Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Lick Planet Search: Detectability and Mass Thresholds

We present an analysis of 11 yr of precision radial velocity measurements of 76 nearby solar-type stars from the Lick radial velocity survey. For each star, we report on variability, periodicity, and long-term velocity trends. Our sample of stars contains eight known companions with mass (Mp sin i) less than 8 Jupiter masses (MJ), six of which were discovered at Lick. For the remaining stars, we place upper limits on the companion mass as a function of orbital period. For most stars, we can exclude companions with velocity amplitude K ≳ 20 m s-1 at the 99% level, or Mp sin i ≳ 0.7MJ(a/AU)1/2 for orbital radii a ≲ 5 AU. We examine the implications of our results for the observed distribution of mass and orbital radius of companions. We show that the combination of intrinsic stellar variability and measurement errors most likely explains why all confirmed companions so far have K ≳ 40 m s-1. The finite duration of the observations limits detection of Jupiter-mass companions to a ≲ 3 AU. Thus it remains possible that the majority of solar-type stars harbor Jupiter-mass companions much like our own, and if so these companions should be detectable in a few years. It is striking that more massive companions with Mp sin i > 3MJ are rare at orbital radii 4-6 AU; we could have detected such objects in ~90% of stars, yet found none. The observed companions show a "piling-up" toward small orbital radii, and there is a paucity of confirmed and candidate companions with orbital radii between ~0.2 and ~1 AU. The small number of confirmed companions means that we are not able to rule out selection effects as the cause of these features. We show that the traditional method for detecting periodicities, the Lomb-Scargle periodogram, fails to account for statistical fluctuations in the mean of a sampled sinusoid, making it nonrobust when the number of observations is small, the sampling is uneven, or for periods comparable to or greater than the duration of the observations. We adopt a "floating-mean" periodogram, in which the zero point of the sinusoid is allowed to vary during the fit. We discuss in detail the normalization of the periodogram and the probability distribution of periodogram powers. We stress that the three different prescriptions in the literature for normalizing the periodogram are statistically equivalent and that it is not possible to write a simple analytic form for the false alarm probability, making Monte Carlo methods essential.
Maker fringes revisited: second-harmonic generation from birefringent or absorbing materials

We present a new formulation of Maker fringes in parallel-surface films, using self-consistent boundary conditions for reflections and allowing for any degree of refractive-index dispersion. This treatment of the second-harmonic reflections and dispersion, unlike a number of previous derivations, leads correctly to the expected form for the effective second-harmonic d coefficients. Complete expressions with physically meaningful factors are given for the generated second-harmonic power for either absorbing or birefringent films including reflections for the case of no pump depletion. A comparison with the isotropic approximation is given, and practical considerations in the use of these expressions for the fitting of experimental data are discussed.
Cross cultural adaptation and validation of the Chinese Health Assessment Questionnaire for use in rheumatoid arthritis.

OBJECTIVE The Health Assessment Questionnaire - Disability Index (HAQ), used as a disability and outcome measurement in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), has been validated in several languages, but not in Chinese. Our aim was to validate the Chinese version of HAQ (Chinese-HAQ) to suit the needs of Chinese speaking patients with RA in an Asian setting. METHODS The original HAQ was modified in the context of Chinese culture and translated into Chinese by 2 translators aware of the objective of the questionnaire. The Chinese HAQ was self-administered by 42 patients with RA during their routine followup visit and one week later. RESULTS The test-retest reliability assessed using Spearman's correlation coefficient was 0.84. Between dimensions measured in the HAQ, the highest test-retest reliability was observed for walking (Spearman correlation coefficient rs=0.80) and the lowest was for eating (rs=0.54). The internal consistency of the scale using Cronbach's alpha was high at 0.86. In terms of criterion validity, the Chinese-HAQ score was found to correlate well with American College of Rheumatology functional status (rs=0.501, p=0.01). The Chinese-HAQ scores also correlated well with markers of disease activity such as patient's perception of pain measured on a visual analog scale (rs=0.55, p < 0.001), grip strength in mm Hg (rs=-0.55. p < 0.001 ), and physician's assessment of disease activity (rs=0.59, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION The Chinese HAQ is a reliable and valid instrument for studies measuring disability of patients with RA in Singapore.
Análisis factorial: una aplicación en el cuestionario de salud general de Goldberg, versión de 12 preguntas

To explore the factor structure of the 12-item version of the Goldberg General Health Questionnaire with Likert scoring, within persons discharged from treatment and rehabilitation programs for drug abuse related problems, in Chilean care centers. Material and Methods : A cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out on a sample of 306 persons who completed the General Health questionnaire. The reliability of the instrument was assessed through an internal consistency analysis. A confirmatory factor analysis was carried out through extraction of the principal components with varimax rotation. Results : The mean age was 30; among the study population 80% were male. The Cronbach.s alpha coefficient was 0,902. Using a 0 to 36 points score, the mean total score in the General Health Questionnaire was 8,5 with a standard deviation of 7,1. The factor analysis confirmed the bidimensionality of the instrument, and the existence of two latent factors, which together accounted for 60% of the total variance. Conclusions : The present study showed a high level of reliability and a similar factor structure to that found in studies within other populations. In view of its self-administered character and the promptness to complete it, the use of the questionnaire is strongly recommended for the assessment of self- perception of the mental health status within persons consulting for drug abuse related disorders.
The Simplest Stacked BST Capacitor For The Future DRAMs Using A Novel Low Temperature Growth Enhanced Crystallization

The simplest stacked capacitor with BST thinner films (about 50nm-thick) grown by a novel low temperature growth [ 11 was demonstrated. The storage node without sidewall spacer was constructed by thinner Ru-layer, sputtered-TiN diffusion barrier, TiSix electrical contact layer and poly-Si plug. The low temperature BST growth prevented the leakage current increase of BST films as thin as 25nm. Therefore, 50% step coverage BST-capacitor was performed as sidewall-less simple stacked capacitors with large storage charge.
The Effect of Increasing Fruit and Vegetable Consumption on Overall Diet: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Increasing fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption is associated with reduced risk of major diseases. However, it is unclear if health benefits are related to increased micronutrient intake or to improvements in overall diet profile. This review aimed to assess if increasing FV consumption had an impact on diet profile. In the systematic review, 12 studies revealed increases in micronutrient intakes, whilst the meta-analysis confirmed macronutrient findings from the systematic review showing no significant difference between the intervention and control groups in energy (kcals) in seven studies (mean difference = 1 kcals [95% CI = −115, 117]; p = 0.98), significant decreases in total fat (% energy) in five studies (Mean difference = −4% [95% CI = −5, −3]; p = < 0.00001) and significant increases in fiber in six studies (Mean difference = 5.36 g [95% CI = 4, 7]; p = < 0.00001) and total carbohydrate (% energy) in four studies (Mean = 4% [95% CI= 2, 5]; p = < 0.00001). In conclusion, results indicate that increased FV consumption increases micronutrient, carbohydrate and fiber intakes and possibly reduces fat intake, with no overall effect on energy intake. Therefore health benefits may act through an improvement in overall diet profile alongside increased micronutrient intakes.
The Power of Personal Coaching: Helping First-Year Students to Connect and Commit in College

Abstract Colleges and universities have long recognized that helping students to become personally connected and committed early in college is critical to their successful retention and graduation. Getting connected to the institution and committed to the academic process are especially challenging for new students who must quickly master a wide range of academic, personal, and social adjustments. For these reasons, institutions typically frontload a wide variety of services and personnel designed to help new students survive in college such as first-year courses, first-year interest groups, living-learning communities, help centers, advisers, counselors, tutors, and mentors. Recently a new kind of new student support service, personal coaching, is proving in some situations to be more effective than traditional new student services in increasing students’ abilities to connect and commit in college. The authors examine the role of personal coaching in college, reasons it appears to be a powerful intervention in encouraging student academic success, and the challenges it presents for traditional institutional approaches to encouraging new student engagement and persistence.
Analysis of a Soft Real-Time Random Access

A communications network that is part of a soft real-time system will need to transmit messages within a bounded delay, but may allow some messages to miss this bound and be dropped within a maximum prespecified rate of message loss. This paper presents a media access protocol for soft real-time systems implemented on a slotted radio channel with binary feedback. The protocol is based on the Gallager FCFS and Capetanakis splitting algorithms, but incorporates strict delay bounds using packet laxities. Also presented is an analytic model for this protocol by examining the probable lengths of the collision resolution intervals given the current lag at any time. Bom analytic and simulation results are obtained to study the maximum input traffic rates that can be sustained for various laxities, delay bounds, and message loss rates.
Impact of exclusion criteria for the DASISION and ENESTnd trials in the front‐line treatment of a ‘real‐life’ patient population with chronic myeloid leukaemia

Both Dasision and ENESTnd trials had many exclusion criteria, with a possible selection bias compared with the real‐life. To address the impact of this bias on the first‐line treatment in the current clinical practice, we revised 207 unselected newly diagnosed chronic phase chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) patients [M/F 108/99, median age 58.8 years, interquartile range 42.3–70.2] treated with front‐line imatinib from June 2002 to June 2013 at our Institution, and evaluated how many of them would have been excluded from enrolment in the two trials. Twenty‐eight patients (13.5%) should have been excluded by both trials because of polycomorbidities (12), severe cardiomyopathy (five), age > 80 with frailty (three), drug abuse (two) or other severe concomitant diseases (six). In addition, eight patients should have been excluded by Dasision due to isolated chronic obstructive broncopulmonar disease, and 19 patients should have been excluded by ENESTnd due to isolated diabetes (10), arrhythmia (four), acute myocardial infarction > 6 months before CML diagnosis (two), chronic pancreatic disease (two) and peripheral arterial obstructive disease (one). On the whole, 36 patients (17.4%) would have been excluded by Dasision trial and 47 (22.7%) by ENESTnd trial. The patients potentially not eligible for both trials were significantly older and with imatinib had a worse outcome compared with patients potentially eligible. Our data highlight that an automatic transposition of results available in clinical controlled trials into the frontline real‐life management of CML patients should be regarded with caution. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Low‐level environmental lead exposure still negatively associated with children's cognitive abilities

Abstract Objective We explored relationships between children's cognitive abilities measured with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children‐Fourth Edition and blood lead levels. Methods Participants were 127 children (mean age = 7.9 years, standard deviation = 0.6) from Australian cities, Port Pirie, and Broken Hill, with low‐level blood lead concentrations (mean = 4.8 microgram/decilitre, standard deviation = 3.3, range = 1.0–19.3). Potential covariates (demographic, parental, familial, psycho‐social, pre‐ and post‐natal factors) were controlled statistically. Results Unadjusted analyses found moderate, continuous, and statistically significant inverse, non‐linear associations between blood lead level and three of the four cognitive indices that combine to deliver Full Scale IQ. In addition to blood lead level, variables that consistently explained most variance in cognitive performance were breastfeeding up to 6 months and stressful life events reported within the family for the past 12 months. In multiple regression analyses, after controlling for these, blood lead level remained a significant predictor of cognitive outcomes. Conclusion These results support the hypothesis that blood lead levels below 10 micrograms/decilitre may still have a detrimental impact on children's cognitive abilities, supporting recent concern that there is no safe level of paediatric lead exposure.
Dynamic Spectrum Access and Coexistence Experiences Involving Two Independently Developed Cognitive Radio Testbeds

The Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research (CTVR) and the Center for Wireless Telecommunications (CWT) are carrying out joint research work investigating the potential of different software-defined radio (SDR) and cognitive radio (CR) systems that can coexist in common frequency bands. This paper describes the independently developed dynamic spectrum access test beds used in a practical coexistence experiment. An initial analysis of actual coexistence experiences involving a primary user and a secondary opportunistic spectrum user in a common frequency band is also presented. The results in this paper include an analysis of a worst case scenario where the primary user and secondary opportunistic user are coexisting with no guard bands separating each other. The experimental results showed that the primary user experienced zero packet loss when guard bands separated the primary and secondary services. Additionally, when no guard bands were used and the spectrum segment was maximally used over the geographical area involved in the experiments, the signal to noise and interference ratio (SNIR) needed to be adjusted to 20 dB by modifying the secondary user transmissions in order to minimise the interference experienced by the primary user.
Impact of router buffer size on TCP/UDP performance

In data communication when there are too many packets contending for the limited shared resources, such as the queue buffer in the router at bottleneck link, it may result in congestion. During congestion, large amount of packets experience delay or even be dropped due to the queue overflow. Severe congestion problems result in degradation of the throughput and large packet loss rate. In this paper, analysis of throughput and packet loss rate for different buffer sizes is presented; taking into account two popular queue management methods, Random Early Detection (RED) and Drop Tail, for different TCP and UDP streams coming to a common router buffer. The results indicate that the throughput and efficiency of TCP increases with increase in buffer size for RED. Moreover, UDP packet loss decreases with an increase in buffer size while the buffer size has no key impact on UDP packet delays. Simulation has been done by using Network Simulator (NS2-2.37) and the graphs are plotted using GNU plot.
The effects of grades on course enjoyment: did you get the grade you wanted?

BACKGROUND Students tend to rate university courses more positively if they do well. Greenwald and Gillmore (1997a) suggested that it is not students' absolute grades that are important but rather how these grades compare to their expectations. However, this hypothesis is difficult to evaluate because few studies have measured grade expectations at the beginning of courses. AIM By measuring students' grade expectations and enjoyment at several stages during a course, we hoped to evaluate the extent to which expectations modulate the impact of grades on course enjoyment. SAMPLE Participants were 242 students in a university course in psychology. METHOD Students were asked what grades they expected, and how much they were enjoying the course, at four stages. The effect of grades and grade expectations on enjoyment were analysed using restricted maximum likelihood (REML) and regression analyses. RESULTS The best predictor of course enjoyment varied somewhat at different stages, but in general it was the extent to which students' grades surpassed their expectations. Students' expectations at the beginning of the course proved particularly influential. CONCLUSIONS Grade expectations do influence how students react to course grades, but the prominent role of pre-course expectations suggests that it may be important to distinguish between grade aspirations and grade expectations. It appears to be students' aspirations--the grades they hope to achieve--that most strongly shape their emotional reactions, rather than the more realistic expectations they may form later in a course.
Constrained Least Square Design of Fir Filters without Speciied Transition Bands Edics: Sp 2.1.1 Fir Systems List of Figures 1 Flowchart for the Exchange Algorithm for the Constrained Least Square Design Of

This paper puts forth the notion that explicitly speciied transition bands have been introduced in the lter design literature in part as an indirect approach for dealing with discontinu-ities in the desired frequency response. We suggest that the use of explicitly speciied transition bands is sometimes inappropriate because, to satisfy a meaningful optimality criterion, their use implicitly assumes a possibly unrealistic assumption on the class of input signals. This paper also presents an algorithm for the design of peak constrained lowpass FIR lters according to an integral square error criterion that does not require the use of speciied transition bands. This rapidly converging, robust, simple multiple exchange algorithm uses Lagrange multipliers and the Kuhn-Tucker conditions on each iteration. The algorithm will design linear and minimum phase FIR lters and gives the best L 2 lter and a continuum of Chebyshev lters as special cases. It is distinct from many other lter design methods because it does not exclude from the integral square error a region around the cut-oo frequency, and yet, it overcomes Gibbs' phenomenon without resorting to windowing or`smoothing out' the discontinuity of the ideal lowpass lter. 7 The trade-oo curve for integral square error and peak size error: jjEjj 2 2 versus s. This curve illustrates the trade-oo for lters of length 61 designed with ! o = 0:3, and = p =
Game Options Analysis of the Information Role of Call Policies in Convertible Bonds

Abstract In debt financing, existence of information asymmetry on the firm quality between the firm management and bond investors may lead to significant adverse selection costs. We develop the two-stage sequential dynamic two-person game option models to analyse the market signalling role of the callable feature in convertible bonds. We show that firms with positive private information on earning potential may signal their type to investors via the callable feature in a convertible bond. We present the variational inequalities formulation with respect to various equilibrium strategies in the two-person game option models via characterization of the optimal stopping rules adopted by the bond issuer and bondholders. The bondholders’ belief system on the firm quality may be revealed with the passage of time when the issuer follows his optimal strategy of declaring call or bankruptcy. Under separating equilibrium, the quality status of the firm is revealed so the information asymmetry game becomes a new game under complete information. To analyse pooling equilibrium, the corresponding incentive compatibility constraint is derived. We manage to deduce the sufficient conditions for the existence of signalling equilibrium of our game option model under information asymmetry. We analyse how the callable feature may lower the adverse selection costs in convertible bond financing. We show how a low-quality firm may benefit from information asymmetry and vice versa, underpricing of the value of debt issued by a high-quality firm.
Sex in the lesbian teacher's closet: the hybrid proliferation of queers in school1

Using feminist, queer and postcolonial theories, this paper analyzes the public commentary and anxious concern about child-welfare in a recent lesbian teacher sex scandal in Vancouver, Canada, involving Jean Robertson. Arguing that the public and professional uproar is not really about child-protectionism so much as it is about the place of white teacher lesbianism in school culture, I ask new questions about how the regulation of teenage sexuality operates to secure heterosexual bifurcations of gender in the school. The idea of the innocent, white ‘girl’ child is, in this paper, shown to anchor a public and professional worry about the proliferation of queer teenage identifications in the school. Using Judith Butler's formulation of the heterosexual matrix, Lee Edelman's conceptualization of reproductive futurity, Judith Halberstam's investigation of queer time and space, and Mikko Tuhkanen's postcolonial reading of lesbian sexuality in popular film, I underscore societal-based upset about white teacher lesbianism. I argue that the teacher sex scandals in North America are driven by an unspoken societal upset about identifications and desires inhospitable to binary gender positions and heteronormative futures.