Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ASTROMETRY.NET: BLIND ASTROMETRIC CALIBRATION OF ARBITRARY ASTRONOMICAL IMAGES

We have built a reliable and robust system that takes as input an astronomical image, and returns as output the pointing, scale, and orientation of that image (the astrometric calibration or World Coordinate System information). The system requires no first guess, and works with the information in the image pixels alone; that is, the problem is a generalization of the “lost in space” problem in which nothing—not even the image scale—is known. After robust source detection is performed in the input image, asterisms (sets of four or five stars) are geometrically hashed and compared to pre-indexed hashes to generate hypotheses about the astrometric calibration. A hypothesis is only accepted as true if it passes a Bayesian decision theory test against a null hypothesis. With indices built from the USNO-B catalog and designed for uniformity of coverage and redundancy, the success rate is >99.9% for contemporary near-ultraviolet and visual imaging survey data, with no false positives. The failure rate is consistent with the incompleteness of the USNO-B catalog; augmentation with indices built from the Two Micron All Sky Survey catalog brings the completeness to 100% with no false positives. We are using this system to generate consistent and standards-compliant meta-data for digital and digitized imaging from plate repositories, automated observatories, individual scientific investigators, and hobbyists. This is the first step in a program of making it possible to trust calibration meta-data for astronomical data of arbitrary provenance.
Atomistic Visualization of Ballistic Phonon Transport

Heat transfer in solid materials at short time scales, short length scales, and low temperatures is governed by the transport of ballistic phonons. In anisotropic crystals, the energy carried by these phonons is strongly channeled into well-defined directions in a phenomenon known as phonon focusing. Presented here is a new molecular dynamics simulation approach for visualizing acoustic phonon focusing in anisotropic crystals. An advantage of this approach over experimental phonon imaging techniques is that it allows examination of phonon propagation at selected modes and frequencies. The spatial, mode, and frequency dependence of ballistic energy transport gained with this approach will be useful for understanding heat transfer issues in high frequency electronics and short time scale laser-material interactions.Copyright © 2007 by ASME
Givental Action and Trivialisation of Circle Action

In this paper, we show that the Givental group action on genus zero cohomological field theories, also known as formal Frobenius manifolds or hypercommutative algebras, naturally arises in the deformation theory of Batalin--Vilkovisky algebras. We prove that the Givental action is equal to an action of the trivialisations of the trivial circle action. This result relies on the equality of two Lie algebra actions coming from two apparently remote domains: geometry and homotopical algebra.
The Chandra Deep Field North Survey. XIII. 2 Ms Point-Source Catalogs

We present point-source catalogs for the ≈2 Ms exposure of the Chandra Deep Field North, currently the deepest X-ray observation of the universe in the 0.5–8.0 keV band. Five hundred and three (503) X-ray sources are detected over an ≈448 arcmin2 area in up to seven X-ray bands. Twenty (20) of these X-ray sources lie in the central ≈5.3 arcmin2 Hubble Deep Field North (13,600 sources deg-2). The on-axis sensitivity limits are ≈2.5 × 10-17 ergs cm-2 s-1 (0.5–2.0 keV) and ≈1.4 × 10-16 ergs cm-2 s-1 (2–8 keV). Source positions are determined using matched-filter and centroiding techniques; the median positional uncertainty is ≈0. ″3. The X-ray colors of the detected sources indicate a broad variety of source types, although absorbed AGNs (including a small number of possible Compton-thick sources) are clearly the dominant type. We also match lower significance X-ray sources to optical counterparts and provide a list of 79 optically bright (R ≲ 23) lower significance Chandra sources. The majority of these sources appear to be starburst and normal galaxies. The average backgrounds in the 0.5–2.0 keV and 2–8 keV bands are 0.056 and 0.135 counts Ms-1 pixel-1, respectively. The background count distributions are very similar to Poisson distributions. We show that this ≈2 Ms exposure is approximately photon limited in all seven X-ray bands for regions close to the aim point, and we predict that exposures up to ≈25 Ms (0.5–2.0 keV) and ≈4 Ms (2–8 keV) should remain nearly photon limited. We demonstrate that this observation does not suffer from source confusion within ≈6′ of the aim point, and future observations are unlikely to be source-confusion limited within ≈3′ of the aim point even for source densities exceeding 100,000 deg-2. These analyses directly show that Chandra can achieve significantly higher sensitivities in an efficient, nearly photon-limited manner and be largely free of source confusion. To allow consistent comparisons, we have also produced point-source catalogs for the ≈1 Ms Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S). Three hundred and twenty-six (326) X-ray sources are included in the main Chandra catalog, and an additional 42 optically bright X-ray sources are included in a lower significance Chandra catalog. We find good agreement with the photometry of the previously published CDF-S catalogs; however, we provide significantly improved positional accuracy.
Pre-service Teachers’ Mathematics Self-efficacy and Mathematics Teaching Self-efficacy

Pre-service mathematics teachers’ mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics teaching self-efficacy were investigated in this study. The purpose was to determine the confidence levels of their self-efficacy in mathematics and mathematics teaching. Also, the study was aimed at finding whether their mathematics self-efficacy and teaching self-efficacy were related. The participants were 49 pre-service mathematics teachers who were in their final year of training in the University. The mathematics self-efficacy items were adopted from Han, et al (2015) and May (2009), while the mathematics teaching self-efficacy items were those used by Khale (2008) and Gavora (2010). The findings of the study revealed that pre-service mathematics teachers had above average confidence levels in both MSE and MTSE. The study also revealed that the pre-service mathematics teachers’ MSE and MTSE were significantly related. Keywords : Mathematics self-efficacy, Teaching self-efficacy, Pre-service teachers
Effect of road traffic noise on housing price - Hong Kong Evidence

It is generally accepted that certain physical attributes of residential flats in Hong Kong contribute to the prices that they achieve on the market. Noise, however, has been ignored in the literature. This study attempts to examine the effect of noise on the price of residential flats in Hong Kong. A hedonic pricing model was employed to determine whether noise affects the pricing of residential flats in Hong Kong. The CRTN method was used to determine the actual traffic noise level in individual residential flats for a selected residential neighborhood and to estimate the impact of noise levels on housing prices. Based on data from 571 transactions over a time span of seven years, it is found that whether a residential flat directly affected by road traffic has a statistically significant effect on its price, with the price decreasing by 8.6%. Upon closer examination, it is found that for every 1 dBA increase in the noise level, the corresponding price of residential flat decreases by 0.31%.
Information Visualization and Semiotic Morphisms

Information visualization design is generally ad hoc, using trial and error, and perhaps drawing on experience with prior visualization systems. This paper suggests a di erent approach: general design principles based on a combination of algebraic abstract data type theory, semiotics, and social theory. Major concepts include semiotic spaces to describe systems of related signs, semiotic morphisms to describe representations of signs, and preservation measures to describe the quality of representations. Some examples are given, each with a critical discussion, illustrating how semiotic morphisms can help with design.
Optimized Dynamic Calibration of a SCARA Robot

Abstract This paper presents experimental results for the dynamic calibration of the SCARA robot. In particular, optimized techniques are applied to determine optimal excitation trajectories for the identification experiment, and the resulting performances are compared with those obtained using standard robot “working” trajectories. Experiments show that the theoretically optimal trajectories provide an actual practical improvement on the quality of the resulting parameter estimates and torque reconstruction.
Checking Behavioural Compatibility in Service Composition with Graph Transformation

The success of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) largely depended on the success of automatic service composition. Dynamic service selection process should ensure full compatibility between the services involved in the composition. This compatibility must be both on static proprieties, called interface compatibility which can be easily proved and especially on behavioural compatibility that needs composability checking of basic services. In this paper, we propose (1) a formalism for modelling composite services using an extension of the Business Process (BP) modelling approach proposed by Benatallah et al. and (2) a formal verification approach of service composition. This approach uses the Graph Transformation (GT) methodology as a formal verification tool. It allows behavioural compatibility verification of two given services modelled by their BPs, used as the source graph in the GT operation. The idea consists of (1) trying to dynamically generate a graph grammar R (a set of transformation rules) whose application generates the composite service, if it exists, in this case (2) the next step consist in checking the deadlock free in the resulting composite service. To this end we propose an algorithm that we have implemented using the AGG, an algebraic graph transformation API environment under eclipse IDE.
Poverty Measurement by Islamic Institutions

Islamic institutions in Malaysia play a variety of socioeconomic roles such as poverty alleviation. To perform this role, these institutions face a major task in identifying the poverty group. Most of these institutions measure and operationalize poverty from the monetary perspective using variables such as income, expenditure or consumption. In practice, most Islamic institutions in Malaysia use the monetary approach in measuring poverty through the conventional Poverty Line Income (PLI) method and recently, the had al kifayah (HAK) method using total necessities of a household from an Islamic perspective. The objective of this paper is to present the PLI and also the HAK method. This micro-data study would highlight the similarities and differences of both the methods.A survey aided by a structured questionnaire was carried out on 260 selected head of households in the state of Selangor. The paper highlights several demographic factors that are associated with the three monetary indicators in the study, namely income, PLI and HAK. In addition, the study found that these monetary variables are significantly related with each other. Keywords—Poverty line, multidimensional, necessities, monetary
NON-DISCOUNTED DENUMERABLE MARKOVIAN DECISION MODELS

Abstract : Countable state, finite action Markovian decision processes are studied under the average cost criterion. The problem is studied by using the known results for the discounted-cost problem. Sufficient conditions are given for the existence of an optimal rule which is of the stationary deterministic type. This rule is shown to be, in some sense, a limit point of the optimal discounted-cost rules. Sufficient conditions are also given for the optimal discounted-cost rules to be epsilon-optimal with respect to the average cost criterion. It is shown that if there is a replacement action then there exists an optimal rule but it may not be of the stationary deterministic type. It is also shown how, in a special case, the average cost criterion can be reduced to the discounted cost criterion. Lastly, an example is given of a process for which there exists an optimal nonstationary rule which is better than any stationary rule.
Microfluidic propulsion by the metachronal beating of magnetic artificial cilia: a numerical analysis

Abstract In this work we study the effect of metachronal waves on the flow created by magnetically driven plate-like artificial cilia in microchannels using numerical simulations. The simulations are performed using a coupled magneto-mechanical solid–fluid computational model that captures the physical interactions between the fluid flow, ciliary deformation and applied magnetic field. When a rotating magnetic field is applied to super-paramagnetic artificial cilia, they mimic the asymmetric motion of natural cilia, consisting of an effective and recovery stroke. When a phase difference is prescribed between neighbouring cilia, metachronal waves develop. Due to the discrete nature of the cilia, the metachronal waves change direction when the phase difference becomes sufficiently large, resulting in antiplectic as well as symplectic metachrony. We show that the fluid flow created by the artificial cilia is significantly enhanced in the presence of metachronal waves and that the fluid flow becomes unidirectional. Antiplectic metachrony is observed to lead to a considerable enhancement in flow compared to symplectic metachrony, when the cilia spacing is small. Obstruction of flow in the direction of the effective stroke for the case of symplectic metachrony was found to be the key mechanism that governs this effect.
An Application of Microemulsion Method for Synthesis of Copper-Zinc Materials

Abstract Microemulsion method was used for preparation of copperzinc mixed oxides. Samples were prepared from the solutions containing zinc and copper nitrates. Sodium carbonate was used as a precipitant and hydrazine as reducing agent. Water-in-oil (W/O) microemulsions were formed by the application of cyclohexane, isopropyl alcohol, and hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as surfactant. The aim of the studies was determination of the influence of the sequence of synthesis stages on the formation of materials, their surface and structural properties. Thermal decomposition studies of materials were carried out by infrared spectroscopy. The physicochemical properties were characterized by nitrogen adsorption-desorption method, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and temperature-programmed reduction (TPR).
Economic Burden of Chronic Pancreatitis and Implications of Total Pancreatectomy and Autologous Islet Cell Transplantation

Context Heterotopic pancreas is usually an incidental finding during pathologic evaluation of gastrointestinal polyps or lesions encoun-tered during endoscopy for nonspecific symptoms or unrelated conditions. However, the same neoplastic processes that occur in normal pancreas also can occur in pancreatic heterotopias. Case report We report two cases of intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms arising in pancreatic heterotopia within the duodenum of two patients. These cases are among the first reports of neoplasia occurring in pancre-atic heterotopia of the duodenum. Both patients are being managed expectantly, as there is currently no consensus regarding the proper follow up in these cases, particularly those that have been incompletely excised. Conclusion These cases highlight the potential for neo-plasia in pancreatic heterotopia and emphasize the importance of careful evaluation of these lesions. Close clinical follow up and possible excision may be warranted in patients with concerning pathologic or clinical findings.
STEM Majors’ Cognitive Calculus Ability to Sketch a Function Graph

Emre Tokgoz is currently an Assistant Professor of Industrial Engineering at Quinnipiac University. He completed a Ph.D. in Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. His pedagogical research interest includes technology and calculus education of STEM majors. He worked on an IRB approved pedagogical study to observe undergraduate and graduate mathematics and engineering students’ calculus and technology knowledge in 2011. His other research interests include nonlinear optimization, financial engineering, facility allocation problem, vehicle routing problem, solar energy systems, machine learning, system design, network analysis, inventory systems, and Riemannian geometry.
Founder effects drive the genetic structure of passively 1 dispersed aquatic invertebrates 2 3

Founder effects drive the genetic structure of passively 1 dispersed aquatic invertebrates 2 3 Javier Montero-Pau , Africa Gómez and Manuel Serra 4 1 Institut Cavanilles de Biodiversitat i Biologia Evolutiva, Universitat de València, A.O. 22085, 5 46071, Valencia, Spain 6 2 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK 7 3 Institute for the Conservation and Breeding of Agricultural Biodiversity (COMAV-UPV), 8 Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain 9 10 11 Corresponding author: 12 Javier Montero-Pau, Institute for the Conservation and Breeding of Agricultural Biodiversity 13 (COMAV-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022, Valencia (Spain) 14 Phone: (+34) 963878847 15 jmonteropau@upv.es 16 17 Running title (45 characters): 18 Founder effects and local adaptation 19
Dendritic Ca transients evoked by action potentials in rat dorsal cochlear nucleus pyramidal and cartwheel neurons Running title: Dendritic Ca transients in DCN neurons

Simultaneous fluorescence imaging and electrophysiologic recordings were used to investigate the Ca influx initiated by action potentials (APs) into dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) pyramidal cell (PC) and cartwheel cell (CWC) dendrites. Local application of Cd blocked Ca transients in PC and CWC dendrites, demonstrating that the Ca influx was initiated by dendritic Ca channels. In PCs, TTX eliminated the dendritic Ca transients when APs were completely blocked. However, the Ca influx could be partially recovered during an incomplete block of APs, or when a large depolarization was substituted for the blocked APs. In CWCs, dendritic Ca transients evoked by individual APs, or simple spikes, were blocked by TTX and could be recovered during an incomplete block of APs or by a large depolarization. In contrast, dendritic Ca transients evoked by complex spikes, a burst of APs superimposed upon a slow depolarization, were not blocked by TTX, despite eliminating the APs superimposed upon the slow depolarization. These results suggest two different mechanisms for the retrograde activation of dendritic Ca channels: the first requires fast Na channel-mediated APs or a large somatic depolarization, whereas the second is independent of Na channel activation, requiring only the slow depolarization underlying complex spikes.
Can AI Generate Love Advice?: Toward Neural Answer Generation for Non-Factoid Questions

Deep learning methods that extract answers for non-factoid questions from QA sites are seen as critical since they can assist users in reaching their next decisions through conversations with AI systems. The current methods, however, have the following two problems: (1) They can not understand the ambiguous use of words in the questions as word usage can strongly depend on the context. As a result, the accuracies of their answer selections are not good enough. (2) The current methods can only select from among the answers held by QA sites and can not generate new ones. Thus, they can not answer the questions that are somewhat different with those stored in QA sites. Our solution, Neural Answer Construction Model, tackles these problems as it: (1) Incorporates the biases of semantics behind questions into word embeddings while also computing them regardless of the semantics. As a result, it can extract answers that suit the contexts of words used in the question as well as following the common usage of words across semantics. This improves the accuracy of answer selection. (2) Uses biLSTM to compute the embeddings of questions as well as those of the sentences often used to form answers. It then simultaneously learns the optimum combination of those sentences as well as the closeness between the question and those sentences. As a result, our model can construct an answer that corresponds to the situation that underlies the question; it fills the gap between answer selection and generation and is the first model to move beyond the current simple answer selection model for non-factoid QAs. Evaluations using datasets created for love advice stored in the Japanese QA site, Oshiete goo, indicate that our model achieves 20% higher accuracy in answer creation than the strong baselines. Our model is practical and has already been applied to the love advice service in Oshiete goo.
Brodbelt, Degenerative mitral valve disease: Survival of dogs attending primary-care practice

This is the peer-reviewed, manuscript version of the following article: M.J. Mattin, A. Boswood, D.B. Church, P.D. McGreevy, D.G. O’Neill, P.C. Thomson, D.C. Brodbelt, Degenerative mitral valve disease: Survival of dogs attending primary-care practice in England, Preventive Veterinary Medicine, Available online 30 May 2015, ISSN 0167-5877, http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.prevetmed. 2015.05. 007. The final version is available online via http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.prevetmed. 2015.05. 007. © 2015. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The full details of the published version of the article are as follows:
New Possibilites for Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer Disease: "Alzheimer Associated Gene" and Blood Biomarkers Nowe możliwości sprzyjające wczesnemu rozpoznawaniu choroby Alzheimera: "Alzheimer Associated Gene" i biomarkery krwi

Summary Simple, non-invasive tests for an early detection of degenerative dementia by use of biomarkers are urgently required. However, up to the present, no validated extracerebral diagnostic markers (plasma/ serum, platelets, urine, connective tissue) of Alzheimer disease (AD) are available, while in disease stages with evident cognitive disturbances, the clinical diagnosis of probable AD is made with around 90% accuracy using modern clinical, neuropsychological and imaging methods, diagnostic sensitivity and specificity even in early disease stages are improved by CSF markers (in particular combined tau and amyloid β proteins) and plasma markers (eg. Aβ 42/40 ratio). Recently, a novel gene/protein - ALZAS (Alzheimer Associated Protein) - with a 79 amino acid sequence, containing the β-amyloid 42 fragment (Aβ-42), the amyloid precursor protein (APP) transmembrane signal and a 12 amino acid C-terminal, not present in any other known APP alleles, has been discovered on chromosome 21 within the APP region. Reverse transcriptase-PCR revealed the expression of the transcript of this protein in the cortex and hippocampal regions as well as in lymphocytes of human AD patients. The expression of ALZAS is mirrored by a specific autoimmune response in AD patients, directed against the ct-12 end of the ALZASpeptide but not against the Aβ-sequence. ELISA studies of plasma dectected highest titers of ALZAS in patients with mild cognitive impairment (presymptomatic AD), but only moderately increased titers in autopsy-confirmed AD, whereas low or undetectable ct-12 titers were found in cognitively intact age-matched subjects and young controls. The antigen, ALZAS protein, was detected in serum in later clinical stages of AD. It is suggested that ALZAS represents an indicator in a dynamic equilibrium between both peripheral and brain degenerative changes in AD and may become a useful „non-invasive“ diagnostic marker via a simple blood test.