Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
HD 147506b: A Supermassive Planet in an Eccentric Orbit Transiting a Bright Star

We report the discovery of a massive (Mp = 9.04 ± 0.50 MJ) planet transiting the bright (V = 8.7) F8 star HD 147506, with an orbital period of 5.63341 ± 0.00013 days and an eccentricity of e = 0.520 ± 0.010. From the transit light curve we determine that the radius of the planet is Rp = 0.982 RJ. HD 147506b (also coined HAT-P-2b) has a mass about 9 times the average mass of previously known transiting exoplanets and a density of ρp ≈ 12 g cm-3, greater than that of rocky planets like the Earth. Its mass and radius are marginally consistent with theories of structure of massive giant planets composed of pure H and He, and accounting for them may require a large (≳100 M⊕) core. The high eccentricity causes a ninefold variation of insolation of the planet between peri- and apastron. Using follow-up photometry, we find that the center of transit is Tmid = 2,454,212.8559 ± 0.0007 (HJD) and the transit duration is 0.177 ± 0.002 days.
Lipopolysaccharide Specific Immunochromatography Based Lateral Flow Assay for Serogroup Specific Diagnosis of Leptospirosis in India

Background Leptospirosis is a re-emerging infectious disease that is under-recognized due to low-sensitivity and cumbersome serological tests. MAT is the gold standard test and it is the only serogroup specific test used till date. Rapid reliable alternative serogroup specific tests are needed for surveillance studies to identify locally circulating serogroups in the study area. Methods/Principal Findings In the present investigation the serological specificity of leptospiral lipopolysaccharides (LPS) was evaluated by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), dot blot assay and rapid immunochromatography based lateral flow assay (ICG-LFA). Sera samples from 120 MAT positive cases, 174 cases with febrile illness other than leptospirosis, and 121 seronegative healthy controls were evaluated for the diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of the developed assays. LPS was extracted from five locally predominant circulating serogroups including: Australis (27.5%), Autumnalis (11.7%), Ballum (25.8%), Grippotyphosa (12.5%), Pomona (10%) and were used as antigens in the diagnostics to detect IgM antibodies in patients’ sera. The sensitivity observed by IgM ELISA and dot blot assay using various leptospiral LPS was >90% for homologous sera. Except for Ballum LPS, no other LPS showed cross-reactivity to heterologous sera. An attempt was made to develop LPS based ICG-LFA for rapid and sensitive serogroup specific diagnostics of leptospirosis. The developed ICG-LFA showed sensitivity in the range between 93 and 100% for homologous sera. The Wilcoxon analysis showed LPS based ICG-LFA did not differ significantly from the gold standard MAT (P>0.05). Conclusion The application of single array of LPS for serogroup specific diagnosis is first of its kind. The developed assay could potentially be evaluated and employed for as MAT alternative.
Crosslinking of surface immunoglobulin and Fc receptors on B lymphocytes inhibits stimulation of inositol phospholipid breakdown via the antigen receptors

F(ab')2 fragments of rabbit anti-mouse Ig induce proliferation of murine B lymphocytes, whereas the intact antibodies are not mitogenic. F(ab')2 anti-Ig stimulates the rapid breakdown of inositol phospholipids in B cells, resulting in the prolonged release of inositol (poly)phosphates and diacylglycerol. In marked contrast, intact anti-Ig initially induces a comparable response, which is abrogated after some 30 s. Blocking either the Fc receptors on the B cells or the Fc portion of the antibodies significantly reversed the inhibitory effect. On the other hand, both forms of anti-Ig elicited comparable increases in free cytoplasmic Ca2+ levels in B cells. These results therefore indicate that crosslinkage of Fc and surface Ig receptors on B cells inhibits inositol phospholipid breakdown (but not Ca2+ flux) resulting from ligation of the antigen receptors. Since there is evidence implicating inositol phospholipid breakdown in the induction of cell growth, this effect could provide a biochemical explanation for the known capacity of antigen-antibody complexes to inhibit B cell activation.
Females drive primate social evolution

Within and across species of primates, the number of males in primate groups is correlated with the number of females. This correlation may arise owing to ecological forces operating on females, with subsequent competition among males for access to groups of females. The temporal relationship between changes in male and female group membership remains unexplored in primates and other mammalian groups. We used a phylogenetic comparative method for detecting evolutionary lag to test whether evolutionary change in the number of males lags behind change in the number of females. We found that change in male membership in primate groups is positively correlated with divergence time in pairwise comparisons. This result is consistent with male numbers adjusting to female group size and highlights the importance of focusing on females when studying primate social evolution.
A supervisory fuzzy neural network control system for tracking periodic inputs

A supervisory fuzzy neural network (FNN) control system is designed to track periodic reference inputs in this study. The control system is composed of a permanent magnet (PM) synchronous servo motor drive with a supervisory FNN position controller. The supervisory FNN controller comprises a supervisory controller, which is designed to stabilize the system states around a defined bound region and an FNN sliding-mode controller, which combines the advantages of the sliding-mode control with robust characteristics and the FNN with online learning ability. The theoretical and stability analyses of the supervisory FNN controller are discussed in detail. Simulation and experimental results show that the proposed control system is robust with regard to plant parameter variations and external load disturbance. Moreover, the advantages of the proposed control system are indicated in comparison with the sliding-mode control system.
Random Generation of 2-Connected Graphs

Enumerating combinatorial objects is an important research topic in combinatorics. Algorithms for random generating combinatorial objects are called sampling. Sampling has many applications in computer science. We describe a simple algorithm to generate 2-connected graphs based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. This algorithm generates graphs at approximately uniform distribution, and we prove it is rapidly mixing.
On the nonexistence of Einstein metric on 4-manifolds

By using the gluing formulae of the Seiberg-Witten invariant, we show the nonexistence of Einstein metric on manifolds obtained from a 4-manifold with nontrivial Seiberg-Witten invariant by performing sufficiently many connected sums or appropriate surgeries along circles or homologically trivial 2-spheres with closed oriented 4-manifolds with negative definite intersection form.
Vowel and consonant confusions from spectrally manipulated stimuli designed to simulate poor cochlear implant electrode-neuron interfacesa)

Suboptimal interfaces between cochlear implant (CI) electrodes and auditory neurons result in a loss or distortion of spectral information in specific frequency regions, which likely decreases CI users' speech identification performance. This study exploited speech acoustics to model regions of distorted CI frequency transmission to determine the perceptual consequences of suboptimal electrode-neuron interfaces. Normal hearing adults identified naturally spoken vowels and consonants after spectral information was manipulated through a noiseband vocoder: either (1) low-, middle-, or high-frequency regions of information were removed by zeroing the corresponding channel outputs, or (2) the same regions were distorted by splitting filter outputs to neighboring filters. These conditions simulated the detrimental effects of suboptimal CI electrode-neuron interfaces on spectral transmission. Vowel and consonant confusion patterns were analyzed with sequential information transmission, perceptual distance, and perceptual vowel space analyses. Results indicated that both types of spectral manipulation were equally destructive. Loss or distortion of frequency information produced similar effects on phoneme identification performance and confusion patterns. Consonant error patterns were consistently based on place of articulation. Vowel confusions showed that perceptions gravitated away from the degraded frequency region in a predictable manner, indicating that vowels can probe frequency-specific regions of spectral degradations.
Distribution of Nidogen in the Murine Eye and Ocular Phenotype of the Nidogen-1 Knockout Mouse

Distribution and lack of nidogen-1, part of numerous basement membranes, were studied in the mouse eye. For that purpose, eyes of C57BL/6 and nidogen-1 knockout mice were stained immunohistochemically for nidogen-1, and intraocular pressure measurements and light- and electron microscopy were used to study the nidogen-1 knockout animals. In normal mice, nidogen-1 was present in many basement membranes, but showed irregularities underneath the corneal epithelium, in Bruch's membrane and in the iris. Homozygous knockout of nidogen-1 in the mouse showed only mild pathological changes. In the anterior eye segment, small interruptions were noted in the nonpigmented ciliary epithelium without further consequences. In the posterior eye segment, interruptions of the inner limiting membrane led to small retinal ectopias and subsequent changes in the optic nerve. In summary, the knockout of nidogen-1 showed mild but significant morphological changes pointing to the importance of this protein which can in part, but not completely; be replaced by nidogen-2.
Blind Microphone Analysis and Stable Tone Phase Analysis for Audio Tampering Detection

In this paper, we present an audio tampering detection method, based on the combination of blind microphone analysis and phase analysis of stable tones, e.g., the electrical network frequency (ENF). The proposed algorithm uses phase analysis to detect segments that might have been tampered: These segments are further analyzed using a feature vector able to discriminate among different microphone types. Using this combined approach, it is possible to achieve a significantly lower false-positive rate and higher reliability as compared to standalone phase analysis.
Introducing computer programming via gameboy advance homebrew

This paper describes our work motivating a group of students (grades 5-8) to learn real-world computer programming by introducing them to homebrew development for the Nintendo Gameboy Advance (GBA) and DS (NDS) systems using C. Students use a freely available professional toolchain (devkitPro) for development. A custom application was written that allowed the students to easily create their own tilesets (sprites and background maps) and quickly get started building their first ROMs. A series of tutorials was created to complement the program and help the students through the creation of their first game.
Individual predictions based on nonlinear mixed modeling: application to prenatal twin growth

The assessment of growth during fetal life and childhood commonly relies upon cross'sectional reference ranges or centiles. However, individual sequential predictions may help the timewise assessment of a growth process. In twin pregnancies for example, which are at risk of growth restriction, such predictions may improve the detection of abnormal trajectories. In this article, we present a simple forecasting method, assuming that a given normal individual behaves in the same way as a reference population. We consider, as a prediction in a given individual, the forecast of a future observation conditional to any previous observation and a set of population parameters obtained by nonlinear mixed modeling in a reference population. We suggest an estimator for this prediction without resorting to linear approximation and show that it enjoys interesting asymptotics when the amount of observations increases over time. We use two independent real datasets of twin pregnancies with normal growth and outcome to illustrate the application of such predictions in prenatal growth. We consider the first dataset as a reference dataset and model it using a two'level nonlinear model. We perform illustration and validation of predictions on the second dataset. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A Run-Time Memory Protection Methodology

In this paper we present a novel methodology to help debug memory corruption errors during application debug. In this methodology an optimal balance between hardware and software instrumentation is chosen to check at run-time all memory accesses made by an application. To achieve this balance a set of benchmark applications is first analyzed to determine their memory access patterns. The analysis results are used to make our approach low-cost both from a software performance penalty and a hardware area point-of-view. Experimental results show that our innovative approach typically requires less than 2% of a CPU in silicon area for a less than 1% run-time performance overhead. Our method is both low-cost and applicable to high performance microprocessors as well as time-constrained embedded systems.
Prospects for Reducing Nitrogen Fertilizer Pollution through Genetic Engineering

Doug Gurian-Sherman and Noel Gurwick are senior scientists in the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) Food and Environment Program. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices. The goal of the UCS Food and Environment Program is a food system that encourages innovative and environmentally sustainable ways to produce high-quality, safe, and affordable food, while ensuring that citizens have a voice in how their food is grown.
Centering Theory in Discourse

PART I. GOALS OF CENTERING PART II. UTTERANCE-LEVEL ISSUES IN CENTERING PART III. CENTERING AS A CROSS-LINGUISTIC UNIVERSAL PART IV. THE ROLE OF CENTERING IN PROCESSING MODELS OF DISCOURSE PART V. INFORMATION STRUCTURE AND CENTERING PART VI. DISCOURSE STRUCTURE AND CENTERING
How to Induce the Beholder to Persuade Himself: Learning from Advertising Research for Information Visualization

Research on the interplay of cognition and effect in the interpretation of visuals has made significant theoretical advances. This literature review highlights three themes which have emerged in advertising research. First it looks at the determinants constituting and influencing 'likeability'- the best predictor of advertisement effectiveness. Second it presents evidence how emotional advertising frames and shapes perception and how it could influence persuasion. Finally it discusses the role of 'co-authoring' in the interpretation of visuals and how it does affect persuasion over the emotional route.
Grand Challenge: High Performance Top-K Processing of Non-Linear Windows over Data Streams

This year’s DEBS Grand Challenge oﬀers two very challenging queries over social networks data. These queries – each for a diﬀerent reason – cannot be handled by traditional techniques and therefore call for the development of a speciﬁc architecture and data structures. In the ﬁrst query, the novelty is the non-linearity of the expiration of the elements. Since a traditional sliding window is not suitable, we investigate here the data structures oﬀering the best tradeoﬀs for all the required operations. In the second query, unlike traditional approaches where no persistent data is stored over the stream, we have to manage a friendship graph which is persistent throughout the system execution. Due to the centrality of this structure, a careful design is therefore required. The common point of the algorithmic approaches that we developed for both queries, is the overwhelming usage of bounds – upper and lower –, in order execute expensive computations only when required. We devise, for the Query 1, a bound based on the score decay. For the Query 2, we use Turan’s theorem to limit the clique computation. The combination of lazy evaluation, careful implementation and thorough testing lead to the realization of an eﬃcient streaming process system.
Improving VQ Index Compression with Modified Relative Index Table

Image Vector Quantization (VQ) has many current applications, like speech and image compression, and envisioned applications, such as digital watermarking, data hiding and speaker identification. Given an image, VQ produce an index map by quantizing the image block by block. Recently, a loss less VQ index compression scheme, called Index Searching Algorithm with index Associated List (ISAIAL), was proposed to improve the VQ performance by using relative index table. The basic idea behind ISAIAL is to utilize the effect of correlation between adjacent indices in the index map. In this paper, two modified relative index tables are proposed to improve the performance of ISAIAL further. The computation of optimal size for modified relative index tables is also addressed. The proposed methods were evaluated via extensive experiments. The results show that the ISAIAL is improved by the proposed methods. Moreover, our approaches apparently reduce the bit rate as compared to the conventional VQ and some commercial loss less compressors, such as rar, zip and arj.
Acute Regulation of Cardiac Metabolism by the Hexosamine Biosynthesis Pathway and Protein O-GlcNAcylation

Objective The hexosamine biosynthesis pathway (HBP) flux and protein O-linked N-acetyl-glucosamine (O-GlcNAc) levels have been implicated in mediating the adverse effects of diabetes in the cardiovascular system. Activation of these pathways with glucosamine has been shown to mimic some of the diabetes-induced functional and structural changes in the heart; however, the effect on cardiac metabolism is not known. Therefore, the primary goal of this study was to determine the effects of glucosamine on cardiac substrate utilization. Methods Isolated rat hearts were perfused with glucosamine (0–10 mM) to increase HBP flux under normoxic conditions. Metabolic fluxes were determined by 13C-NMR isotopomer analysis; UDP-GlcNAc a precursor of O-GlcNAc synthesis was assessed by HPLC and immunoblot analysis was used to determine O-GlcNAc levels, phospho- and total levels of AMPK and ACC, and membrane levels of FAT/CD36. Results Glucosamine caused a dose dependent increase in both UDP-GlcNAc and O-GlcNAc levels, which was associated with a significant increase in palmitate oxidation with a concomitant decrease in lactate and pyruvate oxidation. There was no effect of glucosamine on AMPK or ACC phosphorylation; however, membrane levels of the fatty acid transport protein FAT/CD36 were increased and preliminary studies suggest that FAT/CD36 is a potential target for O-GlcNAcylation. Conclusion/Interpretation These data demonstrate that acute modulation of HBP and protein O-GlcNAcylation in the heart stimulates fatty acid oxidation, possibly by increasing plasma membrane levels of FAT/CD36, raising the intriguing possibility that the HBP and O-GlcNAc turnover represent a novel, glucose dependent mechanism for regulating cardiac metabolism.
Logics of Decision-making on Community Asylum Policy: A Case Study of the Evolvement of the Dublin II Regulation

This case study of the evolvement of the so-called Dublin II Regulation on asylum demonstrates the role of Council-specific informal rules and procedures in facilitating intergovernmental agreement. The paper addresses a Rationalist "puzzle", namely the question why the Justice and Home Affairs Council reached political agreement on Dublin II in spite of the Regulation's likely redistributive effects on the number of asylum applications processed by individual Member States. The empirical material suggests that issue-linkage, informal decision-making procedures, and a strong reluctance on the part of Council members to exercise their right to veto are jointly sufficient conditions for reaching political agreement.
Temporal Cluster Migration Matrices for Web Usage Mining

Time can play a crucial role in the analysis of web usage. Temporal data mining has been an active area of research. However, there is little work on the analysis of cluster memberships over time. Typical clustering operations in web mining involve finding natural groupings of web resources or web users. Changes in clusters can provide important clues about the changing nature of the usage of a web site, as well as changing loyalties of web users. This paper addresses two different types of temporal changes in cluster analysis. The changes in cluster compositions over time and changes in cluster memberships of individual web users. The paper also proposes the concept of temporal cluster migration matrices (TCMM). The proposed matrices are shown to be useful for analyzing the changing nature of a web site as well as changing patronages of individual web users. TCMM can be used as a visualization technique to study results obtained from temporal data mining, which can be more complex because of the additional time dimension.
Software engineering education: where's the appliance of science?

Classically, the focus of degree courses in engineering has been primarily on the teaching of applied science, but there has been much less emphasis on this for software engineering. This paper therefore examines the relationships between courses in software engineering and other branches of engineering, and particularly the balance within them between science and its applications. It discusses the extent to which the content and teaching methods of software engineering degree courses need to change in order to correct this balance, so as to bring them more into line with educational practice in other branches of engineering. The guiding principle is proposed that both the scientific content and the teaching methods need to reflect the importance of the modelling process in the application of formal methods within software engineering. The discussion is mainly oriented towards undergraduate courses, but the principles are applicable to postgraduate courses as well.
Changes in Corn Acreage and Production After the Early Indications

Early-season indications of corn acreage and production are important to farmers, to processors, and to the Government. This article compares the earliest indication of corn acreage and production each season with the actual outcome of the crop as estimated in December. During the last two or three decades, more than 80 percent of the year-to-year variation in corn acreage has been reflected in the Mare? , 1 intentions, and about 60 percent of the variation in corn production has been reflected in the July 1 indications. But 40 percent of the variation in corn production has been determined after July 1, and decisions based on July indications must allow for this remaining uncertainty. In general, the range of uncertainty is reduced substantially by the August and September crop reports. The September estimates have differed from the December estimates by less than 100 million bushels in 20 of the last 32 years.