Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CENCPP - Beyond-birthday-secure Encryption from Public Permutations

Public permutations have been established as valuable primitives since the absence of a key schedule compared to block ciphers alleviates cryptanalysis. While many permutation-based authentication and encryption schemes have been proposed in the past decade, the birth-day bound in terms of the primitive’s block length n has been mostly accepted as the standard security goal. Thus, remarkably little research has been conducted yet on permutation-based modes with higher security guarantees. Only recently at CRYPTO’19, Chen et al showed two constructions with higher security based on the sum of two public per-mutation. Their work has sparked increased interest in this direction by the community. However, since their proposals were domain-preserving, the question of encryption schemes with beyond-birthday-bound security was left open. This work tries to address this gap by proposing CENCPP , a nonce-based encryption scheme from public permutations. Our proposal is a variant of Iwata’s block-cipher-based mode CENC that we adapt for public permutations, thereby generalizing Chen et al.’s Sum-of-Even-Mansour construction to a mode with variable output lengths. Like CENC , our proposal enjoys a comfortable rate-security trade-oﬀ that needs w + 1 calls to the primitive for w primitive outputs. We show a tight security level for up to O (2 2 n/ 3 /w 2 ) primitive calls. While w ≥ 1 can be arbitrary, two independent keys suﬃce; moreover, although we propose CENCPP ﬁrst in a generic setting with w + 1 independent permutations, we show that only log 2 ( w + 1) bits of the input for domain separation suﬃce to obtain a single-permutation variant that still maintains a security level of up to O (2 2 n/ 3 /w 4 ) queries.
Demographic, Residential, and Socioeconomic Effects on the Distribution of 19th Century African-American Body Mass Index Values

Little research exists on the body mass index values of late 19th and early 20th century African-Americans. Using a new BMI data set and robust statistics, this paper demonstrates that late 19th and early 20th century black BMI variation by age increased in their mid-30s but declined at older ages when worker physical productivity declined. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, black BMIs decreased across the distribution, indicating that the 20th century increase in black BMIs did not have its origin in the 19th century. During industrialization, black BMIs were lower in Kentucky, Missouri, and urban Philadelphia.
Experimental work on the effect of pre-existing anisotropy on fabric development in glaciers

Abstract Localization of deformation in ice is known to be important at all scales in deforming glaciers. However, relatively little is known of the significance of shear localization and the influence of fabric development in anisotropic ice at microscopic scales (<mm-cm). In this experimental study, the effect of initial c-axis preferred orientation and the inclination of the primary layering in anisotropic ice masses, during both plane strain-compression and combined simple shear-compression, have been examined. A series of creep tests in the temperature range of −5 to −1°C over a range of shortening strains varying from 10 to 40% and compressive stresses ranging from 0 to 0.7 MPa have been undertaken. Significant variations in the strain rate and microstructural development have been observed in the plane strain-compression experiments that reflects the varying orientations of the anisotropy and its relationship to easy-glide directions in the ice mass. In the unconfined combined compression and shear experiments minimum shear stress rates vary between the variously oriented anisotropic ice masses and deviate from the normal power flow law for isotropic ice. Where annealing occurs, such ice masses preserve the pre-existing c-axis fabric and hence may reflect a contribution from both the recrystallized and inherited ice components.
The influence of temperature on the spectra of the A‐asteroids and implications for their silicate chemistry

Previously obtained high-quality near-infrared spectra of asteroids revealed a class of objects, the A-asteroids, with reflectance spectra similar to the mineral olivine. We compare the asteroid spectra to a compositional series of powdered olivines varying from Fe-rich to Fe-poor. With continua removed and absorption band strengths normalized, the A-asteroid spectra are most similar, but not identical, to the spectrum of a very low-Fe olivine suggesting the asteroidal olivine to be Fe-poor. The spectra of the laboratory samples differ systematically from those of the A-asteroids. The spectra of the A-asteroids are much more similar to the spectra of low-Fe olivines obtained at low temperatures reasonable for the heliocentric distance of the main asteroid belt. We conclude that the spectral differences between ambient temperature laboratory measurements of olivines and the spectra of A-asteroids are mainly due to temperature-dependent spectral effects. This is the first detection of these effects in the spectra of asteroids. We further conclude that the A-asteroid silicate fraction is olivine with a composition less than Fa10±5. The low iron content of these asteroid silicates indicates the objects' origin in reduced parent bodies with compositions unlike the ordinary chondrites. The combination of monomineralic olivine silicate fraction and very low iron olivines is solely represented in the meteorite collection by the main group of pallasite meteorites. The silicate fraction of other olivine-rich meteorites is too Fe-rich to be represented on the A-asteroids. This work strengthens the link between the pallasite meteorites and the A-type asteroids.
NIMBYism revisited: public acceptance of wind energy in the United States

The acronym NIMBY, known to stand for ‘Not‐In‐My‐Back‐Yard’, generally describes resistance to siting specific projects close to one's area of residence while exhibiting acceptance of similar projects elsewhere. As wind energy continues to be recognized as a successful technology for meeting renewable energy targets and decreasing carbon dioxide emissions, the siting of wind turbines is a growing challenge that policy makers, facility planners, and wind developers face. The most often cited motivations for public support and opposition are reviewed here with a focus on wind energy developments in the United States. The purpose is to present the existing state of research on community responses to wind energy and to answer the following questions: What motivates support and opposition to facility siting, and in particular to wind energy facilities? Does the literature provide substantial evidence that NIMBYism is the determining motivation for opposition in the United States and, by extension, does the term's widespread use help to explain opposition? What mechanisms have been proposed for ‘overcoming’ NIMBYism, if it is present? This paper, following the recommendations of other social scientists, provides a collective call for a significant course shift: rather than proposing strategies to ‘overcome’ opposition, research should focus on proposing how to make siting successful. Drawing on a review of the relevant literature, the ‘ENUF’ framework—which stands for ‘Engage, Never use NIMBY, Understand, and Facilitate’—is introduced as a step in that direction. WIREs Clim Change 2013, 4:575–601. doi: 10.1002/wcc.250
Relative Fuzzy Connectedness and Object Definition: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications in Image Segmentation

—The notion of fuzzy connectedness captures the idea of “hanging-togetherness” of image elements in an object by assigning a strength of connectedness to every possible path between every possible pair of image elements. This concept leads to powerful image segmentation algorithms based on dynamic programming whose effectiveness has been demonstrated on 1,000s of images in a variety of applications. In the previous framework, a fuzzy connected object is defined with a threshold on the strength of connectedness. In this paper, we introduce the notion of relative connectedness that overcomes the need for a threshold and that leads to more effective segmentations. The central idea is that an object gets defined in an image because of the presence of other co-objects. Each object is initialized by a seed element. An image element c is considered to belong to that object with respect to whose reference image element c has the highest strength of connectedness. In this fashion, objects compete among each other utilizing fuzzy connectedness to grab membership of image elements. We present a theoretical and algorithmic framework for defining objects via relative connectedness and demonstrate utilizing the theory that the objects defined are independent of reference elements chosen as long as they are not in the fuzzy boundary between objects. An iterative strategy is also introduced wherein the strongest relative connected core parts are first defined and iteratively relaxed to conservatively capture the more fuzzy parts subsequently. Examples from medical imaging are presented to illustrate visually the effectiveness of relative fuzzy connectedness. A quantitative mathematical phantom study involving 160 images is conducted to demonstrate objectively the effectiveness of relative fuzzy connectedness.
Analyzing Social Media Content for Detection of Offensive Text

To tackle the conundrum of detecting offensive comments/posts which are considerably informal, un-structured, miswritten and code-mixed, we introduce two inventive methods in this research paper. Offensive comments/posts on the social media platforms, can affect an individual, a group or underage alike. In order to classify comments/posts in two popular Dravidian languages, Tamil and Malayalam, as a part of the HASOC - DravidianCodeMix FIRE 2021 shared task, we employ two Transformer-based prototypes which successfully stood in the top 8 for all the tasks. The codes for our approach can be viewed and utilized 1 .
Online Peer-to-Peer Lending: A Lenders' Perspective

Online Peer-to-Peer lending platforms claim to be beneficial for both borrowers and lenders by eliminating expensive intermediaries and reducing transaction costs. However, are the often inexperienced lenders who operate in a pseudonymous online environment with potentially significant information asymmetries really able to obtain an attractive return on their investment? This paper discusses the question by presenting profitability data from the US platform Prosper. Although the overall investment performance has not been satisfactory for most rating categories, it is shown that following some simple investment rules improves profitability of a portfolio and leads to acceptable returns for all credit rating categories with exception of the high-risk one.
Rain energy and soil amendments effects on infiltration and erosion of three different soil types

The effect of rain kinetic energy and soil amendments on infiltration and erosion from three Israeli soils was studied using a drip-type simulator. The soil samples were from the top layer (0-250 mm depth) of cultivated fields differing in their texture, specific surface area and lime content. Three kinetic energies of raindrops were obtained by varying heights of fall (h = 0.4, 1-0 and 1.6 m) of 3 mm diameter drops. The soil types studied were Typic Chromoxerert, Typic Rhodoxeralf and Calcic Haploxeralf. Soil amendments were phosphogypsum (PG) and a combined application of an anionic polyacrylamide (PAM) with PG. An increase in the impact energy of the raindrops reduced depth of rain before ponding, final infiltration rate (FIR), cumulative infiltration (i.e. infiltration parameters) and increased soil erosion. The addition of PAM+PG to the soil surface significantly increased the infiltration parameters and reduced erosion compared with the PG and control treatments. The Typic Chromoxerert was the least susceptible of the three soils to sealing, probably because of its high smectitic clay content, high specific surface area and high CaCO3 content which stabilize soil structure. The Typic Rhodoxeralf with the lowest specific surface area was the most susceptible to clay dispersion, and seal formation. Relative to the Typic Chromoxerert and the Typic Rhodoxeralf, the Calcic Haploxeralf was intermediate in its susceptibility to seal formation.
A Probabilistic Taylor Expansion with Applications in Filtering and Differential Equations

We study a class of Gaussian processes for which the posterior mean, for a particular choice of data, replicates a truncated Taylor expansion of any order. The data consists of derivative evaluations at the expansion point and the prior covariance kernel belongs to the class of Taylor kernels, which can be written in a certain power series form. This permits statistical modelling of the uncertainty in a variety of algorithms that exploit first and second order Taylor expansions. To demonstrate the utility of this Gaussian process model we introduce new probabilistic versions of the classical extended Kalman filter for non-linear state estimation and the Euler method for solving ordinary differential equations.
Observations of flow separation by an isolated island

Abstract Remotely-sensed data from a series of overflights of the Clyde estuary in western Scotland are described. Thermal band images are presented to demonstrate the occurrence of flow separation at the tip of an isolated island in the estuary and the characteristics of the resulting downstream eddy are investigated. Field data are used to interpret the observed eddy structure and to confirm that the eddy is delineated in the images because of the existence of a source tracer of cold water upstream of the point at which the tidal stream separates from the tip of the island. Upwelling of cold water induced by the rotational motion of the attached eddy is shown to be inhibited by the stable density stratification existing in the estuary under summer conditions. The dynamics of the eddies generated at the island are discussed in terms of the non-dimensional parameters controlling the flow and it is demonstrated that the effects of the background rotation of the Earth upon the flow dynamics are weak. The us.
Resilience of Pelagic and Benthic Microbial Communities to Sediment Resuspension in a Coastal Ecosystem, Knebel Vig, Denmark

Abstract The effects of resuspension on benthic and pelagic photosynthesis, bacterial production, denitrification and other aspects of C- and N-cycling were studied in a Danish coastal water system. Experiments were done in two 3·6–3·8 m deep mesocosms where resuspension was generated by stirring of the water. Six millimetres of the sediment was suspended, causing a reduction of Secci-depth in the overlying water to 10 cm. The system studied was N-limited and had considerable populations of benthic diatoms and cyanobacteria with photosynthetic activity of the same magnitude or larger than the pelagic.The algae created a distinct mat on the sediment surface and effectively controlled the sediment–water fluxes of dissolved inorganic nitrogen. During resuspension, the O 2 content of the water in the two mesocosms decreased by 5%, and chlorophyll a content in the water increased by 28%, corresponding to a transport of only 2% of the benthic algal chlorophyll to the water phase. Primary production and nutrients in the pelagic were not affected, but bacterial production increased for 1 day. After resuspension, the average benthic chlorophyll was unchanged, but was more unevenly distributed. Benthic primary production was affected for 1 week after the event, mostly due to water turbidity; dark respiration and fluxes of N-species were unchanged. Denitrification rates were stimulated in resuspended mesocosms relative to undisturbed controls. The system studied showed remarkable stability with some short-term responses to resuspension and almost all measured parameters returned to status quo within 1 week.
Self-adaptive routing protocols for integrating cellular networks, WLANs, and MANETs

A growing need to have ubiquitous connectivity has motivated our research to provide continuous connection between various wireless platforms such as cellular networks, wireless local area networks (WLANs), and mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). In this paper, we consider integration at the routing layer and propose two adaptable routing protocols (IRP-RD and IRP-PD) that exploit topology information stored at the fixed network components (cellular base stations and WLAN access points) for the route discovery and maintenance processes. Our proposed protocols can provide connectivity to the cellular network and/or WLAN hotspots through multihop routing, while differ in the gateway discovery approach used. In IRP-RD, multihop routes to gateways to the cellular network or WLAN hot spots are discovered on demand, while in IRP-PD out of coverage users proactively maintain routes to the gateways. Furthermore, proposed protocols can be used in any heterogeneous scenario, combining a cellular network and WLANs operating in infrastructure or ad hoc (MANET) mode. We provide simulation results that demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed integrated routing protocols and show the advantages and drawbacks of each gateway discovery approach in different heterogeneous scenarios. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Denoising Score Matching via Random Fourier Features

The density estimation is one of the core problems in statistics. Despite this, existing techniques like maximum likelihood estimation are computationally inefficient in case of complex parametric families due to the intractability of the normalizing constant. For this reason, an interest in score matching has increased, being independent on the normalizing constant. However, such an estimator is consistent only for distributions with the full space support. One of the approaches to make it consistent is to add noise to the input data called Denoising Score Matching. In this work we build computationally efficient algorithm for density estimate using kernel exponential family as a model distribution. The usage of the kernel exponential family is motivated by the richness of this class of densities. To avoid calculating an intractable normalizing constant we use Denoising Score Matching objective. The computational complexity issue is approached by applying Random Fourier Features-based approximation of the kernel function. We derive an exact analytical expression for this case which allows dropping additional regularization terms based on the higher-order derivatives as they are already implicitly included. Moreover, the obtained expression explicitly depends on the noise variance, so that the validation loss can be straightforwardly used to tune the noise level. Along with benchmark experiments, the method was tested on various synthetic distributions to study the behavior of the method in different cases. The empirical study shows comparable quality to the competing approaches, while the proposed method being computationally faster. The latter one enables scaling up to complex high-dimensional data.
Advances in the remote sensing of volcanic activity and hazards, with special consideration to applications in developing countries

Applications of remote sensing for studies of volcanic activity and hazards have developed rapidly in the past 40 years. This has facilitated the observation of volcanic processes, such as ground deformation and thermal emission changes, lava flows, eruption clouds, ash and gas emissions, as well as mapping of volcanic structures and hazardous terrain, even for volcanoes in remote regions. Advances in the remote sensing of volcanoes, from ground‐based sensors to sensors onboard airborne and spaceborne platforms, are reviewed. A key point made in this review is that volcanic remote sensing could have a much broader impact if the techniques and data were readily available to scientists studying/monitoring potentially hazardous volcanoes in developing countries. Perspectives on particular needs, with regard to sensor types, data availability and training, required to take volcanic remote sensing further in coming years are highlighted.
Overview of the HASOC track at FIRE 2019: Hate Speech and Offensive Content Identification in Indo-European Languages

The identification of Hate Speech in Social Media is of great importance and receives much attention in the text classification community. There is a huge demand for research for languages other than English. The HASOC track intends to stimulate development in Hate Speech for Hindi, German and English. Three datasets were developed from Twitter and Facebook and made available. Binary classification and more fine-grained subclasses were offered in 3 subtasks. For all subtasks, 321 experiments were submitted. The approaches used most often were LSTM networks processing word embedding input. The performance of the best system for identification of Hate Speech for English, Hindi, and German was a Marco-F1 score of 0.78, 0.81 and 0.61, respectively.
On-line formant shifting as a function of F0

We investigate whether there is a within-speaker effect of a higher F0 on the values of the first and the second formant. When asked to speak at a high F0, speakers turn out to raise their formants as well. In the F1 dimension this effect is greater for women than for men. We conclude that while a general formant raising effect might be due to the physiology of a high F0 (i.e. raised larynx and shorter vocal tract), a plausible explanation for the gender-dependent size of the effect on F1 values can only be found in the undersampling hypothesis.
Natural gradient via optimal transport I

We study a natural Wasserstein gradient flow on manifolds of probability distributions with discrete sample spaces. We derive the Riemannian structure for the probability simplex from the dynamical formulation of the Wasserstein distance on a weighted graph. We pull back the geometric structure to the parameter space of any given probability model, which allows us to define a natural gradient flow there. In contrast to the natural Fisher-Rao gradient, the natural Wasserstein gradient incorporates a ground metric on sample space. We discuss implementations following the forward and backward Euler methods. We illustrate the analysis on elementary exponential family examples.
Incremental 3D Line Segment Extraction from Semi-dense SLAM

Although semi-dense Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) has been becoming more popular over the last few years, there is a lack of efficient methods for representing and processing their large scale point clouds. In this paper, we propose using 3D line segments to simplify the point clouds generated by semi-dense SLAM. Specifically, we present a novel incremental approach for 3D line segment extraction. This approach reduces a 3D line segment fitting problem into two 2D line segment fitting problems and takes advantage of both images and depth maps. In our method, 3D line segments are fitted incrementally along detected edge segments via minimizing fitting errors on two planes. By clustering the detected line segments, the resulting 3D representation of the scene achieves a good balance between compactness and completeness. Our experimental results show that the 3D line segments generated by our method are highly accurate. As an application, we demonstrate that these line segments greatly improve the quality of 3D surface reconstruction compared to a feature point based baseline.