Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Photometric redshifts as a tool for studying the Coma cluster galaxy populations

Aims. We apply photometric redshift techniques to an investigation of the Coma cluster galaxy luminosity function (GLF) at faint magnitudes, in particular in the u* band where basically no studies are presently available at these magnitudes. Methods: Cluster members were selected based on probability distribution function from photometric redshift calculations applied to deep u^*, B, V, R, I images covering a region of almost 1 deg2 (completeness limit R ~ 24). In the area covered only by the u* image, the GLF was also derived after a statistical background subtraction. Results: Global and local GLFs in the B, V, R, and I bands obtained with photometric redshift selection are consistent with our previous results based on a statistical background subtraction. The GLF in the u* band shows an increase in the faint end slope towards the outer regions of the cluster. The analysis of the multicolor type spatial distribution reveals that late type galaxies are distributed in clumps in the cluster outskirts, where X-ray substructures are also detected and where the GLF in the u* band is steeper. Conclusions: We can reproduce the GLFs computed with classical statistical subtraction methods by applying a photometric redshift technique. The u* GLF slope is steeper in the cluster outskirts, varying from α ~ -1 in the cluster center to α ~ -2 in the cluster periphery. The concentrations of faint late type galaxies in the cluster outskirts could explain these very steep slopes, assuming a short burst of star formation in these galaxies when entering the cluster. Based on observations obtained with MegaPrime/MegaCam, a joint project of CFHT and CEA/DAPNIA, at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) which is operated by the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada, the Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) of France, and the University of Hawaii. This work is also partly based on data products produced at TERAPIX and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre as part of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey, a collaborative project of NRC and CNRS. Also based on data from W. M. Keck Observatory which is operated as a scientific partnership between the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA. It was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation.
Assessing Test Feedback Strategies Adopted By Primary School Teachers In Anambra State

In learning new skills, it is necessary that students receive some information (feedback), that tells them if they are on the right track. The strategies, tactics or means through which teachers provide feedback to pupils after assessments are, however, a source of concern. Thus, this study aimed at assessing test feedback strategies/tactics adopted by primary school teachers in Anambra State, Nigeria. This study is a descriptive survey conducted in Anambra State, a south-eastern State in Nigeria. The sample of the study consisted of 500 teachers drawn from 1054 public primary schools in the state. The study tested two hypotheses and answered two research questions. The instrument used for collecting data is a researcher-developed questionnaire, titled “Test Feedback Strategy Assessment Questionnaire” (TFSAQ). Mean, standard deviation and t-test were adopted to analyze the data collected. The study revealed that teachers majorly gave feedbacks in writing or print form which included handwritten comments on students’ assessed work, written numeric scores, grades, averages or positions, etc. They also gave face-to-face feedbacks to whole classes, individual students and small groups of students. Most of the teachers did not use electronic feedbacks. The feedbacks were of fairly good quality. The school location and the level of a class taught had no significant influence on teachers’ responses. As a result of the findings, the researcher recommended among other things that teachers should be given more training especially on electronic feedback strategies as well as ways of improving the qualities of their test feedbacks.
Genotyping using whole-genome sequencing is a realistic alternative to surveillance based on phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing.

OBJECTIVES Antimicrobial susceptibility testing of bacterial isolates is essential for clinical diagnosis, to detect emerging problems and to guide empirical treatment. Current phenotypic procedures are sometimes associated with mistakes and may require further genetic testing. Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) may soon be within reach even for routine surveillance and clinical diagnostics. The aim of this study was to evaluate WGS as a routine tool for surveillance of antimicrobial resistance compared with current phenotypic procedures. METHODS Antimicrobial susceptibility tests were performed on 200 isolates originating from Danish pigs, covering four bacterial species. Genomic DNA was purified from all isolates and sequenced as paired-end reads on the Illumina platform. The web servers ResFinder and MLST (www.genomicepidemiology.org) were used to identify acquired antimicrobial resistance genes and MLST types (where MLST stands for multilocus sequence typing). ResFinder results were compared with phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing results using EUCAST epidemiological cut-off values and MLST types. RESULTS A total of 3051 different phenotypic tests were performed; 482 led to the categorizing of isolates as resistant and 2569 as susceptible. Seven cases of disagreement between tested and predicted susceptibility were observed, six of which were related to spectinomycin resistance in Escherichia coli. Correlation between MLST type and resistance profiles was only observed in Salmonella Typhimurium, where isolates belonging to sequence type (ST) 34 were more resistant than ST19 isolates. CONCLUSIONS High concordance (99.74%) between phenotypic and predicted antimicrobial susceptibility was observed. Thus, antimicrobial resistance testing based on WGS is an alternative to conventional phenotypic methods.
Modeling and Analysis of Multi-agent Coordination Using Nearest Neighbor Rules

In a recent IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control article, Jadbabaie et al. provides a theoretical explanation of the discrete-time model of groups of mobile autonomous agents raised by Vicsek et al. in 1995. In their paper, Jadbabaie et al. established conditions given in terms of neighbor graphs for coordination of agents and provided that these agents are periodically linked together. This paper sharpens this result by showing that coordination will be reached under a very weak condition that requires all agents are finally linked together. The theorems in this paper show that convergence will be attained if these neighbor graphs are finally linked together. This condition is also strictly weaker than the one Jadbabaie et al. desired. An example is provided that illustrates the soundness of the theorem.
Free Will and Neuroscience: From Explaining Freedom Away to New Ways of Operationalizing and Measuring It

The concept of free will is hard to define, but crucial to both individual and social life. For centuries people have wondered how freedom is possible in a world ruled by physical determinism; however, reflections on free will have been confined to philosophy until half a century ago, when the topic was also addressed by neuroscience. The first relevant, and now well-known, strand of research on the brain correlates of free will was that pioneered by Libet et al. (1983), which focused on the allegedly unconscious intentions taking place in decisions regarded as free and voluntary. Libet’s interpretation of the so-called readiness potential (RP) seems to favor a sort of deflation of freedom (Soon et al., 2008). However, recent studies seem to point to a different interpretation of the RP, namely that the apparent build-up of the brain activity preceding subjectively spontaneous voluntary movements (SVM) may reflect the ebb and flow of the background neuronal noise, which is triggered by many factors (Schurger et al., 2016). This interpretation seems to bridge the gap between the neuroscientific perspective on free will and the intuitive, commonsensical view of it (Roskies, 2010b), but many problems remain to be solved and other theoretical paths can be hypothesized. The article therefore, proposes to start from an operationalizable concept of free will (Lavazza and Inglese, 2015) to find a connection between higher order descriptions (useful for practical life) and neural bases. This new way to conceptualize free will should be linked to the idea of “capacity”: that is, the availability of a repertoire of general skills that can be manifested and used without moment by moment conscious control. The capacity index, which is also able to take into account the differences of time scales in decisions, includes reasons-responsiveness and is related to internal control, understood as the agent’s ownership of the mechanisms that trigger the relevant behavior. Cognitive abilities, needed for one to have capacity, might be firstly operationalized as a set of neuropsychological tests, which can be used to operationalize and measure specific executive functions, as they are strongly linked to the concept of control. Subsequently, a free will index would allow for the search of the underlying neural correlates of the capacity exhibited by people and the limits in capacity exhibited by each individual.
Prevalence of HIV in syphilis in a tertiary care centre

<p class="abstract"><strong>Background:</strong> Aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of HIV in syphilis in patients attending the STD clinic in a tertiary care center. </p><p class="abstract"><strong>Methods:</strong> Study was conducted in all new patients attending the STD clinic during the study period of 6 months from June 2012 to November 2012. Clinically suspected cases of syphilis were diagnosed serologically and all the patients were tested for HIV after proper counselling and consent. <strong></strong></p><p class="abstract"><strong>Results:</strong> In a total of 200 new patients attended the STD clinic 47 (23.5%) were diagnosed as syphilis. Majority of the cases (43) were latent syphilis in our study. A total of 77 (38.5%) cases were reactive to HIV. Among the 47 (23.5%) syphilis cases 24 (51%) were reactive to HIV. In the age group of 21-30 years most of the syphilis male (5/6) patients showed HIV reactivity. </p><p class="abstract"><strong>Conclusions:</strong> Seroprevalence of syphilis among other STI was found to be significant. Rising trend in latent syphilis was noted may be due to antenatal checkup, purpose of foreign job and strict blood screening protocols. The prevalence of HIV in syphilis individual was 51% and it was high in the age group of 31-50 when compared to other age group. In the age group of 21-30 most of the males, diagnosed as syphilis were serologically positive for HIV. Hence these sexually active groups were to be targeted for their safe sexual practice to prevent the transmission of HIV. </p>
Combined Impact of Lifestyle Factors on Prospective Change in Body Weight and Waist Circumference in Participants of the EPIC-PANACEA Study

Background The evidence that individual dietary and lifestyle factors influence a person’s weight and waist circumference is well established; however their combined impact is less well documented. Therefore, we investigated the combined effect of physical activity, nutrition and smoking status on prospective gain in body weight and waist circumference. Methods We used data of the prospective EPIC-PANACEA study. Between 1992 and 2000, 325,537 participants (94,445 men and 231,092 women, aged between 25–70) were recruited from nine European countries. Participants were categorised into two groups (positive or negative health behaviours) for each of the following being physically active, adherent to a healthy (Mediterranean not including alcohol) diet, and never-smoking for a total score ranging from zero to three. Anthropometric measures were taken at baseline and were mainly self-reported after a medium follow-up time of 5 years. Results Mixed-effects linear regression models adjusted for age, educational level, alcohol consumption, baseline body mass index and follow-up time showed that men and women who reported to be physically active, never-smoking and adherent to the Mediterranean diet gained over a 5-year period 537 (95% CI −706, −368) and 200 (−478, −87) gram less weight and 0.95 (−1.27, −0.639) and 0.99 (−1.29, −0.69) cm less waist circumference, respectively, compared to participants with zero healthy behaviours. Conclusion The combination of positive health behaviours was associated with significantly lower weight and waist circumference gain.
Review Article Recent and emerging trends in Pharmacotherapy of neuropathic pain

Neuropathic pain is a type of chronic pain caused by a lesion or disease of the somatosensory nervous system. The pathophysiology of neuropathic pain is very complex, not fully understood and different from that somatic pain. It has a deleterious effect on health related quality of life, and leads to increased health-care costs and its management is extremely difficult. The response to currently available treatments is less promising, so newer agents with better efficacy and safety are needed. Currently tricyclic antidepressants and anticonvulsants like gabapentin and pregabalin are considered as the 1 st line drugs but these are not able to produce complete relief. Various recent drugs are: high dose capsaicin patch, topical lidocaine, botulinum toxin A, lacosamide, Selective Serotinin Reuptake inhibitorss, NMDA antagonists. Certain new targets like endocannabinoid system and various neurotrophic factors like BDNF, NT3, NT4, and GDNF are undergoing preclinical and clinical trials and their role in the treatment of neuropathic pain is still emerging.
War experiences and emerging rights claims in postwar former Yugoslavia: The role of generalized conflict exposure and collective anomie

Violent conflicts have often been observed to generate social environments in which human rights violations are more easily tolerated and legitimized. However, recent research has documented cases in which communities exposed to violence react with increased condemnations of human rights violations. In this article, we focus on the distinction between generalized and particularized violence. Our findings show that, in the postwar exYugoslavia context, when local communities have been exposed to violence that was generalized across different ethno-national groups, they strongly condemn human rights violations. Multilevel structural equation models show that the relationship between generalized victimization and the condemnation of human rights violations is mediated by a collective sense of anomie. The processes that move from collective exposure to violence to the collective reaffirmation of human rights are more likely to unfold in communities where violence transcended group boundaries than in communities where particular groups were disproportionately affected by the violence.
THE LABOCA SURVEY OF THE EXTENDED CHANDRA DEEP FIELD SOUTH: TWO MODES OF STAR FORMATION IN ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS HOSTS?

We study the co-existence of star formation and active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity in Chandra X-ray-selected AGN by analyzing stacked 870 μm submillimeter emission from a deep and wide map of the Extended Chandra Deep Field South (ECDFS), obtained with the LABOCA instrument at the APEX telescope. The total X-ray sample of 895 sources with median redshift z ∼ 1 drawn from the combined (E)CDFS X-ray catalogs is detected at >11σ significance at a mean submillimeter flux of 0.49 ± 0.04 mJy, corresponding to a typical star formation rate (SFR) around 30 M☉ yr−1 for a T = 35 K, β = 1.5 graybody far-infrared spectral energy distribution. The good signal-to-noise ratio permits stacking analyses for major subgroups, splitting the sample by redshift, intrinsic luminosity, and AGN obscuration properties. We observe a trend of SFR increasing with redshift. An increase of SFR with AGN luminosity is indicated at the highest L2–10 keV ≳ 1044 erg s−1 luminosities only. Increasing trends with X-ray obscuration as expected in some AGN evolutionary scenarios are not observed for the bulk of the X-ray AGN sample but may be present for the highest intrinsic luminosity objects with L2–10 keV ≳ 1044 erg s−1. This behavior suggests a transition between two modes in the co-existence of AGN activity and star formation. For the bulk of the sample, the X-ray luminosity and obscuration of the AGN are not intimately linked to the global SFR of their hosts. The hosts are likely massive and forming stars secularly, at rates similar to the pervasive star formation seen in massive galaxies without an AGN at similar redshifts. In these systems, star formation is not linked to a specific state of the AGN and the period of moderately luminous AGN activity may not highlight a major evolutionary transition of the galaxy. The change indicated toward more intense star formation, and a more pronounced increase in SFRs between unobscured and obscured AGN reported in the literature at highest (L2–10 keV ≳ 1044 erg s−1) luminosities suggests that these luminous AGNs follow an evolutionary path on which obscured AGN activity and intense star formation are linked, possibly via merging. Comparison to local hard X-ray-selected AGN supports this interpretation. SFRs in the hosts of moderate luminosity AGN at z ∼ 1 are an order of magnitude higher than at z ∼ 0, following the increase in the non-AGN massive galaxy population. At high AGN luminosities, hosts on the evolutionary link/merger path emerge from this secular level of star formation.
Diagnosing and responding to violations in the positivity assumption

The assumption of positivity or experimental treatment assignment requires that observed treatment levels vary within confounder strata. This article discusses the positivity assumption in the context of assessing model and parameter-specific identifiability of causal effects. Positivity violations occur when certain subgroups in a sample rarely or never receive some treatments of interest. The resulting sparsity in the data may increase bias with or without an increase in variance and can threaten valid inference. The parametric bootstrap is presented as a tool to assess the severity of such threats and its utility as a diagnostic is explored using simulated and real data. Several approaches for improving the identifiability of parameters in the presence of positivity violations are reviewed. Potential responses to data sparsity include restriction of the covariate adjustment set, use of an alternative projection function to define the target parameter within a marginal structural working model, restriction of the sample, and modification of the target intervention. All of these approaches can be understood as trading off proximity to the initial target of inference for identifiability; we advocate approaching this tradeoff systematically.
Association between endothelial progenitor cell depletion in blood and mild-to-moderate renal insufficiency in stable angina.

BACKGROUND Low blood counts of CD34/kinase-insert domain receptor double-positive cells (CD34(+)/KDR(+) cells)-a leukocytes subpopulation enriched for bone marrow-derived endothelial progenitor cells (EPC)- predict adverse outcomes in coronary artery disease (CAD). The dependence of EPC numbers on the glomerular filtration rate (GFR), another prognostic factor, has not been reported in CAD yet. Our aim was to assess CD34(+)/KDR(+) cell counts versus GFR in stable angina. METHODS We studied 102 stable angina men with severe angiographic CAD and normal left-ventricular systolic function. CD34(+)/KDR(+) cells were enumerated by flow cytometry. RESULTS With lowering GFR, CD34(+)/KDR(+) cell numbers (% of lymphocytes, median and interquartile range) decreased: 0.04 (0.03-0.06), 0.03 (0.02-0.05) and 0.02 (0.01-0.03)% for GFR >or=90, 60-89 and 30-59 ml/min/1.73 m(2), respectively (P < 0.001 for trend). CD34(+)/KDR(+) cell counts correlated with GFR (r = 0.25, P = 0.01), CAD extension score (r = -0.20, P = 0.04), soluble form of vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (sVCAM-1) (r = -0.22, P = 0.03) and homocysteine (r = -0.20, P = 0.04) levels. A GFR <90 ml/min/1.73 m(2) was associated with insignificantly higher plasma erythropoietin concentrations (r = -0.22, P = 0.09 for trend) that correlated with haemoglobin levels (r = -0.33, P = 0.01, n = 59). The GFR-CD34(+)/KDR(+) cells relation was attenuated, yet maintained (beta = 0.19 +/- 0.09, P = 0.04) on adjustment for the remaining multivariate determinants of CD34(+)/KDR(+) cell numbers: sVCAM-1 (beta = -0.20 +/- 0.09, P = 0.03) and haemoglobin (beta = 0.18 +/- 0.09, P = 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Mild-to-moderate renal dysfunction accompanying stable angina is associated with CD34(+)/KDR(+) cell depletion, which partially depends on concomitant endothelial dysfunction and a tendency to anaemia (despite insignificantly higher erythropoietin) irrespective of an angiographic CAD extent. This may exacerbate an imbalance between endothelial injury and EPC-mediated repair, thus contributing to high cardiovascular risk in CAD coexisting with renal insufficiency.
The role of knowledge-intense high-impact firms in city innovation systems

Abstract Past studies on city innovation systems acknowledge the important role of firms, but rarely study them explicitly. This paper shifts attention to the firm level, and proposes that knowledge-intensive high-impact firms are especially important in shaping the economic development of local economies by creating industry-specific micro pathways. This argument follows from their central role in city innovation systems: we propose that knowledge-intense high-impact firms (KIHIFs) have a relatively high absorptive capacity and therefore make better use of knowledge spillover, but also play a role in distributing international knowledge spillover in return. To empirically investigate this thesis, we examine firms operating in the computer-programming activities, and engineering and technical consultancy industries in the capital area surrounding Helsinki, Finland. In line with our theoretical arguments, we find that the relative within-industry concentrations and rates of internationalisation of KIHIFs vary greatly over small geographic distances. Future research and implications for policy-makers are discussed.
A memristor-based memory cell with no refresh

This paper analyzes and improves the performance of a hybrid memory cell consisting of a memristor and ambipolar transistors. This work extends a previous design by efficiently biasing the memristor (as controlled by the ambipolar transistors), such that no refresh operation is now required. By utilizing macroscopic models, the features of the cell are characterized for the memory operations and no modification is needed to the cell circuit other than the memristor biasing scheme. A detailed treatment of the memory cell with respect to the new biasing scheme of the memristor is provided. Simulation results show that the proposed memory cell has superior performance compared with the previous memristor-based cell.