Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ISM Studies of GRB 030329 with High-Resolution Spectroscopy

We present early Very Large Telescope UV-Visual Echelle Spectrograph (VLT UVES) high-resolution spectra of the afterglow of GRB 030329 at redshift z = 0.16867 ± 0.00001. In contrast to other spectra from this burst, both emission and absorption lines were detected. None of them showed any temporal evolution. From the emission lines, we determine the properties of the host galaxy, which has a star formation rate (SFR) of 0.198 M☉ yr-1 and a low metallicity of 0.17 Z☉. Given the low total stellar host mass log M⋆ = 7.75 ± 0.15 M☉ and an absolute luminosity mB = -16.29, we derive specific SFRs (SSFR) of log SFR = -8.5 yr-1 and SFR = 15.1 M☉ yr-1 L. This fits well into the picture of GRB hosts as being low-mass, low-metallicity, actively star-forming galaxies. The Mg II and Mg I absorption lines from the host show multiple narrow (Doppler width b = 5-12 km s-1) components spanning a range of v ~ 230 km s-1, mainly blueshifted compared to the redshift from the emission lines. These components are likely probing outflowing material of the host galaxy, which could arise from former galactic superwinds, driven by supernovae from star-forming regions. Similar features have been observed in QSO spectra. The outflowing material has high column densities of log NMg II = 13.99 ± 0.04 cm-2 and log NMg I = 12.39 ± 0.04 cm-2 and the nonvariability of the column densities implies a distance of at least 560 pc from the burst, further supporting an outflow scenario.
Fast Full Parsing by Linear-Chain Conditional Random Fields

This paper presents a chunking-based discriminative approach to full parsing. We convert the task of full parsing into a series of chunking tasks and apply a conditional random field (CRF) model to each level of chunking. The probability of an entire parse tree is computed as the product of the probabilities of individual chunking results. The parsing is performed in a bottom-up manner and the best derivation is efficiently obtained by using a depth-first search algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that this simple parsing framework produces a fast and reasonably accurate parser.
A Universal Approach for the Intuitive Control of Mobile Robots using an AR/VR-based Interface

Mobile robots are used in a large field of scenarios, like exploring contaminated areas, repairing oil rigs under water, finding survivors in collapsed buildings, etc. Currently, there is no unified intuitive user interface (UI) to control such complex mobile robots. As a consequence, some scenarios are done without the exploitation of experience and intuition of human teleoperators. A novel framework has been developed to embed a flexible and modular UI into a complete 3-D virtual reality simulation system. This new approach wants to access maximum benefits of human operators. Sensor information received from the robot is prepared for an intuitive visualization. Virtual reality metaphors support the operator in his decisions. These metaphors are integrated into a real time stereo video stream. This approach is not restricted to any specific type of mobile robot and allows for the operation of different robot types with a consistent concept and user interface. Keywords—3-D simulation system, augmented reality, teleoperation of mobile robots, user interface.
Bleeding detection in wireless capsule endoscopy based on color features from histogram probability

This paper presents a novel technique for detecting bleeding regions in capsule endoscopy images. The proposed algorithm extracts color features from image-regions by calculating mean, standard deviation, skew and energy from the first order histogram of the RGB planes separately. Through the use of RGB color space, three times more number of features can be obtained than while using a grayscale image. Such color features have been used in content based retrieval system in pathology images. However, in spite of simplicity and ease of calculation, these features have not yet been studied in the classification of bleeding and non-bleeding regions in capsule endoscopic images. This paper studies the feasibility of using these features by assessing all possible feature subsets through the use of classification accuracy. The proposed algorithm could obtain classification accuracy up to 89%.
AtomNet: A Deep Convolutional Neural Network for Bioactivity Prediction in Structure-based Drug Discovery

Deep convolutional neural networks comprise a subclass of deep neural networks (DNN) with a constrained architecture that leverages the spatial and temporal structure of the domain they model. Convolutional networks achieve the best predictive performance in areas such as speech and image recognition by hierarchically composing simple local features into complex models. Although DNNs have been used in drug discovery for QSAR and ligand-based bioactivity predictions, none of these models have benefited from this powerful convolutional architecture. This paper introduces AtomNet, the first structure-based, deep convolutional neural network designed to predict the bioactivity of small molecules for drug discovery applications. We demonstrate how to apply the convolutional concepts of feature locality and hierarchical composition to the modeling of bioactivity and chemical interactions. In further contrast to existing DNN techniques, we show that AtomNet's application of local convolutional filters to structural target information successfully predicts new active molecules for targets with no previously known modulators. Finally, we show that AtomNet outperforms previous docking approaches on a diverse set of benchmarks by a large margin, achieving an AUC greater than 0.9 on 57.8% of the targets in the DUDE benchmark.
Gigerenzer Do Icon Arrays Help Reduce Denominator Neglect ?

Background and Objective. Denominator neglect is the focus on the number of times a target event has happened (e.g., the number of treated and nontreated patients who die) without considering the overall number of opportunities for it to happen (e.g., the overall number of treated and nontreated patients). In 2 studies, we addressed the effect of denominator neglect in problems involving treatment risk reduction where samples of treated and non-treated patients and the relative risk reduction were of different sizes. We also tested whether using icon arrays helps people take these different sample sizes into account. We especially focused on older adults, who are often more disadvantaged when making decisions about their health. Design. Study 1 was conducted on a laboratory sample using a within-subjects design; study 2 was conducted on a nonstudent sample interviewed through the Web using a between-subjects design. Outcome Measures. Accuracy
Forecasting Financial Time Series with Correlation Matrix Memories for Tactical Asset Allocation

High frequency forecasts have always been considered di cult to generate and generation of forecast distributions instead of point forecasts has always been desired by the practitioners in asset allocation and investment management elds. This thesis looks at the problem of high frequency forecast generation by extending the traditional nonlinear dynamics technique by Farmer and Sidorowich and implementing it in a new connectionist architecture based on Correlation Matrix Memories. The architecture employs distribution generation and produces point forecasts as maximum probability points. Distributions are generated from nearest neighbour interpolations by a Bayesian technique. Testing of the architecture's utility has been performed by looking at a selection of representative time series including currency, index and commodity series and their forecast implied e ciency which was compared to standard e ciency estimates. E ciency was measured with respect to Henriksson{Merton measure and the average directional accuracy. Initial tests suggest that the developed architecture performs as well as other methods and that in cases where deterministic chaotic components are present it surpasses them. With some reservations these results suggest that the architecture is usable in high frequency asset allocation. iii za mamu, tatu, tetku, te cu i ellen
Insulin resistance and hyperinsulinaemia in the development and progression of cancer

Experimental, epidemiological and clinical evidence implicates insulin resistance and its accompanying hyperinsulinaemia in the development of cancer, but the relative importance of these disturbances in cancer remains unclear. There are, however, theoretical mechanisms by which hyperinsulinaemia could amplify such growth-promoting effects as insulin may have, as well as the growth-promoting effects of other, more potent, growth factors. Hyperinsulinaemia may also induce other changes, particularly in the IGF (insulin-like growth factor) system, that could promote cell proliferation and survival. Several factors can independently modify both cancer risk and insulin resistance, including subclinical inflammation and obesity. The possibility that some of the effects of hyperinsulinaemia might then augment pro-carcinogenic changes associated with disturbances in these factors emphasizes how, rather than being a single causative factor, insulin resistance may be most usefully viewed as one strand in a network of interacting disturbances that promote the development and progression of cancer.
Game Theoretic Considerations for Optimizing Efficiency of Taxi Systems

Taxi service is an indispensable part of public transport in modern cities. The taxi system is operated by a large number of self-controlled drivers lacking of centralized scheduling and control, which makes it inefficient, difficult to analyze and optimize. It is thus important to take into account taxi drivers' strategic behavior in order to optimize taxi systems' efficiency. This paper reviews existing taxi system researches for modeling taxi system dynamics, introduces the taxi system efficiency optimization problem, and presents a game theoretic approach for optimizing the efficiency of taxi systems. Challenges and open issues in the taxi system efficiency optimization problem are also discussed.
A randomized trial comparing acupuncture, simulated acupuncture, and usual care for chronic low back pain.

BACKGROUND Acupuncture is a popular complementary and alternative treatment for chronic back pain. Recent European trials suggest similar short-term benefits from real and sham acupuncture needling. This trial addresses the importance of needle placement and skin penetration in eliciting acupuncture effects for patients with chronic low back pain. METHODS A total of 638 adults with chronic mechanical low back pain were randomized to individualized acupuncture, standardized acupuncture, simulated acupuncture, or usual care. Ten treatments were provided over 7 weeks by experienced acupuncturists. The primary outcomes were back-related dysfunction (Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire score; range, 0-23) and symptom bothersomeness (0-10 scale). Outcomes were assessed at baseline and after 8, 26, and 52 weeks. RESULTS At 8 weeks, mean dysfunction scores for the individualized, standardized, and simulated acupuncture groups improved by 4.4, 4.5, and 4.4 points, respectively, compared with 2.1 points for those receiving usual care (P < .001). Participants receiving real or simulated acupuncture were more likely than those receiving usual care to experience clinically meaningful improvements on the dysfunction scale (60% vs 39%; P < .001). Symptoms improved by 1.6 to 1.9 points in the treatment groups compared with 0.7 points in the usual care group (P < .001). After 1 year, participants in the treatment groups were more likely than those receiving usual care to experience clinically meaningful improvements in dysfunction (59% to 65% vs 50%, respectively; P = .02) but not in symptoms (P > .05). CONCLUSIONS Although acupuncture was found effective for chronic low back pain, tailoring needling sites to each patient and penetration of the skin appear to be unimportant in eliciting therapeutic benefits. These findings raise questions about acupuncture's purported mechanisms of action. It remains unclear whether acupuncture or our simulated method of acupuncture provide physiologically important stimulation or represent placebo or nonspecific effects.
A New System Splitting Scheme Based on the Unified Stability Control Framework

In this paper, a new system splitting scheme based on the unified stability control framework is proposed. Compared with the conventional system splitting scheme, the new method is much more effective under complicated oscillation scenarios. Under the unified stability control framework, different emergency control measures can be evaluated and compared with each other. The system splitting strategy will be applied to the system only when the analysis shows that the splitting is necessary or reasonable. Related algorithms are described in detail in this paper. The advantages and effectiveness of the new scheme can be justified through the testing cases
A Dissimilarity Measure for Comparing Subsets of Data : Application to Multivariate Time Series ∗

Similarity is a central concept in data mining. Many techniques, such as clustering and classification, use similarity or distance measures to compare various subsets of multivariate data. However, most of these measures are only designed to find the distances between a pair of records or attributes in a data set, and not for comparing whole data sets against one another. In this paper we present a novel dissimilarity measure based on principal component analysis for doing such comparisons between such data sets, and in particular time series data sets. Our measure accounts for the correlation structure of the data, and can be tuned by the user to account for domain knowledge. Our measure is useful in such applications as change point detection, anomaly detection, and clustering in fields such as intrusion detection, clinical trial data analysis, and stock analysis.
Would a ‘flat tax’ simplify the UK’s corporation tax legislation and reduce the associated compliance costs?

Most parties with an interest in UK tax law appear to be able to agree on one thing: it is complex. Surveys show that the UK tax code is now the longest in the world, having recently overtaken India to claim that dubious title. It is equally the case that the amount, as well as the complexity of the legislation, increases every year, leading to increasing compliance costs for business. One of the more stimulating tax debates of recent years in the UK has been over the merits of a flat tax. While to date the debate has focussed more on issues such as a potential economic stimulus on the introduction of such a tax, an important claim of flat tax supporters is that its introduction would simplify the current UK tax legislation. There would therefore appear to be a clear and worthwhile link to explore between the complexity of the UK tax legislation and whether a flat tax might reduce it. However, little work has been performed to date on investigating such a link, either at a theoretical level or by considering data from countries that have introduced tax systems described as flat taxes. This might seem surprising considering the current substantial costs to business in complying with the UK tax legislation. The exploration of this link is the key focus behind this thesis. This thesis only considers the case of corporation tax from among all the UK taxes due to time and length constraints. Many other countries have similar taxes known as ‘corporate income tax (CIT)’, which is levied mainly on companies, as opposed to ‘personal income tax (PIT)’, levied mainly on individuals. Where this thesis refers to ‘income tax’ this should be taken to refer to the latter, in line with current UK practice. The thesis starts with a brief introduction to UK corporation tax and the theoretical background to a generic corporation tax. It then considers the nature of the current UK tax legislation and its apparent complexity, before looking at the corporation tax compliance costs incurred by UK business. The fundamental issue of complexity of a tax system is a topic of sufficient magnitude to merit its own chapter, followed by a detailed examination of the concept of ‘flat tax’, considering both the theoretical Hall-Rabushka (HR) model and the real-life Eastern European flat taxes introduced. Potential simplifications for the UK of a flat tax are then considered, followed by evidence as to why a flat tax would not be the simplifying force that might be hoped. The final two chapters consider real-life evidence and data, factors conspicuously absent in the UK flat tax debate to date. Evidence from those countries, mainly from Eastern Europe, that have introduced flat tax systems is considered, followed by a case study covering the proposed recent changes to the UK’s capital gains tax and the lessons it provides for any simplifying tax reform.
Globalization and Monetary Control

It has recently become popular to argue that globalization has had or will soon have dramatic consequences for the nature of the monetary transmission mechanism, and it is sometimes suggested that this could threaten the ability of national central banks to control inflation within their borders, at least in the absence of coordination of policy with other central banks. In this paper, I consider three possible mechanisms through which it might be feared that globalization can undermine the ability of monetary policy to control inflation: by making liquidity premia a function of "global liquidity" rather than the supply of liquidity by a national central bank alone; by making real interest rates dependent on the global balance between saving and investment rather than the balance in one country alone; or by making inflationary pressure a function of "global slack" rather than a domestic output gap alone. These three fears relate to potential changes in the form of the three structural equations of a basic model of the monetary transmission mechanism: the LM equation, the IS equation, and the AS equation respectively. I review the consequences of global integration of financial markets, final goods markets, and factor markets for the form of each of these parts of the monetary transmission mechanism, and find that globalization, even of a much more thorough sort than has yet occurred, is unlikely to weaken the ability of national central banks to control the dynamics of inflation.
Gambling patterns and associated risk and protective factors among Finnish young people

Background and aims: In recent years online gambling has become a potential risk for young people. The purpose of this study was to analyse patterns of gambling activities and their association with behavioural risk factors and protective factors. Data and Method: A demographically balanced sample of Finnish respondents aged 15–25 years (N = 1200) filled out an online survey in March–April 2017. Principal component analysis was used to reduce the variables on gambling activities to smaller sets of components, and regression analysis was used to analyse whether behavioural risk factors and protective factors were associated with the gambling patterns found. Results: Two main components were found: online- and skill-based competent gambling and chance-based entertainment gambling. Competent gambling had statistically significant associations with a variety of behavioural problems and risks, including psychological distress, lower social support, lower delay of gratification, hazardous drinking, regular drug use, compulsive Internet use, and problem gambling. Entertainment gambling was associated with lower delay gratification, hazardous drinking, and problem gambling. Entertainment gambling had a negative association with compulsive Internet use and a positive association with social support. Conclusions: Online-based competent gambling is a potentially hazardous form of gambling. New forms of online gambling are potential risks for younger generations. Health professionals working with young people should be aware of the role of online gambling and associated activities.
Parathyroid hormone biosynthesis. Correlation of conversion of biosynthetic precursors with intracellular protein migration as determined by electron microscope autoradiography

The formation of parathyroid hormone (PTH) in the parathyroid gland occurs via two successive proteolytic cleavages from larger biosynthetic precursors. The initial product coded for by PTH mRNA is pre-proparathyroid hormone (PreProPTH), a polypeptide of 115 amino acids. Within 1 min of synthesis, the polypeptide, proparathyroid hormone (ProPTH), is formed as a result of the proteolytic removal of the NH2-terminal 25 amino acids from Pre-ProPTH. After a delay of 15-20 min, the NH2-terminal six-amino acid sequence of ProPTH is removed to give PTH of 84 amino acids. To investigate the subcellular sites in the parathyroid cell where the biosynthetic precursors undergo specific proteolytic cleavages, we examined, by electron microscopy autoradiography, the spatiotemporal migration of autoradiographic grains and, by electrophoresis, the kinetics of the disappearance of labeled Pre-ProPTH and the conversion of labeled ProPTH to PTH in bovine parathyroid gland slices incubated with [3H]leucine for 5 min (pulse incubation) followed by incubations with unlabeled leucine for periods up to 85 min (chase incubations). By 5 min, 85% of the autoradiographic grains were confined to the rough endoplasmic reticulum (RER). Autoradiographic grains increased rapidly in number in the Golgi region after 15 min of incubation; from 15 to 30 min they migrated within secretory vesicles still in the Golgi region and then migrated to mature secretory granules outside the Golgi area. Electrophoretic analyses showed that Pre-ProPTH disappeared rapidly (by 5 min) and that conversion of ProPTH to PTH was first detectable at 15 min and was completed by 30 min. At later times of incubation (30-90 min), autoradiographic grains within the secretion glanules migrated to the periphery of the cell and to the plasma membrane, in correlation with the release of PTH first detected by 30 min. We conclude that proteolytic conversion of Pre-ProPTH to ProPTH takes place in the RER and that subsequent conversion of ProPTH to PTH occurs in the Golgi complex.