Consumers’ perception on human-like artificial intelligence devices

The presence of Artificial Intelligence in our everyday life has become one of the most debated topics nowadays. In opposition to the past, nowadays, in the age of broadband connectivity, it is difficult for individuals to imagine their everyday life, at work or in their spare time, without computers, internet, mobile applications or other devices. Most of these devices have had a contribution to the improvement of our everyday life by being more efficient and having a higher convenience. Few people are aware of the fact that, by continuously developing and improving these technologies, they might become more intelligent than we are and that they will have the potential to control us. In the attempt to make these devices friendlier to consumers, they have started to take human-like aspect and even having own identities. We have nowadays call center answering machines with names or robots with names and citizenship. The objective of this article is to determine the acceptance and preference of consumers for personalized or human-like robots or devices. For four different cases, the respondents had to choose between a classic device and a human-like robot. The results of the research show, with a high significance, that consumers still prefer the classic devices over anthropomorphic robots

From testimony to memory: gender and racial identity in Portuguese women’s post-colonial literature and cinema

From Testimony to Memory: Gender and Racial Identity in Portuguese Women’s Post-Colonial Literature and Cinema investigates post-colonial cultural encounters in a series of literary, cinematographic and artistic productions belonging to two generations of Portuguese female writers and directors, pointing out the tensions between these generations in their construction of identity through the prism of social class, gender and race. The first three chapters explore Lídia Jorge’s A Costa dos Murmúrios (1988) and Teolinda Gersão’s A Árvore das Palavras (1997), two novels representative of the Portuguese experience of Africa that shaped the construction of female identity during the Estado Novo. Each chapter is centred on the analysis of social, gender and racial identity, exposing the tensions between the recording of history and the role of memory. The second part shifts from literature to cinema and theatrical performance, concentrating on the works of three contemporary directors, Filipa César, Margarida Cardoso and Joana Craveiro. The analysis includes Filipa César’s feature-film Spell Reel (2017) and short-films Conakry (2013), Mined Soil (2014) and Compost Archive (2016), Margarida Cardoso’s documentaries Natal 71 (1999) and Kuxa Kanema (2003) and feature-film Yvone Kane (2014), and Joana Craveiro’s 2017 practice-as-research doctoral thesis and the accompanying theatrical performance, A Live/Living Museum of Small, Forgotten and Unwanted Memories – Performing Narratives, Testimonies and Archives of the Portuguese Dictatorship and Revolution. Concentrating on questions of memory transmission and the legitimacy of official history, the last three chapters explore the use of archive, the critique of power and the shift in social, gender and racial perspective in these works. As the focus switches from testimony to memory between the two generations, my research addresses the tensions between these generations of women and the way in which their optics change, exploring the similarities and the differences between the two generations in their portrayal of identity

The MASSIVE Survey XIII -- Spatially Resolved Stellar Kinematics in the Central 1 kpc of 20 Massive Elliptical Galaxies with the GMOS-North Integral-Field Spectrograph

We use observations from the GEMINI-N/GMOS integral-field spectrograph (IFS) to obtain spatially resolved stellar kinematics of the central $\sim 1$ kpc of 20 early-type galaxies (ETGs) with stellar masses greater than $10^{11.7} M_\odot$ in the MASSIVE survey. Together with observations from the wide-field Mitchell IFS at McDonald Observatory in our earlier work, we obtain unprecedentedly detailed kinematic maps of local massive ETGs, covering a scale of $\sim 0.1-30$ kpc. The high ($\sim 120$) signal-to-noise of the GMOS spectra enable us to obtain two-dimensional maps of the line-of-sight velocity, velocity dispersion $\sigma$, as well as the skewness $h_3$ and kurtosis $h_4$ of the stellar velocity distributions. All but one galaxy in the sample have $\sigma(R)$ profiles that increase towards the center, whereas the slope of $\sigma(R)$ at one effective radius ($R_e$) can be of either sign. The $h_4$ is generally positive, with 14 of the 20 galaxies having positive $h_4$ within the GMOS aperture and 18 having positive $h_4$ within $1 R_e$. The positive $h_4$ and rising $\sigma(R)$ towards small radii are indicative of a central black hole and velocity anisotropy. We demonstrate the constraining power of the data on the mass distributions in ETGs by applying Jeans anisotropic modeling (JAM) to NGC~1453, the most regular fast rotator in the sample. Despite the limitations of JAM, we obtain a clear $\chi^2$ minimum in black hole mass, stellar mass-to-light ratio, velocity anisotropy parameters, and the circular velocity of the dark matter halo.Comment: Accepted to Ap

Special Topics on Map Meshing in Turbomachinery

The purpose of this paper is to present various kinds of options as regards the computational mesh generation that is required by the analysis of flow in axial turbomachinery (compressors and turbines). Specific cases of interest as both the rotating and fixed blade row profiles and axial stage are focused. There were highlighted the very best options of mesh generation that lead to a good level of computational accuracy. Therefore, one may consider this paper as a successful attempt to be a useful guide of the first steps in computational analysis of flow in turbomachinery

Photometric variability of candidate white dwarf binary systems from Palomar Transient Factory archival data

We present a sample of 59 periodic variables from the Palomar Transient Factory, selected from published catalogues of white dwarf (WD) candidates. The variability can likely be attributed to ellipsoidal variation of the tidally distorted companion induced by the gravity of the primary (WD or hot subdwarf) or to the reflection of hot emission by a cooler companion. We searched 11311 spectroscopically or photometrically selected WD candidates from three hot star/WD catalogues, using the Lomb-Scargle periodogram to single out promising sources. We present period estimates for the candidates, 45 of which were not previously identified as periodic variables, and find that most have a period shorter than a few days. Additionally, we discuss the eclipsing systems in our sample and present spectroscopic data on selected sources

The MASSIVE Survey - X. Misalignment between Kinematic and Photometric Axes and Intrinsic Shapes of Massive Early-Type Galaxies

We use spatially resolved two-dimensional stellar velocity maps over a $107"\times 107"$ field of view to investigate the kinematic features of 90 early-type galaxies above stellar mass $10^{11.5}M_\odot$ in the MASSIVE survey. We measure the misalignment angle $\Psi$ between the kinematic and photometric axes and identify local features such as velocity twists and kinematically distinct components. We find 46% of the sample to be well aligned ($\Psi < 15^{\circ}$), 33% misaligned, and 21% without detectable rotation (non-rotators). Only 24% of the sample are fast rotators, the majority of which (91%) are aligned, whereas 57% of the slow rotators are misaligned with a nearly flat distribution of $\Psi$ from $15^{\circ}$ to $90^{\circ}$. 11 galaxies have $\Psi \gtrsim 60^{\circ}$ and thus exhibit minor-axis ("prolate") rotation in which the rotation is preferentially around the photometric major axis. Kinematic misalignments occur more frequently for lower galaxy spin or denser galaxy environments. Using the observed misalignment and ellipticity distributions, we infer the intrinsic shape distribution of our sample and find that MASSIVE slow rotators are consistent with being mildly triaxial, with mean axis ratios of $b/a=0.88$ and $c/a=0.65$. In terms of local kinematic features, 51% of the sample exhibit kinematic twists of larger than $20^{\circ}$, and 2 galaxies have kinematically distinct components. The frequency of misalignment and the broad distribution of $\Psi$ reported here suggest that the most massive early-type galaxies are mildly triaxial, and that formation processes resulting in kinematically misaligned slow rotators such as gas-poor mergers occur frequently in this mass range.Comment: Accepted to MNRA

The MASSIVE Survey. VI. The spatial sistribution and kinematics of warm ionized gas in the most massive local early-type galaxies

We present the first systematic investigation of the existence, spatial distribution, and kinematics of warm ionized gas as traced by the [O ii] 3727 Å emission line in 74 of the most massive galaxies in the local universe. All of our galaxies have deep integral-field spectroscopy from the volume- and magnitude-limited MASSIVE survey of early-type galaxies with stellar mass $\mathrm{log}({M}_{* }/{M}_{\odot })\gt 11.5$ (M K < −25.3 mag) and distance D < 108 Mpc. Of the 74 galaxies in our sample, we detect warm ionized gas in 28, which yields a global detection fraction of 38 ± 6% down to a typical [O ii] equivalent width limit of 2 Å. MASSIVE fast rotators are more likely to have gas than MASSIVE slow rotators with detection fractions of 80 ± 10% and 28 ± 6%, respectively. The spatial extents span a wide range of radii (0.6–18.2 kpc; 0.1–4R e ), and the gas morphologies are diverse, with 17/28 ≈ 61 ± 9% being centrally concentrated, 8/28 ≈ 29 ± 9% exhibiting clear rotation out to several kiloparsecs, and 3/28 ≈ 11 ± 6% being extended but patchy. Three out of four fast rotators show kinematic alignment between the stars and gas, whereas the two slow rotators with robust kinematic measurements available exhibit kinematic misalignment. Our inferred warm ionized gas masses are roughly ~105 M ⊙. The emission line ratios and radial equivalent width profiles are generally consistent with excitation of the gas by the old underlying stellar population. We explore different gas origin scenarios for MASSIVE galaxies and find that a variety of physical processes are likely at play, including internal gas recycling, cooling out of the hot gaseous halo, and gas acquired via mergers

Photometric variability of candidate white dwarf binary systems from Palomar Transient Factory archival data

We present a sample of 59 periodic variables from the Palomar Transient Factory, selected from published catalogues of white dwarf (WD) candidates. The variability can likely be attributed to ellipsoidal variation of the tidally distorted companion induced by the gravity of the primary (WD or hot subdwarf) or to the reflection of hot emission by a cooler companion. We searched 11 311 spectroscopically or photometrically selected WD candidates from three hot star/WD catalogues, using the Lomb–Scargle periodogram to single out promising sources. We present period estimates for the candidates, 45 of which were not previously identified as periodic variables, and find that most have a period shorter than a few days. Additionally, we discuss the eclipsing systems in our sample and present spectroscopic data on selected sources