Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. XIII. SBF Distance Catalog and the Three-dimensional Structure of the Virgo Cluster

The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey consists of HST ACS imaging for 100 early-type galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, observed in the F475W (≈SDSS g) and F850LP (≈SDSS z) filters. We derive distances for 84 of these galaxies using the method of surface brightness fluctuations (SBFs), present the SBF distance catalog, and use this database to examine the three-dimensional distribution of early-type galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. The SBF distance moduli have a mean (random) measurement error of 0.07 mag (0.5 Mpc), or roughly 3 times better than previous SBF measurements for Virgo Cluster galaxies. Five galaxies lie at a distance of d ≈ 23 Mpc and are members of the W' cloud. The remaining 79 galaxies have a narrow distribution around our adopted distance of ⟨d⟩ = 16.5 ± 0.1 (random mean error) ±1.1 Mpc (systematic). The rms distance scatter of this sample is σ(d) = 0.6 ± 0.1 Mpc, with little or no dependence on morphological type or luminosity class (i.e., 0.7 ± 0.1 and 0.5 ± 0.1 Mpc for the giants and dwarfs, respectively). The back-to-front depth of the cluster measured from our sample of early-type galaxies is 2.4 ± 0.4 Mpc (i.e., ±2 σ of the intrinsic distance distribution). The M87 (cluster A) and M49 (cluster B) subclusters are found to lie at distances of 16.7 ± 0.2 and 16.4 ± 0.2 Mpc, respectively. There may be a third subcluster associated with M86. A weak correlation between velocity and line-of-sight distance may be a faint echo of the cluster velocity distribution not having yet completely virialized. In three dimensions, Virgo's early-type galaxies appear to define a slightly triaxial distribution, with axis ratios of (1 : 0.7 : 0.5). The principal axis of the best-fit ellipsoid is inclined ~20°-40° from the line of sight, while the galaxies belonging to the W' cloud lie on an axis inclined by ~10°-15°.
On the Functional Interpretation of OCL

The Object Constraint Language (OCL) is defined as a sideeffect-free language combining model-oriented and functional features. Its interpreters are mostly focused on model-oriented features, providing a direct representation of features like inheritance and properties navigation. However, in the last few years many other functional features were proposed, e.g. pattern matching, lambda expressions and lazy evaluation. In this work we explore the use of Haskell as an alternative for the functional interpretation of OCL in a direct and clear way. We also show its feasibility through the development of a case study.
Effect of Epistemic Uncertainty Modeling Approach on Decision-Making: Example using Equipment Performance Indicator

Quantitative risk assessments are an integral part of risk-informed regulation of current and future nuclear plants in the U.S. The Bayesian approach to uncertainty, in which both stochastic and epistemic uncertainties are represented with precise probability distributions, is the standard approach to modeling uncertainties in such quantitative risk assessments. However, there are long-standing criticisms of the Bayesian approach to epistemic uncertainty from many perspectives, and a number of alternative approaches have been proposed. Among these alternatives, the most promising (and most rapidly developing) would appear to be the concept of imprecise probability. In this paper, we employ a performance indicator example to focus the discussion. We first give a short overview of the traditional Bayesian paradigm and review some its controversial aspects, for example, issues with so-called noninformative prior distributions. We then discuss how the imprecise probability approach treats these issues and compare it with two other approaches: sensitivity analysis and hierarchical Bayes modeling. We conclude with some practical implications for risk-informed decision making.
Web page retrieval in ubiquitous sensor environments

This paper proposes new concept of query free web search for daily living. We ordinarily benefit from additional information about our daily activities that we are currently engaged in. When washing a coffee maker, for example, we receive the benefit if we obtain such information as 'cleaning a coffee maker with vinegar removes its stain well. ' Our proposed method automatically searches for a web page including such information relates to an activity of daily living when the activity is performed. We assume that wireless sensor nodes are attached to daily objects to detect object use; our method makes a query from the names of objects which are used. Then, the method retrieves a web page relates to the activity of daily living by using the query.
- ELECTROMECHANICAL SWITCHES FOR SINGLE ELECTRON SHUTTLING

The integration of single electron tunneling devices into nano-electromechanical systems allows to realize electromechanical transistors, the electro-mechanical single electron transistor [1,2]. Based on standard silicon processing techniques such transistors enable direct integration of sensor and signal processing elements into standard circuitry [3]. Especially, since the operating frequency of nano-mechanical devices is now crossing 1 GHz [4]. Nanoelectromechanical transistors will prove to be of importance, e.g. when applied as sensor elements for gas sampling through field effect ionization or as a diode. An important precondition for this is the ability to control the mechanical properties of the nano-resonator completely. This we achieved recently when we demonstrated tuning of the mechanical quality factor Q [5]. In the following we will first discuss layout and fabrication of the electromechanical transistors and then focus on the experiments performed with respect to mechanically control current switching in an EMSET.
Bile Acids Regulate Nuclear Receptor (Nur77) Expression and Intracellular Location to Control Proliferation and Apoptosis

Bile acids (BA) are endogenous agents capable of causing cancer throughout the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. To uncover the mechanism by which BAs exert carcinogenic effects, both human liver and colon cancer cells as well as mouse primary hepatocytes were treated with BAs and assayed for viability, genotoxic stress, and transcriptional response. BAs induced both Nur77 (NR4A1) and proinflammatory gene expression. The intracellular location of BA-induced Nur77 was time dependent; short-term (1–3 hours) exposure induced nuclear Nur77, whereas longer (1–2 days) exposure also increased cytosolic Nur77 expression and apoptosis. Inhibiting Nur77 nuclear export with leptomycin B decreased lithocholic acid (LCA)-induced apoptosis. Extended (7 days) treatment with BA generated resistance to BA with increased nuclear Nur77, viability, and mobility. While, knockdown of Nur77 in BA-resistant cells increased cellular susceptibility to LCA-induced apoptosis. Moreover, in vivo mouse xenograft experiments demonstrated that BA-resistant cells form larger tumors with elevated Nur77 expression compared with parental controls. DNA-binding and gene expression assays identified multiple survival genes (CDK4, CCND2, MAP4K5, STAT5A, and RBBP8) and a proapoptosis gene (BID) as Nur77 targets. Consistently, BA-induced upregulation of the aforementioned genes was abrogated by a lack of Nur77. Importantly, Nur77 was overexpressed in high percentage of human colon and liver cancer specimens, and the intracellular location of Nur77 correlated with elevated serum total BA levels in patients with colon cancer. These data show for the first time that BAs via Nur77 have a dual role in modulating cell survival and death. Implications: These findings establish a direct link between Nur77 and the carcinogenic effect of BAs. Mol Cancer Res; 13(2); 281–92. ©2014 AACR.
Empirical Comparison of Intermediate Representations for Android Applications

In Android-based mobile computing, since the original Java source code is irretrievable from Dalvik bytecode, intermediate representations (IRs) were developed to represent Dalvik bytecode in readable form. To date, SMALI, JASMIN, and JIMPLE are all used as Android application IRs by mobile developers, testers and researchers. Here, we compare these three IRs via randomized event-based testing (Monkey testing) to determine that which most accurately preserves the original program behaviors in terms of the number of successfully injected events. As such program behaviors are critical to mobile security, the choice of IR is crucial during software security testing. In our experiment, we developed an event-based comparative scheme, and conducted a comprehensive empirical study. Statistical comparison of the three IRs’ program behaviors shows that SMALI behaves closest to the original applications and hence is the most suitable for software security testing as the most accurate alternative to the original Java source code (which is usually not publicly available). Keywords-intermediate representation; program behaviors; event-based testing; Android computing; SMALI; JASMIN; JIMPLE
Design and kinematic analysis of a parallel robot with Remote Center of Motion for Minimally Invasive Surgery

A Remote Center of Motion (RCM) Robot can imitate medical operative of surgeons in Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) and improve surgical precision. Compared to serial robots, parallel robots are more compact, more isotropic and have better rigidity and accuracy. A design of a new type of RCM parallel robot is proposed in this paper, which including the robot mechanical structure, kinematics and optimization design. The workspace of the mechanism is derived from the inverse kinematics. The global performance index (GPI) is used as the performance evaluation index to optimize the structure design by the algorithm of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The results of the paper are used to analysis the performance of robot to confirm the structure design, and prepare for prototype machining.
An Unsupervised Ranking Model for Noun-Noun Compositionality

We propose an unsupervised system that learns continuous degrees of lexicality for noun-noun compounds, beating a strong baseline on several tasks. We demonstrate that the distributional representations of compounds and their parts can be used to learn a fine-grained representation of semantic contribution. Finally, we argue such a representation captures compositionality better than the current status-quo which treats compositionality as a binary classification problem.
You are what you bet : eliciting risk attitudes from horse races Still preliminary

As a textbook model for contingent markets, horse races have provided an interesting way to study the attitude towards risk of bettors. We innovate on the literature by explicitly considering heterogeneous bettors, with different utility functions (possibly non-expected utility). Based on a simple single-crossing condition, we derive testable predictions; and we show that parimutuel data allow to uniquely identify the distribution of preferences among the population of bettors. We then estimate the model on data from US races. Preliminary empirical results illustrate how well families of preferences towards risk and/or uncertainty can explain the behavior of bettors. ∗Columbia University. †University of Wisconsin-Madison. ‡Columbia University. e-mail: bsalanie@columbia.edu §Toulouse School of Economics (Lerna/Inra).
Entropy-based action features selection using histogram intersection kernel

Current approaches of local spatio-temporal interest point detections provide compact but descriptive representations for human action recognition. However, unavoidable noisy points interfering with video representation lead to bringing the accuracy of recognition down. This paper proposes an efficient approach to select human action features in videos. We combine entropy with histogram intersection kernel incorporating method of feature distance measurement in similarity to compute histogram significance. The accuracy of our method tested on the KTH dataset using 3D-Harris detector and 3D-HoG descriptor is 83.52%. Experimental results demonstrate that our method with distance of Histogram Intersection to build visual code words has a positive impact upon selecting features which are beneficial to classification.
Accelerating arrays of linear-supp

This logo detection system uses a large number of classifiers to capture the variety of appearances exhibited by the logos of this world under a range of viewing conditions (i.e. different view points and presence of occlusion). Each classifier is trained to detect instances of a specific part of a specific logo. Given an image, each detected part instance is used to generate a hypothesis on the extent of the full logo.
Lifetime or energy: Consolidating servers with reliability control in virtualized cloud datacenters

Server consolidation using virtualization technologies allow cloud-scale datacenters to improve resource utilization and energy efficiency. However, most existing consolidation strategies solely focused on balancing the tradeoff between service-level-agreements (SLAs) desired by cloud applications and energy costs consumed by hosting servers. With the presence of fluctuating workloads in datacenters, the lifetime and reliability of servers under dynamic power-aware consolidation could be adversely impacted by repeated on-off thermal cycles, wear-and-tear and temperature rise. In this paper, we propose a Reliability-Aware server Consolidation stratEgy, named RACE, to address when and how to perform energy-efficient server consolidation in a reliability-friendly and profitable way. The focus is on the characterization and analysis of this problem as a multi-objective optimization, by developing an utility model that unifies multiple constraints on performance SLAs, reliability factors, and energy costs in a holistic manner. An improved grouping genetic algorithm is proposed to search the global optimal solution, which takes advantage of a collection of reliability-aware resource buffering, and virtual machines-to-servers re-mapping heuristics for generating good initial solutions and improving the convergence rate. Extensive simulations are conducted to validate the effectiveness, scalability and overhead of RACE in improving the overall utility of datacenters while avoiding unprofitable consolidation in the long term - compared with pMapper and PADD strategies for server consolidation.
Testing quantitative genetic hypotheses about the evolutionary rate matrix for continuous characters

Aim: Provide a new multivariate hypothesis testing approach for the evolution of continuous characters in a phylogenetic context. Background: Brownian motion is the most commonly used model for the evolution of quantitative traits. Under multivariate Brownian motion, the evolution of multiple continuous traits can be described by an evolutionary rate matrix in which the diagonal elements determine the rate of evolution for individual characters, while the off-diagonal elements determine the extent to which different characters co-evolve. Method: We present likelihood tests for two simple hypotheses about the evolutionary rate matrix: (1) equality or proportionality to a hypothetical matrix; and (2) concerted change in the rate matrix in a certain portion or portions of the phylogenetic tree. In case (1), the hypothetical matrix might be estimated from the within-species additive genetic variance–covariance matrix. In case (2), concerted change in the evolutionary rate matrix might result from shifts in ploidy level or the mutation rate. We illustrate these hypothesis tests using data from individual-based quantitative genetic simulations on stochastic phylogenetic trees. Results: Our evolutionary rate matrix estimator exhibited minimal bias. Type I errors in our likelihood-based tests for matrix equality and proportionality were very close to appropriate levels. Power to detect selection was also sufficient, except in the case of the weakest selection simulated in this study. Type I error and the accuracy of parameter estimation in the test for rate matrix heterogeneity were also adequate.
HIERARCHICAL DESIGN OF 3 D MESHES IN REPRESENTATION / STORAGE OF VOLUME DATA FOR MULTIMEDIA APPLICATIONS I ş ı

Hierarchical mesh representation and mesh simplification have been addressed in computer graphics for adaptive level-of-detail rendering of 3D objects used for animation. In this paper, we propose a new simplification method to design hierarchical 3D meshes such that each mesh level (representing a different level of spatial hierarchy) is a subset of the previous higher detail mesh and has Delaunay topology. This topology constraint on each mesh layer not only helps to design meshes with desired geometric properties, but also enables efficient compression of the mesh data for multimedia applications.
Schema Evolution for Real-Time Object-Oriented Databases1

It has been shown that the database schemata often experience considerable changes during the development and initial use phases of database systems for advanced applications, such as automated manufacturing and computer-aided design. An automated schema evolution system can significantly reduce the amount of work and potential errors related to schema changes. Although schema evolution for non-real-time databases was the subject of some previous research, its impact on real-time database systems remains unexplored. Since these advanced applications typically utilize object-oriented models to handle complex data types and there exists no agreed-upon real-time object model that can be used as foundation to define a schema evolution framework, we first design a conceptual real-time object-oriented data model, called ROMPP. It captures the key characteristics of real-time applications, namely, timing constraints and performance polymorphism. It uses specialization dimensions to model timing specifications and letter class hierarchies to capture performance polymorphism. We then re-evaluate previous (non-real-time) schema evolution support in the context of real-time databases, which results in several modifications to the semantics of schema changes and to the needs of schema change resolution rules and schema invariants. Furthermore, we expand the schema change framework with new constructs—including new schema change operators, new resolution rules, and new invariants—for handling additional features of the real-time object model.
Susceptibility of multi-resistant Gram-negative bacilli in Singapore to tigecycline as tested by agar dilution.

INTRODUCTION Tigecycline is an antibiotic belonging to the glycylcycline class with in vitro activity against most Gram-negative bacteria, other than Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This study investigated the in vitro activity of tigecycline against multi-resistant isolates of Enterobacteriaceae and Acinetobacter spp. isolated from clinical specimens in Singapore. MATERIALS AND METHODS Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) to tigecycline were determined for 173 isolates of multi-resistant Escherichia coli, Klebsiella spp. , Enterobacter spp. and Acinetobacter spp. using agar dilution. RESULTS The MIC required to inhibit the growth of 90% of organisms varied from 0.5 to 4 mg/L for the study isolates. Based on a resistance breakpoint of >or=8 mg/L, resistance rates varied from 0% to 9%. CONCLUSIONS Tigecycline demonstrates good in vitro activity against multi-resistant strains of Enterobacteriaceae, with more variable activity against multi-resistant strains of Acinetobacter spp.
Frustratingly Easy Cross-Lingual Transfer for Transition-Based Dependency Parsing

In this paper, we present a straightforward strategy for transferring dependency parsers across languages. The proposed method learns a parser from partially annotated data obtained through the projection of annotations across unambiguous word alignments. It does not rely on any modeling of the reliability of dependency and/or alignment links and is therefore easy to implement and parameter free. Experiments on six languages show that our method is at par with recent algorithmically demanding methods, at a much cheaper computational cost. It can thus serve as a fair baseline for transferring dependencies across languages with the use of parallel corpora.
Perceptions of employers toward hiring graduates with online degrees

Perceptions of Employers Toward Hiring Graduates With Online Degrees by Leisa Dione Thompson Dr. Cecilia Maldonado-Daniels, Examination Committee Co-Chair Associate Professor of Educational Leadership University of Nevada, Las Vegas Dr. Sterling Saddler, Examination Committee Co-Chair Associate Professor of Educational Leadership University of Nevada, Las Vegas Since the late 1990s, online education programs for academic credit have emerged in colleges and universities across the country at an astonishing rate. Enrollment in online courses and online degree programs has grown dramatically. Online education is in high demand because it allows individuals to pursue an education while maintaining their full-time jobs and commitments to their families. However, the employability of a graduate with an online degree has not kept pace with the growth of this delivery method. This study was an attempt to explore the workforce sentiments concerning employment of college graduates obtaining a degree completed through online education. Using a conceptual framework of human capital theory and the theory of credentialism, a Web-based self-administered questionnaire was implemented. A national survey was conducted to investigate the perceptions of human resource (HR) professionals and employer policies and practices toward hiring college iii graduates who have earned traditional degrees compared to those who have earned online degrees. In this study, HR professionals are defined as executives, directors, or managers who develop and manage human resources polices and practices, as well as those who specialize in employment, recruitment, and piacement of job applicants. Participants were instructed to rate policy-oriented statements as to how well each statement reflected their organization's current hiring practices on a 6 point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 to 6 (1 = strongly disagree to 6 = strongly agree). Findings indicate that respondents have a strong preference for graduates with traditional degrees compared to graduates with online degrees. While online degrees from accredited institutions are accepted for employment, some employers may only consider job candidates with traditional degrees and prefer not to have applicants from online degree programs. Additionally, the findings indicate that employers have different policies and practices toward hiring college graduates who have earned their degree traditionally or online. Differences exist in industries where a college degree is often required for employment and work activities require a high degree of expertise and training. Moreover, differences exist in organizations that have a large percentage of employees with a bachelor or graduate degree.
Teacher Candidates' Socialization Process: A Grounded Theory Study

The purpose of this research is to reveal teacher candidates' experiences from the beginning of their service until being a teacher. In this study, the grounded theory research design was preferred. The study group was determined with criterion sampling. Based on the criterion that the participants have just completed the one-year candidacy process, 12 teachers from different branches participated in this research. Interview technique was used as a data collection tool. The data were collected through a semi-structured interview form. According to the result of the model, teacher candidates have emotional responses regarding their prospective professional life before starting such as excitement or nervousness. The first stage is called the adaptation process. The second stage indicates that the implementation stage is associated with the experiences in the adaptation. As for the third phase, experience-gaining, the teachers who could identify and improve the shortcomings in the implementation process, gained experiences.