Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predictive Surgical Simulation for Cardiac Surgery

Many cardiac surgeries involve very complex operations on the heart, the great arteries and other cardiac tissues. At present, cardiac surgeons rely only on echocardiography, cardiac catherization and CT images to understand the specific anatomical structures of a patient. Without appropriate surgical planning and visualization tool, they have to resort to manual drawing to visualize the surgical procedures and the expected results. This approach is not precise and is impossible to provide detailed information about the possible outcome of the surgical procedures. To improve the precision and effectiveness of cardiac surgical planning, novel computer simulation systems that perform planning and simulation of cardiac surgeries are needed. Among the existing surgical simulation systems, reactive simulation systems attempt to simulate real-time displacement and deformation of body tissues in response to user inputs that emulate surgical operations such as incision, resection, opening, suturing etc. They are useful for medical training and pre-operative planning of simple surgical operations. However, they are not suitable for predicting the results of complex surgical procedures. On the other hand, predictive systems produce the results of surgical procedures given a small amount of user inputs, In this way, the surgeon can explore various surgical options to determine the best ones. At present, few predictive simulation systems have been developed for open surgeries, and none for complex cardiac surgeries. In this thesis proposal, a predictive simulation system is proposed for complex cardiac surgeries such as Arterial Switch Operation and Norwood procedure. Surgical requirements of the system are analyzed from the surgeon’s perspective. These requirements are translated into system requirements that define the surgical simulation system. Candidate algorithms for achieving these requirements are discussed. With careful analysis of the system requirements and formulation of the computational problems involved in the simulation of cardiac surgeries, a list of research tasks are identified for completing the proposed research. Some of these tasks have already been accomplished and are presented as preliminary work. The preliminary work shows that the approach adopted in this proposal is feasible and promising for developing a predictive simulation system for complex cardiac surgeries.
SLI: a tool for easing the understanding of automated proof construction

Outcomes and Conclusions “NoSQL data stores will not be a ‘passing fad. ’ The simplicity, flexibility, and scalability of these systems fills a market niche, e.g. for web sites with millions of read/write users and relatively simple data schemas. Even with improved relational scalability, NoSQL systems maintain advantages for some applications [14]. ” Students get exposure to the principles and concepts of database design that are essential for building well-designed database applications and also become familiar with the new NoSQL technology.
Payload Obfuscation Flow Obfuscation Random Flushing Random Padding Random Packet Directions Hiding Tunneling Encapsulation Onion

With the beginning of the 21st century emerging peer-to-peer networks ushered in a new era of large scale media exchange. Faced with ever increasing volumes of traffic, legal threats by copyright holders, and QoS demands of customers, network service providers are urged to apply traffic classification and shaping techniques. These systems usually are highly integrated to satisfy the harsh restrictions present in network infrastructure. They require constant maintenance and updates. Additionally, they have legal issues and violate both the net neutrality and end-to-end principles. On the other hand, clients see their freedom and privacy attacked. As a result, users, application programmers, and even commercial service providers laboriously strive to hide their interests and circumvent classification techniques. In this user vs. ISP war, the user side has a clear edge. While changing the network infrastructure is by nature very complex, and only slowly reacts to new conditions, updating and distributing software between users is easy and practically instantaneous. In this paper we discuss how state-of-the-art traffic classification systems can be circumvented with little effort. We present a new obfuscation extension to the BitTorrent protocol that allows signature free handshaking. The extension requires no changes to the infrastructure and is fully backwards compatible. With only little change to client software, contemporary classification techniques are rendered ineffective. We argue, that future traffic classification must not rely on restricted local syntax information but instead must exploit global communication patterns and protocol semantics in order to be able to keep pace with rapid application and protocol changes.
Design und Implementierung eines energiesparenden Dateisystems Studienarbeit im Fach Informatik

The development of small mobile hard disks with large storage capacities has changed the application requirements of modern mobile computers and embedded systems significantly. While these devices are mostly battery-powered, all usable power saving techniques have to be integrated to prolong their up-time. Most mobile devices suffer from the restriction of small sized memories. It is common that the available memory is exclusively used by the operating system and the running applications. Therefore, in contrast to normal workstation computers, the caching of disk blocks at the operating system level is problematic and not as effective for these devices due to the large memory requirements of that technique. However, existing file systems organize file data and meta data to match performance requirements by relying on the presence of a considerable amount of system memory for caching purposes. As far as hard disks are concerned, valuable battery power can be saved by avoiding disk seeks and introduced latencies due to rotational delays. This work examines the effects of different file system layouts on hard disk energy consumption. It is shown that energy efficiency of file systems is heavily influenced by the used data layout and file organization principle when disk caches are mostly not available. Guidelines for a low power file system design are developed. A new implementation of a file system for the Linux kernel based on these recommendations is provided to show that energy efficiency is significantly improvable by adapting the file system layout in systems which do not have the possibility to use disk block caching techniques.
Constructions of crime data and criminal statistics: A critical reflection

This chapter explores a number of interrelated questions about ‘crime levels’, ‘crime patterns’, and ‘crime trends’ and how they are measured. These range from what may sound like (but are not) straightforward empirical and methodological questions, such as ‘how much crime is there? ’, ‘how is it changing? ’ and ‘how do we know? ’, to broader questions about the relationships between, on the one hand, the kinds of crime data which are collected and published and, on the other, changing perceptions of the nature of ‘the crime problem’ and policy demands arising from developments in the politics of crime control. The chapter considers the steep falls in crime rates that have been apparent globally over the past two decades (following a long period of increases) and questions whether it is possible to determine that there has been a real ‘crime drop’ given the problems inherent in measuring crime both consistently and reliably over time. It also identifies a decline in public trust in official crime statistics, and charts attempts to regain this trust through changes in how they are collated and presented. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first provides an overview of the development of the ‘official’ crime statistics in England and Wales, derived originally from police records and more recently from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). It also looks at what the data from each appear to tell us about the scale of crime and trends over time, and to what extent they give similar, complementary, or contradictory messages. In doing so, it highlights some of the key decisions that are made about how to present statistics to the public, such as whether to pursue comprehensiveness or to focus only on selected offences (the more serious, or those more easily measured); and how to respond to legal changes, new sources of data, and the emergence of new kinds of criminal behaviour. The second section examines, and explores the reasons behind, a rapid growth in demand for new kinds of information about crime which has been evident since the 1970s, fuelling (and being fuelled by) a massive expansion in data collection and OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri Feb 1
Locata: A new high accuracy indoor positioning system

1 Abstract—Accurate indoor positioning is required for a variety of commercial applications, including warehouse automation, asset tracking, emergency first-responders, and others. In fact, the general expectation of users today is for " GPS-like " positioning performance anywhere they go. The inherent limitations of GPS signal availability indoors and in satellite-occluded environments, however, has forced researchers to investigate alternative technologies which may be able to replicate GPS/GNSS performance indoors. A new terrestrial RF-based distance measurement technology, trademarked " Locata " , has overcome the technical challenges required to create " a localised autonomous terrestrial replica of GNSS ". Signals from the Locata network are seen by receiver devices as equivalent to (but totally independent from) the GNSS satellite constellation(s). This technical paper describes indoor positioning results with the latest generation of Locata positioning devices. The results demonstrate that Locata's technology enables cm-level positioning in severe multipath environments where conventional high-accuracy radiopositioning has previously been impossible.
Option pricing, interest rates and risk management

Introduction Part I. Option Pricing: Theory and Practice: 1. Arbitrage theory Yu. M. Kabanov 2. Market models with frictions: arbitrage and pricing issues E. Jouini and C. Napp 3. American options: symmetry properties J. Detemple 4. Purely discontinuous asset price processes D. Madan 5. Latent variable models for stochastic discount factors R. Garcia and E. Renault 6. Monte Carlo methods for security pricing P. Boyle, M. Broadie and P. Glasserman Part II. Interest Rate Modeling: 7. A geometric view of interest rate theory T. Bjork 8. Towards a central interest rate model A. Brace, T. Dun and G. Barton 9. Infinite dimensional diffusions, Kolmogorov equations and interest rate models B. Goldys and M. Musiela 10. Libor market model with semimartingales F. Jamshidian 11. Modeling of forward Libor and swap rates M. Rutkowski Part III. Risk Management and Hedging: 12. Credit risk modeling, intensity based approach T. Bielecki and M. Rutkowski 13. Towards a theory of volatility trading P. Carr and D. Madan 14. Shortfall risk in long-term hedging with short-term futures contracts P. Glasserman 15. Numerical comparison and local risk-minimisation and mean-variance hedging D. Heath, E. Platen and M. Schweizer 16. A guided tour through quadratic hedging approaches M. Schweizer Part IV. Utility Maximization: 17. Theory of portfolio optimization in markets with frictions J. Cvitanic 18. Bayesian adaptive portfolio optimization I. Karatzas and X. Zhao.
Role delegation in role-based access control

In distributed-computing environments, applications or users have to share resources and communicate with each other to perform their jobs more efficiently. For better performance, it is important to keep resources and the information integrity from the unexpected use by unauthorized user. Therefore, there is a strong demand for the authentication and the access control of distributed-shared resources. Nowadays, three kinds of access control, discretionary access control (DAC) mandatory access control (MAC) and role-based access control (RBAC) have been proposed. In RBAC, there are role hierarchies in which a senior role can perform the permission of a junior role. However, it is sometimes necessary for a junior role to perform a senior role’s permission, which is not allowed basically by a junior role. In this paper, we will propose a role delegation method, consisting of a role delegation server, and a role delegation protocols. We divide the delegation into two by the triggered object: active delegation and passive delegation. Consequently, a junior role can gain a senior role’s permissions.
Multi-Column Convolutional Neural Networks with Causality-Attention for Why-Question Answering

Why-question answering (why-QA) is a task to retrieve answers (or answer passages) to why-questions (e.g., "why are tsunamis generated? ") from a text archive. Several previously proposed methods for why-QA improved their performance by automatically recognizing causalities that are expressed with such explicit cues as "because" in answer passages and using the recognized causalities as a clue for finding proper answers. However, in answer passages, causalities might be implicitly expressed, (i.e., without any explicit cues): "An earthquake suddenly displaced sea water and a tsunami was generated. " The previous works did not deal with such implicitly expressed causalities and failed to find proper answers that included the causalities. We improve why-QA based on the following two ideas. First, implicitly expressed causalities in one text might be expressed in other texts with explicit cues. If we can automatically recognize such explicitly expressed causalities from a text archive and use them to complement the implicitly expressed causalities in an answer passage, we can improve why-QA. Second, the causes of similar events tend to be described with a similar set of words (e.g., "seismic energy" and "tectonic plates" for "the Great East Japan Earthquake" and "the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake"). As such, even if we cannot find in a text archive any explicitly expressed cause of an event (e.g., "the Great East Japan Earthquake") expressed in a question (e.g., "Why did the Great East Japan earthquake happen? "), we might be able to identify its implicitly expressed causes with a set of words (e.g., "tectonic plates") that appear in the explicitly expressed cause of a similar event (e.g., "the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake"). We implemented these two ideas in our multi-column convolutional neural networks with a novel attention mechanism, which we call causality attention. Through experiments on Japanese why-QA, we confirmed that our proposed method outperformed the state-of-the-art systems.
Permeation in potassium channels: implications for channel structure.

The SR K+ channel is a single-ion channel with a tunnel that is not very selective, while the DR and CaK channels are both more selective, multi-ion channels. The permeation mechanisms of the three channels are probably most systematically distinguished by the length of their tunnels; the SR has the shortest and the DR the longest. Although different in their mechanisms of activation, the DR and CaK channels have very similar permeation characteristics, down to the details of selectivity and blockade. The longer tunnel and reduced conductance (perhaps a result of the extra tunnel length) of the DR K+ channel are the main differences. The selectivity of the rate-limiting barriers and the binding sites within the channels, however, are strikingly similar. A successful potassium channel must satisfy two criteria: It must let potassium ions through and not much else, and it must let many potassium ions through. To be selective the channel must have a narrow selectivity filter, so that an ion must shed some of its waters of hydration to pass through. Sodium ions are excluded because they are more reluctant to lose their water, and they are not adequately compensated for this loss by interaction with the selectivity filter. To carry a large current the narrow region must be short, with wide antechambers to reduce the diffusional access resistance (48). Energetically, the channel must strike a balance. There must be enough binding energy to compensate the ions for their lost hydration energy, so that the energy barrier to permeation is small. If the channel binds the ion too tightly, however, the ion will not be able to exit, and the current will be small. Some of the shared properties of different potassium channels are probably consequences of these requirements; others may be incidental to function, suggesting a common origin. Barium ions have almost exactly the same radius as potassium ions but twice the charge, so it is perhaps not surprising that barium can block any potassium channel by binding where potassium does, but too tightly. It seems more surprising that blockade by TEA+ and other quaternary ammonium ions is also well conserved. All three of the potassium channels considered here have a mouth that binds QA ions and that has a nearby hydrophobic pocket; the frog DR and the CaK channels also have a TEA+-specific site on the opposite side. The QA site might not be an obligatory feature of potassium channels, but rather a conserved evolutionary vestige. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Crop Water Planning and Irrigation Efficiency in Rainfed Agriculture

More than 70 % of irrigation needs in India are currently met from groundwater resources. Hard rock areas (HRA) in India occupy more than 65% of the geographical area where groundwater resource is in increasing demand, but fraught with poor recharge. Indian farmers pump twice the groundwater used in USA and six times that used in EU. India's green revolution was significantly supported by increased groundwater irrigation, and can be termed as 'groundwater revolution' leading to overexploitation in many regions. A fall out of overexploitation is farmers increasingly facing risk of initial and premature well failure which exacerbates the cost of groundwater. Water policies focus on the demand side of water (Million wells scheme, Subsidy for micro irrigation, conveyance pipes, energy subsidy) neglecting the supply side of water (or lack of efforts towards recharging well) affecting its sustainable use. Even considering the energy subsidy, farmers are bearing more than 50 to 75 % of cost of groundwater, treating groundwater expenditure as implicit rather than as explicit cost. The costing methodology of cultivation by DES (Directorate of Economics and Statistics)/CACP (Commission for agricultural costs and benefits) ignores the cost of groundwater by treating depreciation on all items of expenditure on irrigation well and irrigation pump (IP) set as fixed cost (for an unspecified number of years). Even the yield of the well and number of hours of operation of IP set for different crops are not properly accounted in the record type forms, where cost of cultivation is assessed on daily basis from thousands of sample farmers all over India. Thus, the DES/CACP is yet to take adequate steps in properly accounting for the cost of groundwater irrigation in the Cost Concepts (of Cost A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, C3). In fact DES/CACP computes average cost of cultivation clubbing both irrigated and rainfed crop conditions. This paper suggests how DES can modify its methodology in costing of groundwater irrigation, highlighting the extent of overestimation of profits due to underestimation of cost of irrigation. By appropriately accounting for the costs of groundwater irrigation incurred by farmers, this article offers solutions for facilitating in the appropriate costing methodology for Minimum Support Prices (MSP), Statutory Minimum Price and Market Intervention Scheme for crops for the benefit of farmers.
Insights Into the Epidemiology of Sexually Transmitted Diseases From Ro = βcD

Because the Thomas Parran Award is the highest honor in the field of sexually transmitted disease (STD) prevention and research, I am humbled and honored to be this year’s recipient. I want to express my thanks to the Association and the Award Committee for this great honor. Any lifetime achievement award results from a lifetime of influences and my experience is no different. I owe an extraordinary debt of gratitude to King Holmes, Allan Ronald, and Roy Anderson. They have shaped how I think about STD research and their ideas repeatedly appear in my work. I also owe thanks to the many colleagues and students with whom I have worked over the years. In particular, I want to acknowledge the pleasures of working with Frank Plummer, Stephen Moses, Joshua Kimani, Fred Aoki, Jamie Blanchard, Rosanna Peeling, Grant McClarty, Michael Rekart, David Patrick, Babak Pourbohloul, and Craig Cohen. My 23-year career as an academic physician entirely depended on the constant support that I received from my wife and 2 sons. I am forever thankful for their unending patience and encouragement. The basic reproduction number (Ro) is fundamental to understanding infectious disease epidemiology. Ro describes the average number of secondary infections that an infected individual generates when entering a fully susceptible population, and when greater than one, it defines ecologic success for a pathogen. Natural selection acts to optimize Ro when an emerging infectious disease newly enters a species population, thus shaping the genotypic and phenotypic properties of a microbe. A range of Ro values have been computed for different pathogens depending on factors such as routes and density dependence of transmission and susceptibility of the pathogen to innate and adaptive immune defenses.1,2 The concept of the reproduction number has been critical to understanding the epidemiology of sexually transmitted infections (STIs)3 and has helped rationalize prevention strategies.4 Ro is determined by 3 parameters: , which represents the per-capita transmissibility of the agent; D, the average annualized duration of infection; and c, the pattern of contact between susceptible and infectious persons:
Capital Structure of Indonesian Toll Road Investor

The development of toll road investment in Indonesia from the year 1978 until 2008 still slowed down. Before financial crisis, before 1998, the total length of toll road in Indonesia was 532.62 km. At the same time, compared to other nations in East Asian, such as China the total length of toll road was 4,735 km, Philippines was 168 km, Malaysia was 1,127 km, and Thailand was 91 km. So, the total length of Indonesian toll road from 1978 to 2007 was 663.82 km or average growth from 1978 to 1997 was 16.36% per year; and from 1998 to 2007 was 2.26% per year. Compare with China has reached is 45,400 km, Malaysia is 1,574 km, Philippines is 198 km, and Thailand is 107 km.In investment, the total toll road investment in Indonesia from 1990 through 2006 is US$ 3,335 million, in China US$ 20,045 million, Philippines US$ 1,509 million, Malaysia US$ 7,720 million, and Thailand US$ 782 million. The Government of Indonesia (GoI) has planned to push the growth of toll road investment to reach 1099.08 km in 2009 that divided in Trans Java and Non-Trans Java. But on the contrary, there are many investors interested in toll road investment but only a few succeed to build and operate. This paper want to describe the benefit of capital structure to finance toll road investment based Modigliani-Miller (1985) theory and other researchers compare with investors’ capital structure. We can see why the investors especially have listed in stock exchange, Indonesia Stock Exchange, PT. Jasa Marga Tbk. and PT. Citra Marga Nusaphala Persada Tbk. , can stay to build and operate toll road. And we can see what the problem of their capital structure.