Cloud Cover: Privacy Protections and the Stored Communications Act in the Age of Cloud Computing

The article discusses the U.S. Stored Communications Act (SCA) and privacy in light of the cloud computing technology innovations of the early 21st century. The author examines various aspects of online privacy laws in the U.S., including the lack of protection for internet communications under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the application of the SCA to online information, and technological advancements such as cloud computing in the post-SCA adoption era

Cloud Cover: Privacy Protections and the Stored Communications Act in the Age of Cloud Computing

The article discusses the U.S. Stored Communications Act (SCA) and privacy in light of the cloud computing technology innovations of the early 21st century. The author examines various aspects of online privacy laws in the U.S., including the lack of protection for internet communications under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the application of the SCA to online information, and technological advancements such as cloud computing in the post-SCA adoption era

Modeling, Designing, and Implementing an Ad-hoc M-Learning Platform that Integrates Sensory Data to Support Ubiquitous Learning

Learning at any-time, at anywhere, using any mobile computing platform learning (which we refer to as “education in your palm”) empowers informal and formal education. It supports the continued creation of knowledge outside a classroom, after-school programs, community-based organizations, museums, libraries, and shopping malls with under-resourced settings. In doing so, it fosters the continued creation of a cumulative body of knowledge in informal and formal education. Anytime, anywhere, using any device computing platform learning means that students are not required to attend traditional classroom settings in order to learn. Instead, students will be able to access and share learning resources from any mobile computing platform, such as smart phones, tablets using highly dynamic mobile and wireless ad-hoc networks. There has been little research on how to facilitate the integrated use of the service description, discovery and integration resources available in mobile and wireless ad-hoc networks including description schemas and mobile learning objects, and in particular as it relates to the consistency, availability, security and privacy of spatio-temporal and trajectory information. Another challenge is finding, combining and creating suitable learning modules to handle the inherent constraints of mobile learning, resource-poor mobile devices and ad-hoc networks. The aim of this research is to design, develop and implement the cutting edge context-aware and ubiquitous self-directed learning methodologies using ad-hoc and sensor networks. The emphasis of our work is on defining an appropriate mobile learning object and the service adaptation descriptions as well as providing mechanisms for ad-hoc service discovery and developing concepts for the seamless integration of the learning objects and their contents with a particular focus on preserving data and privacy. The research involves a combination of modeling, designing, and developing a mobile learning system in the absence of a networking infrastructure that integrates sensory data to support ubiquitous learning. The system includes mechanisms to allow content exchange among the mobile ad-hoc nodes to ensure consistency and availability of information. It also provides an on-the-fly content service discovery, query request, and retrieving data from mobile nodes and sensors

Borderline Over-sampling for Imbalanced Data Classification

Traditional classification algorithms, in many times, perform poorly on imbalanced data sets in which some classes are heavily outnumbered by the remaining classes. For this kind of data, minority class instances, which are usually much more of interest, are often misclassified. The paper proposes a method to deal with them by changing class distribution through over-sampling at the borderline between the minority class and the majority class of the data set. A Support Vector Machines (SVMs) classifier then is trained to predict new unknown instances. Compared to other over-sampling methods, the proposed method focuses only on the minority class instances lying around the borderline due to the fact that this area is most crucial for establishing the decision boundary. Furthermore, new instances will be generated in such a manner that minority class area will be expanded further toward the side of the majority class at the places where there appear few majority class instances. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve better performance than some other over-sampling methods, especially with data sets having low degree of overlap due to its ability of expanding minority class area in such cases

The History of the Dalat Nuclear Reactor

Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP)http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116113/1/TheHistoryofthe_Dalat_Nuclear_Reactor.pd

Complete Embedded Self-Translating Surfaces under Mean Curvature Flow

We describe a construction of complete embedded self-translating surfaces under mean curvature flow by desingularizing the intersection of a finite family of grim reapers in general position.Comment: 42 pages, 8 figures. v2: typos correcte

War-Gaming Applications for Achieving Optimum Acquisition of Future Space Systems

This chapter describes an innovative modeling and simulation approach using newly proposed Advanced Game-based Mathematical Framework (AGMF), Unified Game-based Acquisition Framework (UGAF) and a set of War-Gaming Engines (WGEs) to address future space systems acquisition challenges. Its objective is to assist the DoD Acquisition Authority (DAA) to understand the contractor’s perspective and to seek optimum Program-and-Technical-Baseline (PTB) solution and corresponding acquisition strategy under both the perspectives of the government and the contractors. The proposed approach calls for an interdisciplinary research that involves game theory, probability and statistics, and non-linear programming. The goal of this chapter is to apply the proposed war-gaming frameworks to develop and evaluate PTB solutions and associated acquisition strategies in the context of acquisition of future space systems. Our simulation results suggest that our optimization problem for the acquisition of future space systems meets the affordability and innovative requirements with minimum acquisition risk

HST Imaging Polarimetry of the Gravitational Lens FSC10214+4724

We present imaging polarimetry of the extremely luminous, redshift 2.3 IRAS source FSC10214+4724. The observations were obtained with HST's Faint Object Camera in the F437M filter, which is free of strong emission lines. The 0.7 arcsec long arc is unresolved to 0.04 arcsec FWHM in the transverse direction, and has an integrated polarization of 28 +/- 3 percent, in good agreement with ground-based observations. The polarization position angle varies along the arc by up to 35 deg. The overall position angle is 62 +/- 3 deg east of north. No counterimage is detected to B = 27.5 mag ($3\sigma$), giving an observed arc to counterimage flux ratio greater than 250, considerably greater than the flux ratio of 100 measured previously in the I-band. This implies that the configuration of the object in the source plane at the B-band is different from that at I-band, and/or that the lensing galaxy is dusty.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomical Journal, February 199

Replacement of freshwater small-size fish by formulated feed in snakehead (Channa striata) aquaculture: Experimental and commercial-scale pond trials, with economic analysis

Traditional snakehead culture in Southeast Asia relies on use of small-size (trash) fish as food, an unsustainable practice. Following development of weaning methods and testing of formulated feed (FF) in laboratory experiments, we conducted feeding trials of FF vs. trash fish (TF) in experimental ponds at Can Tho University (CTU), followed by similar trials on commercial farms in two provinces in Vietnam. CTU pond trials consisted of five treatments (in triplicate), in which TF was replaced by FF in increasing percentages: 0 (control), 25, 50, 75, and 100% replacement of TF by FF (i.e., three treatments had mixed TF/FF diets). Although survival was significantly reduced in the 100% replacement treatment, and growth was significantly reduced in the 75% and 100% replacement treatments, the cost per kg of fish produced was 28–35% less in those high-replacement treatments compared to the 0% replacement treatment. On-farm trials were then conducted at two farms in An Giang and Dong Thap provinces for 6 months with snakehead fed TF only or FF only. At both farms, survival (73–80%) was not significantly different, but growth was significantly better on FF diet at both; however, FF-fed fish at the An Giang farm showed significantly higher levels of abnormal development. Overall production was about twice as high at the An Giang farm as at Dong Thap, but significantly greater production by FF-fed fish vs. TF-fed fish was only seen at Dong Thap. Sensory evaluation by a tasting panel found no difference in product quality between FF-fed fish, TF-fed fish, and a commercial sample bought in the market. Economic analysis indicated that profits were higher for FF-fed fish from both farms, although production costs and sales varied greatly, reflecting market differences in the two provinces

Intensified Antituberculosis Therapy in Adults with Tuberculous Meningitis

BACKGROUND Tuberculous meningitis is often lethal. Early antituberculosis treatment and adjunctive treatment with glucocorticoids improve survival, but nearly one third of patients with the condition still die. We hypothesized that intensified antituberculosis treatment would enhance the killing of intracerebral Mycobacterium tuberculosis organisms and decrease the rate of death among patients. METHODS We performed a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected adults and HIV-uninfected adults with a clinical diagnosis of tuberculous meningitis who were admitted to one of two Vietnamese hospitals. We compared a standard, 9-month antituberculosis regimen (which included 10 mg of rifampin per kilogram of body weight per day) with an intensified regimen that included higher-dose rifampin (15 mg per kilogram per day) and levofloxacin (20 mg per kilogram per day) for the first 8 weeks of treatment. The primary outcome was death by 9 months after randomization. RESULTS A total of 817 patients (349 of whom were HIV-infected) were enrolled; 409 were randomly assigned to receive the standard regimen, and 408 were assigned to receive intensified treatment. During the 9 months of follow-up, 113 patients in the intensified-treatment group and 114 patients in the standard-treatment group died (hazard ratio, 0.94; 95% confidence interval, 0.73 to 1.22; P=0.66). There was no evidence of a significant differential effect of intensified treatment in the overall population or in any of the subgroups, with the possible exception of patients infected with isoniazid-resistant M. tuberculosis. There were also no significant differences in secondary outcomes between the treatment groups. The overall number of adverse events leading to treatment interruption did not differ significantly between the treatment groups (64 events in the standard-treatment group and 95 events in the intensified-treatment group, P=0.08). CONCLUSIONS Intensified antituberculosis treatment was not associated with a higher rate of survival among patients with tuberculous meningitis than standard treatment. (Funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Li Ka Shing Foundation; Current Controlled Trials number, ISRCTN61649292.)