Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Blue Turns to Gray: Paleogenomic Insights into the Evolutionary History and Extinction of the Blue Antelope (Hippotragus leucophaeus)

The blue antelope (Hippotragus leucophaeus) is the only large African mammal species to have become extinct in historical times, yet no nuclear genomic information is available for this species. A recent study showed that many alleged blue antelope museum specimens are either roan (H. equinus) or sable (H. niger) antelopes, further reducing the possibilities for obtaining genomic information for this extinct species. While the blue antelope has a rich fossil record from South Africa, climatic conditions in the region are unfavourable to the preservation of ancient DNA. Nevertheless, we recovered two blue antelope draft genomes, one at 3.4x mean coverage from a historical specimen (~200 years old) and one at 2.1x mean coverage from a fossil specimen dating to 9,800–9,300 cal BP, making it currently the oldest palaeogenome from Africa. Phylogenomics show that blue and sable antelope are sister species, confirming previous mitogenomic results, and demonstrate ancient gene flow from roan into blue antelope. We show that blue antelope genomic diversity was much lower than in roan and sable antelopes, indicative of a low population size since at least the early Holocene. This supports observations from the fossil record documenting major decreases in the abundance of blue antelope after the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Finally, the persistence of this species throughout the Holocene despite low population size suggests that colonial-era human impact was likely a decisive factor in the blue antelope’s extinction.
Managing Industrial Control Systems Security Risks for Cyber Insurance (Dagstuhl Seminar 21451)

Industrial control systems (ICSs), such as production systems or critical infrastructures, are an attractive target for cybercriminals, since attacks against these systems may cause severe physical damages/material damages (PD/MD), resulting in business interruption (BI) and loss of profit (LOP). Besides financial loss, cyber-attacks against ICSs can also harm human health or the environment or even be used as a kind of weapon. Thus, it is of utmost importance to manage cyber risks throughout the ICS’s lifecycle (i.e., engineering, operation, decommissioning), especially in light of the ever-increasing threat level that is accompanied by the progressive digitization of industrial processes. However, asset owners may not be able to address security risks sufficiently, nor adequately quantify them in terms of their potential impact (physical and non-physical) and likelihood. A self-deceptive solution might be using insurance to transfer these risks and offload them from their balance sheet since the underlying problem remains unsolved. The reason for this is that the exposure for asset owners remains and mitigation measures may still not be implemented adequately while the insurance industry is onboarding unassessed risks and covering it often without premium and without managing the potential exposure of accumulated events. The Dagstuhl Seminar 21451 “Managing Industrial Control Systems Security Risks for Cyber Insurance” aimed to provide an interdisciplinary forum to analyze and discuss open questions and current topics of research in this area in order to gain in-depth insights into the security risks of ICSs and the quantification thereof.
Review on Triangle Area Based MCA Technique and Anomaly Based Detection Technique for Detecting DOS Attacks

Systems, such as Web servers, database servers, cloud computing servers etc, are below threats from network attackers. The availability of such interconnected systems are severally degraded by increasing number of DOS attacks. Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks cause serious impact on these computing systems such as router, host or entire network. In this paper, we introduce a DoS attack detection system using Multivariate Correlation Analysis (MCA) technique. Multivariate correlation analysis employs for accurate network traffic characterization by extracting the geometrical correlations between network traffic features. Therefore, this paper studies the techniques for detecting Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks to network services and proposes an effective system for DoS attack detection. The proposed system applies the idea of Multivariate Correlation Analysis (MCA) to network traffic characterization and employs the principal of anomaly-based detection in attack recognition. Anomaly -based detection makes system capable of detecting known as well as unknown DoS attacks effectively by learning the genuine pattern of network traffic. Furthermore, a triangle area based technique is proposed to enhance and speed up the process of MCA. The KDD Cup 99 dataset employs to evaluate the effectiveness of proposed DOS attack detection system . The impact of both non-normalized data and normalized data on the performance of the proposed detection system is tested.
Mining of Ship Operation Data for Energy Conservation

We present a novel and publicly available data set of high quality sensory data collected from a ferry over a period of 2 months, and investigate state of the art machine-learning methods for prediction of main propulsion fuel efficiency. Neural networks are applied in both instantaneous and predictive settings. Performance results for the instantaneous models and examples and discussions of the practical advantage of the predictive models are given. The presented models have been successfully deployed in a trim optimization application onboard one of DS NORDEN's product tankers.
Electrohydrodynamic pumping and flow measurement

A micromachined electrohydrodynamic (EHD) injection pump with improved characteristics and a novel method for flow measurement with the same structure are presented. Based on the structure of the EHD injection pump, an improved design with grid distances in the range between 10 mu m and 60 mu m was achieved, yielding a reduction in the required driving voltage. Grid areas of 2.5*2.5 mm/sup 2/ and 1*1 mm/sup 2/ were accomplished. The outer dimensions of the smallest pumps are 3*3*1.0 mm/sup 3/. One of the grids is etched back from the frontside and mounted upside down on the lower grid in order to reduce the grid distance. The two grids are bounded together by anodic bonding. The pump is mounted in a ceramic housing with two fluid ports. Based on this structure, a novel method for the measurement of fluid flow and velocity was developed. This technique is well suited for small flow rates below 100 mL/min down to some mu L/min. Volumetric flow rates down to 8 mu L/min were measured with a 2.5*2.5 mm/sup 2/ grid area. <<ETX>>
Unnatural Illusions: Some Words About Visual Resource Management

Under the name of “Visual Resource Management” a number of federal agencies have institutionalized a set of landscape values which, while they give new teeth to the old saw “out of sight, out of mind,” simultaneously reduce what is in sight to a uniform pleasantness, a kind of visual fast food. This has the effect of minimizing the viewer's ability to make sense of what he or she is seeing (since it is intentionally manipulated to mislead the individual), at once with respect to what is going on (tree farming, for instance) and with respect to how it is being carried out (“naturally”). The program's goal, in two words, is to lie and to confuse.
Spinal Intradural Hematoma after Spinal Anesthesia in a Young Male Patient: Case Report and Review of the Literature

Spinal intradural hematoma (SIH) is a rare condition which can cause neurological sequelae such as permanent motor weakness and sensory loss in the lower extremities. Herein, we describe a case of SIH following spinal anesthesia. The patient was a 30-year-old man who underwent treatment for accessory navicular syndrome at our department. The patient was not receiving anticoagulation therapy, and spinal anesthesia was thus selected. No symptoms of hematoma were observed in the immediate postoperative period, but the patient complained of pain in both buttocks on postoperative day 5. However, neither motor weakness nor sensory loss were observed. Additionally, as the radiating pain extending to the lower extremities typical of neurological pain was not observed, musculoskeletal pain was suspected. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed intradural hematomas at L4-5 and S1. Conservative treatment and follow-up evaluations were performed to ensure that additional neurological sequelae did not occur. Six months after symptom onset, his pain Numeric Rating Scale score was 0, and no other neurological findings were observed. However, in patients who undergo spinal anesthesia, localized pain in the back without other neurological symptoms and lack of radiating pain may be associated with more than musculoskeletal pain. Such patients must be continuously monitored.
Localized Surface Plasmon Assisted Oxygen Dissociation on Ag(111)

— Thermal energy is used to pass the rate limiting step that oxygen’s high activation barrier causes, but driving reactions using thermal energy can compromise efficiency or even dissociate other reactants. This study aims to observe another method used to achieve oxygen’s activation barrier by coupling thermal energy with visible light to dissociate oxygen to atomic oxygen. Visible light incident on the substrate Ag(111) creates a plasmonic effect that aids in dissociating oxygen. Successful results were determined by the presence of oxygen adatoms present on the Ag(111) through a scanning tunneling microscope image after the prepared Ag(111) surface was dosed with O 2 molecules, heated by a filament, and shone with a laser. This confirms the viability of using the plasmonic effect to assist in oxygen dissociation on the level of a single isolated crystal, which will lead to a better understanding of a wider application of the plasmonic effect on catalytic oxidation reactions.
The max k-cut problem on classical and quantum solvers

Recent claims on “solving” combinatorial optimization problems via quantum computers have attracted researchers to work on quantum algorithms. The max k-cut problem is a challenging combinatorial optimization problem with multiple notorious mixed integer linear optimization formulations. In this paper, we revisit the binary quadratic optimization formulation of Carlson and Nemhauser (Operations Research, 1966) and provide theoretical and computational comparisons between di↵erent mixed integer optimization formulations of the max k-cut problem. While no claim on “quantum advantage” is provided, we introduce quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) formulations with tight penalty coe cients. For at least 60% of test instances, the computational experiments show the superiority of the tight models over näıve ones in terms of the quality of feasible solutions in the quantum context. We also design quantum circuits to find feasible solutions using a quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). A preprocessing procedure is proposed to make instances manageable for quantum computers. In comparison to the existing fixing procedures, our proposed preprocessing algorithm reduces the number of vertices and edges of some existing benchmark instances up to 30% and 25%, respectively. Finally, we conduct an extensive set of experiments on classical and quantum-inspired formulations. Our codes and data are available on GitHub.
Female College Students ’ Perception on Cervical Cancer , HPV Vaccine , HPV Vaccine Campaign

The purpose of the study is to investigate how females in the 2nd vaccination group(that is, women between the ages of 14-26) perceive cervical cancer, HPV vaccine, and the current campaign on HPV vaccine. In-depth interviews with 19 female college students between the ages of 20-26 revealed that the participants perceive the cervical cancer and vaccine as unimportant due to limited information; they were exposed to related information at random and there were lack of important information; and information provided were viewed as gender-biased. Moreover, social taboo-ness, cost and fear of its side-effects were found to influence women from getting vaccinated. Results show that participants want more fact-based and practical information, information that includes peers and men, as well as a campaign that has more frequent contact and accessibility. Findings of the study can be used for HPV prevention education in the future targeting women between the ages of 13-35. The study provides suggestion for future research and changes needed in HPV vaccine campaigns.
Plant Regeneration Protocol for Recalcitrant Passionflower (Passiflora quadrangularis L.)

This research was designed to provide the first protocol to establish an efficient solution for direct organogenesis regeneration in Passiflora quadrangularis using nodal explants from young shoots. Passifloraceae tissue culture has been associated with problems such as recalcitrance, sensitivity to ethylene accumulation and browning of explants due to the presence of phenols in the tissues. Due to the high rate of endogenous contamination of the explants, a preliminary experiment was performed. The best results of surface sterilization were obtained using the pretreatment with 70% EtOH, 1 min and 50% NaOCl, 10 min along with the treatment of Rifampicin 15 µg/mL and Benomyl 2 g/L. The effects of plant growth regulators on the induction of direct organogenesis, multiplication of shoots in subcultures and in vitro rooting were evaluated. Additional compounds such as AgNO3 and Pluronic F-68 were added to the culture media in order to reduce the effects of phenols and the sudden browning of the explants. Shoot proliferation increased to the sixth subculture after which it decreased. A maximum of 7.17 shoots were obtained from one shoot on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with 2 mg/L 6-benzylaminopurine and 1 mg/L thidiazuron. Supplementation of ½ MS medium with 1 mg/L 1-naphthaleneacetic acid was conducing to root formation in 61.11% of shoots. After acclimatization, the plants showed vigorous growth, green leaves, and well-developed roots. Although this species has previously shown difficulty in in vitro propagation, this protocol established based on the results proved to be efficient and reproducible.
Advanced antenna configurations for 60 GHz broadband wireless

• A submitted manuscript is the author's version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences between the submitted version and the official published version of record. People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for the final version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publisher's website. • The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review. • The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers.
Potent and Broad-Spectrum Bactericidal Activity of a Nanotechnologically Manipulated Novel Pyrazole

The antimicrobial potency of the pyrazole nucleus is widely reported these days, and pyrazole derivatives represent excellent candidates for meeting the worldwide need for new antimicrobial compounds against multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria. Consequently, 3-(4-chlorophenyl)-5-(4-nitrophenylamino)-1H-pyrazole-4-carbonitrile (CR232), recently reported as a weak antiproliferative agent, was considered to this end. To overcome the CR232 water solubility issue and allow for the determination of reliable minimum inhibitory concentration values (MICs), we initially prepared water-soluble and clinically applicable CR232-loaded nanoparticles (CR232-G5K NPs), as previously reported. Here, CR232-G5K NPs have been tested on several clinically isolates of Gram-positive and Gram-negative species, including MDR strains. While for CR232 MICs ≥ 128 µg/mL (376.8 µM) were obtained, very low MICs (0.36–2.89 µM) were observed for CR232-G5K NPs against all of the considered isolates, including colistin-resistant isolates of MDR Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemases (KPCs)-producing K. pneumoniae (0.72 µM). Additionally, in time–kill experiments, CR232-G5K NPs displayed a rapid bactericidal activity with no significant regrowth after 24 h on all isolates tested, regardless of their difficult-to-treat resistance. Conjecturing a clinical use of CR232-G5K NPs, cytotoxicity experiments on human keratinocytes were performed, determining very favorable selectivity indices. Collectively, due to its physicochemical and biological properties, CR232-G5K NPs could represent a new potent weapon to treat infections sustained by broad spectrum MDR bacteria.
Multi-Certificate Attacks against Proof-of-Elapsed-Time and Their Countermeasures

—Proof-of-Elapsed-Time (P O ET) is a blockchain consensus protocol in which each participating node is required to wait for the passage of a speciﬁed time duration before it can participate in the block leader election in each round. It relies on trusted execution environments, such as Intel SGX, to ensure its security, and has been implemented in Hyperledger Sawtooth and used in many real-world settings. This paper examines the security issues including fairness guarantees of the Sawtooth’s P O ET design and implementation, and discovers a new category of security attacks against P O ET, dubbed Multi-Certiﬁcate Attacks, which allows a malicious node to unfairly create multiple Certiﬁcate s in each round of block leader election and select the one that maximizes her probability of winning. We have systematically analyzed the root causes of these attacks and assisted the Sawtooth community to ﬁx several vulnerabilities in the latest version of P O ET. To further mitigate the identiﬁed threats, we propose a new design of P O ET in this paper, which we call P O ETA, that can be used to address the remaining vulnerabilities we have discovered. We have implemented P O ETA and evaluated its security and performance.
Preferential X Chromosome Inactivation as a Mechanism to Explain Female Preponderance in Myasthenia Gravis

Myasthenia gravis (MG) is a neuromuscular autoimmune disease characterized by prevalence in young women (3:1). Several mechanisms proposed as explanations for gender bias, including skewed X chromosome inactivation (XCI) and dosage or sex hormones, are often involved in the development of autoimmunity. The skewed XCI pattern can lead to an unbalanced expression of some X-linked genes, as observed in several autoimmune disorders characterized by female predominance. No data are yet available regarding XCI and MG. We hypothesize that the preferential XCI pattern may contribute to the female bias observed in the onset of MG, especially among younger women. XCI analysis was performed on blood samples of 284 women between the ages of 20 and 82. XCI was tested using the Human Androgen Receptor Assay (HUMARA). XCI patterns were classified as random (XCI < 75%) and preferential (XCI ≥ 75%). In 121 informative patients, the frequency of skewed XCI patterns was 47%, significantly higher than in healthy controls (17%; p ≤ 0.00001). Interestingly, the phenomenon was observed mainly in younger patients (<45 years; p ≤ 0.00001). Furthermore, considering the XCI pattern and the other clinical characteristics of patients, no significant differences were found. In conclusion, we observed preferential XCI in MG female patients, suggesting its potential role in the aetiology of MG, as observed in other autoimmune diseases in women.
Gunao-Yizhi decoction combined with donepezil for vascular dementia: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: Gunao-Yizhi decoction has the effects of supplementing intelligence, strengthening marrow, resolving phlegm, and reducing turbidity. It is clinically used for the treatment of vascular dementia (VaD). However, there is still a lack of systematic evaluation of its efficacy and safety. This review conducted a systematic review of the current evidence on the efficacy and safety of Gunao-Yizhi decoction combined with donepezil for VaD. Methods: China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang database (Wanfang), Chinese Science and Technology Periodical Database (VIP), China Biology Medicine disc (CBM), MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library were searched for randomized controlled trials on Gunao-Yizhi decoction combined with donepezil for VaD. RevMan 5.3 software was used for data analysis. Results: Twelve studies were obtained, including 1036 patients. Compared with donepezil alone, meta-analysis showed that Gunao-Yizhi decoction combined with donepezil could improve clinical efficacy, mini-mental state examination (MMSE) score, Hasegawa dementia scale (HDS), increase the level of superoxide dismutase (SOD) in serum, and reduce the level of malonaldehyde dismutas (MDA) in serum. The GRADE system was adopted to evaluate the outcome index. Clinical efficiency and the MMSE score were evaluated as very-low-quality evidence. HDS score, serum SOD level, and serum MDA level were evaluated as low-quality evidence. Conclusion: Gunao-Yizhi decoction combined with donepezil has a significant prevalence in the treatment of vascular dementia, with no increase in adverse events. Gunao-Yizhi decoction can be recommended for routine use in the treatment of VaD.
FakeGuard: Exploring Haptic Response to Mitigate the Vulnerability in Commercial Fingerprint Anti-Spoofing

—How to defend against presentation attacks via artificial fake fingers is a core challenge in fingerprint biometrics. The trade-off among security, usability, and production cost has driven researchers to reach a common standpoint, i.e., integrate the commercial fingerprint technology with anti-spoofing detec- tion (e.g., ridge traits). These anti-spoofing solutions are perceived as sufficiently resilient under the assumption that a fake finger can never closely relate to a live finger due to either composition of spoofing materials or non-automated manufacturing errors. In this paper, we first identify the vulnerability of in-practice antispoofing solutions in commercial fingerprint products. Instead of using expensive 3D fake fingers [1] (above USD $1000), we mimic a more realistic scenario where an attacker fabricates high-precision fake fingerprints using low-cost polyvinylacetate materials [2] (less than USD $50). Building on this, we introduce a practical and secure countermeasure, namely FakeGuard , to overcome the exposed vulnerability. We examine the nature of 3D haptic response effect that arises when a fingertip epidermis interacts with a tactile surface and reflects the disparate anatomy of live and fake fingers. Unlike the previous mitigation strategies, FakeGuard offers both hardware and software compatibility with existing fingerprint scanners. As the first exploration of haptic-based anti-spoofing solution, we demonstrate the capability of FakeGuard to prevent known and unknown fake finger attacks with an average detection error of 1.4%.