Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The ROSAT North Ecliptic Pole Survey: the Optical Identifications

The X-ray data around the North Ecliptic Pole (NEP) of the ROSAT All Sky Survey have been used to construct a contiguous area survey consisting of a sample of 445 individual X-ray sources above a flux of ~2 × 10-14 ergs cm-2 s-1 in the 0.5-2.0 keV energy band. The NEP survey is centered at α2000 = 18h00m, δ2000 = +66°33′ and covers a region of 80.7 deg2 at a moderate Galactic latitude of b = 29. °8. Hence, the NEP survey is as deep and covers a comparable solid angle to the ROSAT serendipitous surveys but is also contiguous. We have identified 99.6% of the sources and determined redshifts for the extragalactic objects. In this paper we present the optical identifications of the NEP catalog of X-ray sources including basic X-ray data and properties of the sources. We also describe with some detail the optical identification procedure. The classification of the optical counterparts to the NEP sources is very similar to that of previous surveys, in particular the Einstein Extended Medium Sensitivity Survey (EMSS). The main constituents of the catalog are active galactic nuclei (AGNs) (~49%), either type 1 or type 2 according to the broadness of their permitted emission lines. Stellar counterparts are the second most common identification class (~34%). Clusters and groups of galaxies comprise 14%, and BL Lacertae objects 2%. One non-AGN galaxy and one planetary nebula have also been found. The NEP catalog of X-ray sources is a homogeneous sample of astronomical objects featuring complete optical identification.
Three-dimensional phase retrieval in propagation-based phase-contrast imaging

We present a solution to the phase problem in near-field x-ray (propagation) imaging. The three-dimensional complex-valued index of refraction is reconstructed from a set of projections recorded in the near-field (Fresnel) setting at a single detector distance. The solution is found by an iterative algorithm based only on the measured data and the three-dimensional tomographic (Helgason-Ludwig) consistency constraint without the need for further a priori knowledge or other restrictive assumptions.
Study of dielectric parameters of polyvinyl fluoride (PVF) by the thermostimulated currents (TSC) method

The thermally stimulated current method (TSC) is used to study the relaxation modes of the semicrystalline polyvinyle fluoride (PVF) polymer with a temperature that ranges (from −100°C to +100°C). The obtained spectrum shows three peaks as the temperature reaches −40°C, −1°C and +50°C. The shown peak at +50°C corresponds to the dielectric manifestation of the glass transition phenomenon and the peak at 0°C is attributed to the relaxation of H<inf>2</inf>O molecules, trapped in the sample. Finally, we have attributed the peak which corresponds to around −40°C to the β relaxation of the material. The thermal windowing method enables us to evaluate the activation enthalpy and the relaxation times. The area under each elementary peak allows us to calculate the relative dielectric dispersion. Knowing this later and the relaxation time τ(T) enables us deducing experimentally the real and the imaginary part of the dielectric permittivity ε∗ for each temperature T and at an equivalent frequency in TSC (f =10<sup>−3</sup>Hz). The Cole and Cole diagrams are then deduced.
Utilizing machine learning approaches to improve the prediction of leaf counts and individual leaf segmentation of rosette plant images

The segmentation of individual leaves in plant images is still a challenging task, especially in case of leaf overlaps. The exact determination of individual leaf areas could improve the biomass estimation which is a good indicator for plant performance. In addition, the number of leaves is directly related to plant development, leaf counts give insight into changing plant development stages. Machine learning is a powerful tool for solving vision tasks. Here we propose an approach including image analysis methods for extraction of a comprehensive set of image features (based on the software IAP) to predict the number of leaves for rosette plants. In addition, we developed a method to detect exact leaf borders for resolving inaccurate leaf segmentation in case of leaf overlaps. For classifier training we evaluate a broad set of different colour and texture features. The predicted leaf borders are used as input for further image processing methods to complete the leaf segmentation. The approaches were tested on image data of Arabidopsis thaliana and tobacco plants supplied in connection with the Leaf Counting Challenge (LCC) and the Leaf Segmentation Challenge (LSC) of the Computer Vision Problems in Plant Phenotyping (CVPPP) workshop in conjunction with the British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC) in 2015. The results show the methods ability for improved leaf count estimations and for predicting leaf overlap borders, which helps to improve the segmentation of individual leaves.
You've Got Mail: A Randomised Field Experiment on Tax Evasion

We report from a large-scale randomized field experiment conducted on a unique sample of more than 15 000 taxpayers in Norway, who were likely to have misreported their foreign income. We find that the inclusion of a moral appeal or a sentence that increases the perceived probability of detection in a letter from the tax authorities almost doubled the average self-reported Foreign income. The moral letter mainly works on the intensive margin, while the detection letter mainly works on the extensive margin. We also show that the detection letter has large long-term effects on tax compliance.
Genetic association between longevity and linear type traits of Holstein cows

Longevity is a desirable trait in the dairy industry because of its relationship to profitability. The aim of this study was to estimate genetic parameters for longevity measurements related to productive life, or life in the herd, and linear type traits of Brazilian Holstein cows born between the years 1990 and 2008. The (co) variance components were estimated by the restricted maximum likelihood method. The heritability for measurements of longevity and linear type traits ranged from 0.05 to 0.07 and 0.08 to 0.39, respectively. The genetic correlations between measurements of longevity and linear type traits ranged from -0.39 to 0.31. Direct selection for longevity does not necessarily lead to long-lived cows, due to low heritability. Indirect genetic selection for udder depth, bone quality, udder height, rear teat placement and conformation traits showed the highest genetic correlations with measurements of time between birth and last milk record and time from first calving to last milk record.
Dropping Out of High School: The Role of School Organization and Structure

In this study, we explore how high schools, through their structures and organization, may influence students’ decisions to stay in school or drop out. Traditional explanations for dropout behavior have focused on students’ social background and academic behaviors. What high schools might do to push out or hold students has received less empirical scrutiny. Using a sample of 3,840 students in 190 urban and suburban high schools from the High School Effectiveness Supplement of the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, we apply multilevel methods to explore schools’ influence on dropping out, taking into account students’ academic and social background. Our findings center on schools’ curriculum, size, and social relations. In schools that offer mainly academic courses and few nonacademic courses, students are less likely to drop out. Similarly, students in schools enrolling fewer than 1,500 students more often stay in school. Most important, students are less likely to drop out of high schools where relationships between teachers and students are positive. The impact of positive relations, however, is contingent on the organizational and structural characteristics of high schools.
Blended learning in master studies in Mathematical Information Technology — Impacts on attendance and learning outcomes

Blended learning based on lecture videos and face-to-face teaching provides good opportunities for students for participation in education, regardless of time or place. This article examines the impacts of blended learning, as it has developed in connection with master studies in information technology, on participation in education and on learning outcomes. The solution is based on face-to-face teaching and the use of streaming lecture videos. According to the results, the use of lecture videos increases participation activeness, and the increase in participation has a positive impact on completion of courses. However, the use of lecture videos does not seem to have any clear-cut effect on grades obtained.
Exponential Decay in Thermoelastic Systems with Internal Distributed Delay

In this paper, we consider a thermoelastic system with an internal distributed delay. We use the energy method to prove, under a suitable assumption on the weight of the delay, that the damping effect through heat conduction is strong enough to uniformly stabilize the system even in the presence of time delay. autt(x;t) duxx(x;t) + x(x;t) = 0; in (0;L) (0;1) b t(x;t) k1 xx(x;t) R 2 1 k2(s) xx(x;t s)ds +u xt(x;t) = 0; in (0;L) (0;1) u(x; 0) = u0(x); ut(x; 0) = u1(x); (x; 0) = 0(x); x2 (0;L) x(x; t) = f0(x;t); x2 (0;L); t2 (0; 2); (1.1) a thermoelastic system with a distributed delay associated with initial data u0;u1; 0 and history function f0 in suitable function spaces. Here a;b;d;k1;; 2 are positive constants, 1 is a non- negative constant with 1 < 2, u is the displacement, is the temperature difference from a reference value, and k2 : ( 1; 2)! IR is a bounded function. We consider boundary conditions of the type ux(0;t) = ux(L;t) = (0;t) = (L;t) = 0 (1.2) or u(0;t) = u(L;t) = x(0;t) = x(L;t) = 0 (1.3) and study the asymptotic behavior of the solution in each case and look for sufficient conditions onk2 that guarantee the uniform stability of these systems. Time delays arise in many applications because, in most instances, physical, chemical, bi- ological, thermal, and economic phenomena naturally depend not only on the present state but also on some past occurrences. In recent years, the control of PDEs with time delay effects has become an active area of research, see for example (1, 31), and references therein. In many cases it was shown that delay is a source of instability and even an arbitrarily small delay may destabilize a system which is uniformly asymptotically stable in the absence of delay unless ad- ditional conditions or control terms have been used. The stability issue of systems with delay is, therefore, of theoretical and practical importance. In the absence of delay, it is well-known (see (3, 10, 21)) that the one dimensional linear thermoelastic system associated with various types of boundary conditions decays to zero ex- ponentially. For the multi-dimensional case, we have the pioneering work of Daformos (5), in which he proved an asymptotic stability result; but no rate of decay has been given. The uniform rate of decay for the solution in two or three dimensional space was obtained by Jiang, Rivera
Quality Assurance for Long-Term Care: The Experiences of England, Australia, Germany and Japan

This In Brief summarizes the findings of the AARP Public Policy Institute Issue Paper “Quality Assurance for Long-Term Care: The Experiences of England, Australia, Germany and Japan. ” This research examines the long-term care quality assurance systems in four developed countries—England, Australia, Germany, and Japan. The approaches taken in the four countries and the United States represent a range of financing and delivery systems and use a variety of strategies to assure the quality of institutional and home and community services.
Reasoning about Object Instances, Relations and Extents in RGBD Scenes

The vast majority of literature in scene parsing can be described as semantic pixel labeling or semantic segmentation: predicting the semantic class of the object represented by each pixel in the scene. Our familiar perception of the world, however, provides a far richer representation. Firstly, rather than just being able to predict the semantic class of a location in a scene, humans are able to reason about object instances. Discriminating between a region that might represent a single object versus ten objects is a crucial and basic faculty. Secondly, rather than reasoning about objects as merely occupying the space visible from a single vantage point, we are able to quickly and easily reason about an object’s true extent in 3D. Thirdly, rather than viewing a scene as a collection of objects independently existing in space, humans exhibit a representation of scenes that is highly grounded through a intuitive model of physics. Such models allow us to reason about how objects relate physically: via physical support relationships. Instance segmentation is the task of segmenting a scene into regions which correspond to individual object instances. We argue that this task is not only closer to our own perception of the world than semantic segmentation, but also directly allows for subsequent reasoning about a scenes constituent elements. We explore various strategies for instance segmentation in indoor RGBD scenes. Firstly, we explore tree-based instance segmentation algorithms. The utility of trees for semantic segmentation has been thoroughly demonstrated and we adapt them to instance segmentation and analyze both greedy and global approaches to inference. Next, we investigate exemplar-based instance segmentation algorithms, in which a set of representative exemplars are chosen from a large pool of regions and pixels are assigned to exemplars. Inference can either be performed in two stages, exemplar selection followed by
Feasibilty of laser action in strained Ge and Group IV alloys on Si platform

Group IV elements and their alloys show poor light emission due to their indirect gap. Application of tensile strain in Ge lowers the Γ valley below the L valleys in bulk as well as in Ge nanowires. We present also our results on direct gap type I alignment showing direct gap at ∼ 0.8 eV in Si<inf>1-p-q</inf>Ge<inf>p</inf> C<inf>q</inf> (C ≪4%) active layers with Ge<inf>1-x-y</inf>Si<inf>x</inf>Sn<inf>y</inf> as the barrier. We have chosen a composition to give the critical thickness as high as possible and estimated its absorption coefficients: both fundamental and free carrier, by using theoretical expressions, available data for Ge and suitable interpolation. The linear gain spectra, and transparency carrier density for the chosen heterostructure are then estimated. The threshold current density for an optimized structure may be approximately 300 A/cm<sup>2</sup>.
Antibody-secreting cells in human peripheral blood after oral immunization with an inactivated enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli vaccine

Vaccine antigen-specific antibody-secreting cell (ASC) responses in peripheral blood of healthy adult volunteers were studied after oral immunization with a prototype enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) vaccine by means of the enzyme-linked immunospot technique. Three doses of vaccine consisting of formalin-killed ETEC bacteria expressing fimbrial colonization factor antigens I and II (CFA/I and CFA/II) in combination with purified cholera toxin B subunit (CTB) were given 2 weeks apart. The ASC responses were detected 7 days after each immunization. Immunoglobulin A (IgA) was the predominant isotype produced by CFA/I- as well as CFA/II-specific ASCs. Moderate CFA/I- and CFA/II-specific IgM-secreting ASC (IgM-ASC) responses were also seen, whereas IgG-ASC responses to either of the CFAs were negligible. The ASC responses to CTB, on the other hand, comprised both IgA- and IgG-ASCs, with few if any specific IgM-ASCs. Almost 90% of the volunteers developed CFA-specific ASC responses after vaccination. Maximal CFA-specific ASC responses were usually observed after a single dose or two doses of vaccine. A third dose of vaccine did not result in increased but rather resulted in decreased magnitudes of CFA-specific ASC responses. Furthermore, it was found that CTB did not function as a mucosal adjuvant, since CFA-specific ASC responses were not enhanced by the simultaneous administration of CTB. These results suggest that two oral doses of ETEC vaccine induce a strong mucosal immune response, as reflected by the presence of large numbers of antigen-specific mucosal B cell immunoblasts in the blood.
Detection of Central Nervous System Infiltration by Myeloid and Lymphoid Hematologic Neoplasms Using Flow Cytometry Analysis: Diagnostic Accuracy Study

Introduction Infiltration of the central nervous system (CNS) by hematologic or lymphoid malignant cells can cause extensive neurological damage, be progressive and fatal. However, usually, the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has low cellularity and rapid cell degeneration, which can impair cytometry analysis. Storage and transport measures, sample preparation, and staining protocols can interfere with diagnostic accuracy. Objective To calculate the diagnostic performance of flow cytometry (FC) using a cell stabilizer for sample preservation compared to cytomorphology in the detection of CNS infiltration by lymphoid and hematologic neoplasms. Methods Cell samples from all consecutive patients with suspected infiltration by hematological malignancies evaluated between January 2014 and December 2016 were included. Cases were analyzed by FC using a cell preservation medium and cytomorphology. Sensitivity and specificity were calculated. Results From 414 CSF samples, 72 had a phenotype compatible with characteristics of infiltration by hematological disease, whereas cytology was positive for 35 cases. FC showed higher sensitivity and specificity when compared to cytomorphology, particularly in cases with cellularity under 5 leukocytes/mm3. Conclusion We demonstrated that collecting CSF in a medium that preserves the stability of the sample improves accuracy when compared to cytomorphology, particularly in low-volume and low-cellularity samples.
Econometric Methods for Fractional Response Variables with an Application to 401(K) Plan Participation Rates

We offer simple quasi-likelihood methods for estimating regression models with a fractional dependent variable and for performing asymptotically valid inference. Compared with log-odds type procedures, there is no difficulty in recovering the regression function for the fractional variable, and there is no need to use ad hoc transformations to handle data at the extreme values of zero and one. We also offer some new, simple specification tests by nesting the logit or probit function in a more general functional form. We apply these methods to a data set of employee participation rates in 401(k) pension plans.
Transmit Antenna Selection Systems: A Performance Comparison of Different Types of Receiver Schemes

In this survey article, we compare the performance of single transmit antenna selection (TAS) systems with different kinds of receiver schemes. These systems include the TAS/switch-and-examine combining (TAS/SEC), TAS/SEC with postselection (TAS/SECPS), TAS/generalized selection combining (TAS/GSC), and TAS/output-threshold generalized selection combining (TAS/OT-GSC) systems. The performance comparisons are made in terms of the average output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), symbol-error rate (SER), the number of channel estimates Ne, and the number of branches required for processing Np . It is shown that the TAS/SECPS and TAS/OT-GSC systems can achieve similar performance compared with the TAS/selection combining (SC) and TAS/GSC systems, respectively, with a reduced number of both channel estimates and branches required for processing when the predetermined SNR threshold is optimized.
A Parameterized Linear Magnetic Equivalent Circuit for Analysis and Design of Radial Flux Magnetic Gears—Part I: Implementation

Magnetic gears offer a promising alternative to mechanical gears with the added benefit of contactless power transfer. However, quick and accurate analysis tools are required to optimize magnetic gear designs and commercialize the technology. Therefore, this paper proposes an extremely fast and accurate 2-D magnetic equivalent circuit (MEC) model of radial flux magnetic gears with surface mounted magnets. This MEC model's distinguishing characteristics include a heavily parameterized gear geometry and a parametrically adjustable systematic flux tube distribution which allow for accurate and efficient analysis of a wide array of designs. Furthermore, the model is fully linear which results in very quick simulation run times without sacrificing significant torque prediction accuracy for most practical designs. This is Part I of a two-part paper and focuses on the implementation of the MEC model. Part II validates the accuracy of the MEC model by comparing its torque and flux density predictions with those produced by nonlinear finite-element analysis.
A proof that every Banach space is subreflexive

A real or complex normed space is subreflexive if those f unctionals which attain their supremum on the unit sphere S of E are normdense in E*, i.e., if for each ƒ in £ * and each e > 0 there exist g in E* and x in S such that \g(x)\ =\\g\\ and ||/—g|| <€. There exist incomplete normed spaces which are not subreflexive [ l ] 1 as well as incomplete spaces which are subreflexive (e.g., a dense subspace of a Hubert space). I t is evident that every reflexive Banach space is subreflexive. The theorem mentioned in the title will be proved for real Banach spaces; the result for complex spaces follows from this by considering the spaces over the real field and using the known isometry between complex functionals and the real functionals defined by their real parts. We first cite a lemma which states, roughly, that if the hyperplanes determined by two functionals ƒ and g (of norm one) are nearly parallel, then one of ||/—g||, | | /+g | | must be small.
Migraine Patients as Trainers of Their Fellow Patients in Non-Pharmacological Preventive Attack Management: Short-Term Effects of a Randomized Controlled Trial

In conformity with current views on patient empowerment, we designed and evaluated the effects of home-based behavioural training (BT) provided by lay trainers with migraine to small groups of fellow patients. The primary aims of BT were to reduce attack frequency and increase perceived control over and self-confidence in attack prevention. In a randomized controlled trial the BT group (n = 51) was compared with a waitlist-control group (WLC), receiving usual care (n = 57). BT produced a minor (-21%) short-term effect on attack frequency and clinically significant improvement in 35% of the participants. Covariance analysis showed a non-significant trend (P = 0.07) compared with WLC. However, patients’ perceived control over migraine attacks and self-confidence in attack prevention increased significantly with large effect sizes. Patients with high baseline attack frequency might benefit more from BT than those with low attack frequency. In conclusion, lay trainers with migraine strengthened fellow patients' perceived control, but did not induce a significant immediate improvement in attack frequency.