Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of galaxy mass ratio on merger-driven starbursts

We employ numerical simulations of galaxy mergers to explore the effect of galaxy mass ratio on merger-driven starbursts. Our numerical simulations include radiative cooling of gas, star formation, and stellar feedback to follow the interaction and merger of four disc galaxies. The galaxy models span a factor of 23 in total mass and are designed to be representative of typical galaxies in the local universe. We find that the merger-driven star formation is a strong function of merger mass ratio, with very little, if any, induced star formation for large mass ratio mergers. We define a burst efficiency that is useful to characterize the merger-driven star formation and test that it is insensitive to uncertainties in the feedback parametrization. In accord with previous work we find that the burst efficiency depends on the structure of the primary galaxy. In particular, the presence of a massive stellar bulge stabilizes the disc and suppresses merger-driven star formation for large mass ratio mergers. Direct, coplanar merging orbits produce the largest tidal disturbance and yield the most intense burst of star formation. Contrary to naive expectations, a more compact distribution of gas or an increased gas fraction both decrease the burst efficiency. Owing to the efficient feedback model and the newer version of smoothed particle hydrodynamics employed here, the burst efficiencies of the mergers presented here are smaller than in previous studies.
Jumping performance analysis of a frog-inspired robot based on trajectory planning

In order to achieve jumping performance similar with real frog, the frog-inspired robot is required to reach some velocity in takeoff phase. In this paper, trajectory planning method is introduced to analyze jumping performance under different takeoff velocities. Firstly, the kinematic model was built, and the dynamic equation was established using Lagrangian method. Then, aimed at minimum joint torques in takeoff phase, the trajectory planning simulation was carried out with the constraints including different takeoff velocities. The results show that the simulation was conducted in almost the same initial and takeoff positions, and joint motion patterns and joint torques can be analyzed under different takeoff velocities.
DUALITY OF RESTRICTION AND INDUCTION FOR C*-COACTIONS

Consider a coaction δ of a locally compact group G on a C-algebra A, and a closed normal subgroup N of G. We prove, following results of Echterhoff for abelian G, that Mansfield’s imprimitivity between A ×δ| G/N and A ×δ G ×δ,r N implements equivalences between Mansfield induction of representations from A×G/N to A×G and restriction of representations fromA×G×rN to A × G, and between restriction of representations from A × G to A × G/N and Green induction of representations from A × G to A × G ×r N . This allows us to deduce properties of Mansfield induction from the known theory of ordinary crossed products.
Observation of new resonances decaying to D{pi} and D{sup *}{pi} in inclusive e{sup +}e{sup -} collisions near {radical}(s)=10.58 GeV

We present a study of the D{sup +}{pi}{sup -}, D{sup 0}{pi}{sup +}, and D*{sup +}{pi}{sup -} systems in inclusive e{sup +}e{sup -}{yields}c{bar c} interactions in a search for new excited D meson states. We use a data set, consisting of {approx}454 fb{sup -1}, collected at center-of-mass energies near 10.58 GeV by the BABAR detector at the SLAC PEP-II asymmetric-energy collider. We observe, for the first time, candidates for the radial excitations of the D{sup 0}, D*{sup 0}, and D*{sup +}, as well as the L=2 excited states of the D{sup 0} and D{sup +}, where L is the orbital angular momentum of the quarks.
A Survey of Plant Iron Content—A Semi-Systematic Review

Iron is an essential mineral nutrient for all living organisms, involved in a plurality of biological processes. Its deficit is the cause of the most common form of anemia in the world: iron deficiency anemia (IDA). This paper reviews iron content in various parts of 1228 plant species and its absorption from herbal products, based on data collected from the literature in a semi-systematic manner. Five hundred genera randomly selected from the Angiosperms group, 215 genera from the Pteridophytes groups and all 95 Gymnosperm genera as listed in the Plant List version 1.1 were used as keywords together with the word “iron” in computerized searches. Iron data about additional genera returned by those searches were extracted and included in the analysis. In total, iron content values for a number of 1228 species, 5 subspecies, and 5 varieties were collected. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to compare iron contents in various plant parts (whole plant, roots, stems, shoots, leaves, aerial parts, flowers, fruits, seeds, wood, bark, other parts) and exploratory analyses by taxonomic groups and life-forms were carried out. The absorption and potential relevance of herbal iron for iron supplementation are discussed.
Peer Assessment in Writing Using Frog VLE in a Secondary School ESL Classroom

The study attempted to shed some light on the effects of using Frog VLE for peer assessment in writing in a secondary school ESL classroom and the students’ perception towards using Frog VLE for peer assessment in writing. A total of 50 Form Four students were involved in this study. A pre-test was given to identify their performance in writing essays. Later, they used Frog VLE for their writing tasks as well as to assess their friends’ work. The teacher posts many rubrics and guidelines for students’ reference in the Frog VLE. At the end of the study, a post-test on writing was given together with a questionnaire to find out the students’ perception on using the Frog VLE for peer assessment. The data collected were analysed using paired t-test while a descriptive analysis was used to find out the perception of students in using Frog VLE to do peer assessment in writing. The results revealed that students perceived using Frog VLE for peer assessment as very useful, enjoyable and their writing proficiency has improved. Some suggestions were given for further research.
Hard-Diet Feeding Recovers Neurogenesis in the Subventricular Zone and Olfactory Functions of Mice Impaired by Soft-Diet Feeding

The subventricular zone (SVZ) generates an immense number of neurons even during adulthood. These neurons migrate to the olfactory bulb (OB) and differentiate into granule cells and periglomerular cells. The information broadcast by general odorants is received by the olfactory sensory neurons and transmitted to the OB. Recent studies have shown that a reduction of mastication impairs both neurogenesis in the hippocampus and brain functions. To examine these effects, we first measured the difference in Fos-immunoreactivity (Fos-ir) at the principal sensory trigeminal nucleus (Pr5), which receives intraoral touch information via the trigeminal nerve, when female adult mice ingested a hard or soft diet to explore whether soft-diet feeding could mimic impaired mastication. Ingestion of a hard diet induced greater expression of Fos-ir cells at the Pr5 than did a soft diet or no diet. Bromodeoxyuridine-immunoreactive (BrdU-ir) structures in sagittal sections of the SVZ and in the OB of mice fed a soft or hard diet were studied to explore the effects of changes in mastication on newly generated neurons. After 1 month, the density of BrdU-ir cells in the SVZ and OB was lower in the soft-diet-fed mice than in the hard-diet-fed mice. The odor preferences of individual female mice to butyric acid were tested in a Y-maze apparatus. Avoidance of butyric acid was reduced by the soft-diet feeding. We then explored the effects of the hard-diet feeding on olfactory functions and neurogenesis in the SVZ of mice impaired by soft-diet feeding. At 3 months of hard-diet feeding, avoidance of butyric acid was reversed and responses to odors and neurogenesis were recovered in the SVZ. The present results suggest that feeding with a hard diet improves neurogenesis in the SVZ, which in turn enhances olfactory function at the OB.
A novel brain-computer interface based on the rapid serial visual presentation paradigm

Most present-day visual brain computer interfaces (BCIs) suffer from the fact that they rely on eye movements, are slow-paced, or feature a small vocabulary. As a potential remedy, we explored a novel BCI paradigm consisting of a central rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of the stimuli. It has a large vocabulary and realizes a BCI system based on covert non-spatial selective visual attention. In an offline study, eight participants were presented sequences of rapid bursts of symbols. Two different speeds and two different color conditions were investigated. Robust early visual and P300 components were elicited time-locked to the presentation of the target. Offline classification revealed a mean accuracy of up to 90% for selecting the correct symbol out of 30 possibilities. The results suggest that RSVP-BCI is a promising new paradigm, also for patients with oculomotor impairments.
Effective Discriminative Feature Selection With Nontrivial Solution

Feature selection and feature transformation, the two main ways to reduce dimensionality, are often presented separately. In this paper, a feature selection method is proposed by combining the popular transformation-based dimensionality reduction method linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and sparsity regularization. We impose row sparsity on the transformation matrix of LDA through ℓ2,1-norm regularization to achieve feature selection, and the resultant formulation optimizes for selecting the most discriminative features and removing the redundant ones simultaneously. The formulation is extended to the ℓ2,p-norm regularized case, which is more likely to offer better sparsity when 0 <; p <; 1. Thus, the formulation is a better approximation to the feature selection problem. An efficient algorithm is developed to solve the ℓ2,p-norm-based optimization problem and it is proved that the algorithm converges when 0<; p <; 2. Systematical experiments are conducted to understand the work of the proposed method. Promising experimental results on various types of real-world data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm.
Selective Augmentation of Stem Cell Populations in Structural Fat Grafts for Maxillofacial Surgery

Structural fat grafting utilizes the centrifugation of liposuction aspirates to create a graded density of adipose tissue. This study was performed to qualitatively investigate the effects of centrifugation on stem cells present in adipose tissue. Liposuction aspirates were obtained from healthy donors and either not centrifuged or centrifuged at 1,800 rpm for 3 minutes. The obtained fat volumes were divided into three layers and then analyzed. The results demonstrate that centrifugation induces a different distribution of stem cells in the three layers. The high-density layer displays the highest expression of mesenchymal stem cell and endothelial markers. The low-density layer exhibits an enrichment of multipotent stem cells. We conclude that appropriate centrifugation concentrates stem cells. This finding may influence the clinical practice of liposuction aspirate centrifugation and enhance graft uptake.
Stellar Photometry of the Globular Cluster NGC 6229.I.Data Reduction and Morphology of the Brighter Part of the CMD

BV CCD photometry of the central (1.5 arcmin x 2.0 arcmin) part of the mildly concentrated outer-halo globular cluster NGC 6229 is presented. The data reduction in such a crowded field was based on a wavelet transform analysis. Our larger dataset extends the previous results by Carney et al. (1991, AJ, 101, 1699) for the outer and less crowded fields of the cluster, and confirms that NGC 6229 has a peculiar color-magnitude diagram for its position in the Galaxy. In particular, NGC 6229's horizontal branch (HB) presents several interesting features, among which stand out: a well populated and very extended blue tail; a rather blue overall morphology, with (B-R)/(B+V+R) = 0.24+/-0.02; a bimodal color distribution, resembling those found for NGC 1851 and NGC 2808; and gaps on the blue HB. NGC 6229 is the first bimodal-HB cluster to be identified in the Galactic outer halo. A low value of the R parameter is confirmed, suggestive of a low helium abundance or of the presence of a quite substantial population of extreme HB stars fainter than our photometric limit (~ 2.5 mag below the RR Lyrae level in V). Twelve new possible variable stars were found in the central part of the cluster. The morphology of the red giant branch (RGB) also seems to be peculiar. In particular, the RGB luminosity function ``bump'' is not a prominent feature and has only been tentatively identified, on the basis of a comparison with a previously reported detection for M3 (NGC 5272). Finally, we compare the properties of NGC 6229 with those for other outer-halo globular clusters, and call attention to what appears to be a bimodal HB distribution for the outer-halo cluster population, where objects with very red or very blue HB types are much more frequently found than clusters with intermediate HB types.
The Interplay between Determinism and Stochasticity in Childhood Diseases

An important issue in the history of ecology has been the study of the relative importance of deterministic forces and processes noise in shaping the dynamics of ecological populations. We address this question by exploring the temporal dynamics of two childhood infections, measles and whooping cough, in England and Wales. We demonstrate that epidemics of whooping cough are strongly influenced by stochasticity; fully deterministic approaches cannot achieve even a qualitative fit to the observed data. In contrast, measles dynamics are extremely well explained by a deterministic model. These differences are shown to be caused by their contrasting responses to dynamical noise due to different infectious periods.
Assessing the impact of diagenesis on d 11 B , d 13 C , d 18 O , Sr / Ca and B / Ca values in fossil planktic foraminiferal calcite

The geochemical composition of foraminiferal tests is a valuable archive for the reconstruction of paleo-climatic, -oceanographic and -ecological changes. However, dissolution of biogenic calcite and precipitation of inorganic calcite (overgrowth and recrystallization) at the seafloor and in the sediment column can potentially alter the original geochemical composition of the foraminiferal test, biasing any resulting paleoenvironmental reconstruction. The dB of planktic foraminiferal calcite is a promising ocean pH-proxy but the effect of diagenesis is still poorly known. Here we present new dB, dC, dO, Sr/Ca and B/Ca data from multiple species of planktic foraminifera from time-equivalent samples for two low latitude sites: clay-rich Tanzanian Drilling Project (TDP) Site 18 from the Indian Ocean containing well-preserved (‘glassy’) foraminifera and carbonate-rich Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 865 from the central Pacific Ocean hosting recrystallized (‘frosty’) foraminifera. Our approach makes the assumption that environmental conditions were initially similar at both sites so most chemical differences are attributable to diagenesis. Planktic foraminiferal dO and dC records show offsets in both relative and absolute values between the two sites consistent with earlier findings that these isotopic ratios are strongly influenced by diagenetic alteration. Sr/Ca and B/Ca ratios in planktic foraminiferal calcite are also offset between the two sites but there is little change in the relative difference between surface and deep dwelling taxa. In contrast, dB values indicate no large differences between well-preserved and recrystallized foraminifera suggesting that despite extensive diagenetic alteration the dB of biogenic calcite appears robust, potentially indicative of a lack of free exchange of boron between pore fluids and the recrystallizing CaCO3. Our finding may remove one potential source of uncertainty in d B based pH reconstructions and provide us with greater confidence in our ability to reconstruct pH in the ancient oceans from at least some recrystallized foraminiferal calcite. However, further investigations should extend this approach to test the robustness of our findings across a range of taphonomies, ages and burial settings. 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Bipositive Events: Associations With Proximal Stressors, Bisexual Identity, and Mental Health Among Bisexual Cisgender Women

Accumulating evidence indicates that bisexual individuals are at increased risk for mental health disorders compared with heterosexual and lesbian/gay populations. Research has also begun to suggest that the stigmatization of bisexuality underlies these disparities. However, factors that may promote mental health among bisexual individuals have received minimal research attention. The current weekly diary study examined a factor that may promote mental health: bipositive events (positive events related to one’s bisexual identity) and its associations with changes in proximal stressors (internalized binegativity, sexual identity uncertainty, and rejection sensitivity), bisexual identity (identity affirmation, strength of identification), and symptoms of anxiety and depression among bisexual cisgender women. Results indicate that experiencing more frequent interpersonal (but not intrapersonal) bipositive events during a particular week predicted subsequent decreases in anxiety. Additionally, experiencing more bipositive events (both intrapersonal and interpersonal) over the course of the study predicted cumulative decreases in proximal stressors (internalized binegativity, sexual identity uncertainty, and rejection sensitivity), increases in bisexual identity affirmation and strength of identification as bisexual, and decreases in anxiety and depression. Indirect effects analyses indicate bipositive events may impact mental health via these cumulative decreases in proximal stressors and increases in strength of identification as bisexual. These findings suggest that bipositive events may be a protective factor that promotes resilience and bisexual mental health. Implications for clinical interventions are discussed.
Analyzing Pricing Strategies for Online-Services with Network Externalities

In this study, we model firms that sell a product and a complementary online service, where only the latter involves network externalities. That is, the value each consumer derives from the service increases with the total number of consumers that subscribe to the service. We consider two pricing strategies: 1) bundle pricing, in which the firm charges a single price for the product and the service; and 2) separate pricing, in which the firm sets the prices of the product and the service separately and consumers self-select whether to buy both or only the product. We show that, in contrast to the common result in the bundling literature, often the monopolist chooses not to offer the bundle (he either sells the service separately or not at all) while bundling would increase consumer surplus and social welfare. Thus, under-provision of the service can be the market outcome. Considering a competitive market with two firms, we find that in some cases the firms are caught in a Prisoner’s Dilemma, as in equilibrium both offer the bundle while they would be better off if the service was not offered or sold separately. We show that the firms’ profit decreases as the extent of network externalities increases, and that even in the duopoly case, under-provision of the service may occur in equilibrium.
Equivariant compactifications of reductive groups

Under study are equivariant projective compactifications of reductive groups that can be obtained as the closure of the image of the group in the space of projective linear operators of a representation. The structure and the mutual position of the orbits of the action of the direct square of the group acting by left/right multiplication and the local structure of the compactification in the neighbourhood of a closed orbit are described. Several conditions for the normality and smoothness of a compactification are obtained. The methods used are based on the theory of equivariant embeddings of spherical homogeneous spaces and reductive algebraic semigroups.
EFFECT OF AMLODIPINE ON ORAL GLUCOSE INDUCED GLYCEMIC CHANGES IN NORMAL ALBINO RATS

Objective: To determine the effect of amlodipine on blood glucose levels through oral glucose tolerance test in normoglycemic albino Rats and the magnitude of its effect on basal v/s glucose induced glycemic value compared to control. Methods: Rats were divided into control and test groups to study the effect of glucose induced glycemic changes in normal rats following oral administration of amlodipine. The control group received 1 ml of distilled water everyday, test group received amlodipine everyday in the dose of 1.5 mg/Kg BW for 3 days.On the third day, 2 hours after drug administration both groups were administered oral glucose in the dose of 0.6 gm/Kg BW. The blood glucose levels were measured at 0, 60 and 150 minutes after glucose administration by rat tail snipping method using ACCUCHEK glucometer. Results: The mean CBG of Test group is significantly higher(P<0.001) at all times of the glucose challenge i.e. 0, 60, 150 minutes from the time of glucose administration compared to control group. The optimal hyperglycemia was seen at 60 minutes which is 32.76% higher than the control group, followed by 0 minutes (29.41%) and 150 minutes (7.92%). Conclusion: Amlodipine worsens glycaemic control in normal rats at all hours of glucose challenge. Extending this to human beings, whether with impaired glucose tolerance or overt diabetes mellitus, it is suggested to limit the use of amlodipine to situations unless absolutely necessary since it induces hyperglycaemia even in normoglycaemic rats by a postulated mechanism of inhibition of both basal and glucose induced insulin secretion significantly. INTRODUCTION: Diabetes mellitus (DM) consists of group of syndromes characterized by hyperglycemia; altered metabolism of lipids, carbohydrates, and proteins; and an increased risk of complications from vascular disease . The pathophysiology of the disease is complex, with association at various degrees of an insulin-resistance state, defect in insulin-secretion and loss of β cell mass and perhaps modification in postprandial hyperglycaemic kinetics . In spite of the introduction and extensive utilization of hypoglycaemic agents, diabetes and the related complications continue to be major health problem worldwide . According to International Diabetic Federation the estimated diabetes prevalence for 2010 has risen to 285 million, representing 6.4% of the world’s adult population, with a prediction that by 2030, the number of people with diabetes will have risen to 438 million. Correspondence to Author: