Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
First record of multi-species synchronous coral spawning from Malaysia

Knowledge about the timing and synchrony of coral spawning has important implications for both the ecology and management of coral reef ecosystems. Data on the timing of spawning and extent of synchrony, however, are still lacking for many coral reefs, particularly from equatorial regions and from locations within the coral triangle. Here we present the first documentation of a multi-species coral spawning event from reefs around Pulau Tioman, Peninsular Malaysia, a popular diving and tourist destination located on the edge of the coral triangle. At least 8 coral species from 3 genera (Acropora, Montipora and Porites) participated in multi-species spawning over five nights in April 2014, between two nights before and two nights after the full moon. In addition, two Acropora species were witnessed spawning one night prior to the full moon in October 2014. While two of the Acropora species that reproduced in April (A. millepora and A. nasuta) exhibited highly synchronous spawning (100% of sampled colonies), two other common species (A. hyacinthus and A. digitifera) did not contain visible eggs in the majority of colonies sampled (i.e., <15% of colonies) in either April or October, suggesting that these species spawn at other times of the year. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first detailed documented observation of multi-species coral spawning from reefs in Malaysia. These data provide further support for the contention that this phenomenon is a feature of all speciose coral assemblages, including equatorial reefs. More research is needed, however, to determine the seasonal cycles and extent of spawning synchrony on these reefs and elsewhere in Malaysia.
Cybernetic modeling of Industrial Control Systems: Towards threat analysis of critical infrastructure

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) encompassing resources for process automation are subjected to a wide variety of security threats. The threat landscape is arising due to increased adoption of Commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS) products as well as the convergence of Internet and legacy systems. Prevalent security approaches for protection of critical infrastructure are scattered among various subsystems and modules of ICS networks. This demands a new state-of-the-art cybernetic model of ICS networks, which can help in threat analysis by providing a comprehensive view of the relationships and interactions between the subsystems. Towards this direction, the principles of the Viable System Model (VSM) are applied to introduce a conceptual recursive model of secure ICS networks that can drive cyber security decisions.
Coming of age, seeking legitimacy: The historical trajectory of African management research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the historical trajectory of African management research and managerial thinking.Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws from a review and synthesis of the literature from 1960–2012.Findings – The analysis led to the identification of three distinct phases which reflect the difficult and uncertain beginning to a promising future. Our historical pathway model also allows us to account for the evolution of management philosophies and thoughts, and current state of knowledge.Originality/value – Although there is a burgeoning stream of African management research, lack of comprehensive review and synthesis have obscured the enormous strides made. We advance a “novel” approach towards theory application and theory creation building on the “convergence hypothesis” and “divergence hypothesis”. Our analysis yielded a number of promising avenues for future research.
Increasing the efficiency of minimal key enumeration methods by means of parallelism

Finding all minimal keys in a table is a hard problem but also provides a lot of benefits in database design and optimization. Some of the methods proposed in the literature are based on logic and, more specifically on tableaux paradigm. The size of the problems such methods deal with is strongly limited, which implies that they cannot be applied to big database schemas. We have carried out an experimental analysis to compare the results obtained by these methods in order to estimate their limits. Although tableaux paradigm may be viewed as a search space guiding the key finding task, none of the previous algorithms have incorporated parallelism. In this work, we have developed two different versions of the algorithms, a sequential and a parallel one, stating clearly how parallelism could naturally be integrated and the benefits we get over efficiency. This work has also guided future work guidelines to improve future designs of these methods.
DPDK Open vSwitch performance validation with mirroring feature

Network Function Visualization (NFV) and Software Defined Network (SDN) currently play a key role to transform the network architecture from hardware-based to software-based. Along with cloud computing, NFV and SDN are moving network functions from dedicated hardware to software implementation (Virtual Network Functions - VNF), on Virtual Machine (VM) or other virtualization technology such as containers, on top of a virtualized platform in the Cloud. To connect the VNFs, hosted in the same Data Center (DC) or across multiple DCs, virtual switches are required. Besides forwarding functions, virtual switches can be configured to mirror traffics for network management needs. Among the existing virtual switch solutions, Open vSwitch (OVS) is the most known and used. OVS is open source, and included in most of the existing Linux distributions. However, OVS performance in terms of throughput for smaller packets is very smaller than of line rate of the interface. To overcome this limitation, OVS was ported to Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), namely OVDK. The latter achieves an impressive line rate throughput across physical interfaces. In this paper, we present the result of OVDK performance test when flow and port mirroring are activated, which was not tested so far. The performance test focuses on two parameters, throughput and latency in OVDK; allowing to validate the use of OVDK for flow forwarding and network management in the envisioned virtualized network architecture.
A reliable budget-constrained facility location / network design problem with unreliable facilities

The combined facility location and network design problem is an important practical problem for locating public and private facilities. Moreover, incorporating aspects of reliability into the modeling of facility location problems is an effective way to hedge against disruptions in the system. In this paper, we consider a combined facility location/network design problem that considers system reliability. This problem has a number of applications, many of which fall into the category of service systems, such as regional planning and locating schools, health care service centers and airline networks. Our model also includes an investment budget constraint. We propose a mixed integer programming formulation to model this problem, as well as an efficient heuristic based on the problem’s LP relaxation. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed heuristic significantly outperforms CPLEX in terms of solution speed, while still maintaining excellent solution quality. Our results also suggest a favorable tradeoff between the “nominal cost” (including fixed facility location costs and link construction costs, as well as transportation costs) and system reliability; that is, substantial improvements in reliability are often possible with only slight increases in the total cost of investment and transportation.
Reset control for passive teleoperation

This paper presents a study on the application of reset control principles to the field of teleoperation based on passivity. The main problem addressed here is the effect of the communication delay. The proposed ideas provide a novel approach which combines the robustness derived from the passivity techniques with the performance improvement enabled by the reset strategy. Results on the stability of the overall setup are presented and simulation examples confirm the good behavior of the proposed solutions.
A Taxonomy of Networked Virtual Environments

There have been several networked virtual environments (NVEs) described in the literature. Each NVE system considers a separate part of the problem and a reference frame for listing all components and comparing different NVEs missing. We summarize the issues to consider while developing complete NVEs, and we compare the most characteristic solutions in the literature for each issue.
The Path Biography Methodology: Analyzing Self-Reinforcing Mechanisms on Technical and Organizational Levels

While studies on self-reinforcing mechanisms in information systems (IS) research rely on methodologies that focus on the technical level without fully accounting for such effects on the organizational level, management research relies on methodologies that concentrate researchers’ efforts on the organizational level. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Path Biography Methodology, a qualitative approach that helps researchers capture and analyze self-reinforcing mechanisms on and between technical and organizational levels. By synthesizing insights from IS and management research, we develop four principles that researchers should consider when applying the Path Biography Methodology. Using a path biography study of a university and its information system, we illustrate how researchers may apply this methodology to analyze self-reinforcing mechanisms. Overall, this paper lays the groundwork for a research methodology that enables researchers to capture and analyze self-reinforcing mechanisms on and between technical and organizational levels.
Enhance non-ideal iris recognition system from NIR Iris video

Iris pattern is one of the most consistent biometric methods used for recognizing and identifying persons. Employing videos as a capturing instrument is a pretty modern style in the area of iris biometric. The use of frame by frame method provides more information and offers more suppleness compared to old-fashioned still images. Nevertheless, the size, quality and shape of the iris might differ between a frame and another. Additionally, to getting best performance it need a rapid and precise method to segment iris to amelioration rate of recognition. This work presents a method for choosing the best frames found in an iris video. This method is based on detecting motion blur and occlusion in iris videos and investigating their influence on the process of recognition. This proposed is followed by a rapid and precise method to detect pupil area, this method on the grounds of “dynamic threshold” with “Circular Hough Transform” then apply “Geodesic Active Contour” for detect outer boundary of iris. Experimental results are carried out on the MBGC NIR Iris Video datasets from the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). Results show that the suggested selection method in NIR Iris Videos results in substantial enhancement in recognition efficiency. Results also indicated that the experimental evaluation of Iris segmented technique proposed in this work indicates that the precision and speed of the iris recognition via video is improved.
A Survey of Botnet and Botnet Detection

Among the various forms of malware, botnets are emerging as the most serious threat against cyber-security as they provide a distributed platform for several illegal activities such as launching distributed denial of service attacks against critical targets, malware dissemination, phishing, and click fraud. The defining characteristic of botnets is the use of command and control channels through which they can be updated and directed. Recently, botnet detection has been an interesting research topic related to cyber-threat and cyber-crime prevention. This paper is a survey of botnet and botnet detection. The survey clarifies botnet phenomenon and discusses botnet detection techniques. This survey classifies botnet detection techniques into four classes: signature-based, anomaly-based, DNS-based, and mining-base. It summarizes botnet detection techniques in each class and provides a brief comparison of botnet detection techniques.
Computationally Efficient Reflectance Estimation for Hyperspectral Images

The Retinex theory assumes that large intensity changes correspond to reflectance edges, while smoothly-varying regions are due to shading. Some algorithms based on the theory adopt simple thresholding schemes and achieve adequate results for reflectance estimation. In this paper, we present a practical reflectance estimation technique for hyperspectral images. Our method is realized simply by thresholding singular values of a matrix calculated from scaled pixel values. In the method, we estimate the reflectance image by measuring spectral similarity between two adjacent pixels. We demonstrate that our thresholding scheme effectively estimates the reflectance and outperforms the Retinex-based thresholding. In particular, our methods can precisely distinguish edges caused by reflectance change and shadows. key words: hyperspectral image, retinex, reflectance estimation, singular values
MOTHER'S EMPLOYMENT: CULTURAL IMPRINT OR INSTITUTIONAL GOVERNANCE?

ABSTRACT In the public and scientific discussion on the political scope of action for improving employment opportunities for mothers, cultural aspects of female labour market participation often remain ignored. This study argues that employment decisions of mothers vary not only with the institutional settings but also with the dominant representative culture of a region. In order to study the effects of culture and institutions on maternal employment, Belgium, East, and West Germany are selected for empirical analysis. In a first step the article demonstrates that these regions differ considerably in terms of family political measures but also in terms of the cultural orientations with regard to female employment. While both Belgium and East Germany (but not West Germany) have well-developed public childcare systems for the under-3s, East Germans have a more favourable opinion towards female employment than Belgians. In a second step the study shows by means of panel analyses that these cultural differences strongly determine female employment behavior. Results indicate that both East and West German mothers have significantly higher employment probabilities in the long-run than Belgian mothers. The well-developed childcare infrastructure and the short parental leave lead only temporarily – right after childbirth – to higher employment rates among Belgian mothers. With increasing age of the child the significance of cultural dispositions result in higher overall employment probabilities among German mothers. These empirical findings support the theoretical approach of Pfau-Effinger in treating both institutional structures and culture as (equally) crucial factors in explaining cross-national differences in mothers' employment.
MANUAL FOR KIT OF REFERENCE TESTS FOR COGNITIVE FACTORS (REVISED 1963)

Abstract : The tests in this Kit are suggested for use in factorial studies where representation is desired for any of the following named aptitude or achievement factors: flexibility of closure; speed of closure; associational fluency; expressional fluency; ideational fluency; word fluency; induction; length estimation; associative (rote) memory; mechanical knowledge; memory span; number facility; originality; perceptual speed; general reasoning; semandefinition; syllogistic reasoning; spatial orientation; sensitivity to problems; spatial scanning; verbal comprehension; visualization; figural adaptive flexibility; and semantic spontaneous flexibility. The purpose of the Kit is to provide research workers with a set of tests for defining each of these factor. The use of the Kit tests for this purpose will facilitate interpretation and the confident comparison of one factor study with another. Use of the Kit tests should provide this common ground for the objective comparison of factors. This manual does not provide the usual reliability, norming, validity, or other information ordinarily expected in a test manual. Such information has not been included because these tests are suggested for the single purpose of factorial research.
Gelatinase Is Important for Translocation of Enterococcus faecalis across Polarized Human Enterocyte-Like T84 Cells

ABSTRACT Previously, in our laboratory, we established a two-chamber system to study translocation of Enterococcus faecalis across monolayers of polarized human colon carcinoma-derived T84 cells. By using the same system in the present study, we now show that disruption of gelE of strain OG1RF, which also has a polar effect on the cotranscribed sprE, as well as disruption of its regulatory system (fsrA, fsrB, and fsrC) resulted in a loss of detectable translocation by E. faecalis OG1RF; these mutants lost gelatinase (GelE) and serine protease (SprE) production by standard assay. A gelE deletion mutant of OG1RF (GelE− SprE+) also showed that significantly reduced translocation and complementation with the gelE gene (pTEX5438) in trans restored gelatinase and translocation, demonstrating that gelatinase is important for E. faecalis translocation. Complementation of fsrA, fsrB, and fsrC mutants with all three fsr genes also resulted in production of gelatinase and translocation. Furthermore, introduction of fsr genes into two non-gelatinase-producing E. faecalis isolates, the well-characterized laboratory strain JH2-2 and a human-derived fecal isolate, TX1322 (both of which have gelE but not fsrA or fsrB, are gelatinase negative, and do not translocate), resulted in gelatinase production by these strains and restored translocation across T84 monolayers, while transformation with pTEX5438 (gelE) showed little or no translocation and no detectable gelatinase, confirming the importance of both fsr and gelatinase for E. faecalis translocation. The importance of gelatinase production was also corroborated among 20 E. faecalis human isolates (7 fecal, 7 endocarditis, and 6 urine isolates), which showed translocation by all gelatinase-positive isolates but little to no translocation for gelatinase nonproducers. These results indicate that gelatinase is important for the successful in vitro translocation of E. faecalis across human enterocyte-like T84 cells.
Recommendations for sex/gender neuroimaging research: key principles and implications for research design, analysis, and interpretation

Neuroimaging (NI) technologies are having increasing impact in the study of complex cognitive and social processes. In this emerging field of social cognitive neuroscience, a central goal should be to increase the understanding of the interaction between the neurobiology of the individual and the environment in which humans develop and function. The study of sex/gender is often a focus for NI research, and may be motivated by a desire to better understand general developmental principles, mental health problems that show female-male disparities, and gendered differences in society. In order to ensure the maximum possible contribution of NI research to these goals, we draw attention to four key principles—overlap, mosaicism, contingency and entanglement—that have emerged from sex/gender research and that should inform NI research design, analysis and interpretation. We discuss the implications of these principles in the form of constructive guidelines and suggestions for researchers, editors, reviewers and science communicators.
Uncovering the transmission dynamics of Plasmodium vivax using population genetics

Abstract Population genetic analysis of malaria parasites has the power to reveal key insights into malaria epidemiology and transmission dynamics with the potential to deliver tools to support control and elimination efforts. Analyses of parasite genetic diversity have suggested that Plasmodium vivax populations are more genetically diverse and less structured than those of Plasmodium falciparum indicating that P. vivax may be a more ancient parasite of humans and/or less susceptible to population bottlenecks, as well as more efficient at disseminating its genes. These population genetic insights into P. vivax transmission dynamics provide an explanation for its relative resilience to control efforts. Here, we describe current knowledge on P. vivax population genetic structure, its relevance to understanding transmission patterns and relapse and how this information can inform malaria control and elimination programmes.
NMR structure of the hypothetical protein encoded by the YjbJ gene from Escherichia coli

Here we describe the solution structure of YjbJ (gil418541) as part of a structural proteomics project on the feasibility of the high-throughput generation of samples from Escherichia coli for structural studies. YjbJ is a hypothetical protein from Escherichia coli protein of unknown function. It is conserved, showing significant sequence identity to four predicted prokaryotic proteins, also of unknown function (Figure 1A). These include gil16762921 from Salmonella enterica (S. typhi), gil17938413 from Agrobacterium tumefaciens, gil16265654 from Sinorizhobium meliloti, and gil15599932 from Pseudomona aeruginosa. The structure of YjbJ reveals a new variation of a common motif (four-helix bundle) that could not be predicted from the protein sequence. Although the biochemical function is unknown, the existence of patterns of conserved residues on the protein surface suggest that the fold and function of all these proteins could be similar.
The Postmodern Marx

Introduction: reassessing Marx spectres and vampires - Marx's metaphors minds and meanings - Marx's concepts individuals and agency - Marx's vision mirror and irony - Marx's critique technologies and Utopias - Marx's communism liberalism and socialism - Marx's democracy translation and interpretation - Marx's words writing and reading - Marx's voices philosophy and politis - Marx's Hegel women and gender - Marx's narratives.
Unsupervised Translation Disambiguation for Cross-Domain Statistical Machine Translation

Most attempts at integrating word sense disambiguation with statistical machine translation have focused on supervised disambiguation approaches. These approaches are of limited use when the distribution of the test data differs strongly from that of the training data; however, word sense errors tend to be especially common under these conditions. In this paper we present different approaches to unsupervised word translation disambiguation and apply them to the problem of translating conversational speech under resource-poor training conditions. Both human and automatic evaluation metrics demonstrate significant improvements resulting from our technique.
ECM-Regulator timp Is Required for Stem Cell Niche Organization and Cyst Production in the Drosophila Ovary

The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a pivotal component adult tissues and of many tissue-specific stem cell niches. It provides structural support and regulates niche signaling during tissue maintenance and regeneration. In many tissues, ECM remodeling depends on the regulation of MMP (matrix metalloproteinase) activity by inhibitory TIMP (tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases) proteins. Here, we report that the only Drosophila timp gene is required for maintaining the normal organization and function of the germline stem cell niche in adult females. timp mutant ovaries show reduced levels of both Drosophila Collagen IV α chains. In addition, tissue stiffness and the cellular organization of the ovarian niche are affected in timp mutants. Finally, loss of timp impairs the ability of the germline stem cell niche to generate new cysts. Our results demonstrating a crucial role for timp in tissue organization and gamete production thus provide a link between the regulation of ECM metabolism and tissue homeostasis.