Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
First IBIS results on the high energy emission of Cygnus X-2

The bright low-mass X-ray binary Cyg X-2 was in the field of view of the IBIS telescope during the early Cygnus region observations, executed during the INTEGRAL Performance Verification Phase. The data presented are spanning about one week and cover the rising edge of one of the two peaks of the ≈ 82 day cycle of the Cyg X-2 light curve. The IBIS data in the energy range 20-40 keV exhibit flux variation correlated with the RXTE /ASM light curve. Two different main exposures, separated by ≈ 5 days are found to be characterized by sensibly different spectra, with significant softening and higher X-ray luminosity in the second part, coincident with the long-term cycle peak. At high energies, both measured spectra are very steep. The ratio of the 30-45 keV and 20-30 keV detected fluxes is ≈ 0.30, against a value of 0.95 expected for a Crab-like spectrum. No positive detection exists for $E\geq45$ keV, with a flux upper limit ($5\sigma$) of ~$1.4\times10^{-10}$ erg cm -2 s -1 in the 45-100 keV band.
Interactive TV Show Based on Avatars

The main purpose of the research and development activities presented in this paper is related to the content development techniques for the ITV. It deals with the development of a real-time immersive and interactive TV show based on a DVB-MHP technology. It is basically a TV quiz that can be played from home thanks to virtual avatars that simulate the behaviors of the players. In fact, the immersive and interactive dimensions require a new gaming concept that renders the viewers as active and participative actors. This work has been achieved under RTI-TVS ESA (European Space Agency) project
Divergence in Male and Female Manipulative Behaviors with the Intensification of Metallurgy in Central Europe

Humeral morphology has been shown to reflect, in part, habitual manipulative behaviors in humans. Among Central European agricultural populations, long-term social change, increasing task specialization, and technological innovation all had the potential to impact patterns of habitual activity and upper limb asymmetry. However, systematic temporal change in the skeletal morphology of agricultural populations in this region has not been well-characterized. This study investigates diachronic patterns in humeral biomechanical properties and lengths among 174 adult Central European agriculturalists through the first ∼5400 years of farming in the region. Greater asymmetry in biomechanical properties was expected to accompany the introduction of metallurgy, particularly in males, while upper limb loading patterns were expected to be more similar between the Bronze and Iron Ages. Results revealed a divergence in the lateralization of upper limb biomechanical properties by sex between the Early/Middle Neolithic and Early/Middle Bronze Age. Neolithic females had significantly more variable properties than males in both humeri, while Bronze Age female properties became homogeneous and very symmetrical relative to the right-biased lateralization of contemporaneous males. The Bronze Age to Iron Age transition was associated with morphological change among females, with a significant increase in right-biased asymmetry and a concomitant reduction in sexual dimorphism. Relative to biomechanical properties, humeral length variation and asymmetry were low though some significant sexual dimorphism and temporal change was found. It was among females that the lateralization of humeral biomechanical properties, and variation within them, changed most profoundly through time. This suggests that the introduction of the ard and plow, metallurgical innovation, task specialization, and socioeconomic change through ∼5400 years of agriculture impacted upper limb loading in Central European women to a greater extent than men.
Evaluation of stratocumulus cloud prediction in the Met Office forecast model during VOCALS-REx

Abstract. Observations in the subtropical southeast Pacific obtained during the VOCALS-REx field experiment are used to evaluate the representation of stratocumulus cloud in the Met Office forecast model and to identify key areas where model biases exist. Marked variations in the large scale structure of the cloud field were observed during the experiment on both day-to-day and on diurnal timescales. In the remote maritime region the model is shown to have a good representation of synoptically induced variability in both cloud cover and marine boundary layer depth. Satellite observations show a strong diurnal cycle in cloud fraction and liquid water path in the stratocumulus with enhanced clearances of the cloud deck along the Chilean and Peruvian coasts on certain days. The model accurately simulates the phase of the diurnal cycle but is unable to capture the coastal clearing of cloud. Observations along the 20° S latitude line show a gradual increase in the depth of the boundary layer away from the coast. This trend is well captured by the model (typical low bias of 200 m) although significant errors exist at the coast where the model marine boundary layer is too shallow and moist. Drizzle in the model responds to changes in liquid water path in a manner that is consistent with previous ship-borne observations in the region although the intensity of this drizzle is likely to be too high, particularly in the more polluted coastal region where higher cloud droplet number concentrations are typical. Another mode of variability in the cloud field that the model is unable to capture are regions of pockets of open cellular convection embedded in the overcast stratocumulus deck and an example of such a feature that was sampled during VOCALS-REx is shown.
A pattern collection for knowledge processing system architecture

Many architecture and design patterns exist for enterprise software development. Nowadays interest of knowledge processing systems has been heightened, as these technologies can provide a valuable benefit for a company (e.g., supporting decision making). Nevertheless, the algorithms and technologies used in this domain can be complex and difficult to implement. Some parts can even outreach standard software development. This paper tries to identify similarities to enterprise systems and present a selection of existing design patterns that can be used to solve knowledge processing difficulties. The aim is to provide a pattern collection to allow also software designers and developers not familiar with knowledge processing principles, to easily design, implement and integrate such systems.
How to Improve the Security Skills of Mobile App Developers? Comparing and Contrasting Expert Views

Programmers’ lack of knowledge and ability in secure development threatens everyone who uses mobile apps. There’s no consensus on how to empower app programmers to get that knowledge. Based on interviews with twelve industry experts we argue that the discipline of secure app development is still at an early stage. Only once industry and academia have produced effective app developer motivation and training approaches shall we begin to see the kinds of secure apps we need to combat crime and privacy invasions.
Implicit Parallelism in a Functional Subset of Scala

In this paper, we describe our approach to implicitly parallelizing programs written in a functional subset of Scala characterized by the single assignment rule. Our functional programming model is supported by a functional subset of Scala based on our past experiences with the Sisal language and the functional language level of DrJava. We automatically parallelize functional Scala programs by inserting futures and accumulators. We avoid the resource limitations that arise when tasks block on futures by executing delimited continuations on a cooperative scheduler with a fixed number of worker threads. The functional structure of programs written in our Scala subset ensures deadlock freedom since such programs cannot generate cyclic dependences among expressions/futures. Our functional programming model exposes abundant opportunities for safe implicit fine-grain parallelism at the expression level. Such expressions can be represented as future constructs that compute the value of the expression in parallel with the rest of the computation. On the other hand, introducing parallelism adds overhead to manage and schedule execution of the futures and to avoid blocking worker threads when the results of the future are required due to data dependence constraints. To achieve high performance in executing such applications on many-core processors, we must partition the computation into largely independent tasks (contrained by data dependence) with appropriate granularity that is neither too fine nor too coarse and we must must efficiently implement the representation and execution of futures. We currently rely on hand-written code and runtime techniques to determine the appropriate granularity for parallel tasks and we use delimited continuations to represent computations waiting on futures without blocking worker threads.
On the suitability of TerraSAR-X split antenna mode for current measurements by along-track interferometry

Latest concepts for the TerraSAR-X hardware design include the availability of a split antenna mode, in which the fore and aft halves of the SAR antenna array with a total length of 4.8 m can act as separate receiving antennas for along-track interferometry (ATI). The effective ATI time lag is 0.17 ms. We discuss in this paper whether the split antenna mode is suitable for ocean current measurements. Typical (tidal) currents in coastal areas are on the order of 1 to 2 m/s. To measure them, the ATI time lag should ideally be 20 times longer than the time lag of TerraSAR-X. Furthermore, the backscattered power from the ocean at low wind speeds can be below the noise floor of the instrument. However, the high resolution of TerraSAR-X permits averaging over many pixels to reduce noise. Simulated data products suggest that TerraSAR-X is capable of measuring currents with satisfactory accuracy at a spatial resolution of about 1 km, which is sufficient for many applications.
Mms21 SUMO Ligase Activity Promotes Nucleolar Function in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The budding yeast E3 SUMO ligase Mms21, also known as Nse2, is a component of the Smc5/6 complex, which regulates sister chromatid cohesion, DNA replication, and repair. Our study shows that the mms21RINGΔ mutant exhibits (1) reduced ribosomal RNA production; (2) nuclear accumulation of ribosomal proteins; (3) elevated Gcn4 translation, indicating translational stress; and (4) upregulation of Gcn4 targets. Genes involved in ribosome biogenesis and translation are downregulated in the mms21RINGΔ mutant. We identified RPL19A as a novel genetic suppressor of the mms21RINGΔ mutant. Deletion of RPL19A partially suppresses growth defects in both smc5-6 and mms21RINGΔ mutants as well as nuclear accumulation of ribosome subunits in the mms21RINGΔ mutant. Deletion of a previously identified strong suppressor, MPH1, rescues both the accumulation of ribosome subunits and translational stress. This study suggests that the Smc5/6 complex supports nucleolar function.
HIV / AIDS EPIDEMIC : CIRCULATING VARIANTS OF HIV IN LATIN AMERICA , PATHOGENESIS , AND VACCINES

Introduction The HIV/AIDS epidemic detected since the beginning of the 80's, continues growing up at giant steps, with more than 16,000 new infections a day around the world. (1) From the beginning , the pandemic has presented an unequal pattern in different regions, countries, and individuals, being the developing countries and the poor the more affected. This differences have been greater since the introduction of the potent antiretroviral treatment, that is widely available in the developed countries and practically not used in those with limited economic resources. Thus, the XII International AIDS Conference in Geneva 1998 came to mark those clear differences and although its slogan was " constructing the bridge between North and South " , between poor and rich, between technology and empiricism, the conclusion is that the bridge already exists but that unfortunately it is a toll bridge, and that the quota is high. Two approaches were evident in the scientific works presented. The developed countries emphasized the achievements of antiretroviral therapy, reflected in a clear decrease in HIV-associated mortality, the significant decline in the number of hospitalizations , as well as the new prospects of antiviral and immune-modulator treatments based on important progress on the understanding of the pathogenesis of the infection, and innovative and expensive techniques for the quantitation of viral load, of resistance to drugs and of immune function. But not everything was positive for the developed countries, it is clear that the more potent antiviral treatments are not enough to eradicate the virus nor for restoring the immune function and that many of the new therapeutic options have cross-resistance with the current treatments. Thus, if new drugs with different targets are not introduce in the near future, the current honeymoon period of the triple and four-drug treatments could finish soon and give way again to the era of frequent hospitalizations, of annoying opportunistic diseases and of increase in mortality. The options to avoid this, are based on the better understanding of the pathogenesis of the infection that would make possible to find new antiviral targets and new strategies of immunological reconstitution. On the other hand, the developing countries showed a darker face, but not disappointing at all, and very positive despite the struggle. Although poor people continues dying, with an increase number of opportunistic infections and the developing countries are facing the negative effect on the economy by the loss of work force; …
The ICT Component of Technological Diversification: Is there an underestimation of ICT capabilities among the world's largest companies?

This empirical paper analyses the importance of information and communications technologies (ICT) in the technological diversification trend among the world's large industrial firms. The objective of the research is twofold. First, to emphasise the emerging differences among technologies when companies from different industries patent outside their traditional technological competencies. Second, to investigate whether the tendency among large companies from all industries to patent in ICT is distinctive when compared with other technologies. We find that technological diversification in large companies has certainly occurred in ICTs. For other technologies the results are ambiguous. As could be expected there is considerable industry variation in the intensity and specific directions of ICT patenting. We conclude that the development of corporate capabilities in the key technologies of the emerging ICT paradigm is more widespread than previously emphasised in the literature. One implication is that the rise of multi-technology corporations can be related to the concept of long waves of techno-economic change and to studies characterising ICT as a general-purpose technology.
Toward a statistical data integration environment: the role of semantic metadata

In most government and business organizations alike, statistical data provides the foundation for strategic planning and for the management of operations. In this context, the use of increasingly abundant statistical data available on the web creates new opportunities for interesting applications and facilitates more informed decision-making. For the majority of end users, however, viable means to explore statistical data sets available on the web are still scarce. Gathering and relating statistical data from multiple sources is hence typically a tedious manual process that requires significant technical expertise. Data that is being published with associated semantics, using standards such as the W3C RDF Data Cube Vocabulary, lays the foundation to overcome such limitations. In this paper, we develop a semantic metadata repository that describes each statistical data set and develop mechanisms for the interconnection of data sets based on their metadata. Finally, we support users in exploring data sets through interactive mashups that facilitate data integration, comparisons, and visualization.
Inhibition of Acetylcholinesterase in Different Structures of the Rat Brain Following Soman Intoxication Pretreated with Huperzine A

Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activities in different brain parts were determined quantitatively in rats treated with huperzine A, soman, and huperzine A followed by soman, using histochemical and biochemical methods. Following soman intoxication (1.2 × LD50, i.m.), AChE activity was decreased to 30–80% of control values depending on the brain structure. The most sensitive area was the frontal cortex and the most relatively resistant was ncl. ruber. Huperzine A treatment only caused a change in AChE activity varying from 70 to 100 % of control values. In rats pretreated with huperzine A and intoxicated with soman, AChE activity was significantly higher than that observed after soman. In these animals, survival of rats pretreated with huperzine was observed while the mortality of unpretreated animals was near to 80 %. The results suggest that huperzine A is good candidate for further study for clinical use as a prophylactic drug against nerve agent poisoning.
Identifying Phishing Attacks

Phishing emails attempt to steal a user’s personal information by masquerading as legitimate transactional email. Recently, Stanford has been the victim of a large number of phishing attacks, which caused the author to wonder about the difficulty of classifying phishing emails. The author examined the accuracy of several existing algorithms, including naive Bayes, logistic regression, and support vector machine (SVM) classifiers, on the bag of words and augmented bag of words models of phishing and non-phishing emails. Of these, the linear SVM under the augmented bag of words model performed best. Additionally, the author attempted to use an SVM with a nonlinear word subsequence kernel, but this kernel was determined to be too computationally expensive to deploy in a real world setting.
A Web Metrics quality evaluation framework for e-commerce systems

E-commerce B2C systems are diverse and their quality is difficult to be measured without a concrete methodology. In this paper we present a B2C-specific quality evaluation framework for web metrics that helps understand what needs to be measured and how. The framework uses three dimensions based on end-user interaction categories, metrics internal specs and quality sub-characteristics as defined of ISO9126. Beginning from the existing large corpus of general-purpose web metrics, specific metrics used for quality evaluation of ecommerce systems are chosen and categorized. Analysis results are subjected to a data mining analysis in order to provide association rules between the various dimensions of the framework. Finally, an ontology that corresponds to the framework is developed to answer to complicated questions related to metrics use and to facilitate the production of new, user-defined metametrics.
Ifelt: accessing movies through our emotions

Films are by excellence the form of art that exploits our affective, perceptual and intellectual activity. Technological developments and the trends for media convergence are turning video into a dominant and pervasive medium and online video is becoming a growing entertainment activity on the web and iTV. The improvement of new techniques for gathering emotional information about videos, both through content analysis or user implicit feedback through user physiological signals, is revealing an unfolding of new ways for exploring emotional information in videos, films or TV series, and brings out new perspectives to personalize user information. We present iFelt - an interactive web video application to classify, access, explore and visualize movies based on their emotional characteristics. In this work, we explore the design and evaluate different ways to access, browse and visualize movies and their contents.
Oxidative stress in obstructive sleep apnea.

STUDY OBJECTIVES To investigate the relationship between the severity of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and oxidative stress, which plays an important role in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease, and to elucidate the factors contributing to this relationship. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. PARTICIPANTS A total of 128 consecutive subjects referred to the sleep laboratory of our hospital for screening or treatment of OSA. INTERVENTIONS Not applicable. MEASUREMENTS The severity of sleep-disordered breathing was evaluated by polysomnography. We measured urinary excretion of 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) as an in vivo parameter of oxidative stress. Known risk factors for oxidative stress (age, obesity, smoking, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, and diabetes mellitus) were also investigated. RESULTS Seventy subjects had nonsevere OSA (an apnea-hypopnea index [AHI] < 30), and 58 subjects had severe OSA (AHI >or= 30). Urinary 8-OHdG excretion was significantly higher in the severe OSA group (p = 0.03). Furthermore, urinary 8-OHdG excretion was significantly correlated with parameters of sleep-disordered breathing, including AHI, the apnea index, the oxygen desaturation index (ODI), the duration of oxygen saturation < 90%, and the respiratory arousal index. However, only ODI was significantly correlated with urinary 8-OHdG excretion after adjustment for confounding factors that are considered to be related to oxidative stress. CONCLUSIONS The severity of OSA is independently associated with oxidative stress. Among various sleep-disordered breathing parameters, ODI is most closely related to oxidative stress.
Survival guide for business families

Introduction The 39 Critical Questions PART ONE: THE JACMAR BUSINESS FAMILY 1 Introducing the JacMars 2 JacMar's Business Profile 3 The Family Dimension 4 Restless Successors and Unspoken Opinions 5 Generational Issues 6 The Family and the Future 7 Today and Tomorrow PART TWO: THE 39 CRITICAL QUESTIONS 8 Commitment 9 Keep or Sell 10 Who's In and Who's Out 11 Growing Up Wealthy and Healthy 12 Results Count! 13 Fathers, Sons, and Succession 14 Succession 15 Activating Your Board 16 Reconciling Outside and Inside Shareholders 17 Buying Out Family Shareholders 18 Understanding Needs 19 Family Councils and Family Decisions 20 Key Employees 21 The Community 22 Jack's Dream 23 From Questions to Answers 24 To My Successor . Appendix A Lawyers, Families, and Feelings Appendix B Estate Planning for the Family Business Owner Notes Suggested Reading