Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
COMPACT BINARY MERGER RATES: COMPARISON WITH LIGO/VIRGO UPPER LIMITS

We compare evolutionary predictions of double compact object merger rate densities with initial and forthcoming LIGO/Virgo upper limits. We find that: (i) Due to the cosmological reach of advanced detectors, current conversion methods of population synthesis predictions into merger rate densities are insufficient. (ii) Our optimistic models are a factor of 18 below the initial LIGO/Virgo upper limits for BH–BH systems, indicating that a modest increase in observational sensitivity (by a factor of ∼2.5) may bring the first detections or first gravitational wave constraints on binary evolution. (iii) Stellar-origin massive BH–BH mergers should dominate event rates in advanced LIGO/Virgo and can be detected out to redshift z ≃ 2 with templates including inspiral, merger, and ringdown. Normal stars ( < 150 M ⊙ ? > ) can produce such mergers with total redshifted mass up to M tot,z ≃ 400 M ⊙ ? > . (iv) High black hole (BH) natal kicks can severely limit the formation of massive BH–BH systems (both in isolated binary and in dynamical dense cluster evolution), and thus would eliminate detection of these systems even at full advanced LIGO/Virgo sensitivity. We find that low and high BH natal kicks are allowed by current observational electromagnetic constraints. (v) The majority of our models yield detections of all types of mergers (NS–NS, BH–NS, BH–BH) with advanced detectors. Numerous massive BH–BH merger detections will indicate small (if any) natal kicks for massive BHs.
The case of lavender and thyme honey 2

10 The proliferation of hybrid plant varieties without pollen, such as lavender, has 11 complicated the classification of specific types of honey. This study evaluated the 12 correlation between the proclaimed type of monofloral honey (lavender or thyme) as 13 appears on the label with the actual percentage of pollen. In addition, physicochemical 14 parameters, colour, olfato-gustatory profile, and volatile compounds were tested. All the 15 samples labelled as lavender were wrongly classified according to the usual commercial 16 criteria (minimum 10% of pollen Lavandula spp.). In the case of lavender honey, there 17 was significant agreement between commercial labelling and classification through 18 organoleptic perception (81.8%), and above all between the commercial labelling and the 19 volatile compounds (90.9%). For thyme honey, agreement for both parameters was 20 90.0%. These results offer compelling evidence that the volatile compounds are useful 21 for the classification of lavender honey with low levels of pollen since this technique 22 agrees well with the organoleptic analysis. 23
Recycling waste cooking oil into biodiesel: A life cycle assessment

Production activities are always accompanied by energy consumption and waste generation; the basic environmental issue in industrial and developing countries worldwide still is how to best identify and manage waste streams while at same time recovering their energy content. In this paper, starting from the evidence that the conventional disposal of waste cooking oil (WCO) causes severe environmental problems, a new way to recover and reuse this oil is explored. Collection of cooking oils and fats from residential and commercial facilities and treatment to biofuel is investigated as a case study in the Campania Region (Italy). There have been recent developments in recycling techniques for conversion of WCO into biodiesel: in such a way, environmental damage can be minimized by also meeting the need for alternative fuels. The aim of this study is dual. Firstly, it assesses the environmental effectiveness of biodiesel production from WCO, secondly, it identifies hotspots throughout the entire biodiesel production chain and suggests future improvements.
Risk factors for early weaning Fatores de risco para o desmame precoce

Objective: to determine the risk factors for early weaning. Methods: cohort study with 300 mothers/babies couples, carried out in two hospitals. The Edinburgh Scale was used to verify the existence of depressive tendencies in mothers with four months babies. Results: the risk factors for exclusive breastfeeding at 2 and 3 months were the score of Edinburgh (p=0.048 and p=0.000), not Child-Friendly Hospital (p=0.002 and p=0.001) and mother working outside the home (p=0.013 and p=0.007). Maternal education was a risk factor only at 2 months (p=0.004). There 38.0% of mothers with depressive tendency with their children hospitalized in the not Child-Friendly Hospital. Conclusion: not Child-Friendly Hospital, a mother who works outside the home and score Edinburgh proved as risk factors for exclusive breastfeeding at 2 and 3 months of baby ́s life, and women with depressive tendencies had a predisposition to weaning. Descriptors: Breast Feeding; Weaning; Depression Postpartum.
HEALTH-RELATED QUALITY OF LIFE OF PEOPLE WITH DIABETES MELLITUS QUALIDADE DE VIDA RELACIONADA À SAÚDE DE PESSOAS COM DIABETES MELLITUS CALIDAD DE VIDA RELACIONADA A LA SALUD DE PERSONAS CON DIABETES MELLITUS Research

Diabetes mellitus is a highly prevalent disease that is linked to high rates of morbidity and mortality. The present study aimed to evaluate the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of people with diabetes mellitus and its relation to gender, age, time spent since the diagnosis of diabetes, and the practice of physical activity. This is a cross-sectional descriptive study that evaluates HRQoL based on the SF-36 questionnaire. Among the 170 participants, 74.1% were female, 52.9% were married, and the average (standard deviation) of age and time since the diagnosis of the illness were 61.8 years (11.3) and 15.9 years (7.9), respectively. The SF-36 component averages ranged from 46.2 (physical functioning) to 84.8 (social functioning). Men presented a better HRQoL assessment. The practice of physical activity was associated with a better HRQoL. No association among HRQoL, age, marital status, and years with diabetes could be observed. It can therefore be concluded that this study’s participants presented a greater loss in the components that assess physical health.
RELATIONSHIP MARKETING IN A DEVELOPING ECONOMY

The sales representatives of a pharmaceutical manufacturer in India were surveyed to explore the effects of relationship marketing on sales performance. Specifically, the effect of buyer-seller relationship quality on sales performance was assessed. The results indicated that customer oriented selling behaviors helped in developing buyer-seller relationship quality and adaptive selling behaviors fully mediated the effects of buyer-seller relationship quality on sales performance. Based on the findings, managerial implications for US firms operating in developing economies, such as India, are discussed.
A Perceptual Evaluation of Individual and Non-Individual HRTFs: A Case Study of the SADIE II Database

As binaural audio continues to permeate immersive technologies, it is vital to develop a detailed understanding of the perceptual relevance of HRTFs. Previous research has explored the benefit of individual HRTFs with respect to localisation. However, localisation is only one metric with which it is possible to rate spatial audio. This paper evaluates the perceived timbral and spatial characteristics of both individual and non-individual HRTFs and compares the results to overall preference. To that end, the measurement and evaluation of a high-resolution multi-environment binaural Impulse Response database is presented for 20 subjects, including the KU100 and KEMAR binaural mannequins. Post-processing techniques, including low frequency compensation and diffuse field equalisation are discussed in relation to the 8802 unique HRTFs measured for each mannequin and 2818/2114 HRTFs measured for each human. Listening test results indicate that particular HRTF sets are preferred more generally by subjects over their own individual measurements.
Improving Pronunciation of Spanish as a Foreign Language for L1 Japanese Speakers with Japañol CAPT Tool

Availability and usability of mobile smart devices and speech technologies ease the development of language learning applications, although many of them do not include pronunciation practice and improvement. A key to success is to choose the correct methodology and provide a sound experimental validation assessment of their pedagogical effectiveness. In this work we present an empirical evaluation of Japa˜nol, an application designed to improve pronunciation of Spanish as a foreign language targeted to Japanese people. A structured sequence of lessons and a quality assessment of pronunciations before and after completion of the activities provide experimental data about learning dynamics and level of improvement. Explanations have been included as corrective feedback, comprising textual and audiovisual material to explain and illustrate the correct articulation of the sounds. Pre-test and post-test utterances were evaluated and scored by native experts and automatic speech recognition, showing a correlation over 0.86 be-tween both predictions. Sounds [s], [ﬂ], [ R ] and [s], [f R ], [ T ] explain the most frequent perception and production failures, respectively, which can be exploited to plan future versions of the tool, including gamiﬁed ones. Final automatic scores provided by the application highly correlate (r > 0.91) to expert evaluation and a signiﬁcant pronunciation improvement can be measured.
Farmers’ knowledge and perceptions of potato pests and their management in Uganda

As we initiate entomological research on potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) in Uganda, there is need to understand farmers’ knowledge of existing insect pest problems and their management practices. Such information is important for designing a suitable intervention and successful integrated pest management (IPM) strategy. A farm household survey using a structured questionnaire was conducted among 204 potato farmers in six districts of Uganda (i.e., Kabale, Kisoro, Mbale, Kapchorwa, Mubende, and Kyegegwa) during August and September 2013. Diseases, insect pests, price fluctuations, and low market prices were the four highest ranked constraints in potato production, in order of decreasing importance. Cutworms (Agrotis spp.), aphids (Myzus persicae (Sulzer)), and potato tuber moth (Phthorimaea operculella (Zeller)) were the three most severe insect pests. Ants (Dorylis orantalis Westwood), whiteflies (Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius)), and leafminer flies (Liriomyza huidobrensis (Blanchard)) were pests of moderate importance. Major yield losses are predominantly due to late blight (Phytophthora infestans (Mont.) de Bary) and reached 100% without chemical control in the districts of Kabale, Kisoro, Mbale, and Kapchorwa. On average, farmers had little to moderate knowledge about pest characteristics. The predominant control methods were use of fungicides (72% of respondents) and insecticides (62% of respondents). On average, only 5% of the 204 farmers knew about insect pests and their natural enemies. This lack of knowledge calls for training of both farmers and extension workers in insect pest identification, their biology, and control. Empowering farmers with knowledge about insect pests is essential for the reduction of pesticide misuse and uptake of more environmentally friendly approaches like IPM. Field surveys would need follow-upin orderto assess the actual field infestation rates and intensities of each insect pest and compare the results with the responses received from farmers.
Histochemical Studies on the Metanephros in Foetus of Goat (Capra hircus)

The present study was conducted on the kidneys of 18 goat foetii to enlighten the histochemical composition of the kidney tissue at different stages of growth. The foetii were divided into three groups based on their estimated ages viz. Group 1 (below 50 days of gestation), Group 2 (between 50-100 days of gestation) and Group 3 (above 100 days of gestation up to full term) containing 6 number of foetii in each group. The capsule in the foetii of group-I showed weak reactions to glycogen which intensified in older foetii. Similarly, the other structural components of the kidney showed enhanced histochemical reactions in regard to basic protein, neutral and acidic mucopolysaccharides and glycogen with advancing gestational age of the goat foetii. It could be concluded that different structural histochemical components of the goat kidney showed enhanced localization with advancing prenatal age.
Learning Numerical Attributes in Knowledge Bases

Knowledge bases (KB) are often represented as a collection of facts in the form (head, predicate, tail), where head and tail are entities while predicate is a binary relationship that links the two. It is a well-known fact that knowledge bases are far from complete, and hence the plethora of research on KB completion methods, specifically on link prediction. However, though frequently ignored, these repositories also contain numerical facts. Numerical facts link entities to numerical values via numerical predicates; e.g., (Paris, latitude, 48.8). Likewise, numerical facts also suffer from the incompleteness problem. To address this issue, we introduce the numerical attribute prediction problem. This problem involves a new type of query where the relationship is a numerical predicate. Consequently, and contrary to link prediction, the answer to this query is a numerical value. We argue that the numerical values associated with entities explain, to some extent, the relational structure of the knowledge base. Therefore, we leverage knowledge base embedding methods to learn representations that are useful predictors for the numerical attributes. An extensive set of experiments on benchmark versions of Freebase and Yago show that our approaches largely outperform sensible baselines. We make the datasets available under a permissive BSD-3 license.
The inverse problem of the calculus of variations: The use of geometrical calculus in Douglas's analysis.

The main objective of this paper is to work out a full-scale application of the integrability analysis of the inverse problem of the calculus of variations, as developed in recent papers by Sarlet and Crampin. For this purpose, the celebrated work of Douglas on systems with two degrees of freedom is taken as the reference model. It is shown that the coordinate-free, geometrical calculus used in Sarlet and Crampin's general theoretical developments provides effective tools also to do the practical calculations. The result is not only that all subcases distinguished by Douglas can be given a more intrinsic characterization, but also that in most of the cases, the calculations can be carried out in a more efficient way and often lead to sharper conclusions.
The Light-Dark Dual Universe for the Big Bang and Dark Energy

In the proposed light-dark dual universe, the light universe is the observable universe with light and kinetic energy that fueled the Big Bang, and the dark universe without light and kinetic energy has been observed as dark energy since about 9 billion years after the Big Bang. The light-dark dual universe started from the zero-energy universe through the four-stage cyclic transformation. Emerging from the zero-energy universe, the four-stage transformation consists of the 11D (dimensional) positive-negative energy dual membrane universe, the 10D positive-negative energy dual string universe, the 10D positive-negative energy dual particle universe, and the 4D (light)-variable D (dark) positive-negative energy dual particle asymmetrical universe. The transformation can then be reversed back to the zero-energy universe through the reverse four-stage transformation. The light universe is an observable four-dimensional universe started with the inflation and the Big Bang, and the dark universe is a variable dimensional universe from 10D to 4D. The dark universe could be observed as dark energy only when the dark universe turned into a four-dimensional universe. The four-stage transformation explains the four force fields in our universe. The theoretical calculated percentages of dark energy, dark matter, and baryonic matter are 72.8. 22.7, and 4.53, respectively, in nearly complete agreement with observed 72.8, 22.7, and 4.56, respectively. According to the calculation, dark energy started in 4.47 billion years ago in agreement with the observed 4.71 ± 0.98 billion years ago. The zero-energy cyclic universe is based on the space-object structures.
Density spectra for knots

We recently discovered a relationship between the volume density spectrum and the determinant density spectrum for infinite sequences of hyperbolic knots. Here, we extend this study to new quantum density spectra associated to quantum invariants, such as Jones polynomials, Kashaev invariants and knot homology. We also propose related conjectures motivated by geometrically and diagrammatically maximal sequences of knots.
Implementation of Argument-Driven Inquiry as An Instructional Model in A General Chemistry Laboratory Course

This study examined the effectiveness of Argument-Driven Inquiry (ADI) as an instructional model in a general chemistry laboratory course. The study was conducted over the course of ten experimental sessions with 125 preservice science teachers. The participants’ level of reflective thinking about the ADI activities, changes in their science process skills, changes in their argumentativeness, their ability to identify flaws in an argument and their views on ADI are assessed. Results show that the participants’ oral and written remarks shed light on the effectiveness of the model and provide positive and negative characteristics associated with the model. Recommendations are put forward regarding the usability of the ADI model by professionals who may consider applying it in practice.
The perception of English-accented polish – a pilot study

Abstract While the perception of Polish-accented English by native-speakers has been studied extensively (e.g Gonet & Pietroń 2004, Scheuer 2003, Szpyra-Kozłowska 2005, in press), an opposite phenomenon, i.e. the perception of English-accented Polish by Poles has not, to our knowledge, been examined so far despite a growing number of Polish-speaking foreigners, including various celebrities, who appear in the Polish media and whose accents are often commented on and even parodied. In this paper we offer a report on a pilot study in which 60 Polish teenagers, all secondary school learners (aged 15-16) listened to and assessed several samples of foreign-accented Polish in a series of scalar judgement and open question tasks meant to examine Poles’ attitudes to English accent(s) in their native language. More specifically, we aimed at finding answers to the following research questions: •How accurately can Polish listeners identify foreign accents in Polish? •How is English-accented Polish, when compared to Polish spoken with a Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, German and Chinese accent, evaluated by Polish listeners in terms of the samples’ degree of: (a) comprehensibility (b) foreign accentedness (c) pleasantness? •What phonetic and phonological features, both segmental and prosodic, are perceived by Polish listeners as characteristic of English-accented Polish? •Can Polish listeners identify different English accents (American, English English and Scottish) in English-accented Polish? •Does familiarity with a specific foreign language facilitate the recognition and identification of that accent in foreign-accented Polish?
Reverberation Mapping of PG 0934+013 with the Southern African Large Telescope

We present the variability and time-lag measurements of PG 0934+013 based on a photometric and spectroscopic monitoring campaign over a two year period. We obtained 46 epochs of data from the spectroscopic campaign, which was carried out using the Southern African Large Telescope with ∼1 week cadence over two sets of four month-long observing period, while we obtained 80 epochs of B-band imaging data using a few 1 m class telescopes. Due to the seven month gap between the two observing periods, we separately measured the time lags of broad emission lines, including Hβ, by comparing the emission line light curve with the B-band continuum light curve using the cross-correlation function techniques. We determined the Hβ lag, days in the observed frame based on Year 2 data, while the time lag from Year 1 data was not reliably determined. Using the rms spectrum of Year 2 data, we measured the Hβ line dispersion = 668 ± 44 km s−1 after correcting for the spectral resolution. Adopting a virial factor f = 4.47 from Woo et al. (), we determined the black hole mass MBH M⊙, based on the Hβ time lag and velocity.
Urban–rural disparities in adult mortality in sub-Saharan Africa

BACKGROUND Empirical evidence showing higher survivorship in urban areas of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) supports a theory of rural disadvantage. Yet this evidence mostly builds on infant or child mortality. There is practically no empirical evidence comparing adult mortality levels across urban and rural sectors. OBJECTIVE This study explores adult mortality differences by urban–rural residence across SSA for men and women. It considers whether existing differences across sectors vary over the course of development. METHODS The indirect orphanhood method is applied to 90 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) datasets from 30 countries between 1991 and 2014. Conditional probabilities of dying between ages 15 and 60 (45q15) are separately estimated for rural and urban populations. RESULTS Based on country averages over all time periods, the mean 45q15 is 0.274 and 0.265 among adult women and 0.307 and 0.292 among adult men in urban and rural populations, respectively. The average urban to rural probability of dying ratio from the most recent data between 2000 and 2010 is 1.08 for females and 1.11 for males in SSA as a whole, indicating an urban penalty. Multiple checks highlight the robustness of our findings to methodological limitations inherent in the method. Multivariate regression models suggest that as countries develop, excess adult mortality is likely to shift from the urban to the rural sector. 1 Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Email: ashira.menashe@mail.huji. ac.il. 2 University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada and (on leave) Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Email: guy.stecklov@ubc.ca. Demographic Research: Volume 39, Article 5 http://www.demographic-research.org 137 CONTRIBUTION We provide evidence that, unlike child mortality, adult mortality remains higher in the urban sector for many countries and for SSA as a whole. This finding has policy implications regarding the spatial provision of health services. Urban poor should be given more attention.
The diversity of flux avalanche patterns in superconducting films

The variety of morphologies in flux patterns created by thermomagnetic dendritic avalanches in type-II superconducting films is investigated using numerical simulations. The avalanches are triggered by introducing a hot spot at the edge of a strip-shaped sample, which is initially prepared in a partially penetrated Bean critical state by slowly ramping the transversely applied magnetic field. The simulation scheme is based on a model accounting for the nonlinear and nonlocal electrodynamics of superconductors in the transverse geometry. By systematically varying the parameters representing the Joule heating, heat conduction in the film, and heat transfer to the substrate, a wide variety of avalanche patterns are formed, and quantitative characterizations of the areal extension, branch width etc are made. The results show that branching is suppressed by the lateral heat diffusion, while large Joule heating gives many branches, and heat removal into the substrate limits the areal size. The morphology shows significant dependence also on the initial flux penetration depth.