Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Simulating the evolution of disc galaxies in a group environment – I. The influence of the global tidal field

We present the results of a series of numerical simulations aimed to study the evolution of a disc galaxy within the global tidal field of a group environment. Both the disc galaxy and the group are modelled as multicomponent, collisionless, N-body systems, composed of both dark matter and stars. In our simulations, the evolution of disc galaxies is followed after they are released from the group virial radius, and as their orbits sink towards the group centre, under the effect of dynamical friction. We explore a broad parameter space, covering several aspects of the galaxy-group interaction that are potentially relevant to galaxy evolution. Namely, prograde and retrograde orbits, orbital eccentricities, disc inclination, role of a central bulge in discs, internal disc kinematics and galaxy-to-group mass ratios. We find that significant disc transformations occur only after the mean density of the group, measured within the orbit of the galaxy, exceeds ∼0.3–1 times the central mean density of the galaxy. The morphological evolution of discs is found to be strongly dependent on the initial inclination of the disc with respect to its orbital plane, i.e. discs on face-on and retrograde orbits are shown to retain their disc structures and kinematics longer, in comparison to prograde discs. This suggests that after interacting with the global tidal field alone, a significant fraction of disc galaxies should be found in the central regions of groups. Prominent central bulges are not produced, and pre-existing bulges are not enhanced in discs after the interaction with the group. Assuming that most S0 are formed in group environments, this implies that prominent bulges should be formed mostly by young stars, created only after a galaxy has been accreted by a group. Finally, contrary to some current implementations of tidal stripping in semi-analytical models of galaxy evolution, we find that more massive galaxies suffer more tidal stripping. This is because dynamical friction brings them faster to the group centre, in comparison to their lower mass counterparts.
Symplectic tomography of ultracold gases in tight waveguides

The phase space is the natural ground to smoothly extrapolate between local and nonlocal correlation functions. With this objective, we introduce the symplectic tomography of many-body quantum gases in tight waveguides, and concentrate on the reduced single-particle symplectic tomogram (RSPST) whose marginals are the density profile and momentum distribution. We present an operational approach to measure the RSPST from the time evolution of the density profile after shutting off the interactions in a variety of relevant situations: Free expansion, fall under gravity, and oscillations in a harmonic trap. From the RSPST, the one-body density matrix of the trapped state can be reconstructed.
Comparing readout strategies to directly detect dark matter

Over the past decades, several ideas and technologies have been developed to directly detect WIMP from the galactic halo. All these detection strategies share the common goal of discriminating a WIMP signal from the residual backgrounds. By directly detecting WIMPs, one can measure some or all of the observables associated to each nuclear recoil candidates, such as their energy and direction. In this study, we compare and examine the discovery potentials of each readout strategies from counting only (bubble chambers) to directional detectors (Time Projection Chambers) with 1d-, 2d-, and 3d-sensitivity. Using a profile likelihood analysis, we show that, in the case of a large and irreducible background contamination characterized by an energy distribution similar to the expected WIMP signal, directional information can improve the sensitivity of the experiment by several orders of magnitude. We also found that 1d directional detection is only less effective than a full 3d directional sensitivity by about a factor of 3, or 10 if we assume no sense recognition, still improving by a factor of 2 or more if only the energy of the events is being measured.
Topological defect dynamics of vortex lattices in Bose-Einstein condensates

Author(s): O'Riordan, LJ; Busch, T | Abstract: © 2016 American Physical Society. Vortex lattices in rapidly rotating Bose-Einstein condensates are systems of topological excitations that arrange themselves into periodic patterns. Here we show how phase-imprinting techniques can be used to create a controllable number of defects in these lattices and examine the resulting dynamics. Even though we describe our system using the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii theory, the full range of many-particle effects among the vortices can be studied. In particular we find the existence of localized vacancies that are quasistable over long periods of time and characterize the effects on the background lattice through the use of the orientational correlation function and Delaunay triangulation.
Camera Calibration Based on Mirror Reflections

: This paper addresses the use of mirror reﬂections for camera calibration. Camera calibration is an essential technique for analyzing the geometric and radiometric relationship between a 3D space and a 2D image. Most conventional camera calibration methods are based on a fundamental assumption: a camera can directly observe a reference object of known geometry . However, there are cases in which this assumption does not hold in practical scenarios. One approach to camera calibration in such cases is the use of a “mirror” as a supporting device. A mirror generates a virtual reference object that can be expressed using a small number of parameters. In addition, the 2D projection of the reﬂection object is equal to that of the known reference object from the virtual viewpoint. This paper utilizes these features and tackles two challenges of the geometric camera calibration; the ﬁrst challenge is the intrinsic camera calibration when a known reference object is not available and the second challenge is the extrinsic camera calibra- tion when the camera cannot directly observe a known reference object due to a physical constraint on the imaging system. The proposed algorithms introduce novel constraints, kaleidoscopic projection constraint and orthogonality constraint , which are hold with the mirror reﬂections for solving these problems. Evaluations with synthesized and real data demonstrates that the proposed algorithms can work properly and report the robustness of it in comparison with conventional methods.
Fundamental Frequency Modeling for Neural-Network-Based Statistical Parametric Speech Synthesis

The fundamental frequency (F0) of speech, which determines the perceived relative highness or lowness of the sound, plays an indispensable role in both the segmental and suprasegmental aspects of human languages. How to generate natural F0 contours from linguistic features of a text is one of the cruces in text-to-speech (TTS) systems, especially in the TTS system that has been able to synthesize speech with a natural segmental quality. A TTS system may produce unnatural speech if the generated F0 contour of that speech is incompatible with the prosodic system of the language (e.g., an incorrect F0 pattern in a tonal language), or if it is bland and monotonous (e.g., an over-smoothed F0 contour). Even though a TTS system correctly plans the prosodic structure and linguistic specification for the text to be uttered, it may generate an unnatural F0 contour when the internal F0 model fails to fulfill the plan. This problem is crucial in common TTS systems that use statistical F0 models, particularly using the so-called black-box neural networks. This thesis focuses on the neural-network-based F0 models for TTS systems, with the goal to identify potential limitations of conventional neural F0 models and propose better solutions. Specifically, this thesis treats F0 modeling as a sequential conversion problem where the input linguistic feature sequence is converted by a neural F0 model into an F0 contour frame by frame. Through interpreting and analyzing common neural F0 models or models that generate F0 with other spectral features, this thesis identifies three potential limitations: (1) it may be a suboptimal F0 modeling strategy to jointly model F0 with other acoustic features; (2) common models such as the recurrent neural network (RNN) is imperfect in modeling the temporal correlation of the F0 contour; (3) common neural F0
Extracting Parallel Sentences from Comparable Corpora with STACC Variants

This article describes our submissions to the BUCC 2018 shared task on parallel sentence extraction from comparable corpora. Our approach is based on variants of the STACC method, which computes similarity on expanded lexical sets via Jaccard similarity. We apply the weighted variant of the method to all four language pairs of the task, demonstrating the efﬁciency and portability of the approach. Additionally, we introduce a variant which further penalizes mismatches in terms of named entities, improving over the already strong weighted variant baseline in most cases. Our approach reached the highest results in all scenarios, with scores over 80% in terms of f1-measure and 90% in precision.
Partial and Synchronized Caption to Foster Second Language Listening based on Automatic Speech Recognition Clues

Central to the development of second language (L2) is the ability to perceive, process and comprehend the speech in the target language, which forms the bedrock of L2 listening skill. Listening is indeed a fundamental skill in L2 acquisition, which comes before speaking. It is the least explicit and essentially a transient and invisible process, hence the most sophisticated skill to master. To advance L2 listening skill, exposure to the authentic materials plays a crucial role. The advancement of ICT has promoted further opportunities for the application of contextualized and authentic materials, making them the mainstays of contemporary L2 learning education. Nevertheless, these materials, which are originally intended for native speakers of the target language, are often too difficult for L2 learners even at advanced levels. To facilitate the comprehension of such resources, captioning is widely used as an assistive tool for providing the text along with the speech. However, through the use of captions, learners tend to rely more on their reading skills, hence neglect the goal of training the listening skill. This thesis attempts to solve this problem by introducing a novel captioning method, partial and synchronized captioning (PSC), as a tool for developing L2 listening skill. In this method, an ASR system is employed to align the words in precise timing with their respective speech signals in order to enable text-to-speech mapping and the caption is partialized by presenting words and phrases which are likely to hinder learner’s listening comprehension. Since there are various factors that lead to L2 listening difficulty, this study investigates the viability of using ASR errors as the predictor of difficulties in speech segments, thereby exploiting them to improve the baseline PSC system. Note that the human-annotated transcript is aligned with the ASR-generated transcript to realize synchronization and ASR error detection. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the general topics of second language listening and the use of captioning to facilitate this process. It goes on to discuss the problems with the existing approaches and lays out the general motivation for and techniques used in the work presented in the following chapters. Chapter 2 describes the overview of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) systems, as well as the use of ASR technology. It also focuses on the use of technologies in training L2 listening skill and discusses the different factors affecting L2 listening. This chapter provides a thorough introduction of different captioning methods and elaborates on the limitations of each method. Within this framework, this thesis presents the importance of adopting partialization and synchronization for creating a new system of captioning.
Modules of Vector Valued Siegel Modular Forms of Half Integral Weight

In this paper, we determine explicitly the modules of certain spaces of vector valued Siegel modular forms of half integral weight of degree two with character. Here the discrete group is the Hecke type congruence subgroup Γ (2) 0 (4) of Sp(2,R) and the weights of the forms are roughly detk−1/2 Sym(2) and detk−1/2 Sym(4) for any natural number k, where detk−1/2 is a certain automorphy factor of weight k − 1/2 and Sym(j) is the symmetric tensor representation of GL(2) of degree j . The character is a certain standard non-trivial character ψ of Γ (2) 0 (4) defined later. Our main theorems are given in §3 Theorem 3.2 and §3 Theorem 3.3. Precise definitions will be given in §1. We note that there is no modular forms of one variable of half-integral weight with character ψ belonging to Γ (1) 0 (4), but in the case of degree two, both forms with character and without character appear. The dimensions of both of these vector valued Siegel cusp forms of degree two of weight detk−1/2 Sym(j) are obtained by Tsushima [8] when k ≥ 5. Also for the case without character, Tsushima [9] obtained an explicit description of the module for det k−1/2Sym(2) already. But as for the case with character, the situation is fairly different and more difficult, since it is like a difference between modular forms of even weight and odd weight, and usually in the theory of Siegel modular forms, the latter is more difficult to construct. We overcome this difficulty by using a theory of differential operators acting on a triple of Siegel modular forms. We have already developed the theory of such differential operators in [4], [6] in the case of integral weight, but here we apply it to the case of half integral weight. The necessary modification of the proof will be indicated in §2 Theorem 2.1. The explicit results in this paper were used for the experimental calculation in [5].
Pervasive Game Design: a Case Study Using Social Interaction to Promote Physical Activity of Elderly People

As populations age worldwide, different challenges emerge to promote quality of life of the elderly. Games have been proposed as a strategy to pursue those challenges, achieving varied levels of success. Nonetheless, there is an excessive focus on health benefits alone, with little concern for aspects such as player’s sought experiences and motivations to play. An emerging category of games that can be used to address this problem are pervasive games, which are electronic games that incorporate elements from the real world into the game world. Because pervasive games blend context (real world) and content (game world) elements, they can be especially appealing for people of all ages, but also particularly to the elderly. Thus, understanding how different design elements of pervasive games affect (elderly) players is essential. In this doctoral research, this issue is investigated, with two main contributions. First, a toolwas developed that allows designers to test variations onpervasive gamedesign. An “experiment system” pervasive game – i.e., a game designed not to solve a specific problem directly, but to understand it from a design perspective – was developed and evaluated. This innovation allows researchers and designers to evaluate specific design elements of pervasive games. While previous works evaluated game vs non-game or traditional approaches, the tool introduced in this research allows to evaluate variations in the same game. In the second main contribution, the developed system was used to investigate the effect of a specific design element – social interaction – in different contexts. As a result of these investigations, new knowledge was acquired about the effects of social interaction as a strategy to promote active lifestyles among older adults. This design element was evaluated in different conditions, including cultures of Brazil and Japan. It was found that the presence of social interaction design elements in a pervasive game system had a significant positive effect on the levels of physical activity of elderly players. This new knowledge can foment future research and development ofmore effective strategies that explore social elements, it can help better understand motivation or generate data to model user behavior, among other applications. Overall, this doctoral research further advances the idea that games, even serious games, should first be fun, and additional benefits come later as a natural consequence. By studying the
Building a Treebank for Vietnamese Syntactic Parsing

School of Multidisciplinary Sciences Department of Informatics Doctor of Philosophy Building a Treebank for Vietnamese Syntactic Parsing by NGUYEN Thi Quy Treebanks, corpora annotated with syntactic structures, are important resources for researchers in natural language processing, linguistic theory, as well as speech processing. They provide training and testing materials so that different algorithms can be compared. However, it is not a trivial task to construct high-quality treebanks. We have not yet had a proper treebank for such a low-resource language as Vietnamese, which has probably lowered the performance of Vietnamese language processing. In order to alleviate such a situation, this thesis has tackled with two objectives, viz., (1) developing a consistent and accurate Vietnamese treebank and (2) applying our treebank to parsing, a crucial problem in improving the quality of speech processing and natural language processing applications. This study is not only beneficial for the development of computational processing technologies for Vietnamese, a language spoken by over 90 million people, but also for similar languages such as Thai, Laos, and so on. For the first objective, we propose an annotation scheme for the Vietnamese treebank. In comparison with the previous one (VLSP treebank’s scheme), our scheme is better because it can cover and distinguish among various constructions and linguistic phenomena in Vietnamese. We also develop three sets of guidelines corresponding to three annotation layers of our treebank, including: word segmentation guidelines (44 pages), part-of-speech (POS) tagging guidelines (73 pages), and bracketing guidelines (182 pages). Our guidelines contain rules to address the challenges of Vietnamese language. Specifically,we hand-crafted 9 rules for segmenting ambiguous expressions, 34 rules for tagging ambiguous words, and 39 rules for bracketing ambiguous expressions. These guidelines, which are used to train the annotators, are valuable resources that serve the use of the treebank. In addition to developing the annotation guidelines, we describe other issues of ensuring the annotation quality including an appropriate annotation process, a well-designed
Chromosome-scale reference genome and RAD-based genetic map of yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis) reveal putative structural variation and QTLs associated with invader traits

Yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis) is a highly invasive species that has been a model system for the potential contribution of evolution to invader traits. Here, we report the construction of a chromosome-scale reference genome for C. solstitialis using a combination of PacBio HiFi and Dovetail Omni-C technologies, and functional gene annotation with RNAseq. We validate the reference genome using a restriction site-associated DNA (RAD)-based genetic map from an F2 mapping population. We find that syntenic comparisons to other taxa in the Asteraceae reveal a chromosomal fusion in the lineage of C. solstitialis, and widespread fission in globe artichoke (Cynara cardunculus). Using a QTL analysis from the mapping population (derived from a cross between native and invading parents) we identify 13 QTL underpinning size traits that are associated with adaptation in the invaded range, including a putative large-scale chromosomal inversion that has a pleiotropic and overdominant effect on key invader traits.
Estimating the net effect of functional traits on fitness across species and environments

Functional traits affect the demographic performance of individuals in their environment, leading to fitness differences that scale up to drive population dynamics and community assembly. Understanding the links between traits and fitness is, therefore, critical for predicting how populations and communities respond to environmental change. However, the net effects of traits on species fitness are largely unknown because we have lacked a framework for estimating fitness across multiple species and environments. We present a modelling framework that integrates trait effects on demographic performance over the life cycles of individuals to estimate the net effect of traits on species fitness. This approach involves (1) modelling trait effects on individual demographic rates (growth, survival and recruitment) as multidimensional performance surfaces that vary with individual size and environment and (2) integrating these effects into a population model to project population growth rates (i.e., fitness) as a function of traits and environment. We illustrate our approach by estimating performance surfaces and fitness landscapes for trees across a temperature gradient in the eastern United States. Functional traits (wood density, specific leaf area and maximum height) interacted with individual size and temperature to influence tree growth, survival and recruitment rates, generating demographic trade‐offs and shaping the contours of fitness landscapes. Tall tree species had high survival, growth and fitness across the temperature gradient. Wood density and specific leaf area had interactive effects on demographic performance, resulting in fitness landscapes with multiple peaks. With this approach it is now possible to empirically estimate the net effect of traits on fitness, leading to an improved understanding of the selective forces that drive community assembly and permitting generalizable predictions of population and community dynamics in changing environments.
Coinfection with chytrid genotypes drives divergent infection dynamics reflecting broad epidemiological patterns

By altering the abundance, diversity, and distribution of species — and their pathogens — globalization may inadvertently select for more virulent pathogens. In Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, a hotspot of amphibian biodiversity, the pet trade has facilitated the co-occurrence of previously isolated enzootic and panzootic lineages of the pathogenic amphibian-chytrid (‘Bd’) and generated new virulent recombinant genotypes (‘hybrid’). Epidemiological data indicate that amphibian declines are most severe in hybrid zones, suggesting that coinfections are causing more severe infections or selecting for higher virulence. We investigated how coinfections involving these genotypes shaped virulence and transmission. Overall, coinfection favored the more virulent and competitively superior panzootic genotype, despite dampening its virulence and transmission. However, for the least virulent and least competitive genotype, coinfection increased both pathogen virulence and transmission. Thus, by integrating experimental and epidemiological data, our results provide mechanistic insight into how globalization can select for, and propel, the emergence of introduced hypervirulent lineages, such as the globally distributed panzootic lineage of Bd.