Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Luminosity function from dedicated SDSS-III and MMT data of quasars in 0.7 < z < 4.0 selected with a new approach

We present a measurement of the quasar luminosity function in the range 0.68 2.15. Using pure luminosity evolution models, we fitted our LF measurements and predicted quasar number counts as a function of redshift and observed magnitude. These predictions are useful inputs for future cosmology surveys such as those relying on the observation of quasars to measure baryon acoustic oscillations.
UTILIZATION OF CROSS-TERMS TO ENHANCE THE LANGUAGE MODEL FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

Traditional retrieval models were effective in the early stage of the Web; however, with the huge amount of information that is available on the Web today further optimization is required to enhance the performance of these models in extracting the most relevant information. Utilization of the term proximity is one of the techniques that have been introduced for this purpose by many researchers. It assumes that the words in the user query are correlated and thus proximity between them should be considered in the matching process. Density-based proximity is an effectual type of term proximity measures which is still not fully considered in the retrieval models. In this paper we investigate the application of a recent density-based measure called Cross-Terms which has achieved significant scores when applied on the effective BM25 retrieval model. We applied cross-terms on another effective retrieval model that is the Language Modeling Approach. The performance of the enhanced language model was measured and evaluated through several experiments and metrics. Experiments results show that the cross-terms measure was able to improve the performance of the basic language model in all the applied evaluation metrics. Performance improvement reached (+4%) with the MAP metric and (+8%) with P@5 and P@20 metrics.
Extra-pair paternity among Great Tits Parus major following manipulation of male signals

Female Great Tits are known to eavesdrop on the singing behaviour of males. It is unknown, however, whether manipulation of these signals is sufficient to influence extra-pair copulations, or whether such potentially costly reproductive decisions are unaffected by altering short-term signals of condition. Using interactive playbacks, we systematically engaged males in territorial contests in which we could control whether the focal male won or lost the interaction, regardless of the males’ true potential. We then determined the levels and patterns of extra-pair paternity among experimental and neighbouring pairs using DNA microsatellite analysis. Extra-pair young were found in equal frequency among the nests of males allowed to win interactions as among those who lost interactions. However, cuckolded males were significantly less variable in allele sizes across the five microsatellite alleles tested than males who were not cuckolded. As measures of genetic variability are increasingly being found to correlate with individual fitness, this may suggest that females are attentive to underlying measures of condition when making extra-pair decisions. Short-term modification of the males’ perceived quality may be insufficient to cause females to alter extra-pair decisions.
Interaction effect of heat shock and seed priming on storability of Agropyron elongatum

Priming improves germination rate and seed vigor but reduces longevity of seeds. We examined the possibilities of obatining primed seeds with maintaining high germination quality but with longevity much the same that seeds are not treated. In this study were used different priming treatments for Agropyron elongatum. Then primed seeds were placed at different levels of heat shock. And then all treatments and unprimed seeds were evaluated in standard germination and accelerated ageing test. We found that the desired longevity could be obtained by keeping the seeds under heat shock for four hours at 40°C, after a priming treatment. Decreasing germination and seedling vigour in hydro and hormonal priming did not happaen again due to such a treatment. In addition, following priming, heat shock affects the initial quality of primed seeds in some treatments. Optimal temperature was strongly duration dependent. The method was applied to obtain primed seeds without loss of storability is very similar to those used to induce desiccation tolerance in germinated seeds and acquired thermotolerance in plant vegetative tissues. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.4038/jas.v10i1. 8045 The Journal of Agricultural Sciences, 2015, vol.10, no1: p.29-40
Relationships among Selected Measures of Cognitive Styles, Abilities, and Aptitudes. Interim Report, January 1979 through June 1979.

Abstract : Measures of cognitive styles, abilities, and aptitudes for a sample of 166 graduates of Basic Electricity and Electronics School were analyzed to determine the magnitude and nature of their relationships. Canonical analyses established that measures of cognitive styles were significantly related to measures of aptitudes and of abilities, but their common variance was not large enough to be practical value. Measures of aptitudes were significantly related to measures of abilities, and the two sets of measures do have a considerable amount of shared variance. When the various measures were factor analyzed, three significant factors were extracted--which appeared to reflect measures of technical aptitude, verbal ability, and problem-solving mode. These factors accounted for much of the variability among the various measures of cognitive characteristics. Thus, it was concluded that cognitive styles are relatively independent of abilities and aptitudes.
Supplementary Material : Part Type Kinematics and Initialization for “ Motion-Guided Mechanical Toy Modeling ” 1

Since the driving motion is a periodic rotation of the driving axis, we require that the input motion of a feature object also be periodic. Denote the number of frames in one period as n. Initialization of each part is based on one period of the target trajectory {pi, i = 1.n} sampled from the initial handle on the feature object. The free end point of each part, denoted ei, is kinematically defined for each part type, and connects to this handle to realize the target motion.
Rate-sensitive constitutive and failure properties of human collateral knee ligaments

Current finite element models of the human lower extremity lack the accurate constitutive representations of knee ligaments necessary for computational evaluation of pedestrian injury countermeasures. The collateral ligaments have been reported to be the most frequently injured knee ligaments in pedestrians involved in automobile collisions. The purpose of this study is to determine the material and failure properties of human collateral knee ligaments tested in tension to failure at two different rates. Four lateral collateral ligament (LCL) specimens and 4 medial collateral ligament (MCL) specimens are tested to failure in tension at a high rate (1600 mm/s), and 4 LCL and 4 MCL specimens are tested to failure at a low rate (1.6 mm/s). Each specimen consists of a bone-ligament-bone complex and the tensile direction is representative of joint distraction at 0° flexion. 3-dimensional non-contact surface digitization is used to calculate the cross sectional area of each ligament. The Lagrangian strain of the surface of the ligament is calculated by speckle pattern motion recognition. The average LCL ultimate stress and elastic modulus (39.3 MPa and 477.9 MPa, respectively) are more than double the ultimate stress and elastic modulus of the MCL (15.98 and 138.3, respectively). The data show that in both ligament types, the stress at a particular strain in an average high rate test is significantly greater than the stress at the same strain in an average low rate test (p<0.001), proving the presence of rate sensitivity over the range of strain-rates examined (1%/s-2400%/s). For the covering abstract see E135170.
Priority-Based Flow Control for Dynamic and Reliable Flow Management in SDN

Software-defined networking (SDN) is a promising paradigm of computer networks, offering a programmable and centralized network architecture. However, although such a technology supports the ability to dynamically handle network traffic based on real-time and flexible traffic control, SDN-based networks can be vulnerable to dynamic change of flow control rules, which causes transmission disruption and packet loss in SDN hardware switches. This problem can be critical because the interruption and packet loss in SDN switches can bring additional performance degradation for SDN-controlled traffic flows in the data plane. In this paper, we propose a novel robust flow control mechanism referred to as priority-based flow control (PFC) for dynamic but disruption-free flow management when it is necessary to change flow control rules on the fly. PFC minimizes the complexity of flow modification process in SDN switches by temporarily adapting the priority of flow rules in order to substantially reduce the time spent on control-plane processing during run-time. Measurement results show that PFC is able to successfully prevent transmission disruption and packet loss events caused by traffic path changes, thus offering dynamic and lossless traffic control for SDN switches.
Counting Fingers : Eyes-Free Text Entry without Touch Location

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). CHI’16 Workshop on Inviscid Text Entry and Beyond , 8 May 2016, San Jose, CA. Abstract Entering text on a touchscreen device without visual feedback can be challenging. In this paper I explore the feasibility of an approach where a single character of output is ambiguously specified by touching the screen with between one to five fingers. The count of fingers is fed to a sentence-based decoder which attempts to infer a user’s intended text. This approach allows users to touch the screen with any finger orientation so long as it is touched with the correct number of fingers. I compare the accuracy of five different finger count to letter mapping, including two based on braille. Four of the mappings provided promising accuracy with character error rates below 5% on simulated input.
Creating a WhatsApp Dataset to Study Pre-teen Cyberbullying

Although WhatsApp is used by teenagers as one major channel of cyberbullying, such interactions remain invisible due to the app privacy policies that do not allow ex-post data collection. Indeed, most of the information on these phenomena rely on surveys regarding self-reported data. In order to overcome this limitation, we describe in this paper the activities that led to the creation of a WhatsApp dataset to study cyberbullying among Italian students aged 12-13. We present not only the collected chats with annotations about user role and type of offense, but also the living lab created in a collaboration between researchers and schools to monitor and analyse cyberbullying. Finally, we discuss some open issues, dealing with ethical, operational and epistemic aspects.
Micro-Level Misallocation and Selection: Estimation and Aggregate Implications

How large are the aggregate productivity losses from the misallocation of resources across firms? If firm entry and exit are endogenous, micro-frictions can induce extensive-margin misallocation: inefficient firms continue to survive (Zombies) and efficient firms are forced to exit (Shadows). Furthermore, since the number of firms is endogenous, variety effects can either reinforce or offset misallocation losses. I develop and estimate a structural model with plant-level micro-data for Indonesia to quantify both types of extensive-margin effects of micro-distortions. I show that adding extensive margin effects empirically magnifies the welfare losses for a given set of measured distortions. Regarding the variety-effects, I show that sample selection issues of previous studies are likely to bias results toward finding that variety effects offset misallocation losses, when in fact, they do not. Regarding extensive-margin misallocation, my estimates show that it can increase aggregate TFP losses from micro-distortions by over 40%. Compared to existing estimates, aggregate TFP losses from micro-distortions are 50-100% higher, mostly driven by extensive-margin misallocation instead of variety effects.
Genomic sequence characterization of Begomovirus infecting soybean and molecular evolutionary genomics of Legume yellow mosaic viruses (LYMVs)

Begomoviruses infecting legumes (family Geminiviridae) pose a serious threat to the cultivation of grain legumes. Eventhough legume yellow mosaic viruses (LYMVs) cause significant loss in yield of legumes, studies regarding evolutionary lineage analysis of LYMVs are very rare. Previously, we have shown that Mungbean yellow mosaic virus (MYMV) and Mungbean yellow mosaic India virus (MYMIV) are major begomoviruses causing yellow mosaic disease (YMD) of soybean in India. In this study, complete genome sequence of begomovirus causing yellow mosaic disease of soybean in Central Indian region was characterized. Furthermore, whole genome sequences of legume begomoviruses [DNA A (108 isolates) and DNA B (89 isolates)] were analyzed to infer genetic diversity, gene flow and evolutionary lineage using nucleotide sequence-based computational approaches. Analysis of nucleotide diversity disclosed that LYMV population as a whole is diverse compared to MYMV and MYMIV. Test of neutral evolution also reiterates the operation of purifying selection and population expansion of MYMV and MYMIV. However, LYMVs as a whole, show decrease in population size and act of balancing or neutral selection. Genetic differentiation studies reveal greater diversity between MYMV and MYMIV. Frequent gene flow was detected between Dolichos yellow mosaic virus (DoYMV), Rhynchosia yellow mosaic India virus (RhYMIV) and other LYMVs. Recombinant events have been detected among LYMV species suggesting frequent genetic exchanges. Molecular phylogeny also revealed distinctness of Old World begomoviruses as New World begomoviruses formed a separate basal cluster. Hence, it is concluded that genetic exchanges are recorded among the LYMVs, and implications of breaching this seclusion is also discussed.
Kinetic Approach to Systems of Conservation Laws

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Web-based Supplementary Materials for “Tail posterior probability for inference in pairwise and multiclass gene expression data” by N.Bochkina and S.Richardson

The data considered in this paper derives from the sets of experiments on the H2Kb muscle cell line of mouse (Tatoud et al., 2006), as a part of BAIR project (http://www.bair.org.uk), studying reaction of cells to insulin to advance further in understanding the development of diabetes. The cells were treated with insulin and metformin, an insulin-replacement drug, and observed after the treatment at two time points, 2 and 12 hours. For comparison, non-treated cells were grown and collected at the time of treatment (0 hours) and at 2 and 12 hours. This experiment has 3 biological replicates for each of the seven conditions. RNA from each of the 21 samples was hybridised on an Affymetrix MOE430A chip (a single channel array), making a total of 21 microarrays, with 22690 genes per chip. The aim of the experiment was to find genes changing their expression in the cells due to treatment by insulin or metformin. The data we use below was background-corrected and the gene expression index was calculated using RMA software (Irizarry
Are they reproducible in Heart Failure Patients ? the Heart Rate Turbulence Indexes

Cardiovascular oscillations following spontaneous ventricular premature complexes (VPC) are characterized by a short-term heart rate fluctuation known as heart rate turbulence (HRT) described by the socalled turbulence onset (TO) and slope (TS). Despite a recent written consensus on the standard of HRT measurement, reproducibility data are lacking. Aim of the paper was a reproducibility study of HRT indexes in heart failure patients (HF). Eleven HF patients underwent two 24h ECG Holter recordings, spaced 7±5 days. A paired t test was used to assess the clinical stability of patients during the study period and the number of PVC in Holter recordings’ couples. Both TO and TS indexes were calculated for each isolated VPC, and due to their skewed distribution, reproducibility of median and mean TO and TS was studied by Bland-Altman technique. Results showed that median HRT indexes might be preferred to commonly suggested mean values and that, although TO showed lower bias value than TS, TS can be considered much more reproducible than TO, comparing limits of agreements with normal values. This preliminary results suggest the use of medians instead of mean HRT indexes values and a reliability of the turbulence slope greater than the turbulence onset index.
Systematic and Easy-To-Use Design Procedure for Proportional-Integral-Resonant Controllers

The control of grid-connected inverters is an important issue nowadays. Different current control techniques have been recently studied, appearing resonant controllers as a very good alternative to solve the traditional problems of PI controllers. However, the resonant controllers' design is a non-widely investigated task. In this paper a systematic and easy-to-use design procedure which can be applied to the design of any Proportional-Integral-Resonant (PIR) controller is developed. The proposal is applied to the PIR controller of the current control loop of a three-phase photovoltaic inverter, showing the potential of this controllers.
UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Natural kinds and dispositions: A causal analysis Natural kinds and dispositions: a causal analysis

Objects have dispositions. Dispositions are normally analyzed by providing a meaning to disposition ascriptions like ‘This piece of salt is soluble’. Philosophers like Carnap, Goodman, Quine, Lewis and many others have proposed analyses of such disposition ascriptions. In this paper we will argue with Quine (‘Natural Kinds’, 1970) that the proper analysis of ascriptions of the form ‘ x is disposed to m (when C)’, where ‘ x ’ denotes an object, ‘ m ’ a manifestation, and ‘ C ’ a condition, goes like this: (i) ‘ x is of natural kind k ’, and (ii) the generic ‘ k s are m (when C)’ is true. For the analysis of the generic, we propose an analysis in terms of causal powers: ‘ k s (when C) have the causal power to m ’. The latter, in turn, is analyzed in a very precise way, making use of Pearl’s probabilistic graphical causal models. We will show how this natural kind-analysis improves on standard conditional analyses of dispositions by avoiding the standard counterexamples, and that it gives rise to precise observable criteria under which the disposition ascription is true.
Automatic Level Difficulty Adjustment in Platform Games Using Genetic Algorithm Based Methodology

In platform games, enemy behavior is not complicated. Therefore, challenges in such games come from the right mixture between enemies and environments of each level. Platform games require manual testing for tuning the game balance for mass audience. This is very time consuming. In addition, the difficulty of each level obtained is not guaranteed to suit individuals. Very few researches tackle how balanced levels can be generated automatically for individuals. This paper proposes a new methodology for using artificial intelligence to adjust games difficulty to suit players by automatically generating levels in platform games. The method is inspired by genetic algorithm. It is much easier to implement compared to an existing reinforcement learning based method, while still maintains similar gameplay quality. The new methodology also consumes less memory.
User-Uncertainty : A Human-Centred Uncertainty Taxonomy for VGI through the Visual Analytics Workflow

The emergence of Web 2.0 and ubiquitous mobile platforms makes it possible to collect a vast amount of information contributed by people (VGI). For example, crowdsourcing applications collect information from domains such as biodiversity, urban planning, and risk management, and other sources such as social media connect citizens that exchange voluntarily huge amount of posts on platforms like Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook. VGI differs from data coming from sensors, simulations, and mathematical models. It is highly dependent on the human wills to share the information, and the background and knowledge of the user, which introduces uncertainty. In this paper, we explore different dimensions of VGI uncertainty from the perspective of the human that contributes with the data, as well as the technology and systems used to collect the data. Our contributions include a new taxonomy that explicitly differentiates among the uncertainty introduced by the humans, we named User-Uncertainty and analyzed it at different steps of the Visual Analytics Workflow. We present several use cases that illustrate our approach for the case of user-uncertainty coming from the producers. We conclude our paper with a discussion about the potential uses and future work related to user-uncertainty.
Urinary and Anthropometrical Indices of Bone Density in Healthy Nigerian Adults

Measurements on the x-ray of the 2nd metacarpal of the right hand and 2h fasting urine sample were used in a cross sectional study to assess urinary indices of bone density (bone mass, percentage cortical area, PCA) in 94 healthy Nigerian adults aged between 19-72 years. Body mass index (BMI) was also estimated. No significant gender - difference was observed in most of the parameters with exception of bone mass, which was larger in the males (57.11± 8.74 mm2 and 47.40±8.43 mm2 for males and females respectively, p (Journal of Applied Sciences & Environmental Management: 2003 7(1): 19-24)
Contents 1 Overview : A Brave New World 3 2 Global Fragmentation and Existing Trade Rules 6

The rapid rise in global fragmentation – foreign investment, global supply chains, and ‘production sharing’ – is fundamentally reshaping the multilateral trading system. This paper uses a simple economic modeling framework to understand how the global fragmentation phenomenon may reshape the WTO, and particularly its developing country members that are most affected by the rise in global production sharing and foreign direct investment. The paper argues that the surge in global production sharing, supply chain agreements, and investment has not only recast the role of existing GATT/WTO rules, but that these same forces also create a strong rationale for new multilateral disciplines pertaining to investment incentives and other ‘behind-the-border’ policies. ∗This document was prepared as a background paper for the 2014 World Trade Report. †Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth; 100 Tuck Hall; Tuck Drive; Hanover, N.H. 03755; ph. (01) 603.646. 8962; emily.blanchard@tuck.dartmouth. edu.