Evaluation of the Anchorage Coordinated Agency Network (CANS) Program

In spring 1999, the Anchorage Police Department and the Alaska Division of Juvenile Justice formed a partnership to enhance the supervision and services provided to juvenile probationers in Anchorage. Modeled after a successful program in San Diego, California, the Anchorage Coordinated Agency Network (CANS) project extended the supervision arm of the youth probation office by having Anchorage police officers make random visits to juvenile probationers. This evaluation examines the CANS program during its pilot phase, June through December 1999. The evaluation assesses whether juveniles participating in the CANS program differed from a control group of non-CANS participants with respect to new probation violations and new offenses. An effort is also made to determine the most important factors predicting program outcomes.Anchorage Police Department Alaska Division of Juvenile JusticeIntroduction / Program Overview / Related Literature / Methodology / Analysis / Summary & Discussion / Reference

Modeling of Social Transitions Using Intelligent Systems

In this study, we reproduce two new hybrid intelligent systems, involve three prominent intelligent computing and approximate reasoning methods: Self Organizing feature Map (SOM), Neruo-Fuzzy Inference System and Rough Set Theory (RST),called SONFIS and SORST. We show how our algorithms can be construed as a linkage of government-society interactions, where government catches various states of behaviors: solid (absolute) or flexible. So, transition of society, by changing of connectivity parameters (noise) from order to disorder is inferred

A Storage-Efficient and Robust Private Information Retrieval Scheme Allowing Few Servers

Since the concept of locally decodable codes was introduced by Katz and Trevisan in 2000, it is well-known that information the-oretically secure private information retrieval schemes can be built using locally decodable codes. In this paper, we construct a Byzantine ro-bust PIR scheme using the multiplicity codes introduced by Kopparty et al. Our main contributions are on the one hand to avoid full replica-tion of the database on each server; this significantly reduces the global redundancy. On the other hand, to have a much lower locality in the PIR context than in the LDC context. This shows that there exists two different notions: LDC-locality and PIR-locality. This is made possible by exploiting geometric properties of multiplicity codes

The Enigmatic Canal-Associated Neurons Regulate Caenorhabditis elegans Larval Development Through a cAMP Signaling Pathway.

Caenorhabditis elegans larval development requires the function of the two Canal-Associated Neurons (CANs): killing the CANs by laser microsurgery or disrupting their development by mutating the gene ceh-10 results in early larval arrest. How these cells promote larval development, however, remains a mystery. In screens for mutations that bypass CAN function, we identified the gene kin-29, which encodes a member of the Salt-Inducible Kinase (SIK) family and a component of a conserved pathway that regulates various C. elegans phenotypes. Like kin-29 loss, gain-of-function mutations in genes that may act upstream of kin-29 or growth in cyclic-AMP analogs bypassed ceh-10 larval arrest, suggesting that a conserved adenylyl cyclase/PKA pathway inhibits KIN-29 to promote larval development, and that loss of CAN function results in dysregulation of KIN-29 and larval arrest. The adenylyl cyclase ACY-2 mediates CAN-dependent larval development: acy-2 mutant larvae arrested development with a similar phenotype to ceh-10 mutants, and the arrest phenotype was suppressed by mutations in kin-29 ACY-2 is expressed predominantly in the CANs, and we provide evidence that the acy-2 functions in the CANs to promote larval development. By contrast, cell-specific expression experiments suggest that kin-29 acts in both the hypodermis and neurons, but not in the CANs. Based on our findings, we propose two models for how ACY-2 activity in the CANs regulates KIN-29 in target cells

Moving in next door: Network flooding as a side channel in cloud environments

The final publication is available at http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-48965-0_56Co-locating multiple tenants' virtual machines (VMs) on the same host underpins public clouds' affordability, but sharing physical hardware also exposes consumer VMs to side channel attacks from adversarial co-residents. We demonstrate passive bandwidth measurement to perform traffic analysis attacks on co-located VMs. Our attacks do not assume a privileged position in the network or require any communication between adversarial and victim VMs. Using a single feature in the observed bandwidth data, our algorithm can identify which of 3 potential YouTube videos a co-resident VM streamed with 66% accuracy. We discuss defense from both a cloud provider's and a consumer's perspective, showing that effective defense is difficult to achieve without costly under-utilization on the part of the cloud provider or over-utilization on the part of the consumer.We would like to acknowledge the MIT PRIMES program and thank in particular Dr. Slava Gerovitch and Dr. Srini Devadas for their support. We are also grateful to Boston University, the Hariri Institute, and the Massachusetts Open Cloud. This paper is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. 1414119 and 1413920

"Cans in a basket" Thanksgiving Food Drive Poster

These posters were created to encourage students to donate to the Thanksgiving Food Drive through the BU Libraries

Alfalfa Snout Beetle, \u3ci\u3eOtiorhynchus Ligustici\u3c/i\u3e L. (Coleoptera: Curculionidae): Methods for Egg Collection and Larval Rearing

The alfalfa snout beetle, Otiorhynchus ligustici L., is the most serious pest of alfalfa in northern New York State. Recent research efforts focused on the biological control of this insect require the availability of all life stages. With a 2-year lifecycle and a mandatory diapause, the artificial rearing of a laboratory culture appears to be a non-viable option at present, but methods described here can be used to obtain sufficient numbers of eggs and larvae over an extended period of time for research purposes. The crowding of adult beetles in egg production units (cups) had a significant, negative effect on egg production per beetle but the total egg production per cup was still higher with higher number of beetles per cup resulting in a significant saving of labor per egg produced. Larval survival rates in alfalfa-planted cans were surprisingly low given the protected conditions of the greenhouse. The larval survival rates were not significantly different among the dates for the second instar and later instars, suggesting that larval mortality occurs in the first instar in alfalfa-planted cans

Parametric study of rock pile thermal storage for solar heating and cooling phase 1

The test data and an analysis were presented, of heat transfer characteristics of a solar thermal energy storage bed utilizing water filled cans as the energy storage medium. An attempt was made to optimize can size, can arrangement, and bed flow rates by experimental and analytical means. Liquid filled cans, as storage media, utilize benefits of both solids like rocks, and liquids like water. It was found that this combination of solid and liquid media shows unique heat transfer and heat content characteristics and is well suited for use with solar air systems for space and hot water heating. An extensive parametric study was made of heat transfer characteristics of rocks, of other solids, and of solid containers filled with liquids