Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Modified fingerprint image thinning algorithm

Most fingerprint recognition applications rely heavily on efficient and fast image enhancement algorithms. Image thinning is a very important stage of image enhancement. A good thinning algorithm preserves the structure of the original fingerprint image, reduces the amount of data needed to process and helps improve the feature extraction accuracy and efficiency. In this paper we describe and compare some of the most used fingerprint thinning algorithms. Results show that faster algorithms have difficulty preserving connectivity. Zhang and Suen's algorithm gives the least processing time, while Guo and Hall's algorithm produces the best skeleton quality. A modified Zhang and Suen's algorithm is proposed, that is efficient and fast, and better preserves structure and connectivity.
Lithium, but Not Fluoxetine or the Corticotropin-Releasing Factor Receptor 1 Receptor Antagonist R121919, Increases Cell Proliferation in the Adult Dentate Gyrus

Several antidepressant drugs have previously been reported to increase neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus in laboratory animals. We found no effect of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor fluoxetine or the corticotropin-releasing factor receptor 1 antagonist R121919 [3-[6-(dimethylamino)-4-methylpyridin-3-yl]-2,5-dimethyl-N,N-dipropyl-1H-pyrazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidin-8-ium-7-amine] on the rate of cell proliferation or hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) mRNA expression in either adult or adolescent rats after long-term administration. In adults, the mood stabilizer lithium was found to significantly increase cell proliferation; the atypical antipsychotic paliperidone did not affect proliferation, either alone or when combined with lithium. Fourteen-day survival of neuronally fated cells showed a significant interaction effect of lithium and paliperidone but no effect of either drug alone. BDNF mRNA expression was significantly decreased by lithium in the CA1/2 cell fields and increased by paliperidone in the CA1/2, CA3, and dentate gyrus. These results raise questions concerning the hypothesis that all antidepressants increase neurogenesis under nonstressed conditions. They also confirm and extend previous reports of lithium-induced increases in cell proliferation but not survival.
Thermal Sprayed Coatings Used Against Corrosion and Corrosive Wear

Coatings have historically been developed to provide protection against corrosion and erosion that is to protect the material from chemical and physical interaction with its environment. Corrosion and wear problems are still of great relevance in a wide range of industrial applications and products as they result in the degradation and eventual failure of components and systems both in the processing and manufacturing industries and in the service life of many components. Various technologies can be used to deposit the appropriate surface protection that can resist under specific conditions. They are usually distinguished by coating thickness: deposition of thin films (below 10 to 20 μm according to authors) and deposition of thick films. The latter, mostly produced at atmospheric pressure have a thickness over 30 μm, up to several millimeters and are used when the functional performance and life of component depend on the protective layer thickness. Both coating technology can also be divided into two distinct categories: "wet" and " dry " coating methods, the crucial difference being the medium in which the deposited material is processed. The former group mainly involves electroplating, electroless plating and hot-dip galvanizing while the second includes, among others methods, vapor deposition, thermal spray techniques, brazing, or weld overlays. This chapter deals with coatings deposited by thermal spraying. It is defined by Hermanek (2001) as follows , "Thermal spraying comprises a group of coating processes in which finely divided metallic or non-metallic materials are deposited in a molten or semi-molten condition to form a coating". The processes comprise: direct current (d.c.) arcs or radio frequency (r.f.) discharges-generated plasmas, plasma transferred arcs (PTA), wire arcs, flames, high velocity oxy-fuel flames (HVOF), high velocity air-fuel flames (HVAF), detonation guns (D-gun). Another spray technology has emerged recently ; it is called cold gas-dynamic spray technology, or Cold Spray (CS). It is not really a thermal spray technology as the high energy gas flow is produced by a compressed relatively cold gas (T < 800°C) expanding in a nozzle and will not be included in this presentation.
Fast simulation of large networks of nanotechnological and biochemical oscillators for investigating self-organization phenomena

We address the problem of fast and accurate computational analysis of large networks of coupled oscillators arising in nanotechnological and biochemical systems. Such systems are computationally and analytically challenging because of their very large sizes and the complex nonlinear dynamics they exhibit. We develop and apply a nonlinear oscillator macromodel that generalizes the well-known Kuramoto model for interacting oscillators, and demonstrate that using our macromodel provides important qualitative and quantitive advantages, especially for predicting self-organization phenomena such as spontaneous pattern formation. Our approach extends and applies recently-developed computational methods for macromodel ling electrical oscillators, and features both phase and amplitude components that are extracted automatically (using numerical algorithms) from more complex differential-equation oscillator models available in the literature. We apply our approach to networks of tunneling phase logic (TPL) and Brusselator biochemical oscillators, predicting a variety of spontaneous pattern generation phenomena. Comparing our results with published measurements of spiral, circular and other pattern formation, we show that we can predict these phenomena correctly, and also demonstrate that prior models (like Kuramoto's) cannot do so. Our approach is more than 3 orders of magnitude faster than techniques that are comparable in accuracy
Ghrelin and Eating Disturbances in Psychiatric Disorders

Introduction: Appetite and eating behavior are frequently altered in psychiatric patients. The newly discovered gut-derived neuropeptide ghrelin simulates hunger and weight gain. Therefore, it might be involved in appetite regulation during psychiatric disorders. Methods: In 83 depressed, 42 schizophrenic patients and 46 healthy controls plasma ghrelin levels were measured, and the psychometric scores on the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ) were assessed. Results: Neither ghrelin levels nor TFEQ scores differed between both patient groups and healthy subjects. However, TFEQ subscale 2 (disinhibition) was predicted by BMI-corrected ghrelin levels, while age, sex, smoking, and medication did not show any influence. Discussion: Ghrelin correlates with factors of eating behavior, specifically with subscale 2 on the TFEQ. Ghrelin might be involved in appetite-regulating pathways during psychiatric disorders. However, its influence is not likely to be displayed as a difference between diagnostic groups. Rather, ghrelin is associated with eating behavior in psychiatric patients meaning susceptibility to eating problems.
The Gay Gayze: Expressions of Inequality on Grindr

ABSTRACT Social media programs such as Grindr, a geolocation-based phone dating app allowing gay men to connect with others in their proximity, have redefined how gay men interact. My purpose here is to demonstrate how new technologies, ironically, have reinforced existing cultural practices, and I show how body typing, ageism, racism, and HIV stigma are reproduced within gay men’s self-performance on the app. In doing so, this study adds to the broader sociological understanding of how the presentation of self is performed in digitally produced environments, especially as it relates to intimate encounters with others. Finally, I consider how the structure of the app, and the general makeup of online worlds, make such phenomena more easily reproducible.
When Data-Driven Decision Making Becomes Data-Driven Test Taking: A Case Study of a Midwestern High School

This case study examines how district administrators and high school mathematics and science teachers use data in instructional decision making and what challenges they face in the current accountability context. Findings reveal unique aspects of data use directly related to a high school setting within the context of test-based accountability and illustrate how overlapping systems (state and federal policy, subject area knowledge, district norms, etc.) influence data practices. We conclude with implications for practice and policy around ways to use data to inform instruction beyond passing state assessments.
Bilateral Optical Power Meter Comparison Between NIST and CENAM

We describe the results of a comparison of reference standards between the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST-USA) and Centro Nacional De Metrología (CENAM-Mexico). Open beam (free field) and optical-fiber-based measurements at wavelengths of 1302 nm and 1546 nm are reported. Both laboratories’ reference standards were compared by means of a temperature-controlled optical trap detector. Measurements showed a largest difference of less than 3.4 parts in 103, which is within the combined expanded (k = 2) uncertainty for the laboratories’ reference standards.
Cosmic evolution of the galaxy's mass and luminosity functions by morphological type from multi-wavelength data in the CDF-South

Aims. We constrain the evolution of the galaxy mass and luminosity functions from the analysis of (public) multi-wavelength data in the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS) area, obtained from GOODS and other projects, including very deep high-resolution imaging by HST/ACS. Methods. Our reference catalogue of faint high-redshift galaxies, which we have thoroughly tested for completeness and reliability, comes from a deep (S 3.6 ≥ 1 µJy) image by IRAC on the Spitzer Observatory. These imaging data in the field are complemented by extensive optical spectroscopy by the ESO VLT/FORS2 and VIMOS spectrographs, while deep K-band VLT/ISAAC imaging is also used to derive further complementary statistical constraints and to assist the source identification and Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) analysis. We selected a highly reliable IRAC 3.6 µm sub-sample of 1478 galaxies with S 3.6 ≥ 10 µJy, 47% of which have spectroscopic redshift, while for the remaining objects we used both COMBO-17 data (Wolf et al. 2004, A&A, 421, 913) and the code Hyperz (Bolzonella et al. 2000, A&A, 363, 476) to estimate the photometric redshift. This very extensive dataset was exploited to assess evolutionary effects in the galaxy luminosity and stellar mass functions, while luminosity/density evolution is further constrained with the number counts and redshift distributions. The deep ACS imaging allows us to differentiate between these evolutionary paths by morphological type, which our simulations show to be reliable at least up to z ∼ 1.5 for the two main early- (E/S0) and late-type (Sp/Irr) classes.
Religion, race and social justice

Currently prevalent liberal democratic discourses and policies assume a lack of or failed ‘integration’ of racialized populations in Europe. While mainstream discourses framing approaches to diversity management, such as civic universalism or multiculturalism, differ regarding of who they consider responsible for addressing the ‘disintegration’ of, for instance, Muslim populations, and the kinds of regulatory responses they advocate, they all suggest that religious minorities need to be transferred from the outside to the inside of a social entity. A diagnosis of a ‘being outside’ informs regulatory frameworks that seek ‘to integrate’ by either prohibiting or accommodating religious minority practices, by limiting or extending the freedom of religious expression, or by protecting from discrimination on grounds of markers of belonging. As I traced in greater detail elsewhere (Lewicki 2014), the disintegration diagnosis assumes an understanding of inequality as ‘individual status differential’, thus as lower position in a social hierarchy that is mainly understood as cultural. This understanding falls short of problematizing inequality as multidimensional and as structural, thus rooted within and brought about by various features of the social order. As an alternative perspective to the reductive ‘integration paradigm’, I propose to draw on a conceptualization of social justice that allows for a more encompassing analysis of structural asymmetries in relation to racialized alterity within diverse European societies. This perspective enables us to critically reflect on distinctions that are key features of and thus perpetually reproduced by the systemic logics and dynamics of the current social order, including the capitalist market economy, Christian secularity, or the nation state.
A packing problem with applications to lettering of maps

The following packing problem arises in connection with lettering of maps: Given n distinct points pl, p2, . pn in the plane, determine the supremum uoPi of all reals U, such that there are n pan-wise dtsjomt, axis-parallel, closed squares Ql, Q2, . Qn of side-length u, where each pi ts a corner of Qi. Note that — by using afine transformation — the problem is equivalent to the case when we want largest homothetic cop~es of a jized rectangle or parallelogram tnstead of equal ly-szzed squares. In the cartographic application, the points are items (groundwater-drillho les etc.) and the squares are places for labels associated with these items (sulphate concentration etc.). An algorithm is presented, that in O(n log n] time either produces a solution, that is guaranteed to be at least half as large as the supremum. This is optimal, m the sense that the corresponding decision problem is NP complete, no po[ynomzal approximation algorithm with a guaranteed factor ezceedmg ~ exwts, provided that P # AfP; and there M also a lower bound of C2(n log n) for the running time.
Capturing the Skew in Interest Rate Derivatives : A Shifted Lognormal LIBOR Model with Uncertain Parameters

The surge of trading volume in caps and swaptions urged the need for a theoretical justification for the related market formulas, which were derived by using the Black (1976) model in a seemingly unsound manner. A consistent theoretical framework for such formulas was provided in a number of papers in the mid 90’s: Brace, Gatarek and Musiela (1997), Miltersen, Sandmann and Sondermann (1997) and Jamshidian (1997), who have independently proposed what is generally known as Libor Market Model (LMM).
Information Systems Management

ith the growing proliferation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, including among midsize companies, it becomes critical to address why and under what circumstances one can realize the benefits of an ERP system. In contrast to previous research, this study examines how managers (president, CFO, production VP, etc.) assess ERP success in specific modules (e.g., suppliers and purchase orders, customers and sales) as contrasted with their assessment of the entire ERP portfolio as one entity. Data collected in 270 manufacturing organizations that implemented initial ERP systems (without additional models such as CRM) show that the benefit from investment in ERP is explained better by organizational business characteristics when examined at a specific ERP module level. To meet organizational needs, computerized information systems in manufacturing firms have evolved over the past 40 years from accounting and simple inventory control, through MRP (material requirement planning) and MRP II (manufacturing resource planning), to today’s focus on ERP systems (Sarkis and Gunasekaran, 2003). ERP systems are software packages that manage and integrate all the enterprise’s data, and provide information based on this data on a real-time basis. ERP systems can provide the organization with competitive advantage through improved business performance (Hitt et al., 2002; Kalling, 2003) by, among other things, integrating supply-chain management, receiving, inventory management, customer orders management, production planning and managing, shipping, accounting, human resource management, and all other activities that take place in a modern business (Gefen and Ridings, 2002; Hong and Kim, 2002; Kalling, 2003). Yet the cost of implementing an ERP software package is substantial, ranging from $200,000 for small companies with annual sales approximating $10M, through $600,000 to $800,000 for midsize companies with annual sales approximating $50M to $80M, and up to several million dollars for larger companies. This refers to the manufacturing management aspects of the ERP W DAVID GEFEN is Associate Professor of MIS at Drexel University. His work has also appeared in such publications as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, and Journal of Management Information Systems. He can be contacted at gefend@drexel.edu.
A Survey of Mobile Database Caching Strategies

The continued growth of portable, wireless enabled devices with massive storage capacity and powerful CPUs are making the wide spread use of mobile databases a reality. Mobile devices are increasingly used for database driven applications such as product inventory tracking, sales order entry, and customer relationship management. These applications have changed the way mobile applications access and manage data. Instead of storing data in a central database, data is being moved closer to applications to increase efficiency and autonomy. This trend leads to many interesting problems in mobile database research. In this paper I survey recent research in mobile database caching strategies. I overview systems built using avoidance-based approaches to cache invalidation. With each system I describe incremental improvements over previous work. I also briefly survey recent related work on conflict avoidance schemes.
Uridylation prevents 3′ trimming of oligoadenylated mRNAs

Degradation of mRNAs is usually initiated by deadenylation, the shortening of long poly(A) tails to oligo(A) tails of 12–15 As. Deadenylation leads to decapping and to subsequent 5′ to 3′ degradation by XRN proteins, or alternatively 3′ to 5′ degradation by the exosome. Decapping can also be induced by uridylation as shown for the non-polyadenylated histone mRNAs in humans and for several mRNAs in Schizosaccharomyces pombe and Aspergillus nidulans. Here we report a novel role for uridylation in preventing 3′ trimming of oligoadenylated mRNAs in Arabidopsis. We show that oligo(A)-tailed mRNAs are uridylated by the cytosolic UTP:RNA uridylyltransferase URT1 and that URT1 has no major impact on mRNA degradation rates. However, in absence of uridylation, oligo(A) tails are trimmed, indicating that uridylation protects oligoadenylated mRNAs from 3′ ribonucleolytic attacks. This conclusion is further supported by an increase in 3′ truncated transcripts detected in urt1 mutants. We propose that preventing 3′ trimming of oligo(A)-tailed mRNAs by uridylation participates in establishing the 5′ to 3′ directionality of mRNA degradation. Importantly, uridylation prevents 3′ shortening of mRNAs associated with polysomes, suggesting that a key biological function of uridylation is to confer 5′ to 3′ polarity in case of co-translational mRNA decay.
To what extent does typicality boost semantic priming effects between members of their categories?

ABSTRACT Atypical items of their semantic category yield more generalisation than their typical members when relearning in connectionist networks (Plaut, D. C. (1996). Relearning after damage in connectionist networks: toward a theory of rehabilitation. Brain and Language, 52(1), 25–82) and in empirical studies (Kiran, S., & Thompson, C. K. (2003). The role of semantic complexity in treatment of naming deficits: Training semantic categories in fluent aphasia by controlling exemplar typicality. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 46(4), 773–787). It seems therefore that atypical words provide more information about the overall structure of the semantic category due to their specific and shared features. In this view, atypical primes could strongly facilitate the processing of targets compared to typical primes, because typical primes contain little information about the variation between members within a category. In contrast, three semantic priming experiments in visual word recognition showed an advantage with the typical context, but not with the atypical one. These findings were observed in a variety of tasks, including lexical decision, categorisation and semantic judgment. Our results do not support the findings about generalisation in relearning and suggest that typicality effects in semantic priming mostly come from the activation of representative features of categories.
Media, Violence, Aggression, and Antisocial Behavior: Is the Link Causal?

The terms “aggression” and “violence” mean different things to the general public and to researchers. To the layperson, “aggression” can mean “assertive” (e.g., a pushy salesperson), “competitive” (an athlete determined to win), or “hostile” (a soldier attacking an enemy). In these examples, the salesperson and the athlete are not intending to harm anyone, placing them outside the definition of aggression used by researchers: a behavior intended to harm someone who does not wish to be harmed (Baron & Richardson, 1994). Most researchers conceptualize aggression along a continuum ranging from mild (e.g., a hurtful remark) to extreme (e.g., shooting), with the term “violence” representing the extreme end of the continuum (Bushman & Anderson, 2001). Violence is always aggression, but not all aggression is violence. This point is important, as many studies of media violence assess its effects on aggressive behavior that, while not severe enough to be called violent, is nevertheless relevant to testing hypotheses about aggression and violence. Media violence is defined by researchers as any media portraying characters deliberately trying to harm others (Anderson, Carnagey, & Eubanks, 2003). Laypersons and researchers would likely agree that a gory horror film constitutes media violence, but mainstream researchers also consider mild aggressive content (e.g., a cartoon plumber jumping on an enemy) to be violent media, a classification laypersons are less likely to make.