Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Self-Consistent Optical, Ultraviolet, and Extreme-Ultraviolet Model for the Spectrum of the Hot White Dwarf G191-B2B

The star G191-B2B is one of a number of hot DA white dwarfs whose atmospheres have been found to contain significant quantities of heavy elements, including C, N, O, Si, Fe, and Ni. Several earlier studies have measured their abundances using IUE echelle data in conjunction with synthetic spectra derived from theoretical model atmosphere calculations of varying degrees of sophistication. However, predictions of the EUV spectrum based on these observations failed completely to match either its shape or absolute flux level. We present here the results of new non-LTE model calculations including the effects of line blanketing from more than 9 million (mainly Fe and Ni) transitions. For the first time, we are able to find an effective temperature and composition that can consistently match the optical, FUV and EUV data. However, to maintain this agreement below the He ii Λ228 Lyman limit, it is necessary to incorporate additional He ii opacity in the form of photospheric, circumstellar or interstellar material.
Ideological Biases Weaken the Impact of Social Trust on Ethnic Outgroup Threat

Previous studies have not examined whether (personal) political ideology influences how trusters perceive of immigrants and refugees as a threat. Our contribution to the literature builds on theories of motivated reasoning and hypothesizes that political ideology weakens the ability of social trust to reduce perceived (ethnic) outgroup threat. Indeed, analyses show that the relationship between social trust and perceived outgroup threat is considerably weaker among rightists than among leftists. Although social trust does relate negatively to perceived outgroup threat across the ideological divide, political ideology has a constraining influence that cannot be ignored. Social trust is also a political phenomenon. We apply a fixed-effects regression, and analyses are based on the 2014-European Social Survey, including 21 countries and 32,175 individuals. In the concluding section, we discuss the full implications of our findings for theories of social trust in an era of increasing flows of immigrants and refugees that go beyond the usual gateway nations.
The process of integration and the concept of integral: How does success with applications and comprehension of underlying notions such as accumulation relate to students' mathematical fluency

At the end of the standard first calculus course, the student is expected to learn the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, and to be able to use the integral to produce new functions, or numbers which, they are told, represent the "area under the curve". At the beginning of the standard second calculus course, students are expected to generalize their knowledge, and use the integration process to generate solids of revolution, surface areas, arc length and work, among other applications. Looking at students' success or failure in these endeavors, it was detected that there are marked differences in an aspect that, in this study, is called mathematical fluency. The concept of mathematical fluency was developed, and the four parameters used in foreign language learning: reading comprehension, writing, speaking and listening comprehension were employed to measure mathematical fluency as defined in the present study. The types of mistakes made by the fluent and nonfluent students can be related to the types of mistakes made by the native or fluent speaker of a natural language, and those made by one who has not reached---or might never reach---that stage. The classification of local fluencies, with mathematical fluency as a global amalgam of these, was developed. Theoretical constructs such as Knisley's four stage model of mathematical learning, Tall and Gray's procept classification, Brousseau's cognitive obstacles as well as analysis of schemas, mental models and metaphors provided the language and concepts with which mathematical fluency, as detected by the four parameters, was described. The study was realized through interviews, action research and observations of students in a second calculus course. In depth analysis using the four parameters of foreign language learning offers a methodology for studying student learning and understanding, that can be generalized to other mathematical areas, and adapted to quantitative as well as qualitative methods.
A Comprehensive Investigation of Color Models used in Image Processing

This paper is a study of different color models for color image processing. Color has been recognized as an important visual aspect for image and scene analysis. Research work in color image processing has focused on color image formation, color quantization, human visual perception, image segmentation, color-based object recognition, and image database retrieval. RGB color space is generally adopted by image acquisition device, while other kinds of color space are derived from RGB space by using either linear or nonlinear transformations. The choice of a color space is important for many computer image processing algorithms (e.g., feature detection, image classification, object recognition, and visual tracking). No color space can be considered as universal because color can be interpreted and modeled in different ways. With the large variety of available color spaces the inevitable question that arises is how to select the color model that produces the best result for a particular computer vision task. In this paper, the main aim is to survey the theory of different color spaces since the performance of an image analysis procedure is known to depend on the choice of the color space.
Is Empathy the Default Response to Suffering? A Meta-Analytic Evaluation of Perspective Taking’s Effect on Empathic Concern

We conducted a series of meta-analytic tests on experiments in which participants read perspective-taking instructions—that is, written instructions to imagine a distressed persons’ point of view (“imagine-self” and “imagine-other” instructions), or to inhibit such actions (“remain-objective” instructions)—and afterwards reported how much empathic concern they experienced upon learning about the distressed person. If people spontaneously empathize with others, then participants who receive remain-objective instructions should report less empathic concern than do participants in a “no-instructions” control condition; if people can deliberately increase how much empathic concern they experience, then imagine-self and imagine-other instructions should increase empathic concern relative to not receiving any instructions. Random-effects models revealed that remain-objective instructions reduced empathic concern, but “imagine” instructions did not significantly increase it. The results were robust to most corrections for bias. Our conclusions were not qualified by the study characteristics we examined, but most relevant moderators have not yet been thoroughly studied.
Do Weak Institutions Affect Recording of Terror Incidents? Evidence from the United States

Abstract Recording of crimes as terror incidents often falls in an unclear/fuzzy area due to overlaps with other crimes such as hate crimes, drug or mental health-related crimes, etc. This paper addresses the recording of crimes as terror crimes across US states, alternately considering both the prevalence and intensity of such crimes. Placing the explanatory variables under institutional, economic, social, political and enforcement categories, results show that weak institutions, ceteris paribus, undermine the recording of terror crimes. In other significant influences, states with greater ethnic homogeneity were less likely to have recorded terror crimes and more populous states had greater incidence (but not greater intensity) of recorded terror activity. Some implications for policy are discussed.
Charting the Course of Language Acquisition: A Case Study

Much research has been devoted to exploring whether learners follow an identifiable sequence in their acquisition of language; a sequence of acquisition. While a large portion of this research has focused on first language acquisition, there is also an expanding body of research that examines second language learning. This paper seeks to describe the sequence of acquisition of one young learner, specifically their use of negators. After identifying several distinct patterns of negation, data are presented to indicate that the learner does follow a discernable pattern as they advance towards a comprehensive understanding of negation. Introduction The route a learner takes in acquiring a specific grammatical structure is an area of research that covers a great deal of ground limited only, obviously, by the number of structures. Ellis (1997) states that “when learners acquire a grammatical structure they do so gradually, moving through a series of stages en route to acquiring the nativespeaker rule” (p.23). Much research has been devoted to the study of the sequence of acquisition in both first and second language acquisition and this paper seeks to address only one of these structures: negation. Data were collected from one young learner
Reworking research: Interactions in academic articles and blogs

The blog is an increasingly familiar newcomer to the panoply of academic genres, offering researchers the opportunity to disseminate their work to new and wider audiences of experts and interested lay people. This digital medium, however, also brings challenges to writers in the form of a relatively unpredictable readership and the potential for immediate, public and potentially hostile criticism. To understand how academics in the social sciences respond to this novel rhetorical situation, we explore how they discoursally recontextualize in blogs the scientific information they have recently published in journal articles. Based on two corpora of 30 blog posts and 30 journal articles with the same authors and topics, we examine the ways researchers carefully reconstruct a different writer persona and relationship with their readers using stance and engagement model. In addition to supporting the view that the academic blog is a hybrid genre situated between academic and journalistic writing, we show how writers’ rhetorical choices help define different rhetorical contexts.
Bank Relationships and Corporate Cash Holdings

In this paper, we investigate how firm–bank relationships affect corporate cash-holding behavior. Using bank loan and financial statement data from emerging firms in Japan, we find that firms with concentrated bank relationships hold lower levels of cash. Additionally, firms with such bank relationships have less propensity to save cash from their cash flows, but we do not observe an effect of bank relationships on cash holdings among firms with access to bond markets. Smaller firms with concentrated bank loan structures hold higher levels of cash. Our results are robust as far as the endogeneity bias and managerial agency problems are concerned. These findings suggest that concentrated bank relationships affect firms' cash holdings, driven by precautionary motives, but such relationships lead to hold-up problems among smaller firms without alternative sources of liquidity. We also find that the negative effect of concentrated bank relationships is weakened after financial crisis periods.
Implementing a neural machine translation engine for mobile devices: the Lingvanex use case

In this paper, we present the challenge entailed by implementing a mobile version of a neural machine translation system, where the goal is to maximise translation quality while minimising model size. We explain the whole process of implementing the translation engine on an English–Spanish example and we describe all the difficulties found and the solutions implemented. The main techniques used in this work are data selection by means of Infrequent n-gram Recovery, appending a special word at the end of each sentence, and generating additional samples without the final punctuation marks. The last two techniques were devised with the purpose of achieving a translation model that generates sentences without the final full stop, or other punctuation marks. Also, in this work, the Infrequent n-gram Recovery was used for the first time to create a new corpus, and not enlarge the in-domain dataset. Finally, we get a small size model with quality good enough to serve for daily use.
Experimental and numerical analysis of supersonic blade profiles developed for highly loaded impulse type steam turbine stages

The paper describes the results of a numerical and experimental research program addressing the aerodynamic investigation on the performance of blade profiles specifically developed for application in highly loaded impulse type turbine stages. The industrial requirements driving toward the adoption of highly loaded stage solutions are presented, along with an estimation of the profiles operating parameters. Two stator vanes and one rotor blade profile have been developed and extensively tested by means of flow field measurements and schlieren visualization in a transonic blow-down wind tunnel for linear cascades. Experimental results for the relevant operating conditions are presented, providing validation data for the CFD model used for blade design and evidencing that the main goals of the design optimization procedure have been achieved.
Tough femininities: ethnic minority girls’ aggressive school opposition

Abstract This article addresses school resistance in ethnic minority girls. Girls’ school opposition is mostly described as covert. If described as hostile, it is rarely understood in terms of femininity. Through psychosocial analyses of extensive fieldwork and interviews with students in a Norwegian upper-secondary school, the article describes an affective practice in which young minority girls reject school aggressively. I argue that through their school opposition, the girls are constituting a transgressive femininity that that does not jeopardise their ethnic belonging or their femininity within school. Their aggression is fuelled by the experience of disentitlement from success in a school perceived as being for ethnic Norwegians and not for them. Although the noisy girls at Skogbyen act in a way that is locally accepted, they still act in opposition to the larger gender order – which comes at a cost.
Acceptance and Penetration of Bitcoin: The Role of Psychological Distance and National Culture

Previous studies showed that a number of factors play roles in influencing Bitcoin penetration and acceptance, both at country and individual level, such as trust, perceived risk, security threat, perceived benefit, perceived ease of use, as well as macro-technological and socioeconomic factors. This present study aimed at finding theoretical models at the macro- and microlevels that are able to explain the penetration and acceptance. Study 1 examined hypotheses on the predictive relationship between national cultural orientation and Bitcoin penetration involving 60 countries. Study 2, using a construal level perspective, tested the predictive strength of psychological distances against Bitcoin acceptance, involving 565 Indonesians (Mage = 28.88 years, SDage = 12.482 years). The results showed that national culture of individualism, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation are able to predict the penetration. Spatial/physical distance, social distance, and hypothetical distance are able to predict the acceptance. This research is pivotal in obtaining the fundamental factors of community vulnerability in accepting and endorsing new e-money, i.e. Bitcoin. Monetary policy is expected to consider cultural and psychological factors in intervening against economic–technological disruptive innovations developing among societies.
Regional trajectories in life expectancy and lifespan variation: Persistent inequality in two Nordic welfare states

Abstract: An important source of inequality in mortality is regional variation. However, studies that investigate regional mortality patterns within and across national borders are extremely rare. We respond by carrying out a comparative study of Finland and Sweden: two welfare states that share many attributes, with one exception being their mortality trajectories. While Finland has risen rapidly in the global life expectancy rankings, Sweden has lost its historical place among the top ten. Using individual-level register data, we study regional trends in life expectancy and life-span variation by sex. Although all regions, in both countries, have experienced substantial improvements in life expectancy and lifespan inequality from 1990-2014, considerable differences between regions have remained unchanged, suggesting the existence of persistent inequality. In particular, Swedish-speaking minority regions in Finland had maintained their mortality advantage over Finnish-speaking regions. Nevertheless, there is some evidence of convergence between the regions of Finland and Sweden.
Projection of Forest Fire Danger due to Climate Change in the French Mediterranean Region

Fire occurrence and behaviour in Mediterranean-type ecosystems strongly depend on the air temperature and wind conditions, the amount of fuel load and the drought conditions that drastically increase flammability, particularly during the summer period. In order to study the fire danger due to climate change for these ecosystems, the meteorologically based Fire Weather Index (FWI) can be used. The Fire Weather Index (FWI) system, which is part of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS), has been validated and recognized worldwide as one of the most trusted and important indicators for meteorological fire danger mapping. A number of FWI system components (Fire Weather Index, Drought Code, Initial Spread Index and Fire Severity Rating) were estimated and analysed in the current study for the Mediterranean area of France. Daily raster-based data-sets for the fire seasons (1st May–31st October) of a historic and a future time period were created for the study area based on representative concentration pathway (RCP) 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios, outputs of CNRM-SMHI and MPI-SMHI climate models. GIS spatial analyses were applied on the series of the derived daily raster maps in order to provide a number of output maps for the study area. The results portray various levels of changes in fire danger, in the near future, according to the examined indices. Number of days with high and very high FWI values were found to be doubled compared to the historical period, in particular in areas of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) region and Corsica. The areas with high Initial Spread Index and Seasonal Spread Index values increased as well, forming compact zones of high fire danger in the southern part of the study area, while the Drought Code index did not show remarkable changes. The current study on the evolution of spatial and temporal distribution of forest fire danger due to climate change can provide important knowledge to the decision support process for prevention and management policies of forest fires both at a national and EU level.
Trust me, I am a caring coach: The benefits of establishing trustworthiness during coaching by communicating benevolence

ABSTRACT A client's trust in the coach is essential for a well-functioning coaching interaction. This trust depends on the coach's trustworthiness in terms of ability, integrity, and benevolence. In three mixed-method studies, we investigated how these components of trustworthiness were established by the coach asking inexperienced (N1 = 42) and experienced (N2 = 29) coaches as well as clients (N3 = 24). An inductive qualitative content analysis revealed a range of approaches to establish trustworthiness that varied depending on the coach's experience: Inexperienced coaches (Study 1) and clients of inexperienced coaches (Study 3) focused most on the coach's ability, whereas experienced coaches (Study 2) focused most on the coach's benevolence. As the client's autonomy need is important in coaching, questions about the need (Study 2) and its fulfilment (Study 3) were added and it was hypothesised that communicating benevolence is autonomy need supportive. The results revealed that when a coach perceived a higher client autonomy need they focused more on communicating benevolence (Study 2). In accordance, when the client reported that the coach communicated more benevolence they felt more autonomy need fulfilment (Study 3). Thus, communicating benevolence can support the client's autonomy need.
Firewall Analysis by Symbolic Simulation

—When doing Layer 4 security analysis on a chain of ﬁrewalls, the analyst is faced with the problem of combining them into a uniﬁed representation in order to verify reachability though the chain and possibly compare it with a security policy. Doing this manually is labor-intensive and becomes infeasible if ﬁrewalls with large conﬁgurations are part of the chain. To automate the uniﬁcation process, we have created the Consecom Network Analyzer that uses symbolic simulation with an interval representation to generate a uniﬁed equivalent ﬁrewall in a normalized, simple and ﬂat form. We show the suitability of this approach for ﬁrewalls with large conﬁgurations by giving benchmarks based on deployed rule-sets. We also demonstrate the eﬀects of diﬀerent optimization techniques on run-time and memory footprint. The Consecom Network Analyzer has already been used successfully for security reviews.
The use of poison pills by US firms over the period 1997-2015: what has been their impact on shareholder value

Poison pills are controversial devices for which no common conclusion as to how the market reacts to their adoption exists. This research collates 4,479 poison pill adoption events by US companies over the period 1997-2015. Statistically significant insights and positive abnormal returns were found on the day the poison pill was adopted. It is for this reason that we argue in favour of the shareholder wealth-maximisation hypothesis, stating that poison pills protect shareholders by providing management a superior bargaining position. The shareholders react positively to poison pill adoption, particularly if a hostile takeover attempt is anticipated. Furthermore, shareholders seem to value the protective effect of the device, which both provides management a superior bargaining position and allows the maximal possible bid premium to be negotiated.
Usage of Supplementary Online Courses: To What Extent Are We Successful? A case study with An Undergraduate Chemistry course

One of the goals of the Distance education Modernization project (DEMP) launched at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) in 2003, with the assistance of the Asian development Bank (ADB) was to utilize ICT as an effective way of teaching and learning. For this purpose OUSL developed and delivered three types of online courses with varying degrees of compulsion. Delivery of the courses is being carried out through the National Online Distance Education Service (NODES network. In order to access NODES several Nodes Access Centres (NAC) were established around the country. This paper presents a case study on the usage of online supplementary component developed for the first year undergraduate Chemistry course. The course was offered over the last three academic years and only a very few students have accessed the supplementary online component. Analysis of its usage raveled that the students do not show much interest in participating in interactive forums but have shown interest in practicing quizzes The knowledge gained in this case study will be useful in future development of online supplementary courses.