Back-end design of a formal high level synthesis system

A complete design and implementation of a cell library has been accomplished in this work. This cell library supports a formal high level synthesis framework. The library contains the logic level models of all primitive functions of a Realization Specification Language (RSL). Modular design methodology is employed to support the expandability of basic cells. Examples of a formal adder, multiplier, inner-product and matrix-matrix multiplier are presented. Advisor: Prof. Sadiq M. Sait, Co-Advisors: Dr. Khalid M. Elleithy and Dr. Samir Abdul Jauwad

Podcast applications in language learning : a review of recent studies.

Many dynamic approaches have emerged due to computer technology in facilitating language learning skills. Podcasting is one such novel tool being exploited by teachers to deliver educational content and to encourage learning outside the classroom. Research on podcasting pedagogy suggests that podcasting greatly helps learners develop various skills of English language. The study reviewed twenty journal articles to determine the effects of podcast on ESL students’ language skills and attitude levels. It was found that podcasts greatly support learning not just in speaking and listening but also in other language skills and areas such as grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary

A Tale of Frozen Clouds: Quantifying the Impact of Algorithmic Complexity Vulnerabilities in Popular Web Servers

Algorithmic complexity vulnerabilities are a class of security problems that enables attackers to trigger the worst-case complexity of certain algorithms. Such vulnerabilities can be leveraged to deploy low-volume, asymmetric, CPU-based denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Previous work speculates that these vulnerabilities are more dangerous in certain web servers, like Node.js, than in traditional ones, like Apache. We believe it is of utmost importance to understand if this is indeed the case or if there are ways to compensate against such problems using various deployment strategies. To this end, we study the resilience of popular web servers against CPU-based DoS attacks in four major cloud platforms under realistic deployment conditions. We find that there are indeed significant differences in how various web servers react to an attack. However, our results suggest a more nuanced landscape than previously believed: while event-based systems tend to recover faster from DoS in certain scenarios, they also suffer the worst performance degradation overall. Nevertheless, in some setups, Apache performs worse than event-based systems, and there are cloud platforms in which all the considered servers are seriously exposed to the attack. We also find that developers can harden their servers against CPU-based DoS attacks by increasing the number of server instances running in parallel. This, in turn, can lead to an increased cost of operation or a slight degradation of performance in non-DoS conditions

Segment Oriented Compression Scheme for MOLAP Based on Extendible Multidimensional Arrays

Many statistical and MOLAP applications use multidimensional arrays as the basic data structure to allow the efficient and convenient storage and retrieval of large volumes of business data for decision making. Allocation of data or data compression is a key performance factor for this purpose because performance strongly depends on the amount of storage required and availability of memory. This holds especially for data warehousing environments in which huge amounts of data have to be dealt with. The most evident consequence of data compression is that it reduces storage cost by packing more logical data per unit of physical capacity. And improved performance is a net outcome because less physical data need to be retrieved during scan-oriented queries. In this paper, an efficient data compression technique is proposed based on the notion of extendible array. The main idea of the scheme is to compress each of the segments of the extendible array using the position information only. We compare the proposed scheme for different performance issues with prominent compression schemes.</p

An Analysis of Impact of Exchange Rate Volatility on the Indian Manufacturing Exports

This paper analyses the impact of real exchange rate volatility of Indian on bilateral exports of India’s manufactured commodities. Four major commodities viz Engineering goods, Cotton yarn, fabrics made ups, etc., Chemicals & allied products, and Leather & manufactures, for the period 1999 to 2013. Five major trading partners of India i.e., USA, UK, Germany, Italy, and Hong-Kong are chosen for the panel data analysis. Result shows the statistically insignificant impact of exchange rate volatility on the exports of all commodities except for Chemicals and Allied product. Real GDP found to be positive and significant for all commodities. The real exchange rate has no significance in explaining exports of these commodities. The results support forex market efficiency with regard to exports

Undergraduates novel experiences with massive open online courses

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have revolutionized e-learning contexts through improvising new technology on its pedagogical features. Recently, much debate has been directed to the application of MOOCs in relation to higher education. However, research regarding students’ experiences of MOOCs is scant. Therefore, the present study aims to fill in the gap by examining undergraduates experiences with MOOCs. Data were collected from 29 undergraduates attending various degree programs at a public university in Malaysia. Undergraduates’ logbook notes were used for collecting data for this study. Results showed that most of the participants expressed positive attitudes towards learning in the MOOC. They valued the MOOC instructional features and tools and showed strong satisfaction in learning in the MOOCs environment. The empirical findings of the study have contributed to a better understanding of the nature of learning and participation in a MOOC environment from the perspective of undergraduate students. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have succeeded to create massive attention among educators, researchers, students, media, and stakeholders as elite universities from developed countries formed consortia to offer free courses on various disciplines. MOOC started with the promises to offer free education for all (Kop, Fournier, & Mak, 2011). A few number of commercial start-ups such as Udacity, Edx, Futurelearn and Coursera have been launched in collaboration with leading universities to deliver free courses online for massive participation. Many academic institutions, especially those in North America such as Duke University, Harvard University, MIT, and Stanford University have been offering courses in cooperation with MOOC providers. Big commercial institutions such as Google and Pearson are also planning to contribute to higher education by adopting MOOC instructional format (Yuan, Powell, & CETIS, 2013). While MOOCs are mushrooming in higher education, empirical research in the area is still very limited. Therefore, the present study aims to contribute some effort to this gap by scanning a small group of tertiary level students’ novel experiences with MOOC instructional features. The following part of the study deals with the background of the development of MOOC and its theoretical underpinnings

Is money demand really unstable? Evidence from Divisia monetary aggregates

We revisit the issue of stable demand for money, using quarterly data for the European Monetary Union, India, Israel, Poland, the UK, and the US. We use a modern version of the same linear time-series macroeconometric modeling and specification approach that had previously cast doubt on money demand stability. Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration models are used in the study to establish a long-term relationship among real money balances, real output, interest rate, and real effective exchange rate. For all the countries analyzed, evidence of stable demand for money is found. Broad money in general is better at capturing a stable demand for money than narrow money. The stability results are especially strong, when broad Divisia money is used instead of its simple sum counterpart. Our results are consistent with the large literature on the Barnett critique, which is based on a different methodological tradition that employs microeconometric modeling of integrable consumer demand systems. That literature has never found the demand for monetary services, measured using reputable index number and aggregation theory, to be any more difficult to model or less stable than the demand for any other good or service in the economy

SecBench.js: An Executable Security Benchmark Suite for Server-Side JavaScript

Npm is the largest software ecosystem in the world, offering millions of free, reusable packages. In recent years, various security threats to packages published on npm have been reported, including vulnerabilities that affect millions of users. To continuously improve techniques for detecting vulnerabilities and mitigating attacks that exploit them, a reusable benchmark of vulnerabilities would be highly desirable. Ideally, such a benchmark should be realistic, come with executable exploits, and include fixes of vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, there currently is no such benchmark, forcing researchers to repeatedly develop their own evaluation datasets and making it difficult to compare techniques with each other. This paper presents SecBench.js, the first comprehensive benchmark suite of vulnerabilities and executable exploits for npm. The benchmark comprises 600 vulnerabilities, which cover the five most common vulnerability classes for server-side JavaScript. Each vulnerability comes with a payload that exploits the vulnerability and an oracle that validates successful exploitation. SecBench.js enables various applications, of which we explore three in this paper: (i) crosschecking SecBench.js against existing security advisories reveals 168 vulnerable versions in 19 packages that are mislabeled in the advisories; (ii) applying simple code transformations to the exploits in our suite helps identify flawed fixes of vulnerabilities; (iii) dynamically analyzing calls to common sink APIs, e.g., exec(), yields a ground truth of code locations for evaluating vulnerability detectors. Beyond providing a reusable benchmark to the community, our work identified 20 zero-day vulnerabilities, most of which are already acknowledged by practitioners

SEED PRIMING AND EXOGENOUS APPLICATION OF SALICYLIC ACID ENHANCE GROWTH AND PRODUCTIVITY OF OKRA (Abelmoschus esculentus L.) BY REGULATING PHOTOSYNTHETIC ATTRIBUTES

Low and uneven germination is a serious problem for the successful production of okra seedlings. Priming of seeds as well as supplementation of different plant growth regulators exhibited better response in successful seedling production which eventually results in higher yield. Therefore, the present study was conducted to evaluate the effects of seed priming and exogenous application of salicylic acid (SA) on okra seed germination and plant development. The okra seeds were primed by 1 mM and 2 mM of SA for 60 minutes whereas the seeds were washed several times with distilled water for the control treatment. Similar doses of SA have been exogenously sprayed to the 12 days okra seedlings for 4 days. The results of the study revealed that seed priming with SA enhanced germination percentage (GP), increased coleoptile length and weight, shoot and root length, and seed vigor index (SVI). Similarly, exogenous application of 1 mM SA increased relative water content (RWC), contents of chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, total chlorophyll while a higher dose of SA (2 mM) degraded the leaf pigments. Supplementation of SA altered photosynthetic attributes, net photosynthetic (Pn) and transpiration rate (Tr), stomatal conductance (Gs), and water use efficiency (WUE). Moreover, SA treatment reduced the time duration of flower bud initiation and days to first flowering and enhanced the yield per plant. The results of this study indicated that seed priming and exogenous application of SA enhanced germination and okra productivity by regulating RWC and photosynthetic attributes where 1 mM SA is more effective compared to 2 mM SA