Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GENETICS Identification of new variants and candidate genes in women with familial premature ovarian insufficiency using whole‑exome sequencing

Purpose To identify candidate variants in genes possibly associated with premature ovarian insufficiency (POI). Methods Fourteen women, from 7 families, affected by idiopathic POI were included. Additionally, 98 oocyte donors of the same ethnicity were enrolled as a control group. Whole-exome sequencing (WES) was performed in 14 women with POI to identify possibly pathogenic variants in genes potentially associated with the ovarian function. The candidate genes selected in POI patients were analysed within the exome results of oocyte donors. Results After the variant filtering in the WES analysis of 7 POI families, 23 possibly damaging genetic variants were identified in 22 genes related to POI or linked to ovarian physiology. All variants were heterozygous and five of the seven families carried two or more variants in different genes. We have described genes that have never been associated to POI pathology; however, they are involved in important biological processes for ovarian function. In the 98 oocyte donors of the control group, we found no potentially pathogenic variants among the 22 candidate genes. Conclusion WES has previously shown as an efficient tool to identify causative genes for ovarian failure. Although some studies have focused on it, and many genes are identified, this study proposes new candidate genes and variants, having potentially moderate/strong functional effects, associated with POI, and argues for a polygenic etiology of POI in some cases.
Dissecting and

In ransomware attacks, the actual target is the human, as opposed to the classic attacks that abuse the infected devices (e.g., botnet renting, information stealing). Mobile devices are by no means immune to ransomware attacks. However, there is little research work on this matter and only traditional protections are available. Even state-of-the-art mobile malware detection approaches are ine ﬀ ective against ransomware apps because of the subtle attack scheme. As a consequence, the ample attack surface formed by the billion mobile devices is left unprotected. First, in this work we summarize the results of our analysis of the existing mobile ransomware families, describing their common characteristics. Second, we present HelDroid , a fast, e ﬃ cient and fully automated approach that recognizes known and unknown scareware and ransomware samples from goodware. Our approach is based on detecting the “building blocks” that are typically needed to implement a mobile ransomware application. Speciﬁcally, HelDroid detects, in a generic way, if an app is attempting to lock or encrypt the device without the user’s consent, and if ransom requests are displayed on the screen. Our technique works without requiring that a sample of a certain family is available before-hand. We implemented HelDroid and tested it on real-world Android ran-somware samples. On a large dataset comprising hundreds of thousands of APKs including goodware, malware, scareware, and ransomware, Hel-Droid exhibited nearly zero false positives and the capability of recognizing unknown ransomware samples.
Designing and Assessing a Benchmark Set for Fault Localization Using Fault Injection Bachelor Thesis

With the further development of communication systems, which are becoming increasingly complex, the number of faults in the software of these systems is also rising. To be able to keep up with this growth, fault localization techniques are becoming increasingly important. Researchers or research groups proposing a new technique for fault localization usually evaluate it on programs with known faults. The main goal of our approach is to create a benchmark set, that can be used to evaluate these techniques. We achieve this goal by creating V-FIT, Verified Fault Injection Tool. It combines the two verifiers CPAchecker and UAutomizer to verify a given subset of safety tasks from the SV-COMP benchmark set and includes the fault injection tool Coccinelle to inject the faults. V-FIT verifies each file after injection again and creates a new fault localization benchmark set, consisting of a sensible folder structure and for each injected fault a metadata file and two files specifying the fault and the exact location. Furthermore, we evaluate the fault localization benchmark set by doing a quantitative analysis to show the performance of V-FIT and a qualitative analysis to examine the weaknesses and strengths of the created benchmark set. In total, V-FIT only processed 3 percent of the subset of tasks from the SV-COMP benchmark set successfully, but nevertheless, a total of 858 fault injections were created and thus a basis for further work was created.
Poor body condition is associated with lower hippocampal neurogenesis and higher gut methanogen abundance in adult laying hens from two housing systems

It is still unclear which commercial housing system provides the best quality of life for laying hens. In addition, there are large individual differences in stress levels within a system. Hippocampal neurogenesis may provide an integrated biomarker of the stressors experienced by an individual. We selected 12 adult hens each with good and poor body condition (based on body size, degree of feather cover and redness of the comb) from a multi-tier free range system (H&N hens) and an enriched cage system (Hy-Line hens) (n=48). Immature neurons expressing doublecortin (DCX) were quanti�ed in the hippocampus, contents of the caecal microbiome were sequenced, and expression of in�ammatory cytokines was measured in the spleen. DCX+ cell densities did not differ between the housing systems. In both systems, poor condition hens had lower DCX+ cell densities, exhibited elevated splenic expression of interleukin-6 (IL6) mRNA, and had a higher relative caecal abundance of methanogenic archea Methanomethylophilaceae. The �ndings suggest that a greater degree of cumulative chronic stress is experienced by those individuals in the poorest condition, and that a survey of the proportion of hens experiencing poor body condition might be one way to evaluate the impact of housing systems on hen welfare.
Intermodality in Multimodal Learning Analytics for Cognitive Theory Development: A Case from Embodied Design for Mathematics Learning

Multimodal Learning Analytics (MMLA) grant us insight into learners’ physiological, cognitive, and behavioral activity as it unfolds. In this chapter, we query the relations among modalities, intermodality, in the context of a design-based research program studying the relations between learning to move in new ways and learning to think in new ways. In the ﬁrst part, we reﬂect on how different methods have afforded purchase on the investigation, development, and elaboration of theoretical claims about the multimodal enactment of cognitive events, culminating in the use of Recurrence Quantiﬁcation Analysis (RQA) to quantify the microgenesis of stable new patterns in hand movement and gaze. In the second part, we analyze an RQA case study spanning across hand and gaze modalities to examine the emergence of intermodal coordination at a critical moment in the mathematical task. We conclude with implications and open questions around intermodality in embodied learning.
The vaquita will be the second cetacean species driven to extinction by humans

Within the interior of the Upper Gulf of California lives a small marine cetacean called Vaquita marina (Phocoena sinus). Limited habitat and by-catch by gillnet has resulted in the reduction of its population to 154 individuals, making it endangered. The Mexican federal government has taken environmental and economic actions to protect and encourage its conservation. Economic action was taken in January 2008 through a program of buy-out fishing permits, as a solution to reduce by-catch deaths to zero. However, as of December of 2011, only 340 permits have been withdrawn which is coupled with the refusal of the public to surrender fishing permits because fishing is the most important economic activity in the region. The transformation of fishing activities into tourism services is still not the solution to save the vaquita from extinction. This problem requires developing a viable economic alternative and proper management of the social aspects of the communities involved. The authorities have few years to find a solution before the vaquita is the second species to disappear due to human activities.
Observing Musical Communities Dedicated to Improvisation and Duet Practice on TikTok Using Web Scraping

In this paper we present a research dealing with musical improvisation practices on TikTok as part of a project devoted to the development of a music improvisation software. Finding musicians to experiment with led us to explore the musical collaborations encouraged by the platform. The duo function appears to be one of its most important feature from this point of view. Tracking relationships between musicians who duet with each other leads to the definition of musical communities that form on the network. These online communities pose new problems to the classic ethnographic approach to communities, and their study can benefit from new methods involving web scraping techniques. This article shows how to use these techniques in the context of TikTok and analyses some properties of the graphs that can be drawn from web scraping data collected within the musical communities that are formed thanks to the duet function. Certain properties of the graph, such as source and sink nodes, are highlighted and linked to musical roles such as soloist and accompanist.
BUILDING A WEB-BASED PLAGIARISM SYSTEM USING ABSTRACT SYNTAX TREE AND GREEDY STRING TILING ALGORITHM

: Plagiarism detection is the process of looking for similarities in documents that are electronic-based. In the academic community, academic integrity is a delicate subject. Consequently, it is vital to fiercely fight them. But plagiarism is a problem everywhere. Because there are so many documents on the internet, and it is possible to copy and paste. The early stages of plagiarism detection involved either manual detection or comparison to previously examined sources. The most crucial aspect of this study is the development of a reliable system that can test a single source of code against a sizable external code base and assess how similar the results are. It should be a system that can compare offline and online source code, as most system comparisons are done from offline to offline. However, this new system will compare both. To protect it against fragility and to enable quick comparison of huge source code, an abstract syntax tree will be modified. This would significantly lessen the problem of students plagiarizing in their assignments and research projects. The objective of this paper is to develop a method to identify instances of plagiarism in sets of source codes or texts that are submitted as part of student assignments or comparable scenarios. The proposed approach does not rely on external repositories, thereby enabling local assessment of the originality of the submitted work. To achieve this goal, the study focuses on various programming languages, including Java, Kotlin, C++, Python, and CSharp. By analyzing the syntax and content of the codes or texts, the method can accurately detect possible instances of plagiarism.
REINFORCEMENT LEARNING AS A REHEARSAL FOR PLANNING IN AIR BATTLE MANAGEMENT (RLAR)

This project leveraged some of the recent advances in RL to develop planners for real time strategy games, specifically MicroRTS in lieu of Stratagem program's wargame. One of these advances from the PI’s lab is called reinforcement learning as a rehearsal (RLaR). Previously, RLaR had only been evaluated in toy benchmark tasks to establish its efficacy in sample complexity reduction. This project developed RLaR for the actor-critic architecture and applied it for the first time to a complex domain with incomplete information such as MicroRTS. Another technique applied in this project originated from the recent successes of multi-agent learning in the complex StarCraft II game, specifically the architecture of multi-stage training that develop league and league-exploiter policies during intermediate stages for training robust policies. We trained RLaR against MicroPhantom—the runner-up from recent MicroRTS competitions—and showed its ability to plan effectively against this opponent but using fewer samples than relevant baselines. Separately, we trained RLaR in self-play using the 4-stage training scheme and evaluated the trained policy against MentalSeal (champion program) and MicroPhantom. While the policy once again showed good performance against MicroPhantom, it did not perform competently against MentalSeal. Based on an earlier preliminary finding that training against MentalSeal is extremely slow, we speculate that vastly more training time is required than what we could devote to this step during the extended period for this project.
Weedy rice: A threat to rice production in Sri Lanka

Weedy rice (Oryza sativa L. f. spontanea), one of the four most significant weeds, is globally well known as a problem in the rice industry. The economic and environmental problems they pose include those related to rice crop production, milling for commerce, quarantine regulations and seed trade. Weedy rice possesses a number of common features with other weeds and distinctive characteristics such as phylogenetic and morphological resemblance to cultivated rice. Weedy rice is a difficult-to-manage weed when coexists in rice ecosystems causing economic losses to rice. Currently, weedy rice has been found in nearly all the rice growing regions in Sri Lanka. The estimated rice yield losses caused by the infestation of weedy rice varied largely from 40% to 90%, depending on its density and degree of shattering in rice fields. Effective control of weedy rice must be taken into immediate consideration to secure rice production in the country. The promotion of the use of certified seed paddy without weedy rice contamination should be the immediate and key step in the implementation of efficient control mechanism followed by other integrated weed control measures to reduce the proliferation and limiting its distribution to non-contaminated areas. However, the outcome will be limited except all parties in the rice industry are unified and committed to control weedy rice. In contrary to all unfavorable impacts of weedy rice on rice production, high heritability values coupled with high genetic variability of its favorable characteristics could be considered in rice improvement programs and in broadening the rice gene pool. Journal of the University of Ruhuna 2015 3(1): 2-13
A Comprehensive Survey on Non-Invasive Fault Injection Attacks

—Non-invasive fault injection attacks have emerged as significant threats to a spectrum of microelectronic systems ranging from commodity devices to high-end customized processors. Unlike their invasive counterparts, these attacks are more affordable and can exploit system vulnerabilities without altering the hardware physically. Furthermore, certain non-invasive fault injection strategies allow for remote vulnerability exploitation without the requirement of physical proximity. However, existing studies lack extensive investigation into these attacks across diverse target platforms, threat models, emerging attack strategies, assessment frameworks, and mitigation approaches. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of contemporary research on non-invasive fault injection attacks. Our objective is to consolidate and scrutinize the various techniques, methodologies, target systems susceptible to the attacks, and existing mitigation mechanisms advanced by the research community. Besides, we categorize attack strategies based on several aspects, present a detailed comparison among the categories, and highlight research challenges with future direction. By underlining and discussing the landscape of cutting-edge, non-invasive fault injection, we hope more researchers, designers, and security professionals examine the attacks further and take such threats into consideration while developing effective countermeasures.
Debris flows as agents of morphological heterogeneity at low-order confluences, Olympic Mountains, Washington

Effects of tributary junctions on longitudinal patterns of riverine heterogeneity are relevant to both fluvial geomorphology and riverine ecology. We surveyed 10 km of small- to moderate-sized mountain channels in the Olympic Peninsula, Washington, to investigate how low-order confluences prone to debris flow deposition directly and indirectly influenced channel and valley morphology. In the Olympic Mountains, debris flows scour sediment and organic material from steep first- and second-order channels and create deposits (debris fans) at tributary junctions in higher-order streams. In lower-energy depositional environments there were statistically significant relationships among debris fans at low-order confluences and gravel substrate, wide channels, and numbers of logs and large pools. Effects of debris fans on channel morphology extended upstream and downstream of fan perimeters, indicating the importance of indirect (offsite) effects of debris flows. Consequently, certain aspects of channel morphology (e.g., pool density, substrate texture, and channel widths) were nonuniformly distributed, reflecting the role of network topology and disturbance history on the spatial scale of morphological heterogeneity. Moreover, heterogeneity of channel morphology increased in proximity to low-order confluences prone to debris flows. In contrast, confluence effects in higher-energy depositional environments were limited. Our field data and information from seven other studies indicate how variation in debris flow volume and composition, stream energy, and valley width at the point of deposition influence the relationship between low-order confluences and channel morphology.
Effects of hydrology, watershed size, and agricultural practices on sediment yields in two river basins in Iowa and Mississippi

The specific sediment yield (SSY) from watersheds is the result of the balance between natural, scale-dependent erosion and deposition processes, but can be greatly altered by human activities. In general, the SSY decreases along the course of a river as sediments are trapped in alluvial plains and other sinks. However, this relation between SSY and basin area can actually be an increasing one when there is a predominance of channel erosion relative to hillslope erosion. The US Geological Survey (USGS) conducted a study of suspended sediment in the Iowa River basin (IRB), Iowa, and the Yazoo River basin (YRB), Mississippi, from 2006 through 2008. Within each river basin, the SSY from four largely agricultural watersheds of various sizes (2.3 to 35,000 km2 [0.9 to 13,513 mi2]) was investigated. In the smallest watersheds, YRB sites had greater SSY compared to IRB sites due to higher rain erosivity, more erodible soils, more overland flow, and fluvial geomorphological differences. Watersheds in the YRB showed a steady decrease in SSY with increasing drainage basin area, whereas in the IRB, the maximum SSY occurred at the 30 to 500 km2 (11.6 to 193 mi2) scale. Subsurface tile drainage and limits to channel downcutting restrict the upstream migration of sediment sources in the IRB. Nevertheless, by comparing the SSY-basin size scaling relationships with estimated rates of field erosion under conservation and conventional tillage treatments reported in previous literature, we show evidence that the SSY-basin size relationship in both the IRB and YRB remain impacted by historical erosion rates that occurred prior to conservation efforts.
Contamination de l'estuaire et de la baie de Seine par le PCB-Bilan des etudes

This report is a synthesis of data concerning PCB concentrations in water, sediments and organisms (Bivalvia, Malacostraca, Pisces). Water analysis shows that Seine River is the primordial factor affecting PCB dispersion in the bay. Sediment contamination is higher near estuary along Calvados coast. PCB levels in Mytilidae and in Pectinidae set the problem of polluant origin, dispersion and effects on estuarine organisms.
The Effect of Firm Size, Profitability and Leverage on Accounting Conservatism

This study aims to determine the effect of Firm Size, Profitability, Leverage on accounting conservatism in property and real estate companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange. This research is a quantitative type because it refers to the calculation of research in the form of numbers. The variables of this study include the dependent and independent variables. The sample in this study is property and real estate companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) in the 2017-2021 period. The sample selection used the purpose sampling method, with a total of 13 companies during the 2017-2021 period. The data analysis technique used the Classical Assumption Test, Multiple Linear Regression Analysis and Hypothesis Testing, this analysis was carried out with the help of the Eviews 9.0 software program. This study shows that the variables Firm Size, Profitability, Leverage simultaneously affect accounting conservatism. With a significance level of 0.020246 less than 0.05. and partially profitability has an effect on accounting conservatism, while Firm Size and Leverage have no effect on accounting conservatism
Test Antioxidant Activity Using the DPPH Method (1,1 Diphenyl-2-picryhidrazyl) in the Ethyl Acetate Fraction of Black Turmeric (Curcuma caeseae)

The purpose of this study was to determine the antioxidant activity with the IC50 value contained in black turmeric (Curcuma cease) rhizome extract using the DPPH (1,1 Diphenyl-2-picryhidrzyl) method. Black turmeric samples were macerated with 96% ethanol solvent. Identification of phenolic compounds produces a purple solution; this indicates that a positive sample containing phenolic compounds. The determination of the IC50 value was carried out by adding the DPPH reaction to each concentration of the sample solution and the vitamin C comparator at the maximum DPPH wavelength of 516 nm. Research has been carried out by quantitatively testing Black turmeric extract (Curcuma caeseae) showing moderate antioxidant activity, with an IC50 value of 144.47 ppm because it is in the IC50 range of 100 – 150 ppm, while vitamin C used as a standard in this study has activity very strong antioxidant 14.0970 ppm because it is in the IC50 value range of less than 50 ppm.
Effect of Climate Changes on the Oestrus Incidence of Goats under Sub-tropical Climate Conditions of Turkey

Season is the main environmental factor controlling the annual breeding time in the subtropical animals. Some local breeds from subtropical latitudes, the season controls the annual reproductive rhythm as in breeds from temperate latitudes. Globally, climatic change has several effects on animal production. Many scientific studies suggest that the seasonal cycle of reproductive activity in both males and female is driven by an endogenous annual rhythm being synchronized by photoperiod which is directly affected by climate changes. In this respect, we described, in a general way, the climate changes between1975-2005 and how these changes affect animal reproduction cycle in terms of oestrus incidence under Mediterranean climate conditions of Turkey.