Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gravitational lensing in eclipsing binary stars

I consider the effect of the gravitational deflection of light upon the light curves of eclipsing binary stars, focusing mainly upon systems containing at least one white dwarf component. In absolute terms the effects are small, however they are strongest at the time of secondary eclipse when the white dwarf transits its companion, and act to reduce the depth of this feature. If not accounted for, this may lead to under-estimation of the radius of the white dwarf compared with that of its companion. I show that the effect is significant for plausible binary parameters, and that it leads to ∼25 per cent reduction in the transit depth in the system KPD 1930+2752. The reduction of eclipse depth is degenerate with the stellar radius ratio, and therefore cannot be used to establish the existence of lensing. A second-order effect of the light bending is to steepen the ingress and egress features of the secondary eclipse relative to the primary eclipse, although it will be difficult to see this in practice. I consider also binaries containing neutron stars and black holes. I conclude that, although relatively large effects are possible in such systems, a combination of rarity, faintness and intrinsic variability makes it unlikely that lensing will be detectable in them.
Large sample performance analysis of ACMA

The "algebraic constant modulus algorithm" (ACMA) is a noniterative block algorithm for blind separation of constant modulus sources. We previously showed that, unlike CMA, it asymptotically converges to the (non-blind) Wiener receiver. We present a finite sample statistical performance analysis. This can be used to predict the SINR performance, as well as the deviation from the Wiener receivers. The theoretical performance is illustrated by numerical simulations and shows a good match.
Spatial processes in environmental economics : empirics and theory

Economic activities are fundamentally influenced by their location in space, which determines the physical and natural environment in which they take place. Likewise, location defines the social context of economic activity prescribing the particular laws, regulations and social norms to which it should conform. Moreover, spatial location defines proximity, which shapes the costs of accessing factor inputs, product markets and other economic and social institutions. In fact, spatial location mediates most forms of interaction, intended and unintended, that may arise from communication and connections between economic agents. These spatial processes have important implications for estimation, policy evaluation and prediction in models of economic activity. This thesis is comprised of two parts. Part I presents a broad range of issues that arise in estimation due to space and frames these as general spatial omitted variables. I explore the use of semi-parametric estimators to identify the parameters of interest in this general model and derive identification conditions for fixed and local adaptive spatial smoothing estimators. The properties of these estimators are contrasted to OLS and spatial econometric estimators. Part II addresses issues in policy evaluation and prediction. I derive an equilibrium sorting model with endogenous tenure choice that can be used to evaluate the general equilibrium welfare effects of policies that affect local environmental quality. Using a series of simulations, motivated by a real world policy application, I contrast the welfare changes derived under this model to a conventional static approach. By allowing for rental and purchase markets the model I develop provides a far richer characterisation of the complex adjustments that propagate through the property market following policy changes and the contrary impact such policies can have upon renters and owners. The usefulness of the model for applied policy analysis is demonstrated through two applications: The Polegate Bypass and Mortgage Interest Deduction reform.
On distributed delay in linear control laws - part II: rational implementations inspired from the /spl delta/-operator

This note proposes rational implementations for distributed delay in linear control laws. The main benefit of doing so is the easy implementation of rational transfer functions. The proposed approach was inspired from the /spl delta/-operator. The resulting rational implementation has an elegant structure of chained low-pass filters. The stability of each node can be guaranteed by the choice of the number N of the nodes. The stability of the closed-loop system can also be guaranteed since the H/sup /spl infin//-norm of the implementation error approaches 0 when N goes to /spl infin/. Moreover, the steady-state performance of the system is retained without the need to change the control structure.
Recovery in the first year after mild head injury: divergence of symptom status and self-perceived quality of life.

OBJECTIVE To examine self-perceived health status during the first year following mild closed head injury. METHODS At 1 week, and at 3, 6 and 12 months post-injury, 37 patients with mild closed head injury completed written versions of the Rivermead Post-Concussion Symptoms Questionnaire (RPSQ), the Rivermead Head-Injury Follow-up Questionnaire (RHIFQ) and the SF-36 Health Survey. Thirty-seven controls provided baselines for the SF-36 and the RPSQ. RESULTS The 3 questionnaires conveyed differing impressions of recovery. On the RPSQ, the patients exhibited ongoing symptomatic complaints and higher scores compared with controls. The RHIFQ conveyed a better recovery in terms of everyday function. The SF-36 showed the best recovery, with the mild closed head injury group achieving normal scores at 3, 6 and 12 months. Regression analyses indicated an influence of IQ, but not of age, education, or clinical measures of injury severity, on long-term health status. CONCLUSION Recovery after mild closed head injury can involve a dichotomy of persistent post-concussional symptoms but relatively normal functionality and quality of life. In addition to indicating an influence of IQ on perception of recovery in mild closed head injury, our findings demonstrate that the nature of self-report questionnaires considerably influences the picture of recovery. This emphasizes the importance of methods unaffected by IQ and self-evaluative accuracy in the assessment of mild closed head injury.
Priorities and perceptions of corporate social responsibility: Insights from the perspective of Greek business professionals

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to inform the business management literature that focuses on the perceptions of business professionals towards the multidimensional and highly complex concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on a sample of 118 Greek business executives/middle managers having different functional positions. A questionnaire based on the works of Quazi and O’Brien (2000) and Welford et al. (2007) was designed and used for data collection. Findings – Key findings denote occupational health and safety, benign environmental management as well as responsible production methods as the top CSR priorities. Two different CSR viewpoints emerged from the factor analysis reflecting a pragmatic and a more socially responsive interpretation of corporate responsibility. Cluster analysis confirmed such contrasting perspectives allowing the partition of data in distinctive groups according to the relative inclination on either of the identifie.
Evaluation of indoor positioning based on Bluetooth Smart technology

Nowadays, positioning technologies are used in a wide variety of areas such as providing driving directions and tracking valuable goods to name a few. Since the introduction of the global positioning system(GPS), it has become a de facto standard for outdoor positioning applications. In contrast to this, no similar widespread technique is available for indoor positioning or in areas where GPS is unavailable. Extensive research have been devoted to exploring the topic based on a variety of technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee and ultra wideband radio. None of these have successfully made it into a widely accepted standard, although signi cant progress has been made. In 2010 a completely new Bluetooth technology, referred to as "Bluetooth low energy" or "Bluetooth smart" was released that promises among other things ultra low power consumption, changed radio frequency properties and a completely new software stack. No academic work can be found that explores the usability of this new technology in the context of indoor positioning. This Master thesis is the rst project to evaluate the suitability and the applicability of this new technology in the context of indoor positioning. A selection of algorithms and approaches are explored, tested, evaluated and compared in a testbed scenario designed for this purpose. Furthermore, the results of these tests are analyzed by examining the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) behaviour, which is the parameter used as basis for the positioning approaches. The evaluation shows that Bluetooth smart is a viable alternative for indoor positioning which o ffers widespread availability in society, reasonable accuracy and low cost deployment. The report also provides essential advice on some important pitfalls when using the technology for positioning applications.
Maternal influences on early development: preferred temperature prior to oviposition hastens embryogenesis and enhances offspring traits in the Children’s python, Antaresia childreni

SUMMARY Embryonic life is particularly sensitive to its surroundings, and the developmental environment can have long-lasting effects on offspring. In oviparous species, the impacts of the developmental environment on offspring traits are mostly examined during development within the egg. However, as more than 25% of the development of squamate reptiles can occur prior to oviposition, we explored the effect of thermal conditions on development prior to oviposition in an oviparous snake species, the Children’s python (Antaresia childreni). We housed gravid female pythons under three thermal cycles: an optimal regime that reflected maternal preference in a non-constrained environment (constant preferred body temperature of gravid females, Tset=31.5°C) and two mildly suboptimal regimes that shared the same mean temperature of 27.7°C, but differed in the duration at Tset. In one of the constraining regimes, females had access to Tset for 4 h daily whereas in the other regime, females never reached Tset (maximal temperature of 29.0°C). Thermal treatments were maintained throughout gravidity in all three groups, but, after oviposition, all eggs were incubated at Tset until hatching. Compared with the optimal regime, the two suboptimal regimes had a longer duration of gravidity, which resulted in delayed hatching. Between the two suboptimal regimes, gravidity was significantly shorter in the treatment that included time at Tset. Furthermore, suboptimal regimes influenced offspring traits at hatching, including body morphology, antipredator behavior, strength and metabolism. However, partial access to maternal Tset significantly enhanced several offspring traits, including performance. Our results demonstrate the importance of time at Tset on early development and suggest an adaptive significance of maternal thermoregulation prior to oviposition.
Bootstrap Tests for Distributional Treatment Effects in Instrumental Variable Models

This article considers the problem of assessing the distributional consequences of a treatment on some outcome variable of interest when treatment intake is (possibly) nonrandomized, but there is a binaryinstrument available for the researcher. Such a scenario is common in observational studies and in randomized experiments with imperfect compliance. One possible approach to this problem is to compare the counterfactual cumulative distribution functions of the outcome with and without the treatment. This article shows how to estimate these distributions using instrumental variable methods and a simple bootstrap procedure is proposed to test distributional hypotheses, such as equality of distributions, first-order and second-order stochastic dominance. These tests and estimators are applied to the study of the effects of veteran status on the distribution of civilian earnings. The results show a negative effect of military service during the Vietnam era that appears to be concentrated on the lower tail of the distribution of earnings. First-order stochastic dominance cannot be rejected by the data.
Perspectives on European Social Work: From the Birth of the Nation State to the Impact of Globalisation

The book offers explanations on and clarifications for the bewildering variety of titles and job profiles in the social professions in Europe. It presents them both as a product of specific national welfare arrangements, and as a sign of a special kind of professional autonomy that so far helped to correct national welfare trends. Now, this autonomy is once more called for in the light of the complete re-structuring of all European welfare states and a European model of social work could deliver impulses for real alternatives to growing exclusion and inequality.
An interpolation‐based fast multipole method for higher‐order boundary elements on parametric surfaces

In this article, a black‐box higher‐order fast multipole method for solving boundary integral equations on parametric surfaces in three spatial dimensions is proposed. Such piecewise smooth surfaces are the topic of recent studies in isogeometric analysis. Due to the exact surface representation, the rate of convergence of higher‐order methods is not limited by approximation errors of the surface. An element‐wise clustering strategy yields a balanced cluster tree and an efficient numerical integration scheme for the underlying Galerkin method. By performing the interpolation for the fast multipole method directly on the reference domain, the cost complexity in the polynomial degree is reduced by one order. This gain is independent of the application of either ℋ ‐ or ℋ2 ‐matrices. In fact, several simplifications in the construction of ℋ2 ‐matrices are pointed out, which are a by‐product of the surface representation. Extensive numerical examples are provided in order to quantify and qualify the proposed method. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A Massive Bipolar Outflow and a Dusty Torus with Large Grains in the Preplanetary Nebula IRAS 22036+5306

We report high angular resolution (~1'') CO J = 3-2 interferometric mapping using the Submillimeter Array (SMA) of IRAS 22036+5306 (I22036), a bipolar preplanetary nebula (PPN) with knotty jets discovered in our HST snapshot survey of young PPNs. In addition, we have obtained supporting lower resolution (~10'') CO and 13CO J = 1-0 observations with the Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) interferometer, as well as optical long-slit echelle spectra at the Palomar Observatory. The CO J = 3-2 observations show the presence of a very fast (~220 km s-1), highly collimated, massive (0.03 M☉) bipolar outflow with a very large scalar momentum (about 1039 g cm s-1), and the characteristic spatiokinematic structure of bow shocks at the tips of this outflow. The Hα line shows an absorption feature blueshifted from the systemic velocity by ~100 km s-1, which most likely arises in neutral interface material between the fast outflow and the dense walls of the bipolar lobes at low latitudes. The fast outflow in I22036, as in most PPNs, cannot be driven by radiation pressure. We find an unresolved source of submillimeter (and millimeter-wave) continuum emission in I22036, implying a very substantial mass (0.02-0.04 M☉) of large (radius ≳1 mm), cold (≲50 K) dust grains associated with I22036's toroidal waist. We also find that the 13C/12C ratio in I22036 is very high (0.16), close to the maximum value achieved in equilibrium CNO nucleosynthesis (0.33). The combination of the high circumstellar mass (i.e., in the extended dust shell and the torus) and the high 13C/12C ratio in I22036 provides strong support for this object having evolved from a massive (≳4 M☉) progenitor in which hot-bottom-burning has occurred.
PENGARUH CORPORATE GOVERNANCE TERHADAP MANAJEMEN PAJAK

This research investigates the influence of corporate governance influences on tax management behavior. Tax management is measured by effective tax rate. Corporate governance are measured by number of commissioner, percentage of independent commissioner, and compensation of commissioner and executives. Company size, profitability, debt ratio, and different tax rate are used as control variables.This research sample is manufactured company selected by using method of purposive sampling. There are 153 companies fulfilling criterions. This research used multiple regression analysis. The results of this research indicates that the number of commissioner, company size, profitability, and debt ratio affect tax management significantly. Meanwhile, the proportion of independent commissioners, compensation of commissioner and executive, and different tax rate does not significantly influence the company's tax management.
Effects of carbon-related oxide defects on the reliability of 4H-SiC MOSFETs

In this work, we use density functional theory-based calculations to study the hole trapping properties of single carbon-related defects in silicon dioxide. We show that such interstitials are stable in the carboxyl configuration, where the interstitial carbon atom remains three-fold coordinated with chemical bonds to two Si atoms and an oxygen atom (Si-[C=O]-Si). Using formation energy calculations, we observed a +2 to neutral charge transition level for carboxyl defect within the 4H-SiC bandgap. This leads us to propose that carboxyl defects are likely to act as switching oxide border hole traps in the oxide and contribute to threshold voltage instabilities in a 4H-SiC MOSFET. Thus, we provide an additional candidate to the traditional oxygen vacancy hole traps in 4H-SiC MOS systems. The atomic structures of the defect in various charge states are presented. The stability-providing mechanism for the carboxyl defect in the doubly positive state is found to be the puckering of the Si atom, as in the case of positively charged oxygen vacancy hole traps.
Attrition factor analysis-with special reference to IT professionals in Chennai

The purpose of establishing any organization revolves with growth and profit. To achieve the predetermined objectives and goals of any organization heavily rely on the available best human resources and the methodology of retaining within the organization. In this aspect it is imperative to retain the existing human resources in a best possible manner. But in reality ground it is the fact to be accepted that due to competitive situations prevail among the organizations, talented employees are easily attracted by the competitors. This situation leads to insurmountable employee's attrition in present day's situation. The present study aims to explore the factors for real causes of attrition. The sample unit [N=482] drawn from experienced IT Professionals from top three software companies situated in Chennai who have left their jobs in last three years. Results were evaluated using SPSS 17.0 and suggestions are provided to retain the talented human resources.
The effect of early thymectomy on histogenesis of the lymphoid organs in Xenopus laevis.

The role of the thymus in the ontogenetic development of the lymphoid system of the clawed toad, Xenopus laevis , was investigated by removing the organ at stage 49 of Nieuwkoop & Faber (1967), a stage when small lymphocytes are present in the thymus but have not yet appeared in the peripheral lymphoid organs. Complete thymectomy, confirmed histologically, was achieved in nine larvae killed at stage 56 and in 23 larvae killed at stage 59. The spleen was smaller in thymectomized larvae than in sham-thymectomized controls in the series killed at stage 56, but the difference was no longer significant at stage 59. In both series, thymectomized larvae showed a fall in the number of extra-follicular lymphocytes and an increase in the reticulo-myeloid elements of the splenic red pulp. The pharyngeal ventral cavity bodies were moderately or severely depleted of lymphocytes. In other areas, histogenesis proceeded normally in the absence of the thymus. In the splenic white pulp, the follicles, which comprised immature cells of the lymphoblast type at the time of thymectomy, developed their normal complement of lymphocytes. All larvae grew and developed at the normal rate.
Hyperspectral Anomaly Detection Based on Low-Rank Representation and Learned Dictionary

In this paper, a novel hyperspectral anomaly detector based on low-rank representation (LRR) and learned dictionary (LD) has been proposed. This method assumes that a two-dimensional matrix transformed from a three-dimensional hyperspectral imagery can be decomposed into two parts: a low rank matrix representing the background and a sparse matrix standing for the anomalies. The direct application of LRR model is sensitive to a tradeoff parameter that balances the two parts. To mitigate this problem, a learned dictionary is introduced into the decomposition process. The dictionary is learned from the whole image with a random selection process and therefore can be viewed as the spectra of the background only. It also requires a less computational cost with the learned dictionary. The statistic characteristic of the sparse matrix allows the application of basic anomaly detection method to obtain detection results. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared to other anomaly detection methods, the proposed method based on LRR and LD shows its robustness and has a satisfactory anomaly detection result.
Language Processing as Cue Integration: Grounding the Psychology of Language in Perception and Neurophysiology

I argue that cue integration, a psychophysiological mechanism from vision and multisensory perception, offers a computational linking hypothesis between psycholinguistic theory and neurobiological models of language. I propose that this mechanism, which incorporates probabilistic estimates of a cue's reliability, might function in language processing from the perception of a phoneme to the comprehension of a phrase structure. I briefly consider the implications of the cue integration hypothesis for an integrated theory of language that includes acquisition, production, dialogue and bilingualism, while grounding the hypothesis in canonical neural computation.
Uncertainty Shocks in an Economy with Collateral Constraints

We show that a rise in uncertainty on its own generates a substantial drop in employment, production and investment. In keeping with previous findings in the literature, we find these initial declines are larger in the presence of capital irreversibility than without, as firms experiencing relatively high productivity invest less to avoid costs associated with later reversals. Surprisingly, the inclusion of financial frictions has a slight mitigating effect on the downturn. We trace this to a reduced negative wealth effect on labor supply associated with future rises in average productivity implied by the coming greater dispersion. Absent frictions in capital reallocation, greater dispersion has a TFP enhancing effect. This positive effect associated with increased dispersion over coming dates is limited in the presence of collateralized borrowing limits hindering reallocation. Thus, we see substantially reduced rises in GDP over the episode following the uncertainty shock. In contrast to the implications of an aggregate productivity shock, an uncertainty shock generates a gradual rise in endogenous aggregate TFP in our model, alongside a nonmonotone response in the labor input. Thus, when driven by uncertainty shocks alone, the model succeeds in reproducing the near-zero correlation between hours and labor productivity in the data.