Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Chandra X-Ray Study of the Globular Cluster M80

We report our analysis of a Chandra X-ray observation of the rich globular cluster M80, in which we detect some 19 sources to a limiting 0.5-2.5 keV X-ray luminosity of 7 × 1030 ergs s-1 within the half-mass radius. X-ray spectra indicate that two of these sources are quiescent low-mass X-ray binaries containing neutron stars. We identify five sources as probable cataclysmic variables (CVs), one of which seems to be heavily absorbed, implying high inclination. The brightest CV may be the X-ray counterpart of nova 1860 T Sco. The concentration of the X-ray sources within the cluster core implies an average mass of 1.2 ± 0.2 M☉, consistent with the binary nature of these systems and very similar to the radial distribution of the blue stragglers in this cluster. The X-ray and blue straggler source populations in M80 are compared to those in the similar globular cluster 47 Tuc.
Stereo mapping and localization for long-range path following on rough terrain

Visual teach-and-repeat navigation enables longrange rover autonomy without solving the simultaneous localization and mapping problem or requiring an accurate global reconstruction. During a learning phase, the rover is piloted along a route, logging images. After post-processing, the rover is able to repeat the route in either direction any number of times. This paper describes and evaluates the localization algorithm at the core of a teach-and-repeat system that has been tested on over 32 kilometers of autonomous driving in an urban environment and at a planetary analog site in the High Arctic. We show how a stereo visual odometry pipeline can be extended to become a mapping and localization system, then evaluate the performance of the algorithm with respect to accuracy, robustness to path-tracking error, and the effects of lighting.
Small-scale spatial variability of sperm and sei whales in relation to oceanographic and topographic features along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

The 2004 Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR)-ECO expedition on the R.V. G.O. Sars provided the first opportunity to correlate oceanic distributions of cetaceans with synoptic acoustic (ADCP to 700m depth, multi-beam echosounders) measurements of high-resolution, three-dimensional (3D) potential habitat (spatial scaleo100 km). The identified habitat features were tested with independent observations from the Icelandic combined cetacean and redfish cruises in 2001 and 2003 using data from a 3D ocean general circulation model of the MAR region (Regional Oceans Modelling System (ROMS) model 5 km resolution). The spatial autocorrelation of sampled encounter rates of sperm Physeter macrocephalus and sei whales Balaenoptera borealis indicated scale-dependent variability in the distribution of both species. Despite the large area surveyed, the observations of both species exhibited a strong small-scale structure (range parameter 20–50 km), indicating affinities to cross-seamount or cross-frontal structures. Potential cross-seamount and crossfrontal habitat structures were derived from the acoustic transect data by analysing fine-scale gradients in the 3D flow patterns and bathymetry, including interactions between frontal and topographic parameters. PLS regression was used to determine the potential habitat drivers of sperm and sei whales, both during the G.O. Sars cruise and during the Icelandic cruises in 2001 and 2003. The selected parameters, which reflected flow gradients interacting with the steep topography, were finally applied for modelling the habitat suitability of both target species along the northern MAR using Ecological Niche Factor Analysis. The results suggest aggregations of sperm and sei whales along the MAR are primarily associated with fine-scale frontal processes interacting with the topography in the upper 100m of the water column just north of the Sub-Polar Front (SPF) and the Charlie–Gibbs Fracture Zone (CGFZ). As moderate and high habitat suitabilities were estimated only for areas downstream from the SPF, the findings suggest that the animals capitalise on secondary production maintained by enhanced primary production associated with the frontal processes in the upper part of the water column in the CGFZ and at the Faraday Seamounts. Further studies are encouraged to evaluate the importance of the bio-physical coupling, and the significance of small-scale frontal processes in the surface and subsurface waters north of the SPF for the transfer of energy to higher trophic levels in the North Atlantic. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
CONFIRMATION OF A HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD IN GRO J1008−57

GRO J1008−57 is a high-mass X-ray binary for which several claims of a cyclotron resonance scattering feature near 80 keV have been reported. We use NuSTAR, Suzaku, and Swift data from its giant outburst of 2012 November to confirm the existence of the 80 keV feature and perform the most sensitive search to date for cyclotron scattering features at lower energies. We find evidence for a 78 keV line in the NuSTAR and Suzaku data at >4σ significance, confirming the detection using Suzaku alone by Yamamoto et al. A search of both the phase-averaged and phase-resolved data rules out a fundamental at lower energies with optical depth larger than 5% of the 78 keV line. These results indicate that GRO J1008−57 has a magnetic field of 6.7 × 1012(1 + z) G, the highest among known accreting pulsars.
Aalborg Universitet On Compressed Sensing and the Estimation of Continuous Parameters From Noisy Observations

Compressed sensing (CS) has in recent years become a very popular way of sampling sparse signals. This sparsity is measured with respect to some known dictionary consisting of a finite number of atoms. Most models for real world signals, however, are parametrised by continuous parameters corresponding to a dictionary with an infinite number of atoms. Examples of such parameters are the temporal and spatial frequency. In this paper, we analyse how CS affects the estimation performance of any unbiased estimator when we assume such infinite dictionaries. We base our analysis on the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) which is frequently used for benchmarking the estimation accuracy of unbiased estimators. For the popular sensing matrices such as the Gaussian sensing matrix, our analysis shows that compressed sensing on average degrades the estimation accuracy by at least the down-sample factor.
Integrative Data Mining Highlights Candidate Genes for Monogenic Myopathies

Inherited myopathies are a heterogeneous group of disabling disorders with still barely understood pathological mechanisms. Around 40% of afflicted patients remain without a molecular diagnosis after exclusion of known genes. The advent of high-throughput sequencing has opened avenues to the discovery of new implicated genes, but a working list of prioritized candidate genes is necessary to deal with the complexity of analyzing large-scale sequencing data. Here we used an integrative data mining strategy to analyze the genetic network linked to myopathies, derive specific signatures for inherited myopathy and related disorders, and identify and rank candidate genes for these groups. Training sets of genes were selected after literature review and used in Manteia, a public web-based data mining system, to extract disease group signatures in the form of enriched descriptor terms, which include functional annotation, human and mouse phenotypes, as well as biological pathways and protein interactions. These specific signatures were then used as an input to mine and rank candidate genes, followed by filtration against skeletal muscle expression and association with known diseases. Signatures and identified candidate genes highlight both potential common pathological mechanisms and allelic disease groups. Recent discoveries of gene associations to diseases, like B3GALNT2, GMPPB and B3GNT1 to congenital muscular dystrophies, were prioritized in the ranked lists, suggesting a posteriori validation of our approach and predictions. We show an example of how the ranked lists can be used to help analyze high-throughput sequencing data to identify candidate genes, and highlight the best candidate genes matching genomic regions linked to myopathies without known causative genes. This strategy can be automatized to generate fresh candidate gene lists, which help cope with database annotation updates as new knowledge is incorporated.
Intelligent route guidance: will the new horse be as good as the old?

The human factors of intelligent automobile displays were investigated with emphasis on determining the need for design guidelines. The experiment was designed to examine the relationship between drivers' visual attention and performance under concurrent multitask conditions. Twenty young male and female students with normal vision and a minimum of three years' driving experience were assigned randomly to two groups in a mixed, three-factor experiment. Subjects drove in a moving-base simulator and performed cognitive tasks on a CRT display located on the instrument panel. A spatial perception task and a verbal memory task were designed to place differential demands on cognitive resources. Subjects were instructed to perform their best on the display and driving tasks, giving priority to the driving. Eleven dependent variables provided measures of driving performance, attentional behavior, display task performance, and workload. On-line eye movement sampling indicated whether the subject looked at the roadway or at the computer display. The results indicate that intelligent displays in vehicles can intrude on driving despite the mitigating influence of driver adaptation. Simulation was found to be a sensitive and valid technique for studying human factors issues related to the design of such displays. Intermediate attention variables, more sensitive to experimental manipulations than primary task measures, appear to provide a valid basis upon which ergonomic criteria could be developed. <<ETX>>
Designing a multi-hop regular virtual topology for ultrafast optical packet switching : node placement optimisation and/or dilation minimisation?

This paper studies the design of multi-hop regular virtual topologies to facilitate optical packet switching in networks with arbitrary physical topologies. The inputs to the virtual topology design problem are the physical topology, the traffic matrix and the regular topology. In this paper, this problem is tackled directly and also by decomposition into two sub-problems. The first sub-problem, dilation minimisation, uses only the physical topology and the virtual topology as optimisation inputs. The second sub-problem considers the traffic matrix and virtual topology as optimisation inputs. The solutions of these two sub-problems are compared with each other and against the results obtained when the global problem is optimised (using all three possible input parameters) for a variety of traffic scenarios. This gives insight into the key question of whether the physical topology or the traffic matrix is the more important parameter when designing a regular virtual topology for optical packet switching. Regardless of the approach taken the problem is intractable and hence heuristics must be used to find (near) optimal solutions in reasonable time. Five different optimisation heuristics, using different artificial intelligence techniques, are employed in this paper. The results obtained by the heuristics for the three alternative design approaches are compared under a variety of traffic scenarios. An important conclusion of this paper is that the traffic matrix plays a less significant role than is conventionally assumed, and only a marginal penalty is incurred by disregarding it in several of the traffic cases considered.
USING NEUTRAL WORK IN PREDICTING CORPORATE FAILURE

This study investigates the predictive power of three neutral network models: Multi-layer neural network, probabilistic neural network, and logistic regression model in predicting corporate failure. Basing on the database provided by The Corporate Scorecard Group (CSG), we combine financial ratios which deem to be significant predictors of corporate bankruptcy in many previous empirical studies to build our predictive models and test it against the holdout sample. On comparison of the results, we find that three models are good at predicting probability of corporate failure. Moreover, probabilistic neural network model outperforms the others. Therefore, neutral networks are useful and probabilistic neutral network is a promising tool for the prediction of corporate failure.
Intelligent light control system

The invention discloses an intelligent light control system. A control terminal transmits input constructions of a user to a main controller through wifi (wireless fidelity), the main controller analyzes the instructions and is responsible for transmitting scene data in a memory to a lamp, and a signal receiving and executing center receives controlling electrical signals and executes operations, so that various effects of light can be controlled. Compared with the prior art, the intelligent light control system can control intelligent lamps of various signal sources; solves the problem that the current controller in the market can only simply control effect variation of LED (light-emitting diode) light sources but not lamps with motors; solves the problem that a professional console must be a fixed table type console but can not be implanted into a mobile phone to be perform convenient control; is suitable for not only intelligent home lighting control, but also stage lighting control; can not only perform on-site real-time control, but also enable the user to edit and store various programs which the user like to perform controlling at any time, so that the intelligent control function of achieving multiple purposes through one machine can be achieved easily.
Improving End-to-End Performance of TCP over Mobile Internetworks

Reliable tronsport protocols such as TCP use end-toendflow, congestion, and error control mechanisms to provide reliable delivery over an internetwork. However, the end-to-end performance of a TCP connection con suffer significant degradation in the presence of a wireless link. We are exploring alternatives for optimizing end-to-end performance of TCP connections qcross an internetwork consisting of both fixed and mobile networks. The central idea in our opproach is to tronsparently split an end-to-end connection into two separale connections; one over the wireless link and other over the wired poth. The connection over the wireless link mny either use regulor TCP or a specialized transport protocol optimized for better perfornwtnce over o wireless link. Our approach does not require any changes to the existing protocol software on stationary hosts. Results of a systematic performonce evalustion using both our approoch and regular TCP show that our approach yields significant performance improvements.
Algorithmic attacks and timing leaks in distributed systems

An important class of remotely applicable security attacks oncerns time. You can attack somebody by making their algorithms run in their worstcase behavior rather than common-case behavior. Likewise, the processing time can di sclose a secret. If an attacker can observe the time it takes for somebody to process a reques t, an attacker may learn something about the internal state. The first part of this the is defines a new class of attacks that perform a remote denial of service by deliberately choo sing inputs to make common algorithms slow. These attacks are widespread. We show that vulnerable hash tables are used by Perl and Squid and we illustrate an attack on the Bro ID S. This second part of this thesis analyzes the opportunities for determining a re mot party’s secret by analyzing processing time remotely over the Internet. Our measuremen ts show that an attacker can potentially time a remote host to 300 nanoseconds over a loca l are network and less than 20 microseconds over the Internet.
Linkage and association of myocilin (MYOC) polymorphisms with high myopia in a Chinese population

Purpose To test the association between myocilin gene (MYOC) polymorphisms and high myopia in Hong Kong Chinese by using family-based association study. Methods A total of 162 Chinese nuclear families, consisting of 557 members, were recruited from an optometry clinic. Each family had two parents and at least one offspring with high myopia (defined as -6.00D or less for both eyes). All offspring were healthy with no clinical evidence of syndromic disease and other ocular abnormality. Genotyping was performed for two MYOC microsatellites (NGA17 and NGA19) and five tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) spreading across the gene. The genotype data were analyzed with Family-Based Association Test (FBAT) software to check linkage and association between the genetic markers and myopia, and with GenAssoc to generate case and pseudocontrol subjects for investigating main effects of genetic markers and calculating the genotype relative risks (GRR). Results FBAT analysis showed linkage and association with high myopia for two microsatellites and two SNPs under one to three genetic models after correction for multiple comparisons by false discovery rate. NGA17 at the promoter was significant under an additive model (p=0.0084), while NGA19 at the 3' flanking region showed significant results under both additive (p=0.0172) and dominant (p=0.0053) models. SNP rs2421853 (C>T) exhibited both linkage and association under additive (p=0.0009) and dominant/recessive (p=0.0041) models. SNP rs235858 (T>C) was also significant under additive (p=4.0E-6) and dominant/recessive (p=2.5E-5) models. Both SNPs were downstream of NGA19 at the 3' flanking region. Positive results for these SNPs were novel findings. A stepwise conditional logistic regression analysis of the case-pseudocontrol dataset generated by GenAssoc from the families showed that both SNPs could separately account for the association of NGA17 or NGA19, and that both SNPs contributed separate main effects to high myopia. For rs2421853 and with C/C as the reference genotype, the GRR increased from 1.678 for G/A to 2.738 for A/A (p=9.0E-4, global Wald test). For rs235858 and with G/G as the reference, the GRR increased 2.083 for G/A to 3.931 for A/A (p=2.0E-2, global Wald test). GRR estimates thus suggested an additive model for both SNPs, which was consistent with the finding that, of the three models tested, the additive model gave the lowest p values in FBAT analysis. Conclusions Linkage and association was shown between the MYOC polymorphisms and high myopia in our family-based association study. The SNP rs235858 at the 3' flanking region showed the highest degree of confidence for association.
Actin Microfilament Mediates Osteoblast Cbfa1 Responsiveness to BMP2 under Simulated Microgravity

Microgravity decreases osteoblastic activity, induces actin microfilament disruption and inhibits the responsiveness of osteoblast to cytokines, but the mechanisms remains enigmatic. The F-actin cytoskeleton has previously been implicated in manifold changes of cell shape, function and signaling observed under microgravity. Here we investigate the involvement of microfilament in mediating the effects of microgravity and BMP2 induction on Cbfa1 activity. For this purpose we constructed a fluorescent reporter cell line (OSE-MG63) of Cbfa1 activity by stably transfecting MG63 cells with a reporter consisting of six tandem copies of OSE2 and a minimal mOG2 promoter upstream of enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP). The fluorescence intensity of OSE-MG63 showed responsiveness to bone-related cytokines (IGF-I, vitamin D3 and BMP2) and presented an accordant tendency with alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity. Using OSE-MG63 reporter fluorescence, we performed a semi-quantitative analysis of Cbfa1 activity after treatment with simulated microgravity, microfilament-disrupting agent (cytochalasin B, CB), microfilament-stabilizing agent (Jasplakinolide, JAS) or any combination thereof. In parallel, ALP activity, DNA binding activity of Cbfa1 to OSE2 (ChIP), F-actin structure (immunofluorescence) and EGFP mRNA expression (RT-qPCR) were analyzed. Simulated microgravity inhibited Cbfa1 activity, affected the responsiveness of Cbfa1 to cytokine BMP2, and caused a thinning and dispersed distribution of microfilament. Under normal gravity, CB significantly attenuated BMP2 induction to Cbfa1 activity as well as DNA binding activity of Cbfa1 to OSE2. The addition of JAS reversed the inhibitory effects of microgravity on the responsiveness of Cbfa1 to BMP2. Our study demonstrates that disrupting the microfilament organization by CB or simulated microgravity attenuates the responsiveness of Cbfa1 to BMP2. A stabilization of the microfilament organization by JAS reverses this inhibition. Taken together, these results suggest that actin microfilament participates in BMP2’s induction to Cbfa1 activity and that their disruption might be an important contributor to microgravity’s inhibition on BMP2’s osteogenic induction.
Classification of Fricative Consonants for Speech Enhancement in Hearing Devices

Objective To investigate a set of acoustic features and classification methods for the classification of three groups of fricative consonants differing in place of articulation. Method A support vector machine (SVM) algorithm was used to classify the fricatives extracted from the TIMIT database in quiet and also in speech babble noise at various signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Spectral features including four spectral moments, peak, slope, Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC), Gammatone filters outputs, and magnitudes of fast Fourier Transform (FFT) spectrum were used for the classification. The analysis frame was restricted to only 8 msec. In addition, commonly-used linear and nonlinear principal component analysis dimensionality reduction techniques that project a high-dimensional feature vector onto a lower dimensional space were examined. Results With 13 MFCC coefficients, 14 or 24 Gammatone filter outputs, classification performance was greater than or equal to 85% in quiet and at +10 dB SNR. Using 14 Gammatone filter outputs above 1 kHz, classification accuracy remained high (greater than 80%) for a wide range of SNRs from +20 to +5 dB SNR. Conclusions High levels of classification accuracy for fricative consonants in quiet and in noise could be achieved using only spectral features extracted from a short time window. Results of this work have a direct impact on the development of speech enhancement algorithms for hearing devices.
Want to improve sexual health education for girls? Include body image

Abstract Research suggests body image is related to sexual behaviors, which can impact sexual health across the lifespan. This paper aims to explain the necessity for including body image content in sexuality education to improve outcomes among girls. Our recommendations, supported by theory and empirical research include (a) an assessment of existing curricula; (b) designing new, theoretically-informed curricula; (c) using innovative technology in sex education; (d) rigorous evaluation of existing and new curricula; and (e) revising the National Sexuality Education Standards. These recommendations are discussed after providing the necessary background and rationale.
Unsupervised image segmentation by combining spatially adaptive color and texture features

We propose an image segmentation algorithm that is based on spatially adaptive color and texture features. The features are first developed independently, and then combined to obtain an overall segmentation. We combine a previously proposed adaptive clustering algorithm for color segmentation with a simple but effective texture segmentation approach to obtain an overall image segmentation. Our focus is in the domain of photographic images with an essentially unlimited range of topics. The images are assumed to be of relatively low resolution and may be degraded or compressed.