Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE INCIDENCE OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI IN PURE DISK GALAXIES: THE SPITZER VIEW

Using the Spitzer telescope, we have conducted a high-resolution spectroscopic study of 18 bulgeless (Hubble type of Sd or Sdm) galaxies that show no definitive signatures of nuclear activity in their optical spectra. This is the first systematic mid-infrared (MIR) search for weak or hidden active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in a statistically significant sample of bulgeless (Sd/Sdm) disk galaxies. Based on the detection of the high-ionization [Ne v] 14.3 μm line, we report the discovery of an AGN in 1 out of the 18 galaxies in the sample. This galaxy, NGC 4178, is a nearby edge-on Sd galaxy, which likely hosts a prominent nuclear star cluster (NSC). The bolometric luminosity of the AGN inferred from the [Ne v] line luminosity is ∼8 × 1041 ergs s−1. This is almost 2 orders of magnitude greater than the luminosity of the AGN in NGC 4395, the best studied AGN in a bulgeless disk galaxy. Assuming that the AGN in NGC 4178 is radiating below the Eddington limit, the lower mass limit for the black hole is ∼6 × 103 M☉. The fact that none of the other galaxies in the sample shows any evidence for an AGN demonstrates that while the AGN detection rate based on MIR diagnostics is high (30%–40%) in optically quiescent galaxies with pseudobulges or weak classical bulges (Hubble type Sbc and Sc), it drops drastically in Sd/Sdm galaxies. Our observations, therefore, confirm that AGNs in completely bulgeless disk galaxies are not hidden in the optical but truly are rare. Of the three Sd galaxies with AGNs known so far, all have prominent NSCs, suggesting that in the absence of a well-defined bulge, the galaxy must possess an NSC in order to host an AGN. On the other hand, while the presence of an NSC appears to be a requirement for hosting an AGN in bulgeless galaxies, neither the properties of the NSC nor those of the host galaxy appear exceptional in late-type AGN host galaxies. The recipe for forming and growing a central black hole in a bulgeless galaxy therefore remains unknown.
Asymptotic BEP and SEP of Differential EGC in Correlated Ricean Fading and Non-Gaussian Noise

In this paper, we study the asymptotic behavior of the bit-error probability (BEP) and symbol-error probability (SEP) of differential M-ary phase-shift keying with differential equal gain combining (DEGC) in correlated Ricean fading and non-Gaussian noise, which in our definition also includes interference. We derive simple and easy-to-evaluate asymptotic BEP and SEP expressions which show that at high signal- to-noise ratios (SNRs) the performance of DEGC depends on certain moments of the noise and interference impairing the transmission. We provide closed-form expressions for these moments for practically important types of noise such as Gaussian noise, Gaussian mixture noise, and correlated co-channel interference. In addition, we show that the performance loss of DEGC compared to coherent maximum ratio combining (MRC) is always 3 dB independent of the type of noise if only one diversity branch is available but strongly depends on the type of noise if multiple diversity branches are combined.
ESA: emergency situation awareness via microbloggers

During a disastrous event, such as an earthquake or river flooding, information on what happened, who was affected and how, where help is needed, and how to aid people who were affected, is crucial. While communication is important in such times of crisis, damage to infrastructure such as telephone lines makes it difficult for authorities and victims to communicate. Microblogging has played a critical role as an important communication platform during crises when other media has failed. We demonstrate our ESA (Emergency Situation Awareness) system that mines microblogs in real-time to extract and visualise useful information about incidents and their impact on the community in order to equip the right authorities and the general public with situational awareness.
A User-Oriented Software Reliability Model

A user-oriented reliability model has been developed to measure the reliability of service that a system provides to a user community. It has been observed that in many systems, especially software systems, reliable service can be provided to a user when it is known that errors exist, provided that the service requested does not utilize the defective parts. The reliability of service, therefore, depends both on the reliability of the components and the probabilistic distribution of the utilization of the components to provide the service. In this paper, a user-oriented software reliability figure of merit is defined to measure the reliability of a software system with respect to a user environment. The effects of the user profile, which summarizes the characteristics of the users of a system, on system reliability are discussed. A simple Markov model is formulated to determine the reliability of a software system based on the reliability of each individual module and the measured intermodular transition probabilities as the user profile. Sensitivity analysis techniques are developed to determine modules most critical to system reliability. The applications of this model to develop cost-effective testing strategies and to determine the expected penalty cost of failures are also discussed. Some future refinements and extensions of the model are presented.
The function of bursts of spikes during visual fixation in the awake primate lateral geniculate nucleus and primary visual cortex

When images are stabilized on the retina, visual perception fades. During voluntary visual fixation, however, constantly occurring small eye movements, including microsaccades, prevent this fading. We previously showed that microsaccades generated bursty firing in the primary visual cortex (area V-1) in the presence of stationary stimuli. Here we examine the neural activity generated by microsaccades in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), and in the area V-1 of the awake monkey, for various functionally relevant stimulus parameters. During visual fixation, microsaccades drove LGN neurons by moving their receptive fields across a stationary stimulus, offering a likely explanation of how microsaccades block fading during normal fixation. Bursts of spikes in the LGN and area V-1 were associated more closely than lone spikes with preceding microsaccades, suggesting that bursts are more reliable than are lone spikes as neural signals for visibility. In area V-1, microsaccade-generated activity, and the number of spikes per burst, was maximal when the bar stimulus centered over a receptive field matched the cell's optimal orientation. This suggested burst size as a neural code for stimuli optimality (and not solely stimuli visibility). As expected, burst size did not vary with stimulus orientation in the LGN. To address the effectiveness of microsaccades in generating neural activity, we compared activity correlated with microsaccades to activity correlated with flashing bars. Onset responses to flashes were about 7 times larger than the responses to the same stimulus moved across the cells' receptive fields by microsaccades, perhaps because of the relative abruptness of flashes.
3D videophone for virtual reality telecommunication

This paper proposes a new virtual reality telecommunication system (VRTS) terminal known as 3D videophone to realize satisfactory face-to-face communication. The 3D effects that can be felt through the system, which are mainly based on the protruding images on the screen are highlighted and evaluated. The preliminary evaluation is to verify that 3D moving images are closer to natural images compared to the conventional technique for image representation in face-to-face communication. The results show that 3D moving images are at least slightly better than the conventional technique. Finally, the design issues for the proposed system towards the future prototype development are discussed.
An efficient approach for designing filter banks for Multi-Carrier Transmission

This paper proposes a fast design scheme for optimizing a novel family of multi-carrier transmission (MCT) systems that are built up based on critically-sampled cosine-modulated filter banks (CMFBs). This approach extends an earlier-proposed windowing-method (WM)-based technique for optimizing prototype filters for CMFBs such that, in addition to the cut-off frequency of the ideal filter, three terms in a four-term window function are used as unknowns, thereby leading to an optimization problem with only four adjustable parameters. Such an optimization problem is very efficiently solvable also when long prototype filters and many subchannels are required. What makes the resulting MCT systems novel is that the optimization concentrates on minimizing directly a weighted sum of the inter- symbol and inter-channel interferences in these MCT systems, without directly considering the prototype filter. If the weight values in this sum are fixed, then the values of the unknowns can be optimized for the given overlapping factor. After tabulating these values, a closely optimum solution for any number of channels is obtained by simply using the WM together with these tabulated values.
A new method for the nonlinear transformation of means and covariances in filters and estimators

This paper describes a new approach for generalizing the Kalman filter to nonlinear systems. A set of samples are used to parametrize the mean and covariance of a (not necessarily Gaussian) probability distribution. The method yields a filter that is more accurate than an extended Kalman filter (EKF) and easier to implement than an EKF or a Gauss second-order filter. Its effectiveness is demonstrated using an example.
Teeth segmentation in 3D dentition models for the virtual articulator

A virtual articulator is a system currently being developed for dentistry. It is supposed to virtually determine teeth antagonists and the occlusion surfaces between them. In contrast to state-of-the-art mechanical articulators, it should use 3D dentition models acquired with highly precise 3D scanners for this. These models, however, describe not only teeth surfaces. Neighbouring surfaces such as teethridge are also included in them. Thus, the first and unavoidable step in designing a virtual articulator is the segmentation of teeth from 3D dentition models. In this paper, we present a robust solution to this problem. First, 2D sectional images of the 3D models are generated and binarised. Second, 2D teeth outlines are estimated using active contours and summarised to 3D segmentation results. The algorithm has provided excellent experimental results and will be used in the industrial realisation of the virtual articulator.
Perception of Cross-Generational Differences in Child Behavior and Parent Socialization: A Mixed-Method Interview Study With Grandmothers in China

China, having gone through rapid economic reform, supported by urbanization, educational expansion, and family size reduction over past decades, is an important part of a worldwide sociodemographic trend that can be summarized as a shift from community/Gemeinschaft to society/Gesellschaft. Correlated with this sociodemographic trend, our qualitative and quantitative analyses document intergenerational change in grandmothers’ perception of socializing environments and developmental pathways of Chinese children. Grandmothers from Beijing ranked (a) three generations of children at ages 4 to 6 in their families (themselves, their children, and their grandchildren) on autonomy, curiosity, self-expression, obedience, and shyness and (b) three generations of parents in their families (their parents, themselves, and their children) on child-rearing behaviors: support, praise, criticism, and control. As predicted, we found an intergenerational increase in perceived child autonomy, curiosity, and self-expression—individualistic traits adapted to Gesellschaft environments. Also as predicted, perceived child obedience and shyness, adapted to Gemeinschaft environments, declined across the generations. Related changes in reported child-rearing behaviors were also expected and found: Grandmothers judged that parental support and praise (promotion socialization), which foster individuated self-development, increased significantly, although the pattern of parental criticism and control (prevention socialization) was less clear. Promotion-based socialization strategies were found to serve as a partial mediator of intergenerational differences in individualistic child behaviors. Results suggest that the younger generations exhibit more promotion-based socialization, leading to more individualistic child traits, as they adapt to China’s more Gesellschaft ecology, comprising urbanization, formal education, and smaller family size.
Malala: the story of a Muslim girl and a Muslim nation

ABSTRACT In this article, we analyze the coverage of Malala in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to explore how these influential media sources characterize Islam and Pakistan to tell Malala’s story. Our discourse analysis reveals how these newspapers construct Malala’s status as a global icon as an embodiment of her subject position as a girl. This media discourse mobilizes Malala’s agency in relation to her potential as an individual whereas her vulnerability as a young girl is presented in reference to her Muslim heritage and culture. Malala’s image as a global icon, thus, is produced through approaching her as an agent in a culture where girls are vulnerable victims of patriarchy. Through focusing on this media discourse, this article argues that Malala’s image as a global icon of girls’ education has become a site to reinsert, rather than challenge, the dominant images about Islam and Muslim societies.
A self-report study that gauges perceived and induced emotion with music

This paper discusses a particular study that gauges emotion with respect to music by means of an online self-report survey. This is part of the ongoing construct of an intelligent mobile music player application that will adjudicate one's activity, environmental context, and physiological state. The study was structured so as to acquire emotional information by giving each participant a discrete affect word including `happy', `excited', `angry', `afraid', `miserable', `sad', `tired', and `relaxed'. Each affect word that was selected for a given song was corroborated by a degree of intensity using 5-point scale. The fundamental objective of this study was to measure as to how each song could be described emotionally, and how each song made them feel emotionally. Pearson's Chi-Squared concluded that 95% of the ratings for both `described' and `induced' emotions were statistically significant. The corresponding results were scaled to the proposed circular-based emotional model based on Russell's Circumplex model of emotion, by converting both the emotional ratings to polar coordinates. Further analysis of the data subsequently showed that the affect words that represent music could be given some granularity around the perimeter of the circle by expanding upon particular properties of Russell's circular ordering of affect words. Lastly, this paper concludes with a Section that outlines the future work for this research.
Identification of a T Cell Receptor Chain Variable Region , V / 320 , That Is Differentially Expressed in Various Strains of Mice

A cDNA library of TCR/3 chain transcripts from BALB/c thymocytes was constructed using anchored polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Screening of this library led to the identification of a VB gene segment, V/320, structurally related to V/33 and V1317. Genomic analysis of mice displaying deletions in their V/3 loci, together with mapping of cosmid clones, situated V/320 2.5 kb beside VB17. The expression of VB20 was estimated by PCR in mice of different H-2 and Mls types. Peripheral T cells from H-2 k and H-2 d mice did not express V/320, whereas in I-E-negative mice (C57B1/6 and SJL), V/320 transcripts were detected. The lack of V/320 transcripts in (C57B1/6 x CBA/J)F1, (C57B1/6 x BALB/c)F1, and in congenic B6.H-2 k mice suggests that the differential use of V/320 is due to an I-E-mediated donal deletion process. The involvement of the Mls super antigens was excluded by analysis of all Mls type combinations. The nature of the V/B20-deleting element(s) is discussed in the context of the I-EAuperantigen systems controlling the expression of V/311 and VB17.
Droplet: A Distributed Solution of Data Deduplication

Creating backup copies is the most commonly used technique to protect from data loss. In order to increase reliability, doing routinely backup is a best practice. Such backup activities will create multiple redundant data streams which is not economic to be directly stored on disk. Similarly, enterprise archival systems usually deal with redundant data, which needs to be stored for later accessing. Deduplication is an essential technique used under these situations, which could avoid storing identical data segments, and thus saves a significant portion of disk usage. Also, recent studies have shown that deduplication could also effectively reduce the disk space used to store virtual machine (VM) disk images. We present droplet, a distributed deduplication storage system that has been designed for high throughput and scalability. Droplet strips input data streams onto multiple storage nodes, thus limits number of stored data segments on each node and ensures the fingerprint index could be fitted into memory. The in-memory finger index avoids the disk bottleneck discussed in Data Domain, ChunkStash and provides excellent lookup performance. The buffering layer in droplet provides good write performance for small data segments. Compression on date segments reduces disk usage one step further.
Sorting of endocytosed transferrin and asialoglycoprotein occurs immediately after internalization in HepG2 cells

After receptor-mediated uptake, asialoglycoproteins are routed to lysosomes, while transferrin is returned to the medium as apotransferrin. This sorting process was analyzed using 3,3'- diaminobenzidine (DAB) cytochemistry, followed by Percoll density gradient cell fractionation. A conjugate of asialoorosomucoid (ASOR) and horseradish peroxidase (HRP) was used as a ligand for the asialoglycoprotein receptor. Cells were incubated at 0 degree C in the presence of both 131I-transferrin and 125I-ASOR/HRP. Endocytosis of prebound 125I-ASOR/HRP and 131I-transferrin was monitored by cell fractionation on Percoll density gradients. Incubation of the cell homogenate in the presence of DAB and H2O2 before cell fractionation gave rise to a density shift of 125I-ASOR/HRP-containing vesicles due to HRP-catalyzed DAB polymerization. An identical change in density for 125I-transferrin and 125I-ASOR/HRP, induced by DAB cytochemistry, is taken as evidence for the concomitant presence of both ligands in the same compartment. At 37 degrees C, sorting of the two ligands occurred with a half-time of approximately 2 min, and was nearly completed within 10 min. The 125I-ASOR/HRP-induced shift of 131I-transferrin was completely dependent on the receptor-mediated uptake of 125I-ASOR/HRP in the same compartment. In the presence of a weak base (0.3 mM primaquine), the recycling of transferrin receptors was blocked. The cell surface transferrin receptor population was decreased within 6 min to 15% of its original size. DAB cytochemistry showed that sorting between endocytosed 131I-transferrin and 125I-ASOR/HRP was also blocked in the presence of primaquine. These results indicate that transferrin and asialoglycoprotein are taken up via the same compartments and that segregation of the transferrin-receptor complex and asialoglycoprotein occurs very efficiently soon after uptake.
Distributed Beamforming for Wireless Sensor Networks With Improved Graph Connectivity and Energy Efficiency

As the nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are independent units, an intensive communication among them is required to generate a common signal and synchronize before entering a distributed beamforming (DBF) phase. Therefore, it is crucial to select the participating nodes in DBF such that not only the resulting beampattern meets the beamforming design requirements but also the internode connectivity is retained. We consider a DBF technique for WSNs with uniformly distributed nodes and derive an average beampattern expression for a general scenario wherein the participating nodes in DBF are located on a ring with arbitrary inner and outer radii. It is proved that increasing the ring inner radius from zero to a value close to the ring outer radius, the width of the average beampattern mainlobe continuously decreases. Further, it is shown that selecting the nodes from a neighborhood close to a disc perimeter, that is, choosing the nodes from the narrow ring adjacent to the inner side of the disc boundary, facilitates a substantial decrease in the network energy waste and the node isolation probability compared to the case that the nodes are randomly selected from the whole disc. A simple approximate expression for the average beampattern is obtained in the case where the nodes are selected from a narrow ring and is used to derive the sidelobes' null and peak positions as well as a tight lower bound on the average beampattern directivity. The proposed technique is then extended to the case where the nodes are located on multiple concentric rings and the set of rings' radii are derived that guarantee an average beampattern null at a required position while substantially decreasing the sidelobe peak levels compared to the single-ring case. Finally, an average beampattern expression is obtained in the case that the nodes' signals are contaminated by noise to show that most properties of the average beampattern in the noise-free signal case carry over to the noisy signal scenario.
SmartPrint: A Cloud Print System for Office

In this paper we present a middleware named SmartPrint to provide cloud print service in office, where many heterogeneous networks exist. The goal of the system is to shield the communication heterogeneity of the devices in the office and make authorized users freely connect to all the printers with no modification on their terminals. SmartPrint can manages all the printers in an office building, and it provides friendly service for the users who know nothing about the printers. SmartPrint can also automatically choose printers for the office staffs. We propose and implement two printer allocation methods, one aims to improve the experience of the user with short print job, and the other is a multiple attributes decision algorithm which considers all factors including spatial information that impact the user experiences. Through experiments we validate the methods, and prove that SmartPrint achieves high user satisfaction from collected real data.
Evolutionary Analyses of ABC Transporters of Dictyostelium discoideum

ABSTRACT The ABC superfamily of genes is one of the largest in the genomes of both bacteria and eukaryotes. The proteins encoded by these genes all carry a characteristic 200- to 250-amino-acid ATP-binding cassette that gives them their family name. In bacteria they are mostly involved in nutrient import, while in eukaryotes many are involved in export. Seven different families have been defined in eukaryotes based on sequence homology, domain topology, and function. While only 6 ABC genes in Dictyostelium discoideum have been studied in detail previously, sequences from the well-advanced Dictyostelium genome project have allowed us to recognize 68 members of this superfamily. They have been classified and compared to animal, plant, and fungal orthologs in order to gain some insight into the evolution of this superfamily. It appears that many of the genes inferred to have been present in the ancestor of the crown organisms duplicated extensively in some but not all phyla, while others were lost in one lineage or the other.