Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Pleiades mass function: Models versus observations

Two stellar-dynamical models of binary-rich embedded proto-Orion-Nebula-type clusters that evolve to Pleiades-like clusters are studied with an emphasis on comparing the stellar mass function with observational constraints. By the age of the Pleiades (about 100 Myr) both models show a similar degree of mass segregation which also agrees with observational constraints. This thus indicates that the Pleiades is well relaxed and that it is suffering from severe amnesia. It is found that the initial mass function (IMF) must have been indistinguishable from the standard or Galactic-field IMF for stars with mass $m\lesssim 2\,M_\odot$, provided the Pleiades precursor had a central density of about 10 4.8 stars/pc 3 . A denser model with 10 5.8 stars/pc 3 also leads to reasonable agreement with observational constraints, but owing to the shorter relaxation time of the embedded cluster it evolves through energy equipartition to a mass-segregated condition just prior to residual-gas expulsion. This model consequently preferentially loses low-mass stars and brown dwarfs (BDs), but the effect is not very pronounced. The empirical data indicate that the Pleiades IMF may have been steeper than the Salpeter for stars with $m\ga 2\,M_\odot$.
Distributed Sequential Estimation in Asynchronous Wireless Sensor Networks

We propose a distributed sequential estimation scheme for wireless sensor networks with asynchronous measurements. Our scheme combines the prediction and update steps of a Bayesian filter (for time alignment and recursive state estimation) with a fusion rule (for intersensor fusion using local communication). We also propose a reduced-complexity implementation using particle filtering and Gaussian mixture approximations, and an estimator of the delays resulting from processing and communication. Simulations for a target tracking problem demonstrate the good performance of our scheme.
Novel IκB kinase inhibitors for treatment of nuclear factor-κB-related diseases

Introduction: NF-κB is a key regulator of inflammation and immunity in cancer development. The IκB kinase (IKK) is a multisubunit complex containing catalytic subunits termed IKK-α, -β and -γ. It is well known that many pro-inflammatory stimuli require the IKK-β subunit for NF-κB activation. Areas covered: NF-κB affects the progression of inflammation-related diseases, such as myocardial ischemia, bronchial asthma, arthritis, cancer and other diseases. We review the characteristics and effects of these inhibitors on inflammatory and other diseases. Expert opinion: Various synthesized IKK inhibitors have been developed and they will be used clinically in the near future.
Modelling dynamic scenes by registering multi-view image sequences

In this paper, we present a new variational method for multi-view stereovision and non-rigid three-dimensional motion estimation from multiple video sequences. Our method minimizes the prediction error of the shape and motion estimates. Both problems then translate into a generic image registration task. The latter is entrusted to a similarity measure chosen depending on imaging conditions and scene properties. In particular, our method can be made robust to appearance changes due to non-Lambertian materials and illumination changes. It results in a simpler, more flexible, and more efficient implementation than existing deformable surface approaches. The computation time on large datasets does not exceed thirty minutes. Moreover, our method is compliant with a hardware implementation with graphics processor units. Our stereovision algorithm yields very good results on a variety of datasets including specularities and translucency. We have successfully tested our scene flow algorithm on a very challenging multi-view video sequence of a non-rigid scene.
Methodological rigor and ethical considerations in Internet-mediated research.

University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, and University of Minnesota Medical School This article reviews the methodological and ethical challenges of undertaking research using the Internet. The authors review methodological issues that may compromise the internal and external validity of Internet research, such as representativeness of samples, sample bias, and respondent bias. In addition to reviewing fundamental ethical problems associated with Internet research, the authors review new constraints imposed by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act legislation. They provide an overview of minimal safeguards needed to maintain the confidentiality of Internet-mediated research.
Unscented Kalman Filtering for Attitude Determination Using MEMS Sensors

This paper presents the results of a quaternion-based unscented Kalman filtering for attitude estimation using low cost MEMS sensors. The unscented Kalman filter uses the pitch and roll angles computed from gravity force decomposition as the measurement for the filter. The immeasurable gravity accelerations are deduced from the outputs of the three axes accelerometers, the relative accelerations, and the accelerations due to body rotation. The constraint of the four elements of the quaternion method is treated as a perfect measurement and is integrated into the system to form a constrained unscented Kalman filter. The heading angle is obtained from a complimentary filter which uses the heading signal derived from the magnetic force information from an electronic magnetic sensor and the GPS-derived heading as the inputs. An experiment using an in-house designed motion platform is conducted to evaluate the proposed algorithm. The noise characteristics of the sensor signals are examined using the laboratory data. Approximations of the time-varying noise variances of the measured signals are obtained through Taylor series expansions. The algorithm is intuitive and easy to implement. Moreover, the proposed algorithm and the filter design are successfully demonstrated through a complete set of flight test data.
New Student Teachers and Computers: an investigation of experiences and feelings

Abstract This paper reports research conducted into students’ experience of computers, and their feelings about computers, prior to the start of teacher training courses. The sample consisted of three different groups of students: a group entering a college of higher education concerned mainly with primary teacher training to start a four‐year B.Ed. course in September 1987; the equivalent September 1988 intake of the same college; and the September 1988 intake of a university one year secondary PGCE course together with the secondary PGCE intake of the college. The data was collected using a questionnaire containing factual, five‐point self rating and free response items, administered personally by the author to ensure high (90% or more) completion rates. Results for computer experience are presented in terms of frequencies of computer experience in school, undergraduate degree studies and elsewhere (including the home). In the case of feelings about computers, frequencies of positive, neutral and negati.
EM-based detection of hardware trojans on FPGAs

The detectability of malicious circuitry on FPGAs with varying placement properties yet has to be investigated. The authors utilize a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro target platform in order to insert a sequential denial-of-service Trojan into an existing AES design by manipulating a Xilinx-specific, intermediate file format prior to the bitstream generation. Thereby, there is no need for an attacker to acquire access to the hardware description language representation of a potential target architecture. Using a side-channel analysis setup for electromagnetic emanation (EM) measurements, they evaluate the detectability of different Trojan designs with varying location and logic distribution properties. The authors successfully distinguish the malicious from the genuine designs and provide information on how the location and distribution properties of the Trojan logic affect its detectability. To the best of their knowledge, this has been the first practically conducted Trojan detection using localized EM measurements.
Determining Performance Targets

ABSTRACT: Performance targets direct organizational participants toward firm strategy, provide guidance for allocating effort, and induce effort toward performance goals. Key aspects of the setting of performance targets are how specific they should be and at which levels they should be set. We develop a structural model that aims to explain the specificity of targets set for subordinate managers and the information sources used to set target levels for defined performance dimensions, which sources include past performance, future planning, and benchmarking information. An analysis of 364 survey responses provides support for our expectations that both target specificity and the use of information sources to determine target levels vary with firms' environmental dynamism and task uncertainty, and with the intensity of financial incentives provided to subordinate managers. In addition, the results show that in response to these contextual variables, firms typically combine information sources to determine .
Social comparison choices in the classroom: further evidence for students' upward comparison tendency and its beneficial impact on performance

Blanton and colleagues (1999) found that children who nominated a comparison-target in several courses chose same-sex students who slightly outperformed them in class. This had a beneficial effect on children's course grades, which were also independently predicted by comparative evaluation (i.e. how the children evaluated their relative standing in class). These phenomena were examined at two time periods with a more detailed record of comparison choices while including several psychological moderators (i.e. closeness to and identification with the comparison targets, perceived academic control, importance of academic domains). The present findings (1) replicate those found earlier by Blanton and colleagues, (2) offer evidence that children compare upward with close friends with whom they identify as a means of self-improvement, (3) show that this identification is more likely to occur when children perceive control over their standing relative to the comparison target, and (4) suggest that the effects of comparison-level choice (i.e. the level typical of the persons with whom one chooses to compare) diminish over time. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Confronting Stigma: Community Involvement and Psychological Well-Being Among HIV-Positive Latino Gay Men

Theories of social integration and stress process posit that community involvement may buffer or may compensate the adverse effects of stigma on psychological well-being. In this article, the authors explore this thesis in a stigmatized and seldom studied group of HIV-positive Latino gay men. Specifically, they examine the effects of community involvement in AIDS and gay-related organizations (e.g., volunteerism and activism) and experienced homosexual stigma on three psychological well-being indicators (i.e., self-esteem, depression, and loneliness). The cross-sectional sample includes 155 HIV-positive men living in New York City and Washington, DC. Results suggest that experienced stigma attributed to homosexuality is associated with psychological well-being. Community involvement, however, seems to compensate the association between stigma and depression and loneliness, while buffering the association with self-esteem. Furthermore, community involvement appears to also heighten the perception of stigma.
Towards Perceptual Optimization of the Visual Design of Scatterplots

Designing a good scatterplot can be difficult for non-experts in visualization, because they need to decide on many parameters, such as marker size and opacity, aspect ratio, color, and rendering order. This paper contributes to research exploring the use of perceptual models and quality metrics to set such parameters automatically for enhanced visual quality of a scatterplot. A key consideration in this paper is the construction of a cost function to capture several relevant aspects of the human visual system, examining a scatterplot design for some data analysis task. We show how the cost function can be used in an optimizer to search for the optimal visual design for a user’s dataset and task objectives (e.g., “reliable linear correlation estimation is more important than class separation”). The approach is extensible to different analysis tasks. To test its performance in a realistic setting, we pre-calibrated it for correlation estimation, class separation, and outlier detection. The optimizer was able to produce designs that achieved a level of speed and success comparable to that of those using human-designed presets (e.g., in R or MATLAB). Case studies demonstrate that the approach can adapt a design to the data, to reveal patterns without user intervention.
Verifying a class of nondeterministic discrete event systems in a generalized temporal logic

A formal verification method is proposed for a class of nondeterministic discrete event systems in which point probability distributions are known. Such systems are modeled by bounded stochastic models that specify their structures. A linear-time temporal logic is generalized to an uncertain environment in order to establish a framework for system verification. Soundness and completeness of the proof system are also discussed. Properties of this class of system are verified by deducing temporal logic specifications of desired behavior from descriptions of the system dynamics. The formulas do not mention probabilities explicitly, so that the specifications and verification are completed qualitatively without using the probability theory. The verification is illustrated by an example of a flexible manufacturing system. >
Business Competency of IT Professionals and Job Satisfaction in Transition Economies: Insights from Poland

In this paper, we examine the effect of business competence of Information Technology (IT) professionals on their job satisfaction in Poland, a transition economy. The necessary data is collected by a survey conducted among IT professionals working in various companies located in Lower Silesia region, Poland. The preliminary results of this survey indicate that business competency, in general, positively affect job satisfaction of IT professionals in transition economies. However, they feel that possessing business competency does not have any substantial effect on their salary level and professional promotions.
Defining and Assessing Spiritual Health: A Comparative Study Among 13- to 15-Year-Old Pupils Attending Secular Schools, Anglican Schools, and Private Christian Schools in England and Wales

This article argues that the nation's commitment to young people involves proper concern for their physical health, their psychological health, and their spiritual health. In this context the notion of spiritual health is clarified by a critique of John Fisher's model of spiritual health. Fisher developed a relational model of spiritual health, which defines good spiritual health in terms of an individual's relationship to four domains: the personal, the communal, the environmental, and the transcendental. In the present analysis, we make comparisons between pupils educated in three types of schools: publicly funded schools without religious foundation, publicly funded schools with an Anglican foundation, and new independent Christian schools (not publicly funded). Our findings draw attention to significant differences in the levels of spiritual health experienced by pupils within these three types of schools.
The Relationship Between Disability-Adjusted Life Years of Cataracts and Ambient Erythemal Ultraviolet Radiation in China

Background Cataracts are one of the major public health problems worldwide. Ultraviolet radiation (UVR) is one of the risk factors for cataract development. We analyzed the relationship between disability-adjusted life year (DALY) rates of cataracts and UVR exposure in China. Methods DALY rates of cataracts and UVR exposure in 31 regions of China were calculated based on data from the Second China National Sample Survey on Disability and the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration database. The relationship between the DALY rates of cataracts and UVR was estimated by Spearman rank correlation analysis and linear regression analysis. Results The elderly (≥65 years) had higher DALY rates of cataracts than the whole population. The DALY rate of cataracts in the agricultural population was higher than that observed in the non-agricultural population. The DALY rates of cataracts were positively associated with UVR The DALY rates of cataracts in regions with higher UVR were higher than those in regions with lower UVR. An increase in the daily ambient erythemal UVR of 1000 J/m2 was associated with an increase in the DALY rates of cataracts by 92 DALYs/100 000 (R2 = 0.676) among the whole population, 34 DALYs/100 000 among the population <65 years old (R2 = 0.423), 607 DALYs/100 000 among the population aged 65–74 years (R2 = 0.617), and by 1342 DALYs/100 000 among the population ≥75 years old (R2 = 0.758). Conclusions DALY rates of cataracts increased with increases in UVR exposure in 31 regions of China. Greater exposure to UVR increases the disease burden of cataracts in the whole population, especially in the elderly and among the agricultural population.
A comprehensive evaluation of full reference image quality assessment algorithms

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in developing objective image quality assessment (IQA) algorithms that can measure the image quality consistently with subjective evaluations. For the full reference (FR) IQA problem, great progress has been made in the past decade. On the other hand, several new large scale image datasets have been released for evaluating FR IQA methods in recent years. Meanwhile, no work has been reported to evaluate and compare the performance of state-of-the-art and representative FR IQA methods on all the available datasets. In this paper, we aim to fulfill this task by reporting the performance of eleven selected FR IQA algorithms on all the seven public IQA image datasets. Our evaluation results and the associated discussions will be very helpful for relevant researchers to have a clearer understanding about the status of modern FR IQA indices. Evaluation results presented in this paper are also online available at http://sse.tongji. edu.cn/linzhang/IQA/IQA.htm.
MAP 1C is a microtubule-activated ATPase which translocates microtubules in vitro and has dynein-like properties

We observe that one of the high molecular mass microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) from brain exhibits nucleotide-dependent binding to microtubules. We identify the protein as MAP IC, which was previously described in this laboratory as a minor component of standard microtubule preparations (Bloom, G.S., T. Schoenfeld, and R.B. Vallee, 1984, J. Cell Biol., 98:320-330). We find that MAP 1C is enriched in microtubules prepared in the absence of nucleotide. Kinesin is also found in these preparations, but can be specifically extracted with GTP. A fraction highly enriched in MAP 1C can be prepared by subsequent extraction of the microtubules with ATP. Two activities cofractionate with MAP 1C upon further purification, a microtubule-activated ATPase activity and a microtubule-translocating activity. These activities indicate a role for the protein in cytoplasmic motility. MAP 1C coelectrophoreses with the beta heavy chain of Chlamydomonas flagellar dynein, and has a sedimentation coefficient of 20S. Exposure to ultraviolet light in the presence of vanadate and ATP results in the production of two large fragments of MAP 1C. These characteristics suggest that MAP 1C may be a cytoplasmic analogue of axonemal dynein.
Colloid osmotic pressure in newborn infants: variations with birth weight, gestational age, total serum solids, and mean arterial pressure.

Colloid osmotic pressure (COP) of blood was measured directly at birth with the Wescor membrane colloid osmometer (model 4100) in 91 appropriately grown, 11 large, and nine small for gestational age "well" newborn infants. COP correlated directly with birth weight (r = .726, P less than .00001) and gestational age (r = .753, P less than .00001). COP values for small for gestational age (SGA) and large for gestational age (LGA) infants were found to fall within the 95% prediction interval with regard to birth weight and gestational age for appropriate for gestational age (AGA) infants. Simultaneous measurements of COP, total serum solids, and central arterial mean blood pressure were made. The results showed that COP correlated directly with total serum solids (r = .89, P less than .0001) and mean arterial blood pressure (r = .660, P less than .001). Among the factors evaluated, total serum solids was the best predictor of COP.
Analysis of video streaming using LTE technology

Long-Term Evolution (LTE) is a radio access technology. It is a standard cellular network that enables mobile transmission of streaming high definition video in real time. This paper analyzes the development and LTE performance in streaming multimedia through an analysis of the video transmission package performance. Furthermore, we examined the influence of LTE in streaming multimedia through the adoption of a simulator.
The two domains of centrin have distinct basal body functions in Tetrahymena

The basal body is a microtubule-organizing center responsible for organizing the cilium. A widely conserved basal body component is the Ca2+-binding protein centrin. A mutagenic analysis of the Tetrahymena centrin shows that its two domains have distinct basal body functions and that Ca2+ is necessary for both functions.
Early Hemoconcentration Is Associated With Pancreatic Necrosis Only Among Transferred Patients

Objectives: Studies evaluating hemoconcentration as a marker of necrosis in acute pancreatitis have reached different conclusions. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of transfer status on the accuracy of hemoconcentration for the prediction of pancreatic necrosis. Methods: We prospectively enrolled 339 patients in an observational cohort study from June 2005 to December 2007. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to evaluate the impact of transfer status on the relationship between hemoconcentration and necrosis. Accuracy for prediction of necrosis was measured by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. Results: Hemoconcentration was associated with increased risk of necrosis only among transferred patients (odds ratio [95% confidence limits], 3.6 [1.2, 10.8]). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for admission hematocrit for prediction of necrosis was 0.78 among the transferred patients versus 0.55 among those with primary admissions (&khgr;2, P < 0.0001). Transferred patients had greater initial severity (median bedside index of severity in acute pancreatitis, 2 vs 1; P < 0.0001), were more likely to have hemoconcentration (44% vs 18%; &khgr;2, P < 0.0001), and experienced increased necrosis (37.5% vs 3.6%; &khgr;2, P < 0.0001) compared with primary admissions. After adjusting for sex, disease severity, fluid resuscitation, and transfer status, hemoconcentration was not associated with necrosis (Wald &khgr;2, P = 0.14). Conclusions: Transfer status is a confounder in the relationship between hemoconcentration and pancreatic necrosis.