Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The cosmological analysis of X-ray cluster surveys

Context. This paper is the fourth of a series evaluating the ASpiX cosmological method, based on X-ray diagrams, which are constructed from simple cluster observable quantities, namely: count rate (CR), hardness ratio (HR), core radius (rc), and redshift. Aims. Following extensive tests on analytical toy catalogues (Paper III), we present the results of a more realistic study over a 711 deg2 template-based maps derived from a cosmological simulation. Methods. Dark matter haloes from the Aardvark simulation have been ascribed luminosities, temperatures, and core radii, using local scaling relations and assuming self-similar evolution. The predicted X-ray sky-maps were converted into XMM event lists, using a detailed instrumental simulator. The XXL pipeline runs on the resulting sky images, produces an observed cluster catalogue over which the tests have been performed. This allowed us to investigate the relative power of various combinations of the CR, HR, rc, and redshift information. Two fitting methods were used: a traditional Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach and a simple minimisation procedure (Amoeba) whose mean uncertainties are a posteriori evaluated by means of synthetic catalogues. The results were analysed and compared to the predictions from the Fisher analysis (FA). Results. For this particular catalogue realisation, assuming that the scaling relations are perfectly known, the CR-HR combination gives σ8 and Ωm at the 10% level, while CR-HR-rc-z improves this to ≤3%. Adding a second HR improves the results from the CR-HR1-rc combination, but to a lesser extent than when adding the redshift information. When all coefficients of the mass-temperature relation (M-T, including scatter) are also fitted, the cosmological parameters are constrained to within 5–10% and larger for the M-T coefficients (up to a factor of two for the scatter). The errors returned by the MCMC, those by Amoeba and the FA predictions are in most cases in excellent agreement and always within a factor of two. We also study the impact of the scatter of the mass-size relation (M-Rc) on the number of detected clusters: for the cluster typical sizes usually assumed, the larger the scatter, the lower the number of detected objects. Conclusions. The present study confirms and extends the trends outlined in our previous analyses, namely the power of X-ray observable diagrams to successfully and easily fit at the same time, the cosmological parameters, cluster physics, and the survey selection, by involving all detected clusters. The accuracy levels quoted should not be considered as definitive. A number of simplifying hypotheses were made for the testing purpose, but this should affect any method in the same way. The next publication will consider in greater detail the impact of cluster shapes (selection and measurements) and of cluster physics on the final error budget by means of hydrodynamical simulations.
Anti-HB Core Screening Significance among Healthy Blood Donors in Fayoum,Egypt

Background: Occult Hepatitis B is the existence of HBV-DNA in the serum of HBsAg negative cases with or without the presence of antibodies to HBV. Although (HBV)transmission viahepatitisB surface antigen (HBsAg) negative blood donors has beenreported, still HBsAg is the only obligatory HBV screening test of blood donors in Fayoum. Aim: Expanding the donor screening procedure to include anti-HBc to reduce the risk of transfusion transmitted HBV infection. Methods: A total of 400 HBsAg negative blood donors were included in the study from blood bank, Fayoum University Hospital, Egypt. All donors were tested for anti-HBc, and HBsAg-negative, anti-HBc-positive sera were further tested quantitatively for antibodies to hepatitis B surface antigen (anti-HBs). ‘Anti-HBc alone’ sera were examined quantitatively for HBV by real time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). Moreover, liver function tests and some oxidative stress parameters were determined in the sera of Anti HBc –ve group and Anti HBc +ve groups. Results: Among 400 HBsAg -negative donors, 69 (17.2%) were anti-HBc -positive, of which 12 donors (17%) were HBsAb negative, 20 donors (29%) were HBsAb low positive and 37 donors (54%) were HBsAb high positive. The 12 ‘anti-HBc alone’ donors displayed 2 cases (16.6%=0.5% of total) with HBV positive DNA. On comparison of the mean liver function profiles of Anti HBc âve group and Anti HBc +ve group, no statistically significant difference was observed. Conclusion: These data suggest including anti-HBc as an additional screening test for blood donors in Fayoum.
Simple Class A Amplifier

The original harmonic distortion standards for audio were laid down by D. T. Williamson in a series of articles published in Wireless World in 1947 and 1949; and the standard, proposed by him, for less than 0.1% total harmonic distortion at full rated power output, has been generally accepted as the target figure for high-quality audio power amplifiers. Since the main problem in the design of valve audio amplifiers lies in the difficulty in obtaining adequate performance from the output transformer, and since modern transistor circuit techniques allow the design of power amplifiers without output transformers, it seemed feasible to aim at a somewhat higher standard, 0.05% total harmonic distortion at full output power over the range 30Hz-20kHz. This also implies that the output power will be constant over this frequency range.
EFFECTS OF POLYTHENE FIBRES ON SELECTED PROPERTIES OF SANDCRETE BLOCKS

The aim of this study is to explore the possibility of using polythene fibres to increase the strength of sandcrete blocks without increasing the weight and cost of production. It is a comparative study of the properties and performance of polythene reinforced and plain sandcrete blocks. The graded soil sample has a specific gravity of 2.64. Polythene fibres were got from shredded sachet water bags. The fibres were mixed at 0.25%, 0.50% and 0.75% by mass of the block with sand and cement to produce the reinforced sandcrete at water – cement ratio of 0.4. Compressive strength, water absorption, split tensile strength tests were carried out on the various samples. The results show that the addition of polythene fibre to sandcrete blocks has very little effect on the compressive strength, although at 0.5% fibre content, the tensile strength increased. Heating the blocks at 100 o C for 24 hours, the compressive strength of the heated blocks are higher than the non - heated blocks. The results reveal that at an optimum fibre content of 0.5%, fibres are good in reinforcing sandcrete blocks if heated. Addition of polythene fibres to sandcrete blocks will increase the tensile strength and can limit the propagation of cracks. http://dx.doi. org/10.4314/njt.v35i1. 6
The demography and ecology of the European shag Phalacrocorax aristotelis in Mor Braz, France

An integrated research program was initiated to evaluate if the European shag Phalacrocorax aristotelis can be used as a robust indicator of the marine environment in Mor Braz, Brittany, France. This program focuses on aspects of the ecology of the shag including its abundance, demography, diet and at-sea distribution measured at three breeding colonies. The annual population growth rate was estimated at 1.01 for the period 1987-2009. The number of breeding pairs (mean: 565) was highly variable from year to year. Part of this interannual variation was explained by variations in sea surface temperature and sea surface height in winter and spring: the number of breeding pairs was negatively related to sea surface temperature and sea surface height. First year, second year and adult survival probabilities were 0.44, 0.76 and 0.81, respectively. Juvenile survival rate varied between colonies, despite the short distances separating these islets. Average productivity was one young fledged per nest, but it varied between years and islets. Density of individuals at sea varied between 1.40 ind.km −2 during the breeding season and 3.08 ind.km −2 after the breeding season had ended. Individuals foraged up to 7 km from the nest and performed on average 2.7 foraging trips per day. The average number of dives deeper than 5 m varied from 126 to 400 per day. Mean diving depth, dive duration and time spent at bottom were 13 m, 28 s, and 19 s respectively. Regurgitated pellets were collected regularly. Four fish families (Gadidae, Gobiidae, Atherinidae and Labridae) represented more than 65% of the preys throughout the year, a percentage reaching more than 95% of the prey from May to October. The other fish in the diet were Cottidae, Ammodytidae, and Clupeidae. The diet of the European shag consisted of benthic fish throughout the year, and also included pelagic fish more frequently between June and October. The synchronous variations of productivity between colonies suggest that some common environmental factors affect this demographic parameter at the regional scale. Thus, the European shag has a good potential for being a reliable ecological indicator of the state of this marine environment. Finally, improved knowledge on the foraging ecology of shags will be useful in the process of designing Marine Protected Areas in the Mor Braz to help ensure sustainable management of marine resources and biodiversity conservation.
Earnings and Caste : An Evaluation of Caste Wage Differentials in the Nepalese Labor Market March 10

This paper examines the sources of wage differentials among castes in Nepal, a country which had, until 1963, an age-old castebased social division of labor. We use an extended Oaxaca decomposition model with occupation and firm size augmenting the conventionally used measures of human capital endowments. Our results indicate that caste wage differentials in Nepal are large and that human capital endowments and lack of access to better paying occupations and larger firms have a significant impact. Furthermore, we find mixed evidence that the government policy of affirmative action has narrowed down the caste wage differential.
MOWING HEIGHT AND ERGOT ALKALOIDS ON BLACK CUTWORM HERBIVORY IN ENDOPHYTIC AND NON-ENDOPHYTIC TURF-TYPE TALL FESCUE AND RESULTING PATTERNS IN ANTIOXIDANT METABOLISM

Turfgrasses exposed to abiotic and biotic stresses produce active oxygen species such as superoxide radical (O2), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), hydroxyl free radical (OH), and singlet oxygen ('02). Plant cells are protected from these species through a complex antioxidant system. Previous research has shown that antioxidant metabolism is affected when subjected to abiotic stresses such as heat, cold, drought, and salinity. Very few studies have evaluated the effect of biotic stresses like insect herbivory on antioxidant metabolism. This greenhouse study consisted of three trials which evaluated the changes in antioxidant metabolism in endophytic (E+) and non-endophytic (E-) turf-type tall fescue (Schedonorus phoenix (Scop.) Holub; formally know as Festuca arundinacea Schreb. ) subjected to black cutworm {Agrotis ipsilon Hufiiagel) herbivory at two mowing heights (5 and 9 cm). Twenty-five black cutworm larvae were placed into Petri dishes and fed endophyte-infected (E+) or non-endophyte infected (E-, heat treated) 'DaVinci' turf-type tall fescue clippings daily. Neonate settling response (number feeding on clippings) was measured on day two and mortality was recorded daily. Time affected black cutworm performance during all three trials and endophyte and mowing height affected settling response and mortality at day 7 for trial two only. Correlations matrices showed that ergot alkaloids negatively influenced settling response for all three trials. As for antioxidant metabolism, superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity was found to be correlated to settling response during trial two. Catalase (CAT) activity was found to also be correlated to settling response in trial three. Antioxidant activity of SOD and CAT
Income Inequality and Gambling: A Panel Study in the United States (1980–1997)

While there are many studies that examine the consequences of increasing income inequality, its effects on gambling behavior have not yet been studied. In this article, we argue that income inequality increases the average expenditure on gambling. Using longitudinal state-level data for the United States (1980–1997), we estimate fixed-effects models to analyze two types of gambling expenditure: pari-mutuel betting and lottery spending. Our findings show a positive effect of increasing income inequality on lottery expenditure. For pari-mutuel betting, the result is not linear, as for higher levels of income inequality, the positive effect decreases, suggesting that the effect flattens out when the increase in income inequality is highest. We argue that there are three reasons why we find a positive effect of income inequality of gambling expenditure: increasing mobility aspirations, availability of resources in the upper part of the distribution, and status anxiety in the lower part of the distribution.
Error Bound for Non-Zero Initial Condition Using the Singular Perturbation Approximation Method

In this article, we present up to date results on the balanced model reduction techniques for linear control systems, in particular the singular perturbation approximation. One of the most important features of this method is it allows for an a priori L 2 and H ∞ bounds for the approximation error. This method has been successfully applied for systems with homogeneous initial conditions, however, the main focus in this work is to derive an L 2 error bound for singular perturbation approximation for system with inhomogeneous initial conditions, extending the work by Antoulas et al. The theoretical results are validated numerically.
Compact Bilinear Deep Features For Environmental Sound Recognition

Environmental sound recognition (ESR) has extensive various civilian and military applications. Existing ESR methods generally tackle this problem by employing various signal processing and machine learning methods. Herein, an ESR paradigm based on feature extraction from pre-trained deep convolutional neural networks (CNN), the derivation of higher-order statistics by compact bilinear pooling and normalisation. In particular, we consider two deep ImageNet architectures for deep feature extraction, and the Random Maclaurin (RM) to produce the compact bilinear features. A support vector machine (SVM) with homogeneous mapping is used in the classification stage. Two publicly available environmental sound datasets are used to verify the efficacy of the approach namely, ESC-50 and ESC-10. We compare the proposed method with various previous state-of-the-art methods. Presented results indicate the suitability of the higher-order statistics of Deep Spectrum representations for ESR classification tasks.
Disturbance-Observer-Based Robust Control of a Serial-link Robotic Manipulator Using SMC and PBC Techniques

Robotic manipulators deployed in automation industry require high speed with precision and accuracy to perform sophisticated control tasks. Whereas, the factors like highly coupled dynamics, internal and external perturbation forces, joint friction and parameter variations degrade the performance of the manipulator. Consequently, the need of an advanced control technique or more preferably combination of multiple techniques with the capability of handling disturbances has been increased significantly. In the present research, design of Disturbance Observer (DO) based control techniques for a 6-Degree Of Freedom (DOF) robotic arm is presented to eliminate the effect of uncertainties and disturbances and to enhance the robustness of both Sliding Mode Control (SMC) and Passivity Based Control (PBC). Results demonstrate that the proposed controllers precisely estimate the torque yielded by external perturbation forces and improve the trajectory tracking performance of the system, which results in comparatively high performance of robotic manipulator in terms of speed and precision.
F 3-A 5 : Toward Model-Based Reconstruction in Scanned Baggage Security Applications

While traditional direct reconstruction algorithms such as filtered back projection depend on the analytic inversion of sinogram data, model-based reconstruction methods are based on the iterative optimization of a statistical model of both the acquired data and the unknown image. Model-based reconstruction offers many important potential advantages over traditional methods of direct reconstruction for the security screening of checked baggage. It has the potential to reduce metal artifacts, improve resolution, reduce artifacts such as cupping that can systematically distort CT number estimates, incorporate tighter integration of reconstruction and segmentation, and support reconstruction from scanners with a small number of projections. All these enhancements have the potential to improve the Pd/Pfa tradeoff for CT security screening systems. The objective of this research is to investigate and quantify the value of model-based reconstruction for baggage security screening. To do this, our first goal is to implement a general model-based reconstruction algorithm for use on multi-slice helical scan CT scanners and to test and evaluate this algorithm on scans of luggage provided by the ALERT Center. In addition, we will have an ongoing goal of identifying and investigating opportunities for adapting and improving the model-based reconstruction technology for use in security applications. In particular, we will study the use of advanced forward and prior models for reducing metal artifacts, improving segmentation accuracy, and improving CT number estimation.
Concepts and principles of rainfall estimation from radar: Multi sensor environment and data fusion

Rainfall estimation has been pursued nearly since the dawn of civilization. It is also one of the most commonly used applications of modern, meteorological radars in most operational systems. Multi sensor approaches have made great strides in addressing the rainfall estimation problem through better sensor calibration and improved integration of observations at scales spanning many orders of magnitude such as radar, satellite and rain gauges. Data fusion techniques have demonstrated advantages in precipitation retrievals, especially for radar observations at attenuated frequencies. Data fusion has also shown benefits in merging data from multiple radars, as well as radars and satellites. This paper describes essential concepts of multi sensor rainfall estimation with a radar focus. Validation concepts for remote estimation of rainfall are also presented. Examples of data fusion and validation are illustrated through rainfall estimate comparisons between gauge and radar networks.
An Emergency Message Dissemination Protocol Using Greedy Forwarding Technique and Clustering For Vanets

Vehicu1ar Ad Hoc Networks is oriented to vehicular communication and regarded as one specific application of Mobi1e Ad Hoc Networks. The prospect of its applications in the inte11igent transportation and entertainment services is cheerfu1. The paper makes a research on GPSR (Greedy Perimeter State1ess Routing for Wire1ess Networks) protoco1. Ana1yze how it works in detai1 and points out its defects in different environments. Then put forward an improved GPSR protoco1 based on position vector aiming at some defects First of a11, it introduces the VANET’s history of development and protocols on some important 1ayers in brief. Based on the comprehensive understanding of the routing mechanism, study the suggested solution for each of defects. Based on the position vector ca1cu1ation and simp1e redundancy elimination, GPSR protoco1 is modified. Moreover, a preliminary assumption is presented specia1 for retrograde motion. Through the comparison with the origina1 one, it proves that the improved protoco1 performs better. We need to carry out the simulation of VANET in the computer environment i.e. we shou1d do a computer simulation. Computer simulation is risk and danger free, we can generate different scenario (rura1, urban, co11ision of vehicles) of the VANET using this. So computer simulation is very important for VANET research. Simu1ation of VANET is divided into two part a. Traffic simulation: Generation of traffic movement, defining the mobility mode1 for vehic1e and creating traffic movement. b. Network simulation: Generating Intercommunicating vehic1e, Defining communication protocols. And both the simulation is connected in the bi-directiona1 coupling.
EKF and Computer Vision for Mobile Robot Localization

The autonomous robotic system accurate localization is a challenging step in robot navigation field once the mobile device should avoid dangerous situations, such as unsafe conditions and collisions. In this context, the present paper proposes a localization method using the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to fuse the information coming from two different sensors (i.e. odometry and computer vision). The localization results present with known and unknown starting points and are tested in a simulated environment.
Disclosure of Personal Information under Risk of Privacy Shocks

Companies are under an increasing pressure by policy makers to publicize data breaches. Such notification obligations require announcing the loss of personal data collected from customers, because of hacker attacks or other incidents. While notification is likely to impact on firms’ reputation, we know little about the impact such notifications have on consumers with respect to disclosure of their personal data. We present the problem as a dynamic lottery with personal data under the risk of privacy shocks and experimentally study how the privacy breach notification changes an individual’s behavior regarding data disclosure. Our results suggest that the notification induces individuals – disregarding the sensitivity of their data – to disclose more.
Optimisation du compresseur à spirale appliqué à l ’ évaluation des pertes dues au frottement

This paper develops a design optimization procedure in scroll-type compressor (STC). By integrating the verified STC simulation model with an optimum solver, a frictional losses reduced problem of bearing components has been investigated. After the optimum search, the frictional losses can be reduced in range of 14.1–18.1% at all testing conditions with specified constraints. Herein, the design modifications of crank and upper bearings are compromised between reduction of frictional losses and maintenance of hydrodynamic lubrication. In addition, the narrower and shorter design of lower bearing and smaller one of thrust bearing can reduce frictional losses too. Furthermore, wider selection of materials in all the bearings can be adopted with the satisfied strength constraint. By using this procedure, various optimum combinations of parameters can be found for different STC design considerations. a 2010 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved. Optimisation du compresseur à spirale appliqué à l’évaluation des pertes dues au frottement Mots clés : Compresseur à spirale ; Modèlisation ; Simulation ; Perte ; Frottement
Plasma Lab Statistical Model Checker: Architecture, Usage and Extension

Plasma Lab is a modular statistical model checking (SMC) platform that facilitates multiple SMC algorithms and multiple modelling and query languages. Plasma Lab may be used as a stand-alone tool with a graphical development environment or invoked from the command line for high performance scripting applications. This tutorial first presents an overview of Plasma Lab architecture, modelling languages and algorithms. Then we present the usage of the tool to design models and perform various experiments Finally we propose a tutorial on how to develop a new plugin for Plasma Lab.