Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of a subsample of the Planck SZ source cluster catalogues using optical SDSS DR12 data

Aims. The Planck catalogues of Sunyaev –Zeldovich (SZ) sources, PSZ1 and PSZ2, are the largest catalogues of galaxy clusters selected through their SZ signature in the full sky. In 2013, we started a long-term observational programme at Canary Island observatories with the aim of validating ∼500 unconfirmed SZ sources. In this work we present results of the initial pre-screening of possible cluster counterparts using photometric and spectroscopic data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR12. Our main aim is to identify previously unconfirmed PSZ2 cluster candidates and to contribute in the determination of the actual purity and completeness of Planck SZ source sample. Methods. Using the latest version of the PSZ2 catalogue, we selected all sources overlapping with the SDSS DR12 footprint and without redshift information. We validated these cluster fields following optical criteria (mainly distance with respect to the Planck pointing, magnitude of the brightest cluster galaxy, and cluster richness), and combined these criteria with the profiles of the Planck Compton y-maps. This combined procedure allows for a more robust identification of optical counterparts compared to simply cross-matching with existing SDSS cluster catalogues that have been constructed from earlier SDSS data releases. Results. The sample contains new redshifts for 37 Planck galaxy clusters that were not included in the original release of PSZ2 Planck catalogue. We detect three cases as possible multiple counterparts. We show that a combination of all available information (optical images and profile of SZ signal) can provide correct associations between the observed Planck SZ source and the optically identified cluster. We also show that Planck SZ detection is very sensitive even to high-z (z > 0.5) clusters. In addition, we also present updated spectroscopic information for 34 Planck PSZ1 sources (33 previously photometrically confirmed and 1 new identification).
Reduced Kinetic Model of Biodiesel Fuel Combustion

In times where the attention on alternative energy sources is continuously increasing, the study of biofuels is taking a primary role, as a possible replacement, or integration, of traditional transportation fuels. Among them, biodiesel fuels are typically a complex mixture of large fatty acids, obtained through transesterification of soybean and rapeseed oils with methanol. In this background, the pyrolysis and combustion kinetics of methyl esters is essential for a proper understanding of the combustion behavior and pollutant formation from biodiesel fuels. From a modeling point of view, when studying the combustion of large methyl esters a reliable kinetic mechanism is required. Nevertheless, the main problems of these molecules lie in their length and lack of symmetry in their structure, which results in the huge size of the related detailed kinetic mechanisms (thousands of species) with a consequent significant computational load, even when dealing with 0D and 1D models. In order to maintain the applicability of the kinetic mechanism also in multidimensional models, it should be useful someway to reduce its dimensions. For this reason, a reduced kinetic scheme for methyl esters was developed and is presented in this work. It is the result of the coupling of two different techniques: (i) an upstream lumping of species and reactions, through which several species are grouped into a single pseudo-species according to proper rules; (ii) a successive further reduction of the kinetic mechanism through a novel technique, based on the analysis of the reacting system in the desired range of operating conditions. The reduced mechanism was validated through comparison with experimental data in a wide range of conditions using shock tube, laminar flame speeds and ideal reactors. A satisfactory agreement with both experimental data and the original scheme was observed. Additionally, thanks to its limited dimensions, the kinetic model could be applied on more complex, multidimensional models. As an instance, its performances on a multi-zone model of an HCCI (Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition) engine are assessed: the obtained results show the great advantages of this mechanism, which can then be used in place of the original one without losing in accuracy, but with considerable savings in computational times.
Development of Microsatellite Markers for Leptobotia elongata (Cypriniformes: Cobitidae) Using 454 Sequencing and Cross-species Amplification

Thirty microsatellite markers were developed from Leptobotia elongata through 454 sequencing and 27 were polymorphic among 24 individuals, with an average of 9.67 alleles per locus, and the mean observed and expected heterozygosities were 0.81 and 0.79, respectively. Polymorphism information content (PIC) ranged from 0.416 to 0.933. In addition, cross-species amplification was tested for all 30 loci in four other loaches of Cobitidae (Leptobotia microphthalma, Botia superciliaris), and Nemacheilidae (Oreias dabryi, Triplophysa stenura). The results showed a significant high level of transferability (63%-97%), which means the possibility of these markers applying to other related species. The microsatellite loci described here would be useful in conservation of L. elongata and possibly some other species.
odelling carrying capacity dynamics for the conservation and management of erritorial salmonids

Inherent in the carrying capacity notion is the basic idea of a maximum population a particular level of resources can support over a period of time. Knowledge of carrying capacity is essential for wildlife conservation since it is intrinsic in determining how much habitat must be conserved to maintain healthy populations. Further, this concept has been the cornerstone of the management of exploited animal and plant populations. Yet the question about what determines carrying capacity for territorial species and how it can be quantified has been long neglected by ecological research. We propose a novel method to model carrying capacity dynamics for territorial salmonids, which can be further applied to any territorial species as long as they are principally limited by habitat conditions. In our model, maximum abundance is limited by environmentally induced fluctuating habitat conditions and regulated through territorial behaviour. Carrying capacity is estimated as the amount of habitat available divided by the expected individual territory area for a given life stage. We tested whether the model was capable of explaining the annual fluctuations in densities of brown trout Salmo trutta from 12 Mediterranean populations for a 12-year study period. We observed not only that density of the different life stages tracked carrying capacity dynamics, but also that the eventual cohort performance was affected by both intercohort competition and intensity of intracohort competition experienced in the previous year. Likewise, recruitment depended on the levels of carrying capacity saturation experienced by adult stock the year before. In any case, resilience decreased with carrying capacity. Such results suggest that restoration measures attempting to increase population abundance through stocking, increased breeding dispersion or cohort survival may reduce the performance of both the enhanced and competing cohorts. Further, high exploitation rates may lead populations occurring at low carrying capacities to extinction.
Functions that map cozerosets to cozerosets

A function f mapping the topological space X to the space Y is called a z-open function if for every cozeroset neighborhood H of a zeroset Z in X, the image f(H) is a neighborhood of clY (f(Z)) in Y. We say f has the z-separation property if whenever U, V are cozerosets and Z is a zeroset of X such that U ⊆ Z ⊆ V , there is a zeroset Zof Y such that f(U) ⊆ Z ' ⊆ f(V ). A surjective function is z-open if and only if it maps cozerosets to cozerosets and has the z-separation property. We investigate z-open functions and other functions that map cozerosets to cozerosets. We show that if f is a continuous z-open function, then the Stone extension of f is an open function. This is used to show several properties of topological spaces related to F-spaces are preserved under continuous z-open functions.
Thermal Fluid Flow Transport Phenomenon in Unsteady Rotating Drum during Spin-Down Process

Numerical analysis is performed on unsteady-state thermal fluid flow transport phenomena in a rotating drum heated at constant wall temperature during a spin-down process. Emphasis is placed on the effect of aspect ratio of the drum on the velocity and temperature fields. The governing equations are discretized by means of a finite-difference technique and numerically solved to determine the distributions of velocity vector and fluid temperature in the drum. It is disclosed from the study that (i) the formation of Ekman boundary layers on both sidewalls of the drum results in a pair of recirculating flows, and (ii) an attenuation of the flow velocity is affected by the aspect ratio of a drum. Results may be used to develop a method to achieve uniform mixing in an enclosed vessel.
Lessons in Combining Block-based and Textual Programming

Tiled Grace is a block-based programming system backed by a conventional textual language that allows switching back and forth between block-based and textual editing of the same code at any time. We discuss the design choices of Tiled Grace in light of existing research and a user experiment conducted with it. We also examine the sorts of task preferred in each mode by users who had the choice of editing either as blocks or as text, and find both positive and cautionary notes for block-based programming in the results.
The Impact of a Shopping Centre on the Value of Adjacent Residential Properties

One of the most significant changes in the South African retail landscape over the past few decades is the increase in the number and size of retail shopping centres situated in, or close to, residential areas. These shopping centres have the potential to generate both positive and negative externalities which may, in turn, be capitalised into adjacent residential property prices. However, policy makers are still unsure as to the effect of commercial land uses such as shopping centres on surrounding property prices. This study sheds light on this issue by considering the effect of the Walmer Park Shopping Centre, situated in Nelson Mandela Bay, on surrounding residential property prices. The results of this study indicate that, in the case of the Walmer Park Shopping Centre, a positive impact is exerted on the property values of adjacent houses.
Simulating the Effects of Debt Relief in Zambia

The HIPC initiative for debt relief in the poorest countries has been extended to cover more countries. Zambia is one the countries accepted under the enhanced initiative for a debt relief of US$ 3.8 billion. In this paper, the possible effects of this debt relief are analysed using a social accounting matrix as a tool of analysis. Two alternative approaches were chosen: income transfers, and direct production support in the amount of the annual decrease in the debt service. Experiments show how debt service relief can contribute to national growth targets. They also show the different effects on household income, resulting from the alternative expenditure patterns. Income transfer scenario creates greater increase in the household income, at the expense of production value.
Table 2 : Long-Run ( Between-Firm ) and Short-Run ( LSDV ) Parameter Estimates

The evidence about the magnitude of scope and scale economies in U.S. cash grain farming is revealed from the empirical estimation of the flexible fixed cost quadratic (FFCQ) model. This framework explicitly disaggregates the crop output vector to take the heterogeneity of output and gives insight to farmers to answer interesting questions such as: Are three-crop farms more cost efficient than twocrop or single-crop farms? How important are economies of scope (fixed-cost and variable-cost components) in two-crop farms and three-crop farms? Two-crop farms as well as three-crop farms exhibit overall economies of scale and scope in all four-size categories that increase with the farm size. They are able to lower the cost of producing crops in the same farm by spreading fixed costs over two or three crops and/or by exploiting product cost complementarity, or diversifying risks. Selected Paper, American Agricultural Economics Association Meeting, Long Beach, California, July 28-31, 2002.
CONDENSATE MINERALS FROM A BURNING COAL-WASTE HEAP IN AVION, NORTHERN FRANCE

A coal-waste heap in Avion, northern France, that has been undergoing subsurface combustion for several decades, is marked by the occurrence of efflorescences at combustion sites where gas and water vapor escape from surficial cracks and vents. Analysis of the efflorescences show that twenty different species of mineral are present, comprising various sulfates, as well as halides and native sulfur. The constituents needed for the formation of these minerals are ultimately derived from the heap of coal-mine waste, composed mainly of pyrite-bearing carbonaceous shale, coal and minor amounts of sandstone. They may be partly released by acid weathering of waste-heap materials prior to combustion, but largely by thermal decomposition and oxidation of those materials during combustion processes. Formation of the efflorescences near gas-discharge zones indicates transport of constituent to those zones from the inner part of the waste heap, which can occur in the gas phase for some elements (S, N, H and Cl), but would require droplets of water vapor as carriers for most cations. Interaction between condensate solutions and the local debris at the surface of the waste heap may also contribute to cations input prior to the formation of secondary minerals. Most minerals formed from a liquid phase along the rock-debris surface at low temperatures (T ≤ 100°C), as confirmed by the occurrence of fluid inclusions. Only salammoniac, native sulfur and mascagnite (where crystallized as a monocrystalline phase) were formed directly from a gas phase. The coal-waste heap shows great variations in mineral assemblages among sampling sites, which must be related to variations in waste composition and in conditions at the level at which the elements are released and where mineral formation takes place.
The role of learner and input variables in learning inflectional morphology

To examine effects of input and learner characteristics on morphology acquisition, 60 adult English speakers learned to inflect masculine and feminine Russian nouns in nominative, dative, and genitive cases. By varying training vocabulary size (i.e., type variability), holding constant the number of learning trials, we tested whether learners required a “critical mass” of vocabulary to generalize case marking patterns to new nouns. Cattell's Culture-Fair IQ Test mediated the effect of type variability on success in generalizing case marking to new vocabulary: only participants with above-median Culture-Fair Test scores showed the predicted critical mass effect of better generalization with larger training vocabulary. These results demonstrate how individual differences in central executive functioning and attention allocation capacity can affect adult second language learning.
Integrating agile practices with plan-driven medical device software development

The popularity of Agile software development is growing rapidly with an increasing number of projects being developed following Agile methodologies such as Scrum and XP [1]. Research has revealed that following Agile practices when developing software can have a significantly positive impact in reducing development time, reducing cost and increasing overall quality [2-4]. Whilst Agile practices can have a positive impact on a development project there are incompatibilities between Agile methodologies and the plan driven approaches followed when developing safety critical software [5, 6]. However, it has been recognised that “formal techniques may be used in an agile way” [5]. Case studies have been performed in organisations developing safety critical software which validate this statement [7-9]. This Ph.D. is focusing on the area of medical device software development and integrating Agile software development principles into traditional plan driven lifecycles for use in developing medical device software.
Developing Systems with NDT and NDT-Tool

The rising interest for developing systems in web environments has produced that the research community poses the necessity of offering methodological proposals in order to give a suitable reference when a web system is produced. In the last years, several methodological proposals have appeared: OOHDM (Object Oriented Hypermedia Design Method, UWE (UML Based Web Engineering), OOH (Object-Oriented Hypermedia Method), WSDM (Web Site Design Method) or WebML (Web Modelling Language) are only some examples. However, there is not a standard and world wide accepted methodology. Each methodology proposes its own techniques and models. This fact has produced that some studies have been made in order to compare them. These comparatives studies show that there are some gaps in web engineering. This paper presents these gaps and introduces NDT (Navigational Development Techniques). NDT is an approach which offers a different development process that starts with requirements treatment and allows to get design models using a systematic process. It tries to solve some of these gaps detected in web engineering. In order to introduce how NDT confronts these gaps, the paper presents NDT development process, a global vision of its objectives and its tool case, NDT-Tool. Also, this paper enumerated some real projects developed by NDT and NDT-Tool in real companies.
Sporadic auroras near the geomagnetic equator: in the Philippines, on 27 October 1856

Abstract. While low-latitude auroral displays are normally considered to be a manifestation of magnetic storms of considerable size, Silverman (2003, JGR, 108, A4) reported numerous “sporadic auroras” which appear locally at relatively low magnetic latitude during times of just moderate magnetic activity. Here, a case study is presented of an aurora near the geomagnetic equator based on a report from the Philippine islands on 27 October 1856. An analysis of this report shows it to be consistent with the known cases of sporadic auroras, except for its appearance at considerably low magnetic latitude. The record also suggests that an extremely low-latitude aurora is not always accompanied by large magnetic storms. The description of its brief appearance leads to a possible physical explanation based on an ephemeral magnetospheric disturbance provoking this sporadic aurora.
A Simple Model of Gauged Lepton and Baryon Charges

We propose a simple extension of the standard model with lepton and baryon numbers gauged by introducing only two leptoquarks (j+1/2, k-1/2) to the fermion content. As natural consequences of the anomaly cancelation, the right-handed neutrinos present and the number of observed fermion families equals to the number of fundamental colors, which is three. To avoid stabilized colored-leptoquarks, two scalar doublets Φ, 𝜒 are introduced which couple the leptoquarks to ordinary quarks. The new gauge bosons Z'L, Z'B gain masses via the vacuum values of scalars SL, SB which are only charged under the U(1)L, U(1)B symmetries, respectively. Furthermore, due to the spontaneous symmetry breaking of these charges, the neutrinos obtain small masses via type I seesaw mechanism while the baryogenesis can be generated in several cases. Constraints coming from flavor changing, stabilization of anomalously electric-charged scalars and collision phenomenology are also obtained.
Living trees provide stable large wood in streams

Large wood exerts strong influences on stream channel morphology and aquatic ecosystems. Previously, in‐stream large wood has generally been equated with dead wood. However, in streams in Northern California we found that living wood – trees that entered the channel but remained rooted and living – represented a major portion of the functional in‐stream large wood. We hypothesized that living wood will tend to be more stable, due to an attached root wad, and more persistent, due to lack of decay, than similarly sized dead wood. Living wood may provide important in‐stream structure in streams with riparian corridors that lack large conifers. We surveyed 20 stream reaches in Northern California with riparian corridors dominated by broadleaved trees and found that a high proportion of wood jams had key pieces that were still living. Living wood was capable of serving as a key piece for a wood jam at a smaller size than dead wood and had a greater influence on channel morphology. We found that only 74% of the jams without living wood persisted over 1–2 years while 98% of those with living key pieces remained in place. Due to living wood, the range of tree species and sizes that provide stable and functional in‐stream large wood may be broader than previously described. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Long-term effects of a mandatory multistage program: the New Deal for young people in the UK

The New Deal For Young People is the major welfare-to-work program in the UK. It is a mandatory multistage policy targeted at the 18-24 year old unemployed. This paper investigates the effectiveness of the program in terms of enhancing the (re)employment probability of participant males. I exploit the eligibility rule to identify a suitable counterfactual relying upon a simple regression discontinuity design. By exploiting such a discontinuity I am able to non parametrically identify (Hahn et al., 2001) a local average treatment effect (LATE). While relying upon the non parametric local linear regression method I am able to push forward such a parameter to a "global" dimension, implicitly adding parametric structure. No evidence of possible general equilibrium as well as substitution effects is found by a co- hort specific approach (before and after the program). The main result is that the program enhances employability by about 6-7%.
HIERARCHICAL BAYESIAN ANALYSIS OF BINARY MATCHED PAIRS DATA

The paper introduces a hierarchical Bayesian analysis of binary matched pairs data with noninformative prior distributions. Certain properties of the poste- rior distributions, including their propriety, are established. The Bayesian methods are implemented via Markov chain Monte Carlo integration techniques, and nu- merical illustrations are provided. For the logit link, the conditional and marginal maximum likelihood estimators of a treatment effect depend only on the off-main- diagonal elements of a 2 × 2 contingency table, and the same is true of McNemar's test. By contrast, the hierarchical Bayes estimators and subsequent analyses de- pend also on the main-diagonal elements in a natural way.
High speed machining modelling : SPH method capabilities

The purpose of this work is to evaluate the use of the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method within the framework of high speed cutting modelling. First, a 2D SPH based model is carried out using the LS-DYNA® software. SPH is a meshless method, thus large material distortions that occur in the cutting problem are easily managed and SPH contact control allows a "natural" workpiece/chip separation. The developed SPH model proves its ability to account for continuous and shear localized chip formation and also correctly estimates the cutting forces, as illustrated in some orthogonal cutting examples. Then, The SPH model is used in order to improve the general understanding of machining with worn tools. At last, a milling model allowing the calculation of the 3D cutting forces is presented. The interest of the suggested approach is to be freed from classically needed machining tests: those are replaced by 2D numerical tests using the SPH model. The developed approach proved its ability to model the 3D cutting forces in ball end milling.