apk2vec: Semi-supervised multi-view representation learning for profiling Android applications

Building behavior profiles of Android applications (apps) with holistic, rich and multi-view information (e.g., incorporating several semantic views of an app such as API sequences, system calls, etc.) would help catering downstream analytics tasks such as app categorization, recommendation and malware analysis significantly better. Towards this goal, we design a semi-supervised Representation Learning (RL) framework named apk2vec to automatically generate a compact representation (aka profile/embedding) for a given app. More specifically, apk2vec has the three following unique characteristics which make it an excellent choice for largescale app profiling: (1) it encompasses information from multiple semantic views such as API sequences, permissions, etc., (2) being a semi-supervised embedding technique, it can make use of labels associated with apps (e.g., malware family or app category labels) to build high quality app profiles, and (3) it combines RL and feature hashing which allows it to efficiently build profiles of apps that stream over time (i.e., online learning). The resulting semi-supervised multi-view hash embeddings of apps could then be used for a wide variety of downstream tasks such as the ones mentioned above. Our extensive evaluations with more than 42,000 apps demonstrate that apk2vec's app profiles could significantly outperform state-of-the-art techniques in four app analytics tasks namely, malware detection, familial clustering, app clone detection and app recommendation.Comment: International Conference on Data Mining, 201

Synthesis and protective effect of pyrazole conjugated imidazo[1,2-a]pyrazine derivatives against acute lung injury in sepsis rats via attenuation of NF-κB, oxidative stress and apoptosis

The current work was conducted to elucidate the pharmacological effect of pyrazole-conjugated imidazo[1,2-a]pyrazine derivatives against acute lung injury in rats in sepsis and their mechanism of action. Various pyrazole-conjugated imidazo[1,2-a]pyrazine derivatives have been synthesized in a straightforward synthetic route. They exhibited a diverse range of inhibitory activity against NF-ĸB with IC50 ranging from 1 to 94 µmol L–1. Among them, compound 3h [(4-(4-((4-hydroxyphenyl)sulfonyl)phenyl)-5-(4-methoxyphenyl)-4,5-dihydro-1H-pyrazol-1-yl)(8-(methylamino)imidazo[1,2-a]pyrazin-2-yl)methanone] was identified as the most potent NF-κB inhibitor with IC50 of 1.02 µmol L–1. None of the synthesized compounds was found cytotoxic to normal cell-line MCF-12A. The pharmacological activity of the most potent NF-ĸB inhibitor 3h was also investigated in cecal ligation and puncture (CLP)-induced sepsis injury of the lung in rats. Compound 3h was administered to rats after induction of lung sepsis, and various biochemical parameters were measured. Results suggested that compound 3h significantly reduced lung inflammation and membrane permeability, as evidenced by H&E staining of lung tissues. It substantially reduced the generation of pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-1B, IL-6) and oxidative stress (MPO, MDA, SOD). It showed attenuation of NF-ĸB and apoptosis in Western blot and annexin-PI assay, resp. Compound 3h also reduced the production of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid from the lung and provided a protective effect against lung injury. Our study showed the pharmacological significance of pyrazole-conjugated imidazo[1,2-a]pyrazine derivative 3h against acute lung injury in sepsis rats

Contact-less and Programming-less Human-Robot Collaboration

AbstractIn today's manufacturing environment, safe human-robot collaboration is of paramount importance, to improve efficiency and flexibility. Targeting the safety issue, this paper presents an approach for human-robot collaboration in a shared workplace in close proximity, where real data driven 3D model of a robot and multiple depth images of the workplace are used for monitoring and decision-making to perform a task. The strategy for robot control depends on the current task and the information about the operator's presence and position. A case study of assembly is carried out in a robotic assembly cell with human collaboration. The results show that this approach can be applied in real-world applications such as human-robot collaborative assembly with human operators safeguarded at all time

Contrast Enhancement of Brightness-Distorted Images by Improved Adaptive Gamma Correction

As an efficient image contrast enhancement (CE) tool, adaptive gamma correction (AGC) was previously proposed by relating gamma parameter with cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the pixel gray levels within an image. ACG deals well with most dimmed images, but fails for globally bright images and the dimmed images with local bright regions. Such two categories of brightness-distorted images are universal in real scenarios, such as improper exposure and white object regions. In order to attenuate such deficiencies, here we propose an improved AGC algorithm. The novel strategy of negative images is used to realize CE of the bright images, and the gamma correction modulated by truncated CDF is employed to enhance the dimmed ones. As such, local over-enhancement and structure distortion can be alleviated. Both qualitative and quantitative experimental results show that our proposed method yields consistently good CE results

Stability of BTZ black strings

We study the dynamical stability of the BTZ black string against fermonic and gravitational perturbations. The BTZ black string is not always stable against these perturbations. There exist threshold values for $m^2$ related to the compactification of the extra dimension for fermonic perturbation, scalar part of the gravitational perturbation and the tensor perturbation, respectively. Above the threshold values, perturbations are stable; while below these thresholds, perturbations can be unstable. We find that this non-trivial stability behavior qualitatively agrees with that predicted by a thermodynamical argument, showing that the BTZ black string phase is not the privileged stable phase.Comment: 9 pages, revised version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Special Issue of Journal of Manufacturing Processes on New Trends in Manufacturing Processes Research

Special issue of journal of manufacturing processes on new trends in manufacturing processes researc

special issue of journal of manufacturing systems on new trends in manufacturing systems research

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Teacher Questioning in College English Class: A Guide to Critical Thinking

Amidst the great revolution in China s education system promoting critical thinking in school education to prepare students for the needs of modern world has been advocated by more and more educators Critical thinking is a learned skill that needs to be cultivated by effective instruction Research suggest that teacher questioning plays an important role in promoting students critical thinking through classroom interaction This article reviews literature on how critical thinking relates to teacher questioning instructional approach and advocates effective use of teacher questioning technique in college English class to actively engage students in the learning process and guide them to critical thinkin