Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Submillimeter Array Imaging of the CO(3-2) Line and 860 μm Continuum of Arp 220: Tracing the Spatial Distribution of Luminosity

We used the Submillimeter Array (SMA) to image 860 μm continuum and CO(3-2) line emission in the ultraluminous merging galaxy Arp 220, achieving a resolution of 0.23″ (80 pc) for the continuum and 0.33″ (120 pc) for the line. The CO emission peaks around the two merger nuclei with a velocity signature of gas rotation around each nucleus and is also detected in a kiloparsec-size disk encompassing the binary nucleus. The dust continuum, in contrast, is mostly from the two nuclei. The beam-averaged brightness temperature of both line and continuum emission exceeds 50 K at and around the nuclei, revealing the presence of warm molecular gas and dust. The dust emission morphologically agrees with the distribution of radio supernova features in the east nucleus, as expected when a starburst heats the nucleus. In the brighter west nucleus, however, the submillimeter dust emission is more compact than the supernova distribution. The 860 μm core, after deconvolution, has a size of 50-80 pc, consistent with recent 1.3 mm observations, and a peak brightness temperature of (0.9–1.6) × 102 K. Its bolometric luminosity is at least 2 × 1011 L☉ and could be ~1012 L☉ depending on source structure and 860 μm opacity, which we estimate to be of the order of τ860 ∼ 1 (i.e., NH2 ∼ 1025 cm −2). The starbursting west nuclear disk must have in its center a dust enshrouded AGN or a very young starburst equivalent to hundreds of super star clusters. Further spatial mapping of bolometric luminosity through submillimeter imaging is a promising way to identify the heavily obscured heating sources in Arp 220 and other luminous infrared galaxies.
Hierarchy and recursion in software and hardware

Advances in microelectronic devices have dissolved the boundary between software and hardware. Since hardware circuits are generally faster and enable significantly broader parallelism to be provided, a number of recent research works are dedicated to high-performance computations in electronic systems without direct use of processing cores which introduce a number of constraints (e.g. pre-defined size of operands, pre-given sets of instructions, limits for concurrency and parallelism, etc.). This paper suggests a regular way enabling methods and functions from general-purpose languages to be converted to hardware implementations. Consequently, such conventional programming techniques as hierarchy, recursion, passing arguments, and returning values were entirely implemented in hardware modules. The resulting circuits are faster than their software alternatives and this is confirmed by examples and numerous experiments from different application areas.
Parent report of early lexical production in bilingual children: a cross-linguistic CDI comparison

ABSTRACT This paper compared the vocabulary size of a group of 250 bilinguals aged 24–36 months acquiring six different language pairs using an analogous tool, and attempted to identify factors that influence vocabulary sizes and ultimately place children at risk for language delay. Each research group used adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories: Words and Sentences and a specially designed developmental and language background questionnaire to gather information on risk factors for language impairment, demographic and language exposure variables. The results showed a wide range in vocabulary development which could be somewhat attributed to mothers’ education status, parental concerns about language development and amount of exposure to the second language. We looked at those children performing below the 10th and above the 90th percentile to determine what factors were related to their vocabulary size. Features of the entire group of lower performing children were fewer than 50 words and the absence of two-word combinations by 24 months, lower levels of parental education and parental concerns about language development. The implications for identifying bilingual children at risk for language impairment as well as the language enrichment that might be needed for young bilinguals are outlined.
Timing an Accreting Millisecond Pulsar: Measuring the Accretion Torque in IGR J00291+5934

We performed a timing analysis of the fastest accreting millisecond pulsar IGR J00291+5934 using RXTE data taken during the outburst of 2004 December. We corrected the arrival times of all the events for the orbital (Doppler) effects and performed a timing analysis of the resulting phase delays. In this way we are able to study, for the first time in this class of sources, the spin-up of a millisecond pulsar as a consequence of accretion torques during the X-ray outburst. The accretion torque gives us for the first time an independent estimate of the mass accretion rate onto the neutron star, which can be compared with the observed X-ray luminosity. We also report a revised value of the spin period of the pulsar.
The Importance of EDI Education: A survey of Australian SMEs

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have been particularly slow to adopt EDI for such reasons as the perceived high cost of implementing EDI, the lack of willing trading partners, the evolutionary nature of the document translation standards and the lack of awareness of the benefits of EDI. Despite a growing understanding of the factors which influence SME adoption of technologies such as EDI, research which generates insight into the importance of education for addressing the EDI acceptance problem is still limited. This paper reports the results of a survey of Australian SMEs which investigated the barriers they believe hinder or prevent their adoption of EDI; and the educational approaches which respondents would prefer when learning about the business potential of EDI in their firm. The findings of the survey corroborate those of similar studies which show that a lack of knowhow and awareness are major barriers to EDI adoption — a problem which can be addressed through education. The results also suggest that SME owner/managers prefer educational approaches which provide information and assistance specific to their needs; and which gives them the opportunity to experiment with real EDI solutions so that they can see first-hand how this technology can be used in their own organisation.
Optimal load balancing in cloud computing by efficient utilization of virtual machines

Load balancing is the major concern in the cloud computing environment. Cloud comprises of many hardware and software resources and managing these will play an important role in executing a client's request. Now a day's clients from different parts of the world are demanding for the various services in a rapid rate. In this present situation the load balancing algorithms built should be very efficient in allocating the request and also ensuring the usage of the resources in an intelligent way so that underutilization of the resources will not occur in the cloud environment. In the present work, a novel VM-assign load balance algorithm is proposed which allocates the incoming requests to the all available virtual machines in an efficient manner. Further, the performance is analyzed using Cloudsim simulator and compared with existing Active-VM load balance algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm distributes the load on all available virtual machines without under/over utilization.
Decreased interoceptive awareness in patients with substance use disorders

Abstract Introduction: The current study was prepared based on the assumption that awareness of the interoceptive processes may be disturbed in addicted individuals. Methods: The participants in the study included 84 abstinent male inpatients who were addicted to alcohol (n = 33), heroin (n = 29), or synthetic cannabinoids (n = 22) according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR), and 35 healthy male volunteers. Interoceptive awareness (IA) was measured using the heartbeat perception (HBP) task. Addiction severity was assessed using the addiction profile index (API). Alexithymia was assessed using the Toronto alexithymia scale (TAS-20). Results: Patients addicted to alcohol, heroin, or synthetic cannabinoids had similar IA, and their HBP scores were significantly lower than those of healthy control subjects. There was a significant negative correlation between HBP scores and TAS-20 subscores, thus indicating difficulties in identifying feelings. HBP scores were not significantly correlated with API scores. API scores were significantly correlated with total alexithymia scores and subscores, thus indicating difficulties in identifying and describing feelings. Discussion: As our main finding, a decrease in IA in addicted patients in comparison to healthy controls may provide support for the hypothesis that awareness of the interoceptive processes may be disturbed in addiction.
Incentive design to mould online behavior: a game mechanics perspective

Designing incentives to shape user behavior in line with system goals is a precarious feat. These goals can be diverse, ranging from user retention to streamlining content creation. Yet there is no playbook available in the art to be applied on such motivation problems. Pertaining to website rollout strategies, there exists a commonality in goals shared by businesses owners. We deployed an innovative incentive model in our enterprise social network knome to aid these goals. In this paper, we study how awarding points using 'Incentive Economy' strategy can mould online user behavior, in a way to meet the founding goals of a platform. We proposed few measures that can be adopted by other website owners to reach their behavior goals using game mechanics. With about 288,273 employees in TCS generating millions of interactions well over the span of 14 months, we extracted several interesting observations from knome. To our knowledge this is one of the largest studies of its nature done in enterprise settings, which in itself exposed unknown challenges. Our output suggests that incentives are effective in moulding user behaviour when coupled with right motivational strategies and targeted delivery, varying with personality types. Additional contributions include, an awarding strategy that can help websites to measure the effectiveness of individual game mechanics and incentives.
Genotyping of ESBL Producing Uropathogenic Escherichia coli in West of Iran

Background and Objective. Urinary tract infection (UTI) is one of the most common bacterial infections in the world. Molecular fingerprinting of UTI isolates such as pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis using for Clonal distribution and determine of predominant type. The aim of the study was to determine genotyping of ESBL producing UPECs. Material and Methods. 200 UPEC isolates from outpatients with UTI were obtained. Antimicrobial susceptibility and interpretation were performed by disk diffusion. Virulence factors for UPECs were screened by using PCR. UPECs were analyzed by Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis and images analyzed by Phoretix1DPro software. Results. A total of 200 isolates of UPECs, 24.5% (n = 49) of isolates, were positive for ESBL production. Resistance ranged from 0% for amikacin and imipenem to over 93.9% for carbenicillin and ampicillin. Frequencies of haemagglutination, haemolysin, and hydrophobicity were 51%, 18.3%, and 14.28%, respectively. A total of 10 different genotypes were obtained, which include nine common clones and one single clone. Conclusion. We confirmed the prevalence of virulence phenotyping especially Haemagglutination among UPEC strains and that it can also contribute to virulence in these strains. Large diversity in genotypes was observed in the isolates that could be indicative of different sources of infection in community acquired.
Political economy and media production: a reply to Dwyer

This is a response to an article by Paul Dwyer in this Journal which makes several claims about the nature and impact of the political economy approach to the analysis of media and communications. We argue that Dwyer’s article misunderstands or is unaware of the history of this approach, and quite fundamentally misconstrues its central tenets. Our response explains how, in capitalist societies, media organisations are integrated into general processes of accumulation, how they exercise power, and how their strategies shape the communications landscape. We explain how the critical political economy approach actually works and illustrate how it has been deployed for concrete analysis in ways that Dwyer seems unaware of. Analysis of shifts in the organisation of capitalism and of their consequences for the structure of cultural production is essential alongside detailed research into how shifting webs of pressure and opportunity impinge on the everyday business of crafting cultural goods in specific cultural industries. We argue that, contra Dwyer, contemporary analysis has a rich legacy of work in both areas on which to build.
Random Forests of Local Experts for Pedestrian Detection

Pedestrian detection is one of the most challenging tasks in computer vision, and has received a lot of attention in the last years. Recently, some authors have shown the advantages of using combinations of part/patch-based detectors in order to cope with the large variability of poses and the existence of partial occlusions. In this paper, we propose a pedestrian detection method that efficiently combines multiple local experts by means of a Random Forest ensemble. The proposed method works with rich block-based representations such as HOG and LBP, in such a way that the same features are reused by the multiple local experts, so that no extra computational cost is needed with respect to a holistic method. Furthermore, we demonstrate how to integrate the proposed approach with a cascaded architecture in order to achieve not only high accuracy but also an acceptable efficiency. In particular, the resulting detector operates at five frames per second using a laptop machine. We tested the proposed method with well-known challenging datasets such as Caltech, ETH, Daimler, and INRIA. The method proposed in this work consistently ranks among the top performers in all the datasets, being either the best method or having a small difference with the best one.
Model Uncertainty and the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment

The reintroduction of capital punishment after the end of the Supreme Court moratorium has permitted researchers to employ state level heterogeneity in the use of capital punishment to study deterrent effects. However, no scholarly consensus exists as to their magnitude. A key reason this has occurred is that the use of alternative models across studies produces differing estimates of the deterrent effect. Because differences across models are not well motivated by theory, the deterrence literature is plagued by model uncertainty. We argue that the analysis of deterrent effects should explicitly recognize the presence of model uncertainty in drawing inferences. We describe methods for addressing model uncertainty and apply them to understand the disparate findings between two major studies in the deterrence literature, finding that evidence of deterrent effects appears, while not nonexistent, is weak.
W51 IRS 2: A Massive Jet Emerging from a Molecular Cloud into an H II Region

We have mapped [Ne II] (12.8 μm) and [S IV] (10.5 μm) emission from W51 IRS 2 with TEXES on Gemini North, and we compare these data to VLA free-free observations and VLT near-infrared images. With 0.5'' spatial and 4 km s-1 spectral resolution, we are able to separate the ionized gas into several components: an extended H II region on the front surface of the molecular cloud, several embedded compact H II regions, and a streamer of high-velocity gas. We interpret the high-velocity streamer as a precessing or fanlike jet, which has emerged from the molecular cloud into an OB star cluster where it is being ionized.
Dissonance Minimization as a Microfoundation of Social Influence in Models of Opinion Formation

Models of opinion formation are used to investigate many collective phenomena. While social influence often constitutes a basic mechanism, its implementation differs between the models. In this article, we provide a general framework of social influence based on dissonance minimization. We only premise that individuals strive to minimize dissonance resulting from different opinions compared to individuals in a given social network. Within a game theoretic context, we show that our concept of dissonance minimization resembles a coordination process when interactions are homogeneous. We further show that different models of opinion formation can be represented as best response dynamics within our framework. Thus, we offer a unifying perspective on these heterogeneous models and link them to rational choice theory.
GIS-Supported Collaborative Decision Making: Results of an Experiment

This article addresses research questions about the sociobehavioral dynamics of geographic information system (GIS) use during collaborative decision making in small interorganizational groups. Using an experimental design of a conference room setting, a study of human-computer-human interaction was conducted with 109 volunteer participants formed into 22 groups, each group representing multiple organizational stakeholder perspectives. The experiment involved the use of GIS integrated with multiple criteria decision models to support group-based decision making concerned with the selection of habitat restoration sites in the Duwamish Waterway of Seattle, Washington. Findings representative of four categories of investigation are presented. In the first category, the experiment demonstrated that groups used maps predominantly to visualize the evaluation results and much less to structure/design the decision problem. Maps played only a limited support role in various decision stages of the experiment. In the second category, while the use of multiple criteria decision models by groups remained steady throughout different phases of the decision process, the use of maps was much lower during the initial exploratory-structuring phase than during the later analytic-integrating phase. In category three, the amount of prior and acquired group member experience with computer tools had no influence on the appropriation of decision aids. In category four, different phases of the decision process had two different levels of conflict: the exploratory-structuring phase was characterized by a lower level of conflict, and the analytic-integrating phase was characterized by high conflict level. The higher level of conflict during the analytic-integrating phase tells us that analytical decision aids aimed at conflict management are likely to help work through conflict, such conflict now being recognized as a necessary part of making progress in public decision problems.
Branden's Conjectures on the Boros-Moll Polynomials

We prove two conjectures of Br\"{a}nd\'{e}n on the real-rootedness of polynomials $Q_n(x)$ and $R_n(x)$ which are related to the Boros-Moll polynomials $P_n(x)$. In fact, we show that both $Q_n(x)$ and $R_n(x)$ form Sturm sequences. The first conjecture implies the 2-log-concavity of $P_n(x)$, and the second conjecture implies the 3-log-concavity of $P_n(x)$.
Genesis of hexavalent chromium from natural sources in soil and groundwater

Naturally occurring Cr(VI) has recently been reported in ground and surface waters. Rock strata rich in Cr(III)-bearing minerals, in particular chromite, are universally found in these areas that occur near convergent plate margins. Here we report experiments demonstrating accelerated dissolution of chromite and subsequent oxidation of Cr(III) to aqueous Cr(VI) in the presence of birnessite, a common manganese mineral, explaining the generation of Cr(VI) by a Cr(III)-bearing mineral considered geochemically inert. Our results demonstrate that Cr(III) within ultramafic- and serpentinite-derived soils/sediments can be oxidized and dissolved through natural processes, leading to hazardous levels of aqueous Cr(VI) in surface and groundwater.
Patterns of Rainfall Insurance Participation in Rural India

Take-up of an innovative rainfall insurance policy offered to smallholder farmers in rural India decreases with basis risk between insurance payouts and income fluctuations, increases with household wealth, and decreases with binding credit constraints. These results are consistent with the predictions of a simple neoclassical model with borrowing constraints. Other patterns are less consistent with the benchmark model. For example, participation in village networks and measures of familiarity with the insurance vendor are strongly correlated with insurance take-up decisions, and risk-averse households are less, not more, likely to purchase insurance. These results may reflect household uncertainty about the product, given their limited experience with it.
Poverty and Crime: Evidence from Rainfall and Trade Shocks in India

Does poverty lead to crime? We shed light on this question using two independent and exogenous shocks to household income in rural India: the dramatic reduction in import tariffs in the early 1990s and rainfall variations. We find that trade shocks, previously shown to raise relative poverty, also increased the incidence of violent crimes and property crimes. The relationship between trade shocks and crime is similar to the observed relationship between rainfall shocks and crime. Our results thus identify a causal effect of poverty on crime. They also lend credence to a large literature on the effects of weather shocks on crime and conflict, which has usually assumed that the income channel is the most relevant one.
Cannabis und Cannabinoide in der Medizin: Fakten und Ausblick

Zusammenfassung Hintergrund: Das Interesse an der therapeutischen Nutzung von Cannabis und seinen Inhaltsstoffen hat in den vergangenen Jahren erheblich zugenommen. Methode: Selektive Literaturrecherche mit den Suchbegriffen „cannabi* or marijuana or THC or endocannabinoid“. Ergebnisse: Die Ergebnisse kontrollierter klinischer Studien führten in zahlreichen europäischen Ländern, aber auch Kanada, den USA und anderen Ländern zur Zulassung von Medikamenten auf Cannabisbasis. Verschrieben werden cannabisbasierte Medikamente derzeit am häufigsten bei Appetitlosigkeit, Übelkeit, Spastik bei Multipler Sklerose, neuropathischen Schmerzen und anderen neurologischen und psychiatrischen Erkrankungen. Alternativ können Patienten bei der Bundesopiumstelle des Bundesinstituts für Arzneimittel und Medizinprodukte eine Ausnahmeerlaubnis zum Erwerb von Medizinal-Cannabisblüten in der Apotheke im Rahmen einer ärztlich überwachten Selbsttherapie beantragen. Schlussfolgerungen: Medikamente auf Cannabisbasis besitzen ein breites therapeutisches Potenzial bei vielen schwerwiegenden Erkrankungen.
Image Matting in the Framework of Quantification IV

Image matting and segmentation, which are used to extract a foreground object from the background, are primary techniques for digital image and video editing. In digital matting, the transparency of the foreground object is considered, while segmentation performs a rigid extraction of the object. Recently, several algorithms for matting and segmentation problems have been proposed and have provided high-quality results. In this paper, we propose a unified formulation for image matting in the framework of the method of quantification IV based on a review of the previous studies from this framework. Our method also utilizes discriminative information provided by a user (a few strokes drawn by the user). The experimental results show a favorable matting performance.