we would like to incorporate other differentiation mechanisms (e.g., CAPTCHAs) in addition to whitelisting, and evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed solution using real attack traces we previously collected.
Investigating the cortical representation of speech melody using near-infrared spectroscopy

Objective measures that reliably quantify the listening success with cochlear implants (CIs) are hardly available, since CIs are incompatible with several common neuroscientific methods. However, especially for pre-lingually implanted children, such measures are urgently needed to better monitor the development of their hearing. A promising method that does not interfere with the function of CIs is near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). We are assuming that cortical activation patterns which resemble those of normal-hearing control subjects indicate that an implantation has been successful. In a first step, we thus presented normal-hearing subjects with speech-like sounds and vowels that differed regarding their prosodic properties, to evaluate the precision and usability of NIRS. The stimuli either had a more or less clear pitch, or varied regarding their pitch contours. Same as additionally obtained magnetoencephalography (MEG) data, which allow for a clear spatial differentiation of the cortical areas activated by the different stimuli, the NIRS data show different spatial activation patterns, despite the lower spatial resolution of this method. The present results thus suggest that NIRS is suitable for investigating cortical responses to stimuli that vary regarding specific acoustic properties and can therefore be used for the neurophysiological assessment of CI-based hearing.
Impact of Board Structure on Performance of Listed Financing Sector in Sri Lanka

Over recent years, corporate governance has become a major and highly contentious issue in all advanced economies, as well as in developing countries. Board size and composition constitute two of the most prevalent corporate governance factors, attracting wide theoretical attention. This paper examines the relationship between two of the most pertinent corporate governance factors–that is, the size of the Board of Directors and the proportion of non-executive directors–and firm performance on a sample of 19 listed companies from financial sector over the period 2008-2010. Results reveal that board size and board composition significantly impact on return on equity and Tobin Q of the firms in financial sector. Further there is a negative relationship between the board size and firm performance but the positive relationship between board composition and the firm performance.
Application of a Case-Based Approach for Tasks of Industrial Safety Inspection

A regular assessment of a technical state and calculation of a residual life are important measures for the safe operation of petrochemical facilities. These measures are parts of the industrial safety inspection (ISI) procedure. The efficiency of this procedure can be improved with the aid of decision support systems, which are process and reuse of accumulated information and experience on the basis of a case-based reasoning (CBR) approach. The formalization of the main ISI tasks is made in order to apply CBR. The case models developed for each ISI task. Testing models and approach was carried out in the special software in Irkutsk research and design institute of chemical and petroleum engineering.
Retina Volumetric Analysis of Vascularized Serous Pigment Epithelial Detachment Progression in Neovascular Age-Related Macular Degeneration Using Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography

Adrian Au, Kirk Hou, Juan Pablo Dávila, Frederic Gunnemann, Serena Fragiotta, Malvika Arya, Riccardo Sacconi, Daniel Pauleikhoff, Giuseppe Querques, Nadia Waheed, K. Bailey Freund, SriniVas Sadda, and David Sarraf Retina Disorders and Ophthalmic Genetics, Stein Eye Institute, University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States Department of Ophthalmology, St. Franziskus-Hospital, Münster, Germany Vitreous Retina Macula Consultants of New York, New York, New York, United States New England Eye Center, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts, United States Department of Ophthalmology, IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele, University Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milan, Italy Doheny Image Reading Center, Doheny Eye Institute, Los Angeles, California, United States Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare Center, Los Angeles, California, United States
Question Answering with BERT and Answer Verification

The task of reading comprehension with unanswerable questions challenges a models ability to both correctly predict an answer span as well as determine if the question can even be answered. Most solutions involve adding placeholder values to the output prediction to predict a question is unanswerable if those placeholders score high enough as the start and end locations of the answer span. I propose combining a method of answer verification with a model architecture that has demonstrated success at question answering. This two stage model combines the strength of answer prediction with the ability to determine if the predicted answer is a valid answer to the question asked. Models with a second stage performed worse on the metrics of EM and F1 on the SQuAD 2.0 dataset, but did show an improvement in correctly determining if questions were unanswerable. Overall it is likely that the addition of a second stage with shared weights caused instability during training resulting in the decreased performance.
Dissection of Traditional Chinese herbs SINI Decoction for Treatment of Cardiovascular Diseases

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are leading causes of death in the world, owing to noticeable incidence and mortality. traditional Chinese Medicine (tCM) SINI Decoction (SND) is used to prevent and treat CVDs, which has attracted extensive attention for its moderate and little side effects. However, the involved molecular mechanisms are exceedingly complicated and remain unclear. Systems pharmacology, as a novel approach that integrates systems biology and pharmacology plays a significant role in investigating the molecular mechanism of tCM. In systems pharmacology approach, we use to systematically uncover the mechanisms of action in Chinese medicinal formula SND as an effective treatment for CVDs, which mainly includes:1) molecular database building; 2) ADMe evaluation; 3) target-fishing 4) network construction and analysis. The results show that 78 underlying valid ingredients and their corresponding 71 direct targets of SND were obtained. And SND take part in cardiomyocyte protection, blood pressure regulation, and lipid regulation module in treatment of CVDs by cooperative way. Systems pharmacology as an emerging field that investigates the molecular mechanisms of TCM through pharmacokinetic evaluation target prediction, and pathway analysis, which will facilitate the development of traditional Chinese herbs in modern medicine.
Inferring Underwriter Intervention on First Day IPO Market-- A Comparison of Two Methods of Gauging Price Support

Abnormal first days returns for initial public offerings (IPOs) have been well documented in literature. One of the explanations offered for this observation is intervention of the underwriters to “support” or “stabilize” prices in the after market. Such researches focus on the activities and motives of underwriters exercising the right to intervene in the market. Basically speaking, in literature there are two competing methodologies of estimating intervention in IPOs. Benveniste, Erdal and Wilhelm (1998) identify the price intervention in IPOs based on a microstructure data on individual issues whereas Asquith, Jones and Kieschnick (1998) estimate the probability of price support from the whole distribution of IPO initial returns. No research has investigated the relationship between these two methodologies. This paper fulfills the gap by assessing the relationship between them. The results are mixed. The two methods differ substantially on the percentage of issues that are price supported, but when the procedures are applied to individual IPOs, the misclassification errors are not large. The estimated means and standard deviations of the IPOs with and without intervention determined from the two methods differ significantly from each other, but the results show that the BEW method confirms the hypothesis underlying the AJK method that returns for “supported” IPOs are lower than those for “unsupported” IPOs. These results suggest that what we have is two imperfect methods of identifying intervention, but that there is some truth underlying the notion that intervention affects the distribution of first day returns in IPOs.
Workplace union representation and gender in the British workplace

This paper outlines and discusses from a gender perspective critical aspects of union representation in the British workplace. The paper utilises original analysis of data gathered by the 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Study (WERS 2011), and illuminates the gender structure of workplace union representation. The analysis allows us to address questions including: bio-demographic characteristics of male and female union representatives; what they do on behalf of their union; how managers and employees perceive union representatives by gender, and male and female union representatives’ involvement in workplace employment relations processes. To our knowledge, researchers have not used WERS 2011 previously to examine these issues with a gender lens (see Millward et al, 2016).
Non-Euclidean plates and shells

An elastic theory of even non-Euclidean plates was recently proposed to describe a class of thin elastic bodies that exhibit residual stress in the absence of external forces or constraints. This plate theory was derived from a threedimension theory of so-called incompatible elasticity; the terms non-Euclidean and incompatible refer to the existence of a reference metric that cannot be immersed in a three-dimensional Euclidean space. In this paper we generalize the reduced two-dimensional theory to account for structural inhomogeneities across the thickness, leading to intrinsic curvatures (non-Euclidean shells), as well as for inhomogenieties in the thickness of the thin body (uneven non-Euclidean plates). Two examples are discussed.
Notes on the taxonomy of Cream-throated White-eye Zosterops atriceps and the biogeography of the Northern Moluccas

The genus Zosterops has famously been described as the ‘great avian speciator’ (Diamond et al. 1976, Moyle et al. 2009) and has diversified across the Australasian and Indo-African regions into nearly 100 species (del Hoyo & Collar 2016) over, in evolutionary terms, a relatively short period of time. The Indonesian Archipelago is particularly rich in Zosterops diversity, with about 26 species (Eaton et al. 2016). However, the genus is also infamous for conservative plumage colouration occurring in a mosaic-like fashion that sees certain colour patterns variably displayed by different species across the archipelago. Zosterops plumage has therefore been thought of as a ‘variation on a theme’, with widely separated species often sporting an almost identical appearance, either of a yellow-bellied or grey-bellied plumage type. This Zosterops plumage mosaic has led to great uncertainty in the taxonomic delimitation of species. In fact, recent molecular work has shown that various traditional common names in Asian white-eye taxonomy have been wrongly delimited for decades and will require reclassification (Round et al. 2017, Lim et al. 2018). The Cream-throated White-eye Zosterops atriceps complex from the Northern Moluccas comprises three described subspecies and an undescribed population, and is one that has been associated with taxonomic upheaval in the last few years. Its cream-white throat colouration is rather unusual (albeit not unique) in this typically yellow-throated genus. On account of this trait, the Cream-throated White-eye has long been treated as a species distinct from what appear to be its closest relatives in the Central Moluccas (Seram, Buru) and Sulawesi (White & Bruce 1986, Coates & Bishop 1997). However, field observations in the Northern Moluccas in recent years have created an awareness that intra-specific variation in Creamthroated White-eyes is more pronounced than previously thought, leading to new taxonomic arrangements. Eaton et al. (2016) split the Creamthroated White-eye into four constituent species, a treatment acknowledged, although not entirely followed, by del Hoyo & Collar (2016), who retained the Cream-throated White-eye as a single species but recognised that the three described subspecies (Morotai Z. a. dehaani, Halmahera Z. a. fuscifrons and Bacan Z. a. atriceps White-eyes) may warrant species status. Here we outline our taxonomic rationale for splitting the complex into the four species recognised by Eaton et al. (2016), in the hope that it may lead to a more widespread adoption of this treatment.
Accurate Optic Disc and Cup Segmentation from Retinal Images Using a Multi-Feature Based Approach for Glaucoma Assessment

Accurate optic disc (OD) and optic cup (OC) segmentation play a critical role in automatic glaucoma diagnosis. In this paper, we present an automatic segmentation technique regarding the OD and the OC for glaucoma assessment. First, the robust adaptive approach for initializing the level set is designed to increase the performance of contour evolution. Afterwards, in order to handle the complex OD appearance affected by intensity inhomogeneity, pathological changes, and vessel occlusion, a novel model that integrates ample information of OD with the effective local intensity clustering (LIC) model together is presented. For the OC segmentation, to overcome the segmentation challenge as the OC’s complex anatomy location, a novel preprocessing method based on structure prior information between the OD and the OC is designed to guide contour evolution in an effective region. Then, a novel implicit region based on modified data term using a richer form of local image clustering information at each point of interest gathered over a multiple-channel feature image space is presented, to enhance the robustness of the variations found in and around the OC region. The presented models symmetrically integrate the information at each point in a single-channel image from a multiple-channel feature image space. Thus, these models correlate with the concept of symmetry. The proposed models are tested on the publicly available DRISHTI-GS database and the experimental results demonstrate that the models outperform state-of-the-art methods.
THE RELATION BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE , SEXUAL IDENTITY AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION

This research aims to capture the importance of developing people’s emotional intelligence, regardless their sexual orientation. Mayer & Salovey (2016) argue that a person's ability to recognize emotions, understand their meaning and manage them appropriately contributes to their personal, professional, and social adaptation. The results show that emotional intelligence plays an essential role both in homosexuals’ openingup to others with regard to their sexual orientation and in the heterosexuals’ attitude toward the minority sexual group.
Measurement of Turbulent Skin Friction Drag Coefficients Produced by Distributed Surface Roughness of Pristine Marine Coatings

Skin friction drag coefficients are determined for marine antifouling coatings in pristine condition by use of Constant Temperature Anemometry (CTA) with uni-directional hot-wires. Mean flow behaviour for varying surface roughness is analysed in zero pressure gradient, flat plate, turbulent boundary layers for Reynolds numbers from Rex = 1.91× 105 to Rex = 9.54× 105. The measurements were conducted at the Technical University of Denmark in a closed-loop wind tunnel redesigned for investigations as this. Ensemble averages of the boundary layer velocity profiles allowed for determination of skin friction drag coefficients as well as roughness Reynolds numbers for the various marine coatings across the range of Rex by fitting of the van Driest profile. The results demonstrate sound agreement with the present ITTC method for determining skin friction coefficients for practically smooth surfaces at low Reynolds numbers compared to normal operation mode for the antifouling coatings. Thus, better estimates for skin friction of rough hulls can be realised using the proposed method to optimise preliminary vessel design.
-WVSS-II Moisture Observations – A Tool for Validating and Monitoring Satellite Moisture Data

1 Abstract – Knowing the accuracy and representativeness of new observing systems is critical for their optimal use in data assimilation and other applications. One such new system is the laser-diode based Water Vapor Sensing System (WVSS-II) currently being deployed and tested on commercial aircraft in the US and, to a more limited degree, in Europe. The paper discusses the results of recent WVSS-II-toRawinsonde intercomparison studies, not only in terms of assessing the accuracy of the humidity data, but also for determining how best to use these data as a supplement to other upper-air moisture measurements and as background for using the data as a source of asynoptic observations to validate/calibrate a variety of satellite moisture products.
Module Edsys ’ 18 : Optimal Control Course

We started this course with an overview of finite-dimensional optimization and studied first and second-order conditions for computing the minima of a function. Several cases for unconstrained, and constrained problems were studied. While these topics are a subject of many books, two standard references are [4, 17]. We then briefly discussed how these notions can be generalized for infinite-dimensional optimization. The conditions that we formulate are rather abstract, and it is seen that for the class of problems encountered in calculus of variations, one can compute explicit expressions. This way we derived the Euler-Lagrange equations which provide first oder necessary conditions for a local weak extremum. We saw several simplified cases of this equation and studied its relevance in the context of mechanics. One can also compute second order necessary conditions as well, although we did not cover it in the class. We refer the readers to article [21] for some historical references and see how a classical problem like Brachristochrone is solved using the tools we have studied. Several generalizations involving integral and non-integral constraints were also studied which allowed us to handle the constraints modeled by ordinary differential equations.
Hand-Tracking Based Interactive 3 D Modeling using Mesh Deformation

The central goal of 3D modeling is to design objects in a digital 3-dimensional space. Industry Standard 3D modeling applications such as Maya, Blender, ZBrush, and 3Ds Max are applicable to a wide range of use cases from sculpting to animation, but also require understanding of a complex user interface which is often cumbersome for beginners. This steep learning curve also requires users to sculpt the computer mouse and keyboard, as opposed to traditional sculpting tools. The goal of this project is to create an interactive virtual reality 3D modeling tool that provides the user with an intuitive user interface and hands-on approach to 3D modeling. The project consists of two main components: a Leap Motion API to incorporate interactivity, and mesh deformation in Unity. By combining these tools, we successfully created a hands-on sculpting interface easily accessible to beginners.
The Margrabe Best-of-two strategy : A sweet spot between equity upside potential and resilience to equity downturns

The Margrabe Best–of–two (MBo2) strategy is a rule–based dynamic investment solution for the two–asset allocation problem. Its typical implementation involves yearly rebalancing the portfolio weights to 50–50 between a high–risk and low–risk asset. It uses intra–year weight adjustments to chase the momentum of the best performing asset by replicating the value of a Margrabe option to exchange an asset for another asset. In practice, this means that the Margrabe portfolio allocation benefits from the upside potential of the high–risk asset and the downside protection from the low–risk asset. The MBo2 allocation depends on the assets’ prices, their return volatilities and correlation, as well as the remaining time until year–end. In this paper, we derive analytical formulae and use simulations to provide insights on the sensitivity of the strategy’s weights and performance to these input parameters. We also report the results of an extensive out–of–sample evaluation for the bond–equity investment problem.
Modeling Distributed Tactical Operations for Command and Control Analysis

Analyzing command and control in tactical operations is an important means of determining whether the procedures and equipment used to coordinate the efforts of multiple, distributed units are appropriate and whether key personnel are able to complete their tasks. This analysis must consider communication between multiple actors working in a dynamically evolving operational environment. We argue that multimedia models of distributed work, systematically constructed from operational data, can help participants, managers, and analysts to grasp the ramifications of decisions and actions in a distributed dynamic environment. We describe a modeling method and a visualization framework and discuss their application to the analysis of command and control in emergency response operations.