Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A new Optimization-Based Image Segmentation method By Particle Swarm Optimization

This paper proposes a new multilevel thresholding method segmenting images based on particle swarm optimization (PSO). In the proposed method, the thresholding problem is treated as an optimization problem, and solved by using the principle of PSO. The algorithm of PSO is used to find the best values of thresholds that can give us an appropriate partition for a target image according to a fitness function. in this paper, a new quantitative evaluation function is proposed based on the information theory. The new evaluation function is used as an objective function for the algorithm of PSO in the proposed method. Because quantitative evaluation functions deal with segmented images as a set of regions, the target image is divided into a set of regions and not to a set of classes during the different stages of our method (where a region is a group of connected pixels having the same range of gray levels). The proposed method has been tested on different images, and the experimental results demonstrate its effectiveness.
‘The body that cannot be contained’: Queering mainstream psychology’s gay male body dissatisfaction imperative

A sizable body of mainstream social psychological body image research suggests that gay men are more dissatisfied with their bodies than heterosexual men (Morrison et al., 2004). However, much of this research has been criticized for producing explanatory models that pathologize gay men by foregrounding homosexuality, irrespective of broader sociohistorical factors, as the source of gay male body dissatisfaction (Filiault, 2010; Filiault and Drummond, 2009; Kane, 2009, 2010) – what we refer to as psychology’s gay male body dissatisfaction imperative. Situated within a critical psychology perspective (Teo, 2015), this article relies on the voices of 19 gay/queer participants to problematize psychology’s epistemological determinism. Their ‘talk’ was less interiorized and totalized than the models’ conceptualizations of gay male identity and body image, highlighting the need for models that instead explicate how gay men develop individual, embodied understandings of sexual and gender identity while navigating heterosexist, masculinist, and neoliberal discourses. We investigate the corporeal manifestations of discourse and pay specific attention to queer forms of embodied resistance.
Globalization , the impact of trade liberalization , and labour law : The case of South Africa

The International Institute for Labour Studies was established in 1960 as an autonomous facility of the International Labour Organization (ILO). Its mandate is to promote policy research and public discussion on emerging issues of concern to the ILO and its constituents — government, business and labour. The Discussion Paper Series presents the preliminary results of research undertaken by the IILS. The documents are intended for limited dissemination with a view to eliciting reactions and comments before they are published in their final form as special publications. The responsibility for opinions expressed in this paper rests solely with its author, and its publication does not constitute an endorsement by the International Institute for Labour Studies of the opinions expressed.
Group Information Behavioural Norms and the Effective Use of a Collaborative Information System: A Case Study

This research investigated whether Group Information Behavioural Norms (GIBNs) are correlated with the effective use of a collaborative information system. Previous research seeking to conceptualize ‘social influence’ in technology adoption has not attempted to include GIBNs. The dependent variable, ‘Effective Use’, comprised two subjective Effectiveness Judgments and three objective Actual Use measures. A mediating variable, ‘Group Adoption’ (GA) of the information system, was conceived as a behavioural expression of group norms and hypothesized to correlate with both GIBNs and Effective Use. It was also hypothesized that GIBNs would have a stronger relationship with Effective Use than the widely used Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) dimensions of Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use.
Optical Identification of Infrared Space Observatory Far-Infrared Sources in the Lockman Hole Using a Deep Very Large Array 1.4 GHz Continuum Survey

By exploiting the far-infrared (FIR) and radio correlation, we have performed a likelihood-ratio analysis to identify optical counterparts to the FIR sources that have been found in an area of ∼0.9 deg2 during the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) deep FIR survey in the Lockman Hole. New ground-based observations have been conducted to build up the catalogs of radio and optical objects, which include a deep Very Large Array (VLA) observation at 1.4 GHz, optical R- and I-band imaging with the Subaru 8 m and University of Hawaii 2.2 m telescopes, and optical spectroscopy with the Keck II 10 m and WIYN 3.5 m telescopes. This work is based on FIR samples consisting of 116 and 20 sources selected with the criteria of FC(90 μm) ≥ 43 mJy and FC(170 μm) ≥ 102 mJy, respectively, where FC is the bias-corrected flux. Using the likelihood ratio analysis and the associated reliability, 44 FIR sources have been identified with radio sources. Optical confirmation of the 44 FIR/radio associations was then conducted using accurate radio positions. Redshifts have been obtained for 29 out of the 44 identified sources. One hyperluminous infrared galaxy (HyLIRG) with LFIR > 1013 L⊙ and four ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) with LFIR = 1012–1013 L⊙ are identified in our sample, while the remaining 24 FIR galaxies have LFIR < 1012 L⊙. The space density of the FIR sources at z = 0.3–0.6 is 4.6 × 10-5 Mpc-3, which is 460 times larger than the local value, implying a rapid evolution of the ULIRG population. Most ISO FIR sources have L(1.4 GHz)/L(90 μm) similar to the star-forming galaxies Arp 220 and M82, indicating that star formation is the dominant mechanism for their FIR and radio luminosity. At least seven of our FIR sources show evidence for the presence of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) in optical emission lines, radio continuum excess, or X-ray activity. Three out of five (60%) of the ULIRGs/HyLIRGs are AGN galaxies, suggesting that the AGN fraction among the ULIRG/HyLIRG population may not change significantly between z ∼ 0.5 and the present epoch. Five of the seven AGN galaxies are within the ROSAT X-ray survey field, and two are within the XMM-Newton survey fields. X-ray emission has been detected in only one source, 1EX030, which is optically classified as a quasar. The nondetection in the XMM-Newton 2–10 keV band suggests a very thick absorption column density of 3 × 1024 cm-2 or AV ∼ 1200 mag obscuring the central source of the two AGN galaxies. Several sources have an extreme FIR luminosity relative to the optical R band, L(90 μm)/L(R) > 500, which is rare even among the local ULIRG population. While source confusion or blending might offer an explanation in some cases, these observations may represent a new population of galaxies with an extreme amount of star formation in an undeveloped stellar system, i.e., formation of bulges or young elliptical galaxies.
Evidence-Based Sentencing and the Scientific Rationalization of Discrimination

This paper critiques, on legal and empirical grounds, the growing trend of basing criminal sentences on actuarial recidivism risk prediction instruments that include demographic and socioeconomic variables. I argue that this practice violates the Equal Protection Clause and is bad policy: an explicit embrace of otherwise-condemned discrimination, sanitized by scientific language. To demonstrate that this practice should be subject to heightened constitutional scrutiny, I comprehensively review the relevant case law, much of which has been ignored by existing literature. To demonstrate that it cannot survive that scrutiny and is undesirable policy, I review the empirical evidence underlying the instruments. I show that they provide wildly imprecise individual risk predictions, that there is no compelling evidence that they outperform judges’ informal predictions, that less discriminatory alternatives would likely perform as well, and that the instruments do not even address the right question: the effect of a given sentencing decision on recidivism risk. Finally, I also present new, suggestive empirical evidence, based on a randomized experiment using fictional cases, that these instruments should not be expected merely to substitute actuarial predictions for less scientific risk assessments, but instead to increase the weight given to recidivism risk versus other sentencing considerations.
Does Quality Signalling and Mispricing Explain the Choice and Long-term Impact of Seasoned Equity Offering Methods ?

SEOs in the UK provide valuable choices to the issuer in terms of renounceability and control dilution. We analyze a large UK sample that captures five major SEO types: rights offerings, open offers, open offers with private placements, standalone placements, and accelerated offers. We find that high quality firms (low risk, high liquidity, low information asymmetry) are more likely to issue to existing shareholders. We also find that tradable issues have higher takeup and if a firm decides to issue to non-existing shareholders, such firms with high information asymmetry tend to select standalone private placements. We find support for various market reaction hypotheses: (a) a negative relation between the discount and the announcement period abnormal return; (b) price reaction is more favorable for combined open offer/private placements and fixed-price private placements (rights offerings and open offerings), when issues are made with a lower (higher) discount; (c) positive relation between shareholder takeup and announcement period abnormal return; (d) firms issuing to (internal) external shareholders (do not) experience long-term underperformance; (e) firms issuing to internal shareholders do not experience long-term underperformance irrespective of discount; (f) firms issuing to external shareholders with larger discount experience larger long-term underperformance; and (g) longterm underperformance is lower for the issues made by liquid firms. JEL classification code: G14, G32
Socio-economic factors and mortality among 25-64 year olds followed from 1991 to 1994: the New Zealand Census-Mortality Study.

AIM To measure the association of income, education, occupational class, small area socio-economic deprivation, car access and labour force status with mortality among 25-64 year old males and females using the 1991 census-cohort of the New Zealand Census-Mortality Study. METHODS Mortality records for 1991-94 were anonymously and probabilistically linked to 1991 census records, thereby creating a cohort study of all New Zealand census respondents. Odds ratios of mortality comparing categories of each socio-economic factor were calculated using logistic regression. For income, education and deprivation (NZDep91) a modified relative index of inequality (RII(10:90)) was calculated. The RII(10:90) estimates the relative risk of mortality for low socio-economic people (10th percentile rank) compared to high socio-economic people (90 percentile rank) allowing direct comparisons across socio-economic factors. RESULTS The relative risk of all-cause mortality for 25-64 year old males with an equivalised household income less than $20,000, compared to greater than $50,000, was 2.16 (95% confidence interval 1.99 to 2.34). For females, this relative risk was 1.68 (1.52 to 1.86). Using the RII(10:90) all-cause mortality was 2.22, 1.94 and 1.58 times greater among low compared to high socio-economic males for income, NZDep91 and education, respectively. For females, these RII(10:90) estimates were 1.77, 1.69 and 1.57, respectively. By cause of death, the strongest gradients were observed for respiratory diseases, followed by lung cancer, cardiovascular disease and unintentional injury. For suicide deaths, unemployed males and females had 2.70 (1.84 to 3.95) and 2.86 (1.19 to 6.85) greater rates than the employed. CONCLUSIONS There are strong socio-economic gradients for all-cause mortality and most specific causes of mortality among both males and female adults in New Zealand, regardless of the choice of socio-economic factor. The gradients were strongest for income, followed by small area deprivation and education, and strongest for 'preventable' causes of death.
Analysis of the CD1 Antigen Presenting System in Humanized SCID Mice

CD1 molecules are glycoproteins that present lipids and glycolipids for recognition by T cells. CD1-dependent immune activation has been implicated in a wide range of immune responses, however, our understanding of the role of this pathway in human disease remains limited because of species differences between humans and other mammals: whereas humans express five different CD1 gene products (CD1a, CD1b, CD1c, CD1d, and CD1e), muroid rodents express only one CD1 isoform (CD1d). Here we report that immune deficient mice engrafted with human fetal thymus, liver, and CD34+ hematopoietic stem cells develop a functional human CD1 compartment. CD1a, b, c, and d isoforms were highly expressed by human thymocytes, and CD1a+ cells with a dendritic morphology were present in the thymic medulla. CD1+ cells were also detected in spleen, liver, and lungs. APCs from spleen and liver were capable of presenting bacterial glycolipids to human CD1-restricted T cells. ELISpot analyses of splenocytes demonstrated the presence of CD1-reactive IFN-γ producing cells. CD1d tetramer staining directly identified human iNKT cells in spleen and liver samples from engrafted mice, and injection of the glycolipid antigen α-GalCer resulted in rapid elevation of human IFN-γ and IL-4 levels in the blood indicating that the human iNKT cells are biologically active in vivo. Together, these results demonstrate that the human CD1 system is present and functionally competent in this humanized mouse model. Thus, this system provides a new opportunity to study the role of CD1-related immune activation in infections to human-specific pathogens.
Retirement among members of the clergy: Findings from a Protestant fellowship

ABSTRACT The body of research on retirement has expanded in recent years but the experience of clergy members has received scant attention. In 2009, Knapp, Pruett, and Hicks sought to rectify this situation by conducting an exploratory study that focused on the financial and housing options that will be available to members of the clergy of a nondenominational fellowship when they reach the age of retirement. The present study built upon that foundation and expanded the sample to include ministers within Churches of Christ from multiple states. The results are consistent with the exploratory study and indicate that financial preparedness varies greatly based on factors such as age, years in ministry, size of the church being served, and whether one intends to fully retire. Similarly, housing options vary greatly and are related to financial well-being. The findings reinforce the need for preretirement education for members of the clergy, especially for those who minister in churches that exist outside of a denominational structure that could assist with the entrance into retirement.
Average-case interactive communication

X and Y are random variables. Person P/sub x/ knows X, Person P/sub y/ knows Y, and both know the joint probability distribution of the pair (X,Y). Using a predetermined protocol, they communicate over a binary error-free channel in order for P/sub y/ to learn X. P/sub x/ may or may not learn Y. It is determined how many information bits must be transmitted (by both persons) on the average. The results show that, when the arithmetic average number of bits is considered, there is no asymptotic advantage to P/sub x/ knowing Y in advance and four messages are asymptotically optimum. By contrast, for the worst-case number of bits, communication can be significantly reduced if P/sub x/ knows Y in advance, and it is not known whether a constant number of messages is asymptotically optimum. >
Automatic and unsupervised methods in natural language processing

Natural language processing (NLP) means the computer-aided processing of language produced by a human. But human language is inherently irregular and the most reliable results are obtained when a human is involved in at least some part of the processing. However, manual workis time-consuming and expensive. This thesis focuses on what can be accomplished in NLP when manual workis kept to a minimum. We describe the construction of two tools that greatly simplify the implementation of automatic evaluation. They are used to implement several supervised, semi-supervised and unsupervised evaluations by introducing artificial spelling errors. We also describe the design of a rule-based shallow parser for Swedish called GTA and a detection algorithm for context-sensitive spelling errors based on semi-supervised learning, called ProbCheck. In the second part of the thesis, we first implement a supervised evaluation scheme that uses an error-free treebankto determine the robustness of a parser when faced with noisy input such as spelling errors. We evaluate the GTA parser and determine the robustness of the individual components of the parser as well as the robustness for different phrase types. Second, we create an unsupervised evaluation procedure for parser robustness. The procedure allows us to evaluate the robustness of parsers using different parser formalisms on the same text and compare their performance. Five parsers and one tagger are evaluated. For four of these, we have access to annotated material and can verify the estimations given by the unsupervised evaluation procedure. The results turned out to be very accurate with few exceptions and thus, we can reliably establish the robustness of an NLP system without any need of manual work. Third, we implement an unsupervised evaluation scheme for spell checkers. Using this, we perform a very detailed analysis of three spell checkers for Swedish. Last, we evaluate the ProbCheck algorithm. Two methods are included for comparison: a full parser and a method using tagger transition probabilities. The algorithm obtains results superior to the comparison methods. The algorithm is also evaluated on authentic data in combination with a grammar and spell checker.
On Hybrid Arrow Logic

We investigate hybridization of Arrow Logic. Hybridization is a general technique for increasing the power of modal logics. A hybrid extension of a given modal logic can be obtained in two stages: ﬁrst adding a new sort of variables considered as formulas whose intended meaning is to denote points in the domains of the frames then introducing mechanisms for handling the now available information (e.g. the satisﬁability operator @ and the down-arrow binder ↓ ). The hybrid language H ( ↓ , @), obtained from the basic modal language following this construction, may be regarded as the “standard hybrid formalism”. In this paper, we study a system obtained from a hybridization of Arrow Logic much as H ( ↓ , @) was obtained from the basic modal language.
A pr 2 00 8 Equivariant Symplectic Geometry of Gauge Fixing in Yang-Mills Theory

The Faddeev-Popov gauge fixing in Yang-Mills theory is interpreted as equivariant localization. It is shown that the Faddeev-Popov procedure amounts to a construction of a symplectic manifold with a Hamiltonian group action. The BRST cohomology is shown to be equivalent to the equivariant cohomology based on this symplectic manifold with Hamiltonian group action. The ghost operator is interpreted as a (pre)symplectic form and the gauge condition as the moment map corresponding to the Hamiltonian group action. This results in the identification of the gauge fixing action as a closed equivariant form, the sum of an equivariant symplectic form and a certain closed equivariant 4-form which ensures convergence. An almost complex structure compatible with the symplectic form is constructed. The equivariant localization principle is used to localize the path integrals onto the gauge slice. The Gribov problem is also discussed in the context of equivariant localization principle. As a simple illustration of the methods developed in the paper, the partition function of N=2 supersymmetric quantum mechanics is calculated by equivariant localization E-mail: akant@gursey.gov. tr
Psychophysical experiments in a complex virtual environment

We are using two PHANToM 3.0 force feedback devices in one workspace in order to perform studies of one-hand precision grip tasks or two handed pointing tasks. The visual environment is rendered by an Onyx workstation and presented in a specialized stereo head mounted display that allows eye tracking. The head position and orientation is tracked with an electromagnetic system (Fastrak). Together, these systems allow the current gaze direction in world coordinates to be computed in real time. The artificial visual and haptic environment may contain free movable objects as well as stationary parts, whereas the objects can be complex or simple. The graphical user interface allows all object properties to be changed online. In addition, we are using free programmable force effects that depend on position or velocity information. Psychophysical experiments that simulate eye-hand coordination in complex 3D scenes demonstrate results that seem to be in line with previous research in real environments. Thus, we believe that the dual-PHANToM instrument is an experimental device that is well suited for various studies of visual motor coordination, with special reference to aspects like timing and adaptation. keywords: human experiments: psychophysics, vision, sensori-motor control; virtual reality 1 The Virtual Reality Setup The National Institute of Health (NIH) Virtual Reality Lab integrates several devices in one co-located environment in order to simulate many aspects of human sensori-motor coordination. Devices like head mounted displays (HMD) and 3D position and orientation trackers (Fastrak, Polhemus Inc) are used to present a virtual scene for subjects, in which they can interact using a force feedback system (PHANToM, SensAble Technologies, Inc.). All devices are integrated in a flexible experimental setup, in which movable as well as stationary virtual objects and their physical properties can be controlled by the experimenter. The program controlling experiments and virtual presentations to subjects allows online control over all parameters concerning the objects and the devices. The simulation runs on a specialized Onyx Infinite Reality machine (Silicon Graphics, Inc.). The graphical rendering as well as the haptic interactions are controlled by the same computer in order to minimize the latency of the simulation. 1.1 The PHANToM 3.0 The current system is designed to have two PHANToM 3.0 force feedback devices acting in one physical and virtual workspace with a dimension of 30x40x40 cm. The two PHANToM devices face each other, mounted on epoxy blocks situated on a table (Fig. 1). A crucial setup problem is to achieve an exact alignment of the workspaces of the two PHANToMs. Each device needs to be calibrated to the precise location in the shared three dimensional workspace. Through careful calibration of the mounting position and by using an optimal starting position (90 degree angles) for the PHANToM arms, we achieved an error below 1 mm on average between the physical point in 3D space and the virtual space of each