Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Statistical properties of thermal Sunyaev–Zel'dovich maps

On small angular scales, i.e. at high angular frequencies, beyond the damping tail of the primary power spectrum, the dominant contribution to the power spectrum of cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations is the thermal Sunyaev–Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect. We investigate various important statistical properties of the Sunyaev–Zel'dovich maps, using well-motivated models for dark matter clustering to construct statistical descriptions of the tSZ effect to all orders enabling us to determine the entire probability distribution function (PDF). Any generic deterministic biasing scheme can be incorporated in our analysis and the effects of projection, biasing and the underlying density distribution can be analysed separately and transparently in this approach. We introduce the cumulant correlators as tools to analyse tSZ catalogues and relate them to corresponding statistical descriptors of the underlying density distribution. The statistics of hot spots in frequency-cleaned tSZ maps are also developed in a self-consistent way to an arbitrary order, to obtain results complementary to those found using the halo model. We also consider different beam sizes to check the extent to which the PDF can be extracted from various observational configurations. The formalism is presented with two specific models for underlying matter clustering, the hierarchical ansatz and the lognormal distribution. We find both models to be in very good agreement with the simulation results, though the extension of the hierarchical model has an edge over the lognormal model. In addition to testing against simulations made using semi-analytical techniques, we have also used the maps made using Millennium Gas Simulations to prove that the PDF and bias can indeed be predicted with very high accuracy using these models. The presence of significant non-gravitational effects such as preheating, however, cannot be modelled using an analytical approach which is based on the modelling of gravitational clustering alone. Our results indicate that the PDFs we construct are insensitive to the underlying cosmology and can thus provide a useful probe of non-gravitational processes, e.g. preheating or feedback.
Ezeji Effect of Social Media on the Study Habits of Students of Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education

There has been considerable anxiety in society that social media distracts from education and reduces the social skills of young people. Following this, educators have sought ways to mitigate its negative effects on educational attainment while incorporating its positive aspects into the learning process. This study sought to examine the impact of social media on the study habits of students of Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education, Owerri. The research design involved survey technique where questionnaires were used to collect data from a sample of the student population. Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) was used to analyse the data. Spearman’s Rho was the specific tool used for analysis. It was presented in frequency tables and bar charts. Findings from variables investigated showed that at p<0.5, social media usage had a significant impact on the study habits of students of Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education, Owerri. This indicated the need for stakeholders in the community to employ counselling and other proactive measures to ensure that students maintained proper focus on their primary assignment for schooling Keywords—Education, social media, study habits, technology.
Coupled Mechanical and Electrochemical Analyses of Three-Dimensional Reconstructed LiFePO4 by Focused Ion Beam/Scanning Electron Microscopy in Lithium-Ion Batteries

Limited lifetime and performance degradation in lithium ion batteries in electrical vehicles and power tools is still a challenging obstacle which results from various interrelated processes, especially under specific conditions such as higher discharging rates (C-rates) and longer cycles. To elucidate these problems, it is very important to analyze electrochemical degradation from a mechanical stress point of view. Specifically, the goal of this study is to investigate diffusion-induced stresses and electrochemical degradation in three-dimensional (3D) reconstructed LiFePO4. We generate a reconstructed microstructure by using a stack of focused ion beam-scanning electron microscopy (FIB/SEM) images combined with an electrolyte domain. Our previous two-dimensional (2D) finite element model is further improved to a 3D multiphysics one, which incorporates both electrochemical and mechanical analyses. From our electrochemistry model, we observe 95.6% and 88.3% capacity fade at 1.2 C and 2 C, respectively. To investigate this electrochemical degradation, we present concentration distributions and von Mises stress distributions across the cathode with respect to the depth of discharge (DoD). Moreover, electrochemical degradation factors such as total polarization and over-potential are also investigated under different C-rates. Further, higher total polarization is observed at the end of discharging, as well as at the early stage of discharging. It is also confirmed that lithium intercalation at the electrode-electrolyte interface causes higher over-potential at specific DoDs. At the region near the separator, a higher concentration gradient and over-potential are observed. We note that higher over-potential occurs on the surface of electrode, and the resulting concentration gradient and mechanical stresses are observed in the same regions. Furthermore, mechanical stress variations under different C-rates are quantified during the discharging process. With these coupled mechanical and electrochemical analyses, the results of this study may be helpful for detecting particle crack initiation.
Experimental evidence of light disturbance along the commuting routes of pond bats ( Myotis dasycneme )

A population of pond bats (Myotis dasycneme) inhabits a network of foraging areas and separate male, female-breeding and temporary colonies. These are interconnected by commuting routes which are also used for foraging. The functioning of these networks is crucially important for the conservation of the species. Observations and anecdotal evidence suggest that light may be an important source of disturbance along commuting routes and potentially affect the connectivity of the networks. The disturbing effects of light on pond bats were experimentally studied by placing a strong lamp (1000 W) along existing pond bat commuting routes. Each experimental site had specific characteristics which allowed us to explore the interacting effects of light disturbance and the environment. The number of passing bats, the percentage of feeding buzzes relative to total commuting calls and flight patterns were compared between dark control nights and experimentally illuminated nights. There were no clear effects of experimental light on the number of passing bats nor did more bats use an alternative commuting route when just one of two possible routes was lit. However, light did reduce the percentage of feeding buzzes by more than 60%, although the abundance of insect food tended to increase. It was observed that light disturbs the flight patterns of pond bats. When approaching the beam of light, between 28% and 42% of pond bats turned before continuing on their normal commuting route. Virtually all pond bats (96%) turned when the light was erected on an existing barrier and they had to fly straight into the beam of light. These disturbing effects also seemed to occur at low levels of light intensity. This study is the first known experimental evidence on the disturbing effects of light on pond bat behaviour along commuting routes and raises many questions, especially as to whether these disturbing effects will have fitness consequences.
Xe and Ar in high-pressure silicate liquids

We investigated the solubility of Xe in liquids of NaAlSirOs, KAlSi3O8, trl'SioOn, and plagioclase (AbsoAnro) compositions to pressures of 25 kbar and to temperatures of 1600 "C, complementing our previous study of Ar in a wide range of mafic and felsic silicate liquids (White et al., 1989). The solubility of Xe is about one-third that of the smaller Ar atom on an atomic basis, ranging up to 1.45 wtVo in KAlSi3O8 liquid at 25 kbar and 1600 . C. As with Ar, the solubility of Xe increases with pressure, is independent of temperature except in KrSi4O, liquid, where it has a positive temperature dependence, and is strongly dependent upon the composition of the liquid, being most soluble in polymerized liquids with a high Si/Al ratio. These results shed light on the solubility mechanisms of molecular species, such as COr, and they reveal that the noble gases dissolve in specific sites in the liquid, presumably as do CO, and some other molecular species, and not simply as microbubbles indiscriminantly sequestered in interstitial sites. Our range of calculated molar volumes for Xe at 15 kbar is 28.0-29.4 cm3/mol, which is similar to that of solid Xe, 32-29 cm3/mol at 89 'C between l0 and 20 kbat (Lahr and Eversole, 1962). Calculations using the Redlich-Kwong equation and corresponding states theory yield values for the volume of the vapor of 32.5 cm3/mol for Ar and 39.4 cmr/mol for Xe. Our calculated enthalpies of solution for Ar and Xe are within the range for Ar and Xe in magmas at I bar (Lux, 1987) and for CO, in NaAlSirO8 at high pressures (Stolper er al., 1987).
Factors Affecting Customer Loyalty of Using Internet Banking in Iran

: This study tries todevelop a model depended on the utilization of Information System, with the purpose to examinefactors effecting customer loyalty in the direction of Internet banking websites. The study also tries to recognize thekey factors amongthose examined: service quality, observedvalue, trust and reputation of the bank.According to the findings, trust, habit and reputation are found to have a remarkableeffect oncustomer loyalty in the direction of individual Internet banking websites in Iran. As compared totrust factors, reputation is the strongest effect. The results also showed thatservice quality observedvalue is not remarkably related to customer loyalty. Servicequality is found to be an important factor in effecting the adoption of the technology, but didnot have a remarkableeffect in keeping of customers. The findings have assuming that the internet banking supporters on the areas to be focused on in keeping their customers.
Order Exposure and Liquidity Coordination: Does Hidden Liquidity Harm Price Efficiency?

We show that the excessive use of hidden orders causes artificial price pressures and abnormal asset returns. Using a simple game-theoretical setting, we demonstrate that this effect naturally arises from mis-coordination in trading schedules between traders, when suppliers of liquidity do not sufficiently disclose their trade intentions. As a result, hidden liquidity can increase trading costs and induce excess price fluctuations unrelated to information. Using NASDAQ order book data, we find strong empirical support and illustrate that hidden liquidity is higher if bid–ask spreads are smaller and relative tick sizes are higher.
Building a Career in English: Users of English as an Additional Language in Academia in the Arabian Gulf.

This study investigates how a group of 30 multilingual academics, all users of English as an additional language (EAL) working at a private university in Oman, acquired discourse community membership in their disciplines through publishing in English, and the strategies they use to sustain the level of literacy needed to disseminate their research in refereed journals while working on the periphery. The participants, from the natural sciences, information technology, and economics, originate from countries in the surrounding region and, although many did not study in one of the traditional Anglophone countries, their academic literacy skills in English have been the cornerstones of their peripatetic academic careers. Participants describe their experience publishing from the periphery and perceptions of reviewer bias, and identify strategies used to overcome material shortcomings and linguistic challenges. The practice of language reuse to support the drafting of particular sections of an article is a recurring theme in many interviews. The article discusses the importance of conventional language in the sciences and the differing understandings of plagiarism among academics from the humanities and sciences. An implication from this study is the need for greater institutional support for the writing process in environments where most faculty members are EAL users. doi: 10.1002/tesq.124
Covariate Distribution Balance via Propensity Scores

This paper proposes new estimators for the propensity score that aim to maximize the covariate distribution balance among different treatment groups. Heuristically, our proposed procedure attempts to estimate a propensity score model by making the underlying covariate distribution of different treatment groups as close to each other as possible. Our estimators are data-driven, do not rely on tuning parameters such as bandwidths, admit an asymptotic linear representation, and can be used to estimate different treatment effect parameters under different identifying assumptions, including unconfoundedness and local treatment effects. We derive the asymptotic properties of inverse probability weighted estimators for the average, distributional, and quantile treatment effects based on the proposed propensity score estimator and illustrate their finite sample performance via Monte Carlo simulations and two empirical applications.
Impact of vertical mixing on sea surface pCO2 in temperate seasonally stratified shelf seas

A key parameter in determining the exchange of CO2 across the ocean-atmosphere interface is the sea surface partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2). Temperate seasonally stratified shelf seas represent a significant sink for atmospheric CO2. Here an analytical model is used to quantify the impact of vertical mixing across the seasonal thermocline on pCO2. The model includes the impacts of the resultant dissolved inorganic carbon, heat, salt, and alkalinity fluxes on the solubility of CO2 and the effect of the inorganic carbon sink created by the primary production fuelled by the flux of limiting nutrient. The results indicate that diapycnal mixing drives a modest but continuous change in pCO2 of order 1–10 µatm d−1. In quantifying the individual impacts of the fluxes of the different parameters, we find that the impact of the fluxes of DIC and nitrate fluxes dominate. In consequence, both the direction and magnitude of the change in pCO2 are strongly dependent on the C:N uptake ratio in primary production. While the smaller impacts of the heat and salt fluxes tend to compensate for each other at midshelf locations, the heat flux dominates close to the shelf break. The analysis highlights the importance of the accurate parameterization of the C:N uptake ratio, the surface-mixed layer depth, and the TKE dissipation rate within the seasonal thermocline in models to be used to predict the air-sea exchange of carbon dioxide in these regimes. The results implicate storms as key periods of pCO2 perturbation.
A Finite Element Study on the Effect of Curvature on the Reinforcement of Matrices by Randomly Distributed and Curved Nanotubes

A significant reinforcement effect has always been expected from the use of carbon nanotubes (CNT). Well-known experimental results, however, reveal that the theoretical reinforcement rules for straight nanotubes are not always achieved in practice. This paper reports that not only should the percentage quantity of nanotubes in the matrix be taken into account, but also their curvatures. A finite element method (FEM) based computational analysis on the mechanical reinforcement of composite materials by nanotubes is presented. In this article we focus on randomly distributed and curved nanotubes as fillers. In particular, we study the influence of the curvature of the nanotubes on the overall elastic moduli. To this end, we apply a statistical analysis of the elastic moduli of nanocomposites when a certain number of nanotubes are incorporated into a matrix. Here, we restrict ourselves to use just a simple as possible linear elasticity model. Nevertheless, it turns out that the average overall reinforcement ratio is significantly lower than in the case of aligned straight nanotubes. In particular, our numerical experiments show that the resulting reinforcement ratios exhibit a linear dependency on the average ratio of the end-to-end distance and the length of the nanotube.
Isolated elliptical galaxies in the local Universe

We have studied a sample of 89 very isolated, elliptical galaxies at z < 0.08 and compared their properties with elliptical galaxies located in a high-density environment such as the Coma supercluster. Our aim is to probe the role of environment on the morphological transformation and quenching of elliptical galaxies as a function of mass. In addition, we elucidate the nature of a particular set of blue and star-forming isolated ellipticals identified here. We study physical properties of ellipticals such as color, specific star formation rate, galaxy size, and stellar age, as a function of stellar mass and environment based on SDSS data. We analyze the blue star-forming isolated ellipticals in more detail, through photometric characterization using GALFIT, and infer their star formation history using STARLIGHT. Among the isolated ellipticals ~ 20% are blue, 8% are star forming, and ~ 10% are recently quenched, while among the Coma ellipticals ~ 8% are blue and just <= 1% are star forming or recently quenched. There are four isolated galaxies (~ 4.5%) that are blue and star forming at the same time. These galaxies, with masses between 7 x 10^9 and 2 x 10^10 h-2 M_sun, are also the youngest galaxies with light-weighted stellar ages <= 1 Gyr and exhibit bluer colors toward the galaxy center. Around 30-60% of their present-day luminosity, but only < 5% of their present-day mass, is due to star formation in the last 1 Gyr. The processes of morphological transformation and quenching seem to be in general independent of environment since most of elliptical galaxies are 'red and dead', although the transition to the red sequence should be faster for isolated ellipticals. In some cases, the isolated environment seems to propitiate the rejuvenation of ellipticals by recent (< 1 Gyr) cold gas accretion.
The science of expertise: Behavioral, neural, and genetic approaches to complex skill

Offering the broadest review of psychological perspectives on human expertise to date, this volume covers behavioral, computational, neural, and genetic approaches to understanding complex skill. The chapters show how performance in music, the arts, sports, games, medicine, and other domains reflects basic traits such as personality and intelligence, as well as knowledge and skills acquired through training. In doing so, this book moves the field of expertise beyond the duality of "nature vs. nurture" toward an integrative understanding of complex skill. This book is an invaluable resource for researchers and students interested in expertise, and for professionals seeking current reviews of psychological research on expertise.
House Prices and Real Interest Rates in Spain

This paper analyses the contribution of interest rates to explain recent house price developments in Spain trying to reconcile different pieces of evidence. On the one hand, empirical evidence supports the view that interest rates are a key variable to explain house price developments. As a matter of fact, using simple asset pricing relations recent changes in house prices could be fully explained by movements in ex-post real interest rates. However, more refined asset pricing models show that the changes in the discount factor cannot fully explain the recent course of house prices in Spain. To resolve this puzzle we provide evidence that shows that the actual real cost of financing might have decreased significantly less than what the course of ex-post real rates would suggest.
Voices of America: Accent, Antidiscrimination Law, and a Jurisprudence for the Last Reconstruction

Every person who reads this Article has an accent. Your accent carries the story of who you are-who first held you and talked to you when you were a child, where you have lived, your age, the schools you attended, the languages you know, your ethnicity, whom you admire, your loyalties, your profession, your class position: traces of your life and identity are woven into your pronunciation, your phrasing, your choice of words. Your self is inseparable from your accent. ' Someone who tells you they don't like the way you speak is quite likely telling you that they don't like you. Every person has an accent-even those who do not communicate with voice.2 The deaf have an accent in the way they use American Sign Language. An observer familiar with deaf culture can identify Black signing, upper-class signing, "hearie" signing, regional signing, teenage signing, "heavy" signing,
Robust Genetic Circuit Design: A Mixed and IQC Analysis

This paper considers the problem of designing a genetic circuit which is robust to noise effect. To achieve this goal, a mixed and Integral Quadratic Constraints (IQC) approach is proposed. In order to minimize the effects of external noise on the genetic regulatory network in terms of norm, a design procedure of Hill coefficients in the promoters is presented. The IQC approach is introduced to analyze and guarantee the stability of the designed circuit.
End-to-end CRNN Architectures for Weakly Supervised Sound Event Detection Technical Report

This presentation describes our approach for large-scale weakly labeled semi-supervise sound event detection in domestic environments (TASK4) of the DCASE 2018. Our structure is based on Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network (CRNN) using raw waveform. The conventional Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is modified to adopt Gated Linear Unit (GLU), ResNet, and Squeeze-and-Excitation (SE) network. Then three Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) follow. Each RNN receives features from different layers, respectively, and the outputs of RNNs are concatenate for final classification by Feed-forward connection (FC) layers. Simple data augmentation method is also applied to augment small amount of labeled data. With this approach F1 score of 5.5% improvement is achieved.