Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
XMM-Newton observations of OY Car III: OM light curve modelling, X-ray timing and spectral studies

We revisit the XMM-Newton observations of the dwarf nova OY Car taken in July 2000 which occured shortly after an outburst. Ramsay et al. ([CITE]) found a prominent energy dependent modulation at a period of 2240 s: this modulation was only seen for ~1/3 of the observation duration. In our new analysis, we examine this time interval in greater detail. In addition to the 2240 s period we find evidence for other periods, the most prominent being near 3500 s. Both these modulations are most likely due to changes in photoelectric absorption over this period: this is supported by phase-resolved spectroscopy. This may indicate the presence of matter above the accretion disc or a presence of a magnetic accretion curtain. In this case the 2240 s period could represent a spin period of the white dwarf and the 3500 s period a beat period between the spin and orbital periods. We also model the B band and UV eclipse profiles and light curves using a new technique to map the spatial extent of the accretion disc. As a result we find that whilst the optical emission is dominated by both the emission close to the accretion disc boundary layer and the hot spot where the accretion stream hits the disc, the UV emission is mainly dominated by the inner disc/boundary layer only.
A block alternating likelihood maximization approach to multiuser detection

In this paper, we address the maximum-likelihood (ML) multiuser detection problem for asynchronous code-division multiple access (CDMA) systems with multiple receiver antennas in frequency-selective fading environments. Multiuser ML detection (MLD) in this case provides attractive symbol error performance, but it requires the solution of a large-scale combinatorial optimization problem. To deal with the computational complexity of this problem, we propose an efficient approximation method based on a block alternating likelihood maximization (BALM) principle. The idea behind BALM is to decompose the large-scale MLD problem into smaller subproblems. Assuming binary or quaternary phase shift keying (BPSK or QPSK) (which are often employed in CDMA), the combinatorial subproblems are then accurately and efficiently approximated by the semidefinite relaxation (SDR) algorithm-an algorithm that has been recently shown to lead to quasi-ML performance in synchronous CDMA scenarios. Simulation results indicate that this BALM detector provides close-to-optimal bit error rate (BER) performance. The BALM principle is quite flexible, and we demonstrate this flexibility by extending BALM to multicarrier (MC) multiuser systems. By exploiting the special signal correlation structure of MC systems, we develop a variation of BALM in which dynamic programming (DP) is used to solve the subproblems. It is shown using simulations that the BER performance of this DP-based BALM detector is as promising as that of the SDR-based BALM detector.
‘His visa is made of rubber’: tactics, risk and temporary moorings under conditions of multi-stage migration to Australia

ABSTRACT This article examines the narratives of two Venezuelan migrants who have engaged in multi-stage migration practices in order to optimise their long-term living options in Australia. I show how they deploy a range of tactics to negotiate risk and uncertainty under the spatial, temporal and institutional conditions of temporary migration programs by moving to regional areas, drawing on friendship networks and continuously responding to shifting immigration policy. I argue that time spent on temporary visas is actively and intentionally used by migrants in order to create future migration possibilities and security for themselves in contexts where migration outcomes can be unpredictable. As temporary migrants they are subject to policies designed to meet the needs of global capital and skills shortages but they are also reasoning individuals who tactically pursue opportunities, put down roots and continually evaluate and readjust their plans and fall back positions, even within a relatively limited range of choices.
Performance Analysis of XML APIs

XML, as a data interchange technology, delivers key advantages in interoperability due to its flexibility, expressiveness, and platform-neutrality. The broad range of applications and growing base of users for XML technologies has driven the development of common tooling, providing a consistent, robust infrastructure on which to build applications. These advantages have spurred widespread adoption of SOAP and web services, as a key component of the next-generation of business computing infrastructure. It is increasingly clear, however, that the advantages of XML result in a heavy performance penalty, and that current parsing technologies are unable to meet the performance demands of an XML-based computing infrastructure. Current implementations of XML parsers use a variety of different APIs including DOM, SAX, and, in the web services world, JAX-RPC. Some progress has been made in recent years in improving XML parsing performance by replacing heavyweight APIs like DOM to transfer data from the parser to the application with lighter-weight methods, such as SAX, or application-specialized options, like JAX-RPC. While lighter-weight, the event-based SAX API is more difficult for application developers to program to than the straight-forward document model of DOM. Nonetheless, SAX is seen as a performance enabling API. Furthermore, even with lighter-weight APIs, performance remains a significant obstacle to many Web Services applications. This paper discusses various aspects of SAX and other current XML APIs, and analyzes aspects of their performance through the use of micro-benchmarks demonstrating how much of current XML parsing time is being lost to these inefficiencies. With better performance, and advantages in terms of usability and robustness, a new or modified API for XML would enable fast and easy XML parsing and validation across broad classes of XML applications. RenderX 1 XML 2005 Conference proceeding by RenderX author of XML to PDF (XSL FO) formatter. XSL• FO formatter Re-format page sizes
Roughing It Up: Including Jump Components in the Measurement, Modeling, and Forecasting of Return Volatility

A growing literature documents important gains in asset return volatility forecasting via use of realized variation measures constructed from high-frequency returns. We progress by using newly developed bipower variation measures and corresponding nonparametric tests for jumps. Our empirical analyses of exchange rates, equity index returns, and bond yields suggest that the volatility jump component is both highly important and distinctly less persistent than the continuous component, and that separating the rough jump moves from the smooth continuous moves results in significant out-of-sample volatility forecast improvements. Moreover, many of the significant jumps are associated with specific macroeconomic news announcements.
An energy-efficient self-organizing global extremity reporting scheme for sensor networks

In this paper we propose an energy-efficient self-organizing global extremity reporting scheme for wireless sensor networks. The proposed scheme assists applications of periodic reporting of extreme values (such as maximum or minimum temperature/pressure) across a wireless sensor field, back to the sink. Furthermore, an event-driven counterpart is supplied for individual sensor nodes to supply their instantaneous sensed values back to the sink, once queried. The targeted sensors initially establish their relative distances to the sink in regards to number of hops, whilst the highest hopcount nodes (HHNs) from the sink identify themselves. The broadcast initiation of the HHNs have the ability to penetrate all nodes within the network towards the sink, and hence obtain the extreme value of the entire network in an efficient manner. This is due to the relative position of these special nodes within the network. Furthermore, the scheme does not require nodes to possess location information of themselves or other nodes, avoiding the need for the global positioning system (GPS) or other location-aware methods. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed protocol in its target application. In particular, the advantage of HHN-initiated broadcasting can be seen in both uniformly and randomly distributed topology networks. Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Strengthening female-headed households: exploring the challenges and strengths of mothers with substance-problems living in a high-risk community

ABSTRACT When mothers are dealing with substance-problems, there are serious health, emotional, social and economic issues and these problems impact the entire household. This study was conducted within the positive psychology approach to uncover the strengths and challenges of female-headed households (FHHs) living in a South African high-risk community. In this qualitative research, the researcher used purposive sampling and 24 mothers meeting the inclusion criteria participated. Data were collected via unstructured interviews (phenomenological research design) and the World Café method (qualitative descriptive design). Descriptive-interpretive analysis of data collected via unstructured interviews and thematic data analysis for data collected via the World Café method was used. Findings revealed the spill-over effect of mothers’ past successions of difficulties upon their families’ present structure and functioning. While the vulnerabilities of female-headed households cannot be denied, it seems that motherhood and the desire toward effective mothering offer a key toward the strengthening of these households.
Spectrin-level modeling of the cytoskeleton and optical tweezers stretching of the erythrocyte.

We present a three-dimensional computational study of whole-cell equilibrium shape and deformation of human red blood cell (RBC) using spectrin-level energetics. Random network models consisting of degree-2, 3, . , 9 junction complexes and spectrin links are used to populate spherical and biconcave surfaces and intermediate shapes, and coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations are then performed with spectrin connectivities fixed. A sphere is first filled with cytosol and gradually deflated while preserving its total surface area, until cytosol volume consistent with the real RBC is reached. The equilibrium shape is determined through energy minimization by assuming that the spectrin tetramer links satisfy the worm-like chain free-energy model. Subsequently, direct stretching by optical tweezers of the initial equilibrium shape is simulated to extract the variation of axial and transverse diameters with the stretch force. At persistence length p = 7.5 nm for the spectrin tetramer molecule and corresponding in-plane shear modulus mu(0) approximately 8.3 microN/m, our models show reasonable agreement with recent experimental measurements on the large deformation of RBC with optical tweezers. We find that the choice of the reference state used for the in-plane elastic energy is critical for determining the equilibrium shape. If a position-independent material reference state such as a full sphere is used in defining the in-plane energy, then the bending modulus kappa needs to be at least a decade larger than the widely accepted value of 2 x 10(-19) J to stabilize the biconcave shape against the cup shape. We demonstrate through detailed computations that this paradox can be avoided by invoking the physical hypothesis that the spectrin network undergoes constant remodeling to always relax the in-plane shear elastic energy to zero at any macroscopic shape, at some slow characteristic timescale. We have devised and implemented a liquefied network structure evolution algorithm that relaxes shear stress everywhere in the network and generates cytoskeleton structures that mimic experimental observations.
Analysis and Design of Dirty Paper Coding by Transformation of Noise

We design a coding scheme for Costa's dirty paper coding (DPC) (M.H.M. Costa, 1983) using a channel and a shaping code. We show that by transforming the channel noise distribution the DPC channel can be converted into the binary erasure channel (BEC) with binary interference with memory. Furthermore, the messages exchanged during the iterative decoding between the channel and shaping codes become one dimensional under the new model. We analyze the iterative decoding and find good shaping and channel code pairs using some closed-form extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) curves. We verify that our dirty paper codes designed using this method are also good for the original DPC channel with the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and arbitrary interference. Our implementation of DPC uses short block codes such as repetition codes for shaping codes. Although the shaping gains of such codes are not very high, they may provide a better complexity-performance trade-off for simple practical implementations of DPC. Furthermore, we show accurate theoretical analysis is possible for such codes under our channel model.
Low-energy DSP code generation using a genetic algorithm

This paper deals with low-energy code generation for a highly optimized digital signal processor designed for mobile communication applications. We present a genetic algorithm based code generator (GCG), and an instruction-level power model for this processor. Our code generator is capable of reducing the power dissipation of target applications by means of two techniques. First, GCG minimizes the number of memory accesses by using a special list-scheduling algorithm. This technique makes it possible to perform graph based code selection and to take into account the high interdependencies of the sub-tasks of code generation by phase coupling. In addition, GCG optimizes the scheduling of processor instructions with respect to the instruction-level power model based on a gate level simulation. Experimental results for several benchmarks show the effectiveness of our approach.
Measurement of Glomerular Filtration Rate by Rapid Intravenous Injection of a Newly Developed Inulin Fraction

Objective: Since the conventional drip-infusion method for measuring inulin clearance (Cin) has problems related to its accuracy and performance, we explored a more accurate and concise method by rapid intravenous injection of a newly developed inulin fraction (Inulead®), in which spot urine sampling was omitted and the administration period of inulin was shortened from 120 to 5 minutes. Patients and Methods: Twenty seven patients (M/F: 15/12, 67.8 ± 12.9 years old) admitted to the Nephrology ward were enrolled in this study. Inulead®, 1500 mg dissolved in 150 mL of saline, was intravenously administered in 5 minutes. Then, sequential blood samplings and urine collection were performed for 24 hours. Cins were calculated by the following three formulae: (1) a pharmacokinetic analysis using a two compartments model based on the plasma inulin concentration to determine Cin, which was the administered dose divided by the area under the curve (AUC) from 0 to ∞, (2) urinary inulin excretion divided by the AUC for 24 hours and (3) the Bayesian method using a three-point set of plasma inulin concentrations to predict the change of inulin concentration to determine Cin as in 1. These Cins were compared with levels of estimated GFR (eGFR), creatinine clearance (Ccr), serum β2 microglobulin (β2MG) and serum cystatin C (Cys C). Results: Cins obtained by the above three methods were well correlated with each other (r. = 0.9088 – 0.9998) and with eGFR (r. = 0.8286 − 0.8650), Ccr (r. = 0.821 − 0.864), 1/β2MG (r. = 0.631 − 0.752) and 1/CysC (r. = 0.830 − 0.857). The averaged differences of each Cin from eGFR were distributed between − 4.4 and − 4.5 mL/min. Conclusion: Since the Cins by rapid inulin injection showed satisfactory correlation and differences with other GFR parameters, this method will be a good alternative to the drip infusion method, and may reduce the burden of patients and medical staff.
CONVEX HULLS OF SETS IN THE PLANE

The convex hull of a set of points is the smallest convex set containing the points. The convex hull is a fundamental concept in mathematics and computational geometry. Other problems can be reduced to finding the convex hull – for example, halfspace intersection, Delaunay triangulation, Voronoi diagram, etc. An algorithm known as Graham scan [6] achieves an O(n log n) running time. This algorithm is optimal in the worst case. Another algorithm [7] for the same problem runs in O(nh) time, where h is the number of hull points, and this outperforms the preceding algorithm if h happens to be very small. Kirkpatrick and Seidel [8] desined later an algorithm with O(n log h) runtime, which is always at least as good as the better of the above two algorithms. A simplification of their algorithm has been recently reported by Chan, Snocyink and Yap [2]. For some special sets of points, it is possible to improve the results above. We concentrate on the case when the set consists of all intersection points of n lines. A straightforward application of the algorithms above leads to a runtime of slightly more than O(n 2). Attalah [1] and Ching and Lee [3] independently presented O(n log n) runtime worst-case algorithms with O(n) space. Ching and Lee [3] also showed that this result is best possible. Devroye and Toussaint [4] and Golin, Langerman and Steiger [5] studied the case when the lines are random with certain distributions. In both models, they presented algorithms with linear expected time.
Prediction of Online Vehicle Insurance System using Decision Tree Classifier and Baye's Classifier – A comparative Analysis

A classification technique (or classifier) is a systematic approach used in building classification models from an input data set. The model generated by the learning algorithm should fit both the input data well and correctly predict the class labels of records it has never seen before. Therefore, a key objective of the learning algorithm is to build models with good generalization capability i.e. models that accurately predict the class labels of previously unknown records. The accuracy or error rate computed from the test set can also be used to compare the relative performance of different classifiers on the same domain. However, the results obtained for accuracy is good and average error rate obtained is equally acceptable for the test records in which the class labels of the test records was not known , in both the classifiers. As computational complexity is concerned Bayes Classifier performs better than Decision Tree Classifier in our system. While the Decision Tree Classifier performed better than Bayes Classifier based on prediction in this system. General Terms Data Mining, Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Quantifying the biological similarity between gene products using GO: an application of the vector space model.

Recent advances in biological experiments, such as DNA microarrays, have produced large multidimensional data sets for examination and analysis. Scientists however, heavily rely on existing biomedical knowledge in order to fully analyze and comprehend such datasets. The approach we propose combines statistical natural language processing techniques with the GO annotation ontology, for assessing the biological relatedness of gene products clusters. We explore the application of the vector space model as a means of quantifying this relatedness between gene products, based on their underlying biological properties, as indicated by the GO terms associated with them. We report on experimental results on a small subset of saccharomyces gene products. We also propose and validate a biological similarity figure of merit which can assess gene expression cluster analysis results. Finally, we deploy our approach combined with hierarchical clustering in order to illustrate its application to gene expression clustering experiments.
Quality Evaluation of Motion-Compensated Edge Artifacts in Compressed Video

Little attention has been paid to an impairment common in motion-compensated video compression: the addition of high-frequency (HF) energy as motion compensation displaces blocking artifacts off block boundaries. In this paper, we employ an energy-based approach to measure this motion-compensated edge artifact, using both compressed bitstream information and decoded pixels. We evaluate the performance of our proposed metric, along with several blocking and blurring metrics, on compressed video in two ways. First, ordinal scales are evaluated through a series of expectations that a good quality metric should satisfy: the objective evaluation. Then, the best performing metrics are subjectively evaluated. The same subjective data set is finally used to obtain interval scales to gain more insight. Experimental results show that we accurately estimate the percentage of the added HF energy in compressed video
ECONO: Express coherence notifications for efficient cache coherency in many-core CMPs

It is commonly stated that a directory-based coherence protocol is the design of choice to provide maximum performance in coherence maintenance for shared-memory many-core CMPs. Nevertheless, new solutions are emerging to achieve acceptable levels of on-chip area overhead and energy consumption to also meet scalability. In this work, we propose the Express COherence NOtification (ECONO) protocol, a coherence protocol aimed at providing high performance with minimal on-chip area and energy consumption for superior scalability. To maintain coherence, ECONO relies on express coherence notifications which are broadcast atomically over a dedicated lightweight and power-efficient on-chip network leveraging state-of-the-art technology. We implement and evaluate ECONO utilizing full-system simulation, a representative set of benchmarks, and compare it against two contemporary coherence protocols: Hammer and Directory. While ECONO achieves slightly better performance than Directory, our proposal does not need to encode sharer sets like in Hammer, saving significant on-chip area and energy even when considering the extra hardware resources required by ECONO. Projections for a 1024-core CMP reveal that, in comparison to one of the most scalable directory-based protocols to date, ECONO entails more than 2× less on-chip storage overhead while keeping with reasonable power dissipation.