Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Γ-ray Bursts and Afterglows from Rotating Strange Stars and Neutron Stars

We here discuss a new model of γ-ray bursts (GRBs) based on differentially rotating strange stars. Strange stars in this model and differentially rotating neutron stars in the Klu´zniak-Ruderman model can produce extremely relativistic, variable fireballs required by GRBs and then become millisecond pulsars. The effect of such pulsars on expansion of the postburst fireballs through magnetic dipole radiation is studied. We show that these two models can explain naturally not only various features of GRBs but also light curves of afterglows. γ-ray bursts (GRBs) has been one of the greatest mysteries in high-energy astrophysics for about thirty years. The observations of GRBs and a few afterglows [1-3] show that their sources are at cosmological distances. These observations require that any energy-source model should satisfy the following general features: (i) The model should produce an extremely relativistic fireball containing an amount of energy ≈ 10 51 –10 52 ergs [4]. (ii) The high Lorentz factor of the fireball implied by the short variability and the non-thermal spectra [5] requires that the fraction of contaminating baryons be less than 1% of the explosive energy (viz., ≤ 10 −5 M ⊙). (iii) The fireball is highly variable (required by the multi-peak feature of the light curves of GRBs) and it should last for the GRB duration (typically a few dozen seconds), implying that the source cannot release energy only once [4,6]. (iv) The fireball should be a rare event occurring about once per million years in a galaxy [4]. (v) Finally, the model should account for the decline-rise-decline behavior of the R-band light curve of the afterglow from GRB 970508 [7,8]. In this Letter, we combine features of some existing pulsar GRB models, build upon them, and synthesize 1
Social Studies Prospective Teachers' Views on Community Service Practicum Course

Purpose of the present study is to determine views of prospective social studies teachers on community service practicum course. Sample of the study included 24 prospective teachers studying in Social Studies Teacher Program at Artvin Coruh University Education Faculty in the spring semester of 2013-2014 academic year. The present study was designed in phenomenological research which is one of the qualitative research designs Data were collected through semi-structured interview. Data were analysed throguh content analysis. As a result of the data analysis it was concluded that prospective social studies teachers experienced happiness and difficulties on the process of taking the necessary legal permissions to initiate activities, developed senstivity towads social problems, the course allowed them to work
Using citation influence to predict software defects

The software dependency network reflects structure and the developer contribution network reflects process. Previous studies have used social network properties over these networks to predict whether a software component is defect-prone. However, these studies do not consider the strengths of the dependencies in the networks. In our approach, we use a citation influence topic model to determine dependency strengths among components and developers, analyze weak and strong dependencies separately, and apply social network properties to predict defect-prone components. In experiments on Eclipse and NetBeans, our approach has higher accuracy than prior work.
Domain Recompilation-based Approach towards Hierarchical Task Network Planning with Constraints

In this paper, we present a domain recompilation- based approach towards specifying and handling state-trajectory con- straints in Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planning paradigm. The proposed constraint specification language is inspired by the PDDL3.0 constructs. The domain-recompilation technique is based on automata templates for the PDDL modal operators. To implement automata embedding we have introduced conditional effect construct in HTN. Introduction of dead automata state has helped in reducing amount of backtracking that was required originally. The constraint specification and handling strategy has been tested with a city tour and travel domain modelled using HTN.
You BEEP Machine-Emotion in Automatic Speech Understanding Systems

An improved casting apparatus for directionally solidifying molten metal is disclosed. The apparatus typically includes a furnace for heating a mold containing molten metal, a liquid metal coolant bath positioned below the bottom of the furnace and means for gradually withdrawing the heated mold from the furnace into the coolant bath to effect directional solidification of the molten metal. The apparatus is improved by positioning a heat insulating baffle between the bottom of the furnace and coolant bath, the baffle being constructed to float on the bath surface during the solidification process and minimize heat loss from the mold until it is immersed in the bath. The provision of the floating baffle between the furnace bottom and coolant bath provides several important advantages including increased thermal gradients, shorter casting cycles and improved cast microstructures. In addition, the floating baffle reduces vaporization of the liquid metal coolant and maintains a smooth, ripple-free coolant surface.
Charge Scan Reveals an Extended Region at the Intracellular End of the GABA Receptor Pore that Can Influence Ion Selectivity

Selective permeability is a fundamental property of ion channels. The Cys-loop receptor superfamily is composed of both excitatory (ACh, 5-HT) and inhibitory (GABA, glycine) neurotransmitter-operated ion channels. In the GABA receptor, it has been previously shown that the charge selectivity of the integral pore can be altered by a single mutation near the intracellular end of the second transmembrane-spanning domain (TM2). We have extended these findings and now show that charge selectivity of the anionic ρ1 GABA receptor can be influenced by the introduction of glutamates, one at a time, over an 8–amino acid stretch (−2′ to 5′) in the proposed intracellular end of TM2 and the TM1–TM2 intracellular linker. Depending on the position, glutamate substitutions in this region produced sodium to chloride permeability ratios (PNa+/Cl−) varying from 0.64 to 3.4 (wild type PNa+/Cl− = 0). In addition to providing insight into the mechanism of ion selectivity, this functional evidence supports a model proposed for the homologous nicotinic acetylcholine receptor in which regions of the protein, in addition to TM2, form the ion pathway.
An investigation of uses and gratifications for using WEB 2.0 technologies in teaching and learning processes

Although the use of Web 2.0 in higher education has been a hot topic for the last decade, a lack of guidelines on how to use Web 2.0 tools has constrained their wider adoption. Therefore, understanding why and how educators use Web 2.0 is a necessary step towards promoting their effective use in teaching and learning. This study draws upon the uses and gratifications perspective to explore faculty members’ uses of Web 2.0 tools in instructional processes in an international higher education context. We gathered data from 15 faculty members via semistructured interviews as part of a phenomenological study design applying maximum variation sampling. We analyzed the data using content analysis. The results indicated that the faculty members were selective in their use of Web 2.0 tools and utilized a variety of Web 2.0 tools to gratify their cognitive, affective, social integrative and personal integrative needs in relation to instructional processes.
A Source Dependency Model for Statistical Machine Translation

In the formally syntax-based MT, a hierarchical tree generated by synchronous CFG rules associates the source sentence with the target sentence. In this paper, we propose a source dependency model to estimate the probability of the hierarchical tree generated in decoding. We develop this source dependency model from word-aligned corpus, without using any linguistically motivated parsing. Our experimental results show that integrating the source dependency model into the formally syntax-based machine translation signiﬁcantly improves the performance on Chinese-to-English translation tasks
Atrial Natriuretic Peptide Regulates Ca2+ Channel in Early Developmental Cardiomyocytes

Background Cardiomyocytes derived from murine embryonic stem (ES) cells possess various membrane currents and signaling cascades link to that of embryonic hearts. The role of atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) in regulation of membrane potentials and Ca2+ currents has not been investigated in developmental cardiomyocytes. Methodology/Principal Findings We investigated the role of ANP in regulating L-type Ca2+ channel current (ICaL) in different developmental stages of cardiomyocytes derived from ES cells. ANP decreased the frequency of action potentials (APs) in early developmental stage (EDS) cardiomyocytes, embryonic bodies (EB) as well as whole embryo hearts. ANP exerted an inhibitory effect on basal ICaL in about 70% EDS cardiomyocytes tested but only in about 30% late developmental stage (LDS) cells. However, after stimulation of ICaL by isoproterenol (ISO) in LDS cells, ANP inhibited the response in about 70% cells. The depression of ICaL induced by ANP was not affected by either Nω, Nitro-L-Arginine methyl ester (L-NAME), a nitric oxide synthetase (NOS) inhibitor, or KT5823, a cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG) selective inhibitor, in either EDS and LDS cells; whereas depression of ICaL by ANP was entirely abolished by erythro-9-(2-Hydroxy-3-nonyl) adenine (EHNA), a selective inhibitor of type 2 phosphodiesterase(PDE2) in most cells tested. Conclusion/Significances Taken together, these results indicate that ANP induced depression of action potentials and ICaL is due to activation of particulate guanylyl cyclase (GC), cGMP production and cGMP-activation of PDE2 mediated depression of adenosine 3′, 5′–cyclic monophophate (cAMP)–cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) in early cardiomyogenesis.
Synchrotron Self-Absorption in Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglow

Gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglow is reasonably described by synchrotron emission from relativistic blast waves at cosmological distances. We perform detailed calculations taking into account the effect of synchrotron self-absorption. We consider emission from the whole region behind the shock front, and use the Blandford-McKee self-similar solution to describe the fluid behind the shock. We calculate the spectra and the observed image of a GRB afterglow near the self-absorption frequency, νa, and derive an accurate expression for νa. We show that the image is rather homogeneous for ν < νa, as opposed to the bright ring at the outer edge and the dim center, which appear at higher frequencies. We compare the spectra we obtain to radio observations of GRB 970508. We combine the calculations of the spectra near the self-absorption frequency with other parts of the spectra and obtain revised estimates for the physical parameters of the burst: E52 = 0.53, ϵe = 0.59, ϵB = 0.014, n1 = 3.0. These estimates different by up to 2 orders of magnitude from the estimates based on an approximate spectrum.
Biscriptuality: Writing skills among German-Russian adolescents

In the context of constantly increasing linguistic diversity in many parts of the world, opportunities and challenges arise for the acquisition of literacy skills. The successful development of literacy skills becomes a crucial prerequisite for educational attainment determining future career prospects of migrant students. Multilingual settings reveal the diversification of languages and scripts prompted in the context of migration. This monograph explores the phenomenon of biscriptuality and aims to provide an approach for investigating the development of biliteracy in the context of divergent scripts. This interdisciplinary mixed-methods study bridges intercultural education science, education research and applied linguistics for gaining a complex view on the role of biscriptuality in students’ biliteracy. It considers the extent of students’ biscriptual skills, specifies language dimensions in which the influence on biliteracy may occur, and differentiates between the effects of biscriptuality on the development of writing skills in two different genres, narrative and expository.
Efficacy of the Integrated Listening Systems' Dreampad™ device to Sleep Quality in insomnia patient

Music can improve sleep quality but there is no study about the Integrated Listening Systems' (iLs) Dreampad™ in patients with insomnia so far. This current study was designed to determine the efficacy of the Integrated Listening Systems' (iLs) Dreampad™ device especially in engaging the parasympathetic branch of the user autonomic nervous system. The aim of this study was to see the effect of Integrated Listening Systems' (iLs) Dreampad™ device in patients who was diagnosed insomnia. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was also applied to evaluate the sleep quality of all participants. A total of 20 volunteers were divided randomly and equally into 2 groups. The first group as an intervention group, had used Integrated Listening Systems' (iLs) Dreampad™ device for 4 weeks before going to bed. Another group as a control group, had used only a simple pillow with no music for 4 weeks. All of volunteers were be evaluated again after 4 weeks of this study by using PSQI. The data were collected and analyzed. The result of this study showed Integrated Listening Systems' (iLs) Dreampad™ device help improved sleep quality in patients with insomnia statistically significant. When we compared the result between intervention group and control group, PSQI score in an intervention group decreased significantly than control group. In conclusion, Integrated Listening Systems' (iLs) Dreampad™ device showed a significantly improved sleep quality in patients with insomnia.
Video SAM X Workstation X Workstation AudioSAM AudioSAM Switched ATM Network Video SAM Disc Brick SAM Video

1 2 3 ; The last few years has seen an increasing use of multimedia applications, including video conferencing and video and audio mail [1]. Using these facilities can create large archives of video material, which poses a signicant storage and retrieval problem. Users are unable to nd stored messages because, unlike text, there are no simple ways to search for a particular reference. The Video Mail Retrieval (VMR) project is addressing this problem by developing a system to retrieve stored video messages by speech recognition. A specic goal of the project is the development of a useful application to work in the Medusa multime-dia environment installed at Olivetti Research Ltd in Cambridge, UK. In the simplest form of message retrieval, a user will specify a single search keyword and word spotting techniques will locate its occurrences in the audio soundtrack. A more robust system will use multiple search keys, both to minimize the eect of spotting errors and to rene the list of retrieved messages. Thus, the topic specication and search strategies developed for conventional text-based information retrieval (IR) must be adapted to this new environment [2]. Although later stages of the project will investigate open-keyword and open-user sets, the initial stage, and the work described here, focuses on a xed, known set of search keywords and users. This paper begins with an overview of the ORL Medusa system ; subsequent sections describe initial word spotting and information retrieval experiments, and a graphical user interface to the video mail retrieval system. (ORL) is an experiment in sending many streams of digital audio and video over a prototype 100 Megabit-per-second switched ATM network [3, 4]. The ATM fabric covers all rooms at the laboratory and some 200 network connections are in place. Figure 1 shows a typical Medusa installation. Optical bre extends the network to the University Engineering Department and the University Computer Laboratory in Cam-bridge. An ATM network has useful characteristics for multimedia transport: the bandwidth is relatively high, the latency is low, and transit time jitter is also low. Multimedia input and output functionality has traditionally been provided by cards plugged into a workstation bus. In contrast, ORL has adopted the more exible approach of making microphones, speakers, cameras and storage systems into rst-class network objects. A modular approach has been adopted to-This paper describes current work on a video and audio document retrieval project at Cambridge University …
Differential Evolution Based on Self-Adaptive Fitness Function for Automated Test Case Generation

Testing is one of the most important parts of the software process, which aims at detecting software faults/bugs and thus guarantees the quality of the final product. Its expense is nearly half of the total cost of software development [7], [9]. Most of the current approaches to software testing are manual, but it has been recently suggested [1] that automated testing should be done to save human resources and budget, as well as to produce high-quality software.
Capital Factors of Rubella Vaccination Behaviour among the Parents in Bangladesh: A PLS-SEM Analysis

This study predicts rubella vaccination behavior of the parents in Bangladesh based on CAPSES model : Human Capital (HC), Material Capital (MC) and Social Capital (SC). A sample size of 72 parents was determined to collect data. The study employed structured questionnaire technique based on 5 point-Likert scale. Then, the study used SmartPLS software (Windows Version-3) to analyze both the measurement and structural models. The study findings lead to this proposition that the higher the CAPSES ranks of the parents, the more likely they will vaccinate their children against MR. On the contrary, the lower the CAPSES rank of the parents, the less likely they will vaccinate their children against MR. Overall, the models have predictive power and relevance in the respective models (R 2 of RVB1= 0.862) was found to be more substantial compared to two other CAPSES models (R 2 of RVB2 = 0.240 and R 2 of RVB3 = 0.181).
Segmentation-Free Dynamic Scene Deblurring

Most state-of-the-art dynamic scene deblurring methods based on accurate motion segmentation assume that motion blur is small or that the specific type of motion causing the blur is known. In this paper, we study a motion segmentation-free dynamic scene deblurring method, which is unlike other conventional methods. When the motion can be approximated to linear motion that is locally (pixel-wise) varying, we can handle various types of blur caused by camera shake, including out-of-plane motion, depth variation, radial distortion, and so on. Thus, we propose a new energy model simultaneously estimating motion flow and the latent image based on robust total variation (TV)-L1 model. This approach is necessary to handle abrupt changes in motion without segmentation. Furthermore, we address the problem of the traditional coarse-to-fine deblurring framework, which gives rise to artifacts when restoring small structures with distinct motion. We thus propose a novel kernel re-initialization method which reduces the error of motion flow propagated from a coarser level. Moreover, a highly effective convex optimization-based solution mitigating the computational difficulties of the TV-L1 model is established. Comparative experimental results on challenging real blurry images demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method.
A Dual-Phase Power Allocation Scheme for Multicarrier Relay System With Direct Link

We present optimization algorithms for source and relay power allocations in a multicarrier relay system with direct link, where the source power is allowed to transmit in both phases in a two-phase relay scheme. We show that there is a significant benefit to the system capacity by allowing the source power to be distributed over both phases. Specifically, we consider the joint optimization of source and relay power to minimize a general cost function. The joint optimization problem is non-convex and the complexity of finding the optimal solution is extremely high. Using the alternating optimization (AO) method, the joint problem is decomposed into a convex source power allocation problem and a non-convex relay power allocation problem. By exploiting the specific structure of the problem, we present efficient algorithms that yield the exact optimal solutions for both source and (non-convex) relay power allocation problems. Then we show that the overall AO algorithm converges to a stationary point of the joint problem. Moreover, the proposed AO algorithm is asymptotically optimal for large relay transmit power or large source-relay channel gain. Finally, simulations show that the proposed AO algorithm achieves significant gain over various baselines.
5‐cm‐Precision aircraft ocean altimetry using GPS reflections

We present the first two aircraft Global Positioning System (GPS)‐reflection altimetry measurements, the most precise GPS ocean‐altimetry measurement, and demonstrate the altimetric precision and spatial resolution necessary to map mesoscale eddies. Our first experiment demonstrated a 14‐cm precision single‐satellite ocean altimetry measurement while our more recent experiment demonstrates 5 cm altimetric precision with 5‐km spatial resolution. The new results show significant improvement over our previous effort, due to improved modeling, greater aircraft altitudes and velocities, improved receiver positioning, and better experimental control. Plans to further reduce speckle and refine models to obtain 5‐cm altimetric accuracy are presented.
Preservation Obscures Pelagic Deep-Sea Fish Diversity: Doubling the Number of Sole-Bearing Opisthoproctids and Resurrection of the Genus Monacoa (Opisthoproctidae, Argentiniformes)

The family Opisthoproctidae (barreleyes) constitutes one of the most peculiar looking and unknown deep-sea fish groups in terms of taxonomy and specialized adaptations. All the species in the family are united by the possession of tubular eyes, with one distinct lineage exhibiting also drastic shortening of the body. Two new species of the mesopelagic opisthoproctid mirrorbelly genus Monacoa are described based on pigmentation patterns of the “sole”—a unique vertebrate structure used in the reflection and control of bioluminescence in most short-bodied forms. Different pigmentation patterns of the soles, previously noted as intraspecific variations based on preserved specimens, are here shown species-specific and likely used for communication in addition to counter-illumination of down-welling sunlight. The genus Monacoa is resurrected from Opisthoproctus based on extensive morphological synaphomorphies pertaining to the anal fin and snout. Doubling the species diversity within sole-bearing opisthoproctids, including recognition of two genera, is unambiguously supported by mitogenomic DNA sequence data. Regular fixation with formalin and alcohol preservation is shown problematic concerning the retention of species-specific pigmentation patterns. Examination or photos of fresh material before formalin fixation is shown paramount for correct species recognition of sole-bearing opisthoproctids—a relatively unknown issue concerning species diversity in the deep-sea pelagic realm.