Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Quantum Zeno Effect and Time Series Related to Quantum Measurements

Our main aim is to prove a more general version of the quantum Zeno effect. Then we discuss some examples of the quantum Zeno effect. Furthermore, we discuss a possibility that based on the quantum Zeno effect and certain experiments one could check whether, from the statistical point of view, a concrete system behaves like a quantum system. The more general version of quantum Zeno effect can be helpful to prove that the brain acts like in a quantum system. The proof of our main result is based on certain formulas describing probability distributions of time series related to quantum measurements.
An Orthogonal High Relative Accuracy Algorithm for the Symmetric Eigenproblem

We propose a new algorithm for the symmetric eigenproblem that computes eigenvalues and eigenvectors with high relative accuracy for the largest class of symmetric, definite and indefinite, matrices known so far. The algorithm is divided into two stages: the first one computes a singular value decomposition (SVD) with high relative accuracy, and the second one obtains eigenvalues and eigenvectors from singular values and vectors. The SVD, used as a first stage, is responsible both for the wide applicability of the algorithm and for being able to use only orthogonal transformations, unlike previous algorithms in the literature. Theory, a complete error analysis, and numerical experiments are presented.
Orthographic diacritics and multilingual computing

Diacritics — marks above, through, or below letters — are used in many orthographies to remedy the shortcomings of the ordinary Latin alphabet. The author catalogues the various diacritics that are in use for spelling different languages, describing what they look like and what they are used for. He also analyses the problems of using accented letters in a multilingual computing environment, and discusses the extent to which these problems have been resolved, with particular reference to Unicode.
Towards a Representation of Idioms in WordNet

1 I n t r o d u c t i o n WordNet (Miller, 1995), (Fellbaum, 1998) is perhaps the most widely used electronic dictionary of English and serves as the lexicon for a rarity of different NLP applications including Information Retrieval (IR), Word Sense Disambignation (WSD), and M~hine Transla~ tion (MT). Despite WordNet's large coverage, which comprises some 100,000 concepts lexicMi~. ed by approySmately 120,000 word forms (strings) and is comparable to that of a collegiate dictionary, it contains relatively little figurative language. WordNet includes a w~mber of multi-word strings, such as phrasal verbs, but many idiomatic verb phrases Like smell a rat, know the ropes, and eat humble pie, are mi~ging. Idioms and metaphors abound in everyday language and are found in texts spanning many genres (see, e.g., (Jackendoff, 1997) for a numerical estlm~te of the frequency of idioms and fixed expression). Clearly, a dictionary that indudes extended senses of words and phrases is likely to yield more successful NLP applications. On the one hand, no system wants to retrieve the string bucket from the idiom kick the bucket. On the other hand, MT and WSD efforts need to distinguish the sense of ropes in phrases like know~learn/teach someone the ropes from the sense meaning "strong cords"; selecting the latter sense in any of the idiomatic phrases leads to failure. An IR query is likely to be interested only in the "strong cord" reading. When this sense is to be retrieved with the aid of a lexicon intended for multiple applications, the figurative sense must be successfully recognized and excluded from a text that may contain instances of the string ropes with both meanings. In this paper, we consider the possibility of extending WordNet to accommodate figurative meanings in the English lexicon. While much
Comparison of eight and 12 hour shifts: impacts on health, wellbeing, and alertness during the shift.

OBJECTIVES: The generally agreed view is that there is no ideal shift system, and that most systems will have both advantages and disadvantages. As such, attention has been placed on trying to identify good and bad features of shift systems, with a view to minimising the possible ill health as a consequence of shiftwork. The present study focuses on the duration of the shift and looks at the implications for individual health, wellbeing, and alertness during the shift of extending the shift from the traditional eight hours to 12. METHODS: Two groups of chemical workers, one working 12 hour shifts and the other working eight hour shifts, took part. All completed a modified version of the standard shiftwork index (SSI), a set of self reported questionnaires related to health and wellbeing. RESULTS: The two groups did not differ on most outcome measures, although the differences that did exist suggested advantages for the 12 hour shift workers over the eight hour shift workers; with the notable exception of rated alertness at certain times of day. CONCLUSIONS: The results are explained in terms of the design of the 12 hour shift system and the specific sequencing of shifts that seem to minimise the potential for the build up of fatigue. Although the current data moderately favour 12 hour shifts, a cautionary note is sounded with regard to the implications of the alertness ratings for performance and safety.
Adaptation en langue française du « Reading Span Test » de Daneman et Carpenter (1980)

Some models of working memory are often used as a theoretical framework for empirical studies. We present a french version of the Reading Span Test (RST) that Daneman and Carpenter (1980) proposed as a measure of working memory involved in language use. The french version meets the following criteria : (a) the procedure is essentially the same that the one originally used by Daneman and Carpenter ; (b) the length of the sentences is controlled, ranging from 22 to 26 syllables ; (c) the length, the frequency and the mental imagery value of the ending words to be memorised are also controlled ; and (d) the distribution of these words throughout the series is counterbalanced to avoid any bias on recall performance. The Reading Span Test is proposed in a long version of 5 series of 20 sentences each, from which a shorter version of 3 series can be derived.
r-Process in Neutron Star Mergers

The production site of the neutron-rich heavy elements that are formed by rapid neutron capture (the r-process) is still unknown despite intensive research. Here we show detailed studies of a scenario that has been proposed earlier by Lattimer & Schramm, Symbalisty & Schramm, Eichler et al., and Davies et al., namely the merger of two neutron stars. The results of hydrodynamic and full network calculations are combined in order to investigate the relevance of this scenario for r-process nucleosynthesis. Sufficient material is ejected to explain the amount of r-process nuclei in the Galaxy by decompression of neutron star material. Provided that the ejecta consist of matter with a proton-to-nucleon ratio of Ye ≈ 0.1, the calculated abundances fit the observed solar r-pattern excellently for nuclei that include and are heavier than the A ≈ 130 peak.
CMOS Cell Sensors for Point-of-Care Diagnostics

The burden of health-care related services in a global era with continuously increasing population and inefficient dissipation of the resources requires effective solutions. From this perspective, point-of-care diagnostics is a demanded field in clinics. It is also necessary both for prompt diagnosis and for providing health services evenly throughout the population, including the rural districts. The requirements can only be fulfilled by technologies whose productivity has already been proven, such as complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors (CMOS). CMOS-based products can enable clinical tests in a fast, simple, safe, and reliable manner, with improved sensitivities. Portability due to diminished sensor dimensions and compactness of the test set-ups, along with low sample and power consumption, is another vital feature. CMOS-based sensors for cell studies have the potential to become essential counterparts of point-of-care diagnostics technologies. Hence, this review attempts to inform on the sensors fabricated with CMOS technology for point-of-care diagnostic studies, with a focus on CMOS image sensors and capacitance sensors for cell studies.
International Conference on Computational Science , ICCS 2013 Local and Global Regularized Twin SVM

The generalized eigenvalue proximal support vector machine (GEPSVM) and twin support vector machine (TWSVM) was proposed by Mangasarian and Jayadeva respectively, which aroused the interest of academia for its less computation cost and better generalization ability. They use the nonparallel hyperplane classifiers to solve the classification problem. Different from traditionally local or global TWSVM methods, a new Twin SVM algorithm called Local and Global Regularized Twin SVM (TWSVMLG) is proposed in this paper. A global regularizer was imposed across local models to smooth the data labels predicted by those local classifiers and avoid overfitting risk for the local classifiers. The classifier could get stronger discriminating ability when exploring local and global information than traditional algorithms. Finally some experimental results are presented to show the effectiveness of our algorithm.
Boltzmann Samplers, Pólya Theory, and Cycle Pointing

We introduce a general method to count unlabeled combinatorial structures and to efficiently generate them at random. The approach is based on pointing unlabeled structures in an “unbiased” way so that a structure of size $n$ gives rise to $n$ pointed structures. We extend Polya theory to the corresponding pointing operator and present a random sampling framework based on both the principles of Boltzmann sampling and Polya operators. All previously known unlabeled construction principles for Boltzmann samplers are special cases of our new results. Our method is illustrated in several examples: in each case, we provide enumerative results and efficient random samplers. The approach applies to unlabeled families of plane and nonplane unrooted trees, and tree-like structures in general, but also to families of graphs (such as cacti graphs and outerplanar graphs) and families of planar maps.
Line And Word Segmentation of Handwritten Documents

In this paper, we present a segmentation methodology of a handwritten document in its distinct entities namely text lines and words. Text line segmentation is achieved making use of the Hough Transform on a subset of the connected components of the document image. Also, a post-processing step includes the correction of possible false alarms, the creation of text lines that Hough Transform failed to create and finally the efficient separation of vertically connected characters using a novel method. Word segmentation is treated as a two class problem. The distances between adjacent overlapped components in a text line are calculated and each of these is categorized either as an inter-word or an intra-word distance after the comparison with a threshold. The performance of the proposed methodology is based on a consistent and concrete evaluation technique that relies on the comparison between the text line segmentation result and the corresponding ground truth annotation as well as the word segmentation result and the corresponding ground truth annotation.
Long Term Effect of Land Reclamation from Lake on Chemical Composition of Soil Organic Matter and Its Mineralization

Since the late 1950s, land reclamation from lakes has been a common human disturbance to ecosystems in China. It has greatly diminished the lake area, and altered natural ecological succession. However, little is known about its impact on the carbon (C) cycle. We conducted an experiment to examine the variations of chemical properties of dissolved organic matter (DOM) and C mineralization under four land uses, i.e. coniferous forest (CF), evergreen broadleaf forest (EBF), bamboo forest (BF) and cropland (CL) in a reclaimed land area from Taihu Lake. Soils and lake sediments (LS) were incubated for 360 days in the laboratory and the CO2 evolution from each soil during the incubation was fit to a double exponential model. The DOM was analyzed at the beginning and end of the incubation using UV and fluorescence spectroscopy to understand the relationships between DOM chemistry and C mineralization. The C mineralization in our study was influenced by the land use with different vegetation and management. The greatest cumulative CO2-C emission was observed in BF soil at 0–10 cm depth. The active C pool in EBF at 10–25 cm had longer (62 days) mean residence time (MRT). LS showed the highest cumulative CO2-C and shortest MRT comparing with the terrestrial soils. The carbohydrates in DOM were positively correlated with CO2-C evolution and negatively correlated to phenols in the forest soils. Cropland was consistently an outlier in relationships between DOM chemistry and CO2-evolution, highlighting the unique effects that this land use on soil C cycling, which may be attributed the tillage practices. Our results suggest that C mineralization is closely related to the chemical composition of DOM and sensitive to its variation. Conversion of an aquatic ecosystem into a terrestrial ecosystem may alter the chemical structure of DOM, and then influences soil C mineralization.
Overcoming Shadows in 3-Source Photometric Stereo

Light occlusions are one of the most significant difficulties of photometric stereo methods. When three or more images are available without occlusion, the local surface orientation is overdetermined so that shape can be computed and the shadowed pixels can be discarded. In this paper, we look at the challenging case when only two images are available without occlusion, leading to a one degree of freedom ambiguity per pixel in the local orientation. We show that, in the presence of noise, integrability alone cannot resolve this ambiguity and reconstruct the geometry in the shadowed regions. As the problem is ill-posed in the presence of noise, we describe two regularization schemes that improve the numerical performance of the algorithm while preserving the data. Finally, the paper describes how this theory applies in the framework of color photometric stereo where one is restricted to only three images and light occlusions are common. Experiments on synthetic and real image sequences are presented.
A Comparison Reduction of 4-Nitrophenol by Gold Nanospheres and Gold Nanostars

In order to investigate structure-property relationships, the catalytic properties of gold nanoparticles were evaluated in the reduction of 4-nitrophenol by NaBH4. Using catalyst suspensions with identical amounts of gold, the following key results were obtained: first, the nanostars showed increased activity as compared to spherical gold nanoparticles; second, larger gold nanostars showed higher activity, likely because of the abundance of flat/spiky features on these particles, which show high metal utilization; third, treatment of the nanostar colloid with cucurbit[7]uril can be used to balance catalyst stability and activity; fourth, as expected from the decreasing surface atom fraction, the specific activity of the spherical nanoparticles decreased with increasing particle size.
Information-seeking behavior of social science scholars in developing countries: A proposed model

Models of information-seeking behavior are based almost entirely on research conducted in Western countries, and were generated at a time when electronic methods of information-seeking were still uncommon. This study develops an integrated model of social science information-seeking behavior based on a synthesis of established models and tests the ability of this integrated model to describe present-day information-seeking among social science scholars in a Middle Eastern university. The research was based on e-mail interviews, face-to-face interviews and focus groups conducted with social science faculty at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. At the time of data collection in June–July 2007, there were approximately 367 social science faculty at this University, distributed throughout the College of Arts and Social Sciences, the College of Education, the College of Commerce and Economics, and the Law College, including both men and women and representing a range of academic ranks. The data from the e-mail interviews, face-to-face interviews, and focus groups are analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The researcher used a qualitative analysis software program, NVIVO, to facilitate the process of analysis. Initially, the responses are examined and a preliminary set of themes created. Then, the responses are re-examined and coded according to the preliminary themes, with additional themes added as necessary. It was found that the information-seeking practices of the study sample could be readily matched to the stages of the model, suggesting that, in general terms, information- seeking behavior follows universally applicable stages, and that the model can be applied to current-day information-seeking despite changes in the information environment. The findings also provided support for the inclusion in the model of additional dimensions relating to the format and location of information resources, since these contextual factors were found to have an important influence on the process of information-seeking among the study participants. It is hoped that this study will make a contribution to the future development of an expanded knowledge base which will underpin library and information science in the 21st century.
Combinatorial Reconstruction of Sibling Relationships

We present a new algorithm for reconstructing sibling relationships in a single generation of individuals without parental information, using data from codominant DNA markers such as microsatellites. We use the simple genetic constraints on the full-sibling groups, imposed by the Mendelian inheritance rules, and combinatorial optimization techniques to extract a minimum number of consistent sibling groups. The results of a simulation study of a relaxed version of the algorithm show that our approach is reasonably accurate and the full version of the algorithm should be pursued. Our algorithm does not require any a priori knowledge about allele frequency, population size, mating system, or family size distributions.
Clinical and molecular predictors of disease severity and survival in chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Several parameters may predict disease severity and overall survival in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). The purpose of our study of 190 CLL patients was to compare immunoglobulin heavy chain variable region (IgVH) mutation status, cytogenetic abnormalities, and leukemia cell CD38 and Zap‐70 to older, traditional parameters. We also wanted to construct a simple, inexpensive prognosis score that would significantly predict TTT and survival in patients at the time of diagnosis and help practicing clinicians. In univariate analyses, patients with higher clinical stage, higher leukocyte count at diagnosis, shorter leukocyte doubling time, elevated serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), unmutated immunoglobulin heavy chain variable region (IgVH) genes, and higher CD38 had a shorter overall survival and time‐to‐treatment (TTT). CLL cell Zap‐70 expression was higher in patients with unmutated IgVH, and those with higher Zap‐70 tended to have shorter survival. IgVH4‐34 or IgVH1‐69 was the most common IgVH genes used (16 and 12%, respectively). Of those with IgVH1‐69, 86% had unmutated IgVH and had a significantly shorter TTT. A cytogenetic abnormality was noted in 71% of the patients tested. Patients with 11q22 del and 17p13 del or complex abnormalities were significantly more likely to have unmutated IgVH. We found that a prognostic score constructed using modified Rai stage, cellular CD38, and serum LDH (parameters easily obtained clinically) significantly predicted TTT and survival in patients at the time of diagnosis and performed as well or better than models using the newer markers. Am. J. Hematol. , 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
PP for ‘product placement’or ‘puzzled public’?

This research examines the effectiveness of the European ‘PP’ symbol, recently introduced as a warning of product placement in locally produced television programmes. The authors test whether this symbol counters the pervasive effect of product placement on purchase intention. Study 1 shows that the symbol does not prompt resistance to the influence of product placement. This is because the majority of consumers neither notice nor comprehend the symbol. In Study 2, two training methods are tested to increase the symbol’s effectiveness: (1) verbal label training and (2) a combination of verbal label training and information training. The addition of information training is necessary to increase the symbol’s noticeability, whereas verbal label training helps increase the symbol’s comprehensibility and effectiveness in activating persuasion knowledge and decreasing purchase intention. Finally, the results provide evidence that brand recall is crucial for resistance to product placement, suggesting the importance of brand recall as a moderator of resistance processes.
On the critical operating modes and adaptive algorithms of intellectual strapdown inertial orientation systems

Critical operating modes of the strapdown inertial orientation systems (SIOS) or such rotations, under which the error of the SIOS increases with the unchanged accuracy of the gyros and the unchanged SIOS algorithm, are presented. Euler's theorem is well-known: A rigid body with a fixed point can be rotated to any angle position about some axis by some angle. Two new theorems are proved: 1. A rigid body with a fixed point can be rotated to any angular position so that the projections of the angular velocity vector on the axes connected with the body contain only harmonic components at one frequency. 2. There are rotations under which the error of any SIOS algorithm with a fixed output frequency of gyros information is 100 %. That is the SIOS algorithm completely “does not see” the rotation of the object. To avoid critical operating modes of SIOS the transition from SIOS based on unchanged algorithms to intellectual SIOS based on a strategy with the choice of various algorithms depending on the current conditions of object rotation or adaptive algorithms of SIOS is proposed.
Diversity and evolution of 11 innate immune genes in Bos taurus taurus and Bos taurus indicus cattle

The Toll-like receptor (TLR) and peptidoglycan recognition protein 1 (PGLYRP1) genes play key roles in the innate immune systems of mammals. While the TLRs recognize a variety of invading pathogens and induce innate immune responses, PGLYRP1 is directly microbicidal. We used custom allele-specific assays to genotype and validate 220 diallelic variants, including 54 nonsynonymous SNPs in 11 bovine innate immune genes (TLR1-TLR10, PGLYRP1) for 37 cattle breeds. Bayesian haplotype reconstructions and median joining networks revealed haplotype sharing between Bos taurus taurus and Bos taurus indicus breeds at every locus, and we were unable to differentiate between the specialized B. t. taurus beef and dairy breeds, despite an average polymorphism density of one locus per 219 bp. Ninety-nine tagSNPs and one tag insertion-deletion polymorphism were sufficient to predict 100% of the variation at all 11 innate immune loci in both subspecies and their hybrids, whereas 58 tagSNPs captured 100% of the variation at 172 loci in B. t. taurus. PolyPhen and SIFT analyses of nonsynonymous SNPs encoding amino acid replacements indicated that the majority of these substitutions were benign, but up to 31% were expected to potentially impact protein function. Several diversity-based tests provided support for strong purifying selection acting on TLR10 in B. t. taurus cattle. These results will broadly impact efforts related to bovine translational genomics.