Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluating Punishment on Recidivism: A Probationary Selection Model with Judge Assignment Randomization

The effect of punishment on subsequent criminal behavior is a crucial topic in law and economics. In evaluating the influence of punishment on recidivism, substantial research was conducted on active sentencing cases, whereas 87.39% of crimes fell into categories for which probation is an option. When the policy changes the punishment scheme, it may induce the judges to change the sentencing practices, and their responses will vary. In order to examine the total impact of policy changes on judges’ decisions and their implications on recidivism, it is essential to take into account how probationary decisions are made. We estimate the effect of comprehensive punishment on recidivism using a probationary selection model with judge randomization. In our model, the judges make various decisions, including whether or not to impose probation, its duration, and the (potential) length of the sentence. We illustrate how this can be done using North Carolina data from 1995 to 2010.
On the density of cyclotomic lattices constructed from codes

Recently, Venkatesh improved the best known lower bound for lattice sphere packings by a factor loglog n for infinitely many dimensions n. Here, we prove an effective version of this result, in the sense that we exhibit, for the same set of dimensions, finite families of lattices containing a lattice reaching this bound. Our construction uses codes over cyclotomic fields, lifted to lattices via Construction A. We also prove a similar result for families of symplectic lattices.
THE REMARKABLE DEATHS OF 9–11 SOLAR MASS STARS

The post-helium-burning evolution of stars from 7 M ⊙ ? > to 11 M ⊙ ? > is complicated by the lingering effects of degeneracy and off-center ignition. Here, stars in this mass range are studied using a standard set of stellar physics. Two important aspects of the study are the direct coupling of a reaction network of roughly 220 nuclei to the structure calculation at all stages and the use of a subgrid model to describe the convective bounded flame that develops during neon and oxygen burning. Below 9.0 M ⊙ ? > degenerate oxygen–neon cores form that may become either white dwarfs or electron-capture supernovae. Above 10.3 M ⊙ ? > the evolution proceeds “normally” to iron-core collapse, without composition inversions or degenerate flashes. Emphasis here is upon the stars in between, which typically ignite oxygen burning off-center. After oxygen burns in a convectively bounded flame, silicon burning ignites in a degenerate flash that commences closer to the stellar center and with increasing violence for stars of larger mass. In some cases the silicon flash is so violent that it could lead to the early ejection of the hydrogen envelope. This might have interesting observable consequences. For example, the death of a 10.0 M ⊙ ? > star could produce two supernova-like displays, a faint low-energy event due to the silicon flash, and an unusually bright supernova many months later as the low-energy ejecta from core collapse collides with the previously ejected envelope. The potential relation to the Crab supernova is discussed.
Characteristic length of a holographic superconductor with d-wave gap

After the discovery of the s-wave and p-wave holographic superconductors, a d-wave holographic superconductor model has also been constructed recently [Phys. Rev. D. 81, 106008]. we study the perturbation of the gravity theory analytically to calculate the superconducting coherence length � of the d-wave holographic superconductor near the superconducting phase transition point. The �� � � ;
The Hidden Cost of Fraud: An Instance-Dependent Cost-Sensitive Approach for Positive and Unlabeled Learning

Financial institutions have increasingly suffered pressure to implement better and faster fraud detection systems to minimize the cost of fraud. This issue has attracted attention from the literature over recent years. Despite the practical relevance, few works have considered label uncertainty in fraud detection. The incomplete label information naturally arises because fraudsters strive to go undetected. Most fraud detection systems operate by spending more resources to investigate only few suspicious cases and quickly process the rest as unsuspicious. That is, we only have positive label information of some fraud-sters whereas the rest of the positives, together with legitimate non-fraudsters, remain unlabeled. This setting is referred to as learning from positive and unlabeled data, or PU learning. Besides the issue of undetected fraudsters, fraud detection is commonly regarded as a cost-sensitive classification task in which the misclassification cost can substantially vary between examples. Thus, this work introduces a novel technique that integrates PU learning and the instance-dependent cost-sensitive framework: PU-CSBoost. PU-CSBoost can directly minimize financial loss through an instance-dependent cost measure that also incorporates the misclassification cost due to hidden fraudsters. Our empirical analysis compares PU-CSBoost with CSBoost, its non-PU counterpart, and other PU techniques specialized in imbalanced learning. The experimental results emphasize the PU-CSBoost’s potential to diminish financial losses under the PU setting. Moreover, the results suggest a quick drop in cost-sensitive performance by CSBoost when hidden fraudsters are present. Thus, ignoring the issue of hidden fraudsters can lead to an underwhelming performance in cost savings for techniques based on the cost-sensitive framework.
On automorphisms of blowups of $\mathbb{P}^3$

Let $\pi :X\rightarrow \mathbb{P}^3$ be a finite composition of blowups along smooth centers. We show that for "almost all" of such $X$, if $f\in Aut(X)$ then its first and second dynamical degrees are the same. We also construct many examples of finite blowups $X\rightarrow \mathbb{P}^3$, whose automorphism group $Aut(X)$ has only finitely many connected components. We also present a heuristic argument showing that for a "generic" compact K\"ahler manifold $X$ of dimension $\geq 3$, the automorphism group $Aut(X)$ has only finitely many connected components.
Thesis for the degree

Interactive proofs of proximity (IPPs) offer ultra-fast approximate verification of assertions regarding their input, where ultra-fast means that only a small portion of the input is read and approximate verification is analogous to the notion of approximate decision that underlies property testing (PT). Specifically, in an IPP, the prover can make the verifier accept each input in the property, but cannot fool the verifier into accepting an input that is far from the property (except for with small probability). The verifier in an IPP system engages in two very different types of activities: interacting with an untrusted prover, and querying its input. The classic definition of IPP allows for arbitrary coordination between these two activities, but keeping them separate is both conceptually interesting and necessary for important applications such as addressing temporal considerations (i.e., at what time is each of the services available) and facilitating the construction of zero-knowledge schemes. In this thesis we embark on a systematic study of IPPs where the queries should not be affected by the interaction with the prover, termed Proof-Oblivious (PO) queries. By assigning the query and interaction activities to separate modules, we can consider different limitations on their coordination, and present a hierarchy of PO queries IPPs. The most strict limitation requires these activities to be totally isolated from one another; they just feed their views to a separate deciding module. We show that such systems can be eﬀiciently emulated by standard testers. In the other extreme, we only disallow information to flow from the interacting module to the querying module, but allow free information flow in the other direction. We show that extremely eﬀicient one-round (i.e., two-message) systems of such type can be used to verify properties that are extremely hard to test (without the help of a prover). That is, the complexity of verifying can be polylogarithmic in the complexity of testing. This stands in contrast to MAPs (a 1 / 2 -round system) in which proof-oblivious queries are as limited as our isolated model. Our main focus is on an intermediate model that allows shared randomness between the querying and interacting modules but no other information flow between them. We show that such 1 -round systems are eﬀiciently emulated by standard testers whereas even 3 / 2 -round systems of extremely low complexity exist for properties that are extremely hard to test. We also show that in this model we can emulate some classes of IPPs that make proof-dependent queries.
Computational cognitive modeling for syntactic acquisition: Approaches that integrate information from multiple places

Abstract Computational cognitive modeling is a tool we can use to evaluate theories of syntactic acquisition. Here, I review several models implementing theories that integrate information from both linguistic and non-linguistic sources to learn different types of syntactic knowledge. Some of these models additionally consider the impact of factors coming from children’s developing non-linguistic cognition. I discuss some existing child behavioral work that can inspire future model-building, and conclude by considering more specifically how to build better models of syntactic acquisition.
Adversarial oversampling for multi-class imbalanced data classification with convolutional neural networks

Although many methods have been proposed for dealing with class imbalance, the problem of multi-class imbalanced classification still received significantly smaller attention. This problem is particularly important in image imbalanced classification since it has many critical applications, e.g., in the medical domain. One group of effective methods for imbalanced data are oversampling algorithms; however, they are usually not designed to work with image data. The current methods also work in separation from the learning algorithm, not considering the difficulties encountered during the training. In this work, we propose a new oversampling algorithm for neural networks that changes oversampled instances during training to further expand the decision region of minority classes, providing better recognition of minority classes. Experiments performed on various datasets with several configurations of class-imbalanced distributions demonstrate that the proposed method provides significant F-measure and G-mean improvements on imbalanced classification tasks.
Zeros of a Certain Class of Gauss Hypergeometric Polynomials

AbstractWe prove that as n → ∞, the zeros of the polynomial $$_2 F_1 \left[ {\begin{array}{*{20}c} { - n,\alpha n + 1} \\ {\alpha n + 2} \\ \end{array} ;z} \right]$$2F1[−n,αn+1αn+2;z] cluster on (a part of) a level curve of an explicit harmonic function. This generalizes previous results of Boggs, Driver, Duren et al. (1999–2001) to the case of a complex parameter α and partially proves a conjecture made by the authors in an earlier work.
Black Empowerment and Whites’ Backlash: The Effect of the Voting Rights Act∗

The 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) dismantled the institutional barriers that had suppressed political participation of African Americans in the U.S. South since the end of Reconstruction. Did it also win hearts and minds in the racially conservative South? In this paper, we study this question using newly collected data on county-level voter registration rates by race. Exploiting variation induced by a special provision of the VRA (“coverage”), we find that covered counties with higher shares of African Americans experienced a larger increase in Black and white registration rates. White counter-mobilization was concentrated in counties where Black empowerment was more likely to represent a political threat to the white majority, and was accompanied by higher hostility against African Americans, as observed in local newspapers. Additional analysis shows that the negative effects of the VRA on whites’ racial attitudes persisted over time, and are still evident today.
Your Mother: Motivating Tones of Voice Predict

Virtually nothing is known about the role that tone of voice may play in motivating interactions. Herein, we use an experimental approach to explore for the first time how the same directive instructions (“Do well at the play”) have different effects on adolescents depending on the motivational tone of voice used to convey these instructions. A sample of 1,000 adolescents aged 14-15 years was randomly assigned to hearing semantically identical messages that were expressed by mothers of adolescents with controlling, autonomy-supportive, or neutral tones of voice. Results suggest that the way speakers modulated their voice when intoning the same verbal messages affected adolescents’ emotional, relational, and behavioral intention responses. Listening to mothers making motivating statements in an autonomy-supportive, relative to a neutral, tone of voice elicited more positive and less negative emotions, increased closeness and intentional behavioral engagement among 14-15 year old adolescents, while the opposite set of findings emerged when adolescents listened to mothers making motivational statements in a controlling tone of voice. These findings elucidate how mothers’ spoken communications can impact adolescents, with implications for the quality of parent-child relationships, adolescents’ well-being and engagement.
GRMHD formulation of highly super-Chandrasekhar magnetized white dwarfs: stable configurations of non-spherical white dwarfs

The topic of magnetized super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs is in the limelight, particularly in the last few years, since our proposal of their existence. By full-scale general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) numerical analysis, we confirm in this work the existence of stable, highly magnetized, significantly super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs with mass more than 3 solar mass. While a poloidal field geometry renders the white dwarfs oblate, a toroidal field makes them prolate retaining an overall quasi-spherical shape, as speculated in our earlier work. These white dwarfs are expected to serve as the progenitors of over-luminous type Ia supernovae.
NEAR-INFRARED ADAPTIVE OPTICS IMAGING OF INFRARED LUMINOUS GALAXIES: THE BRIGHTEST CLUSTER MAGNITUDE–STAR FORMATION RATE RELATION

We have established a relation between the brightest super star cluster (SSC) magnitude in a galaxy and the host star formation rate (SFR) for the first time in the near-infrared (NIR). The data come from a statistical sample of ∼40 luminous IR galaxies (LIRGs) and starbursts utilizing K-band adaptive optics imaging. While expanding the observed relation to longer wavelengths, less affected by extinction effects, it also pushes to higher SFRs. The relation we find, MK ∼ −2.6log SFR, is similar to that derived previously in the optical and at lower SFRs. It does not, however, fit the optical relation with a single optical to NIR color conversion, suggesting systematic extinction and/or age effects. While the relation is broadly consistent with a size-of-sample explanation, we argue physical reasons for the relation are likely as well. In particular, the scatter in the relation is smaller than expected from pure random sampling strongly suggesting physical constraints. We also derive a quantifiable relation tying together cluster-internal effects and host SFR properties to possibly explain the observed brightest SSC magnitude versus SFR dependency.
Design and Development of a Smart Fashion Accessory – Communicating Positive Facial Expressions Hidden by Face Masks –

: Face masks interfere with social interactions, as they cover facial expressions that communicate personality, intentions, and emotions, and consequently impede smooth communication. This study designed and implemented a smart fashion accessory that communicates positive emotions to others, even when wearing a face mask, and evaluated its psychological effects. The design of the smart fashion accessory integrates headbands, earrings, and chokers. The electromyography (EMG) of the facial muscles was measured to identify positive facial expressions hidden by the mask. The integrated smart fashion accessory controls the red-green-blue (RGB) light-emitting diode (LED) emission pattern built into the earrings according to the facial expression recognized by the EMG. Hue rotation and white blink were set as RGB LED emission patterns, and their psychological effects were evaluated in the experiment. The result confirmed that “active,” “enthusiastic,” and “excited” expressions hidden by the mask were transmitted by the integrated smart fashion accessory.
A systematic study of evolved supernova remnants in the large and small Magellanic Clouds with Suzaku

Typing the origin (i.e., Type Ia or core-collapse) of supernova remnants (SNRs) is crucial to determine the rates of supernova (SN) explosions in a galaxy, which is a key to understand its recent chemical evolution. However, evolved SNRs in the so-called Sedov phase are dominated by the swept-up interstellar medium (ISM), making it difficult to determine their ejecta composition and thus SN type. Here we present a systematic X-ray study of nine evolved SNRs in the Magellanic Clouds, DEM L238, DEM L249, 0534-69.9, 0548-70.4, B0532-71.0, B0532-67.5, 0103-72.6, 0049-73.6, and 0104-72.3, using archival data of the Suzaku satellite. Although Suzaku does not spatially resolve the SN ejecta from the swept-up ISM due to the limited angular resolution, its excellent energy resolution has enabled clear separation of emission lines in the soft X-ray band. This leads to the finding that the `spatially-integrated' spectra of the evolved (~10^4 yr) SNRs are still significantly contributed by emission from the ejecta at the energies around 1 keV. The Fe/Ne mass ratios, determined mainly from the well-resolved Fe L-shell and Ne K-shell lines, clearly divide the observed SNRs into the Type Ia and core-collapse groups, confirming some previous typing made by Chandra observations that had utilized its extremely high angular resolution. This demonstrates that spatially-integrated X-ray spectra of old SNRs can also be used to discriminate their progenitor type, which would be helpful for future systematic studies of extragalactic SNRs with ASTRO-H and beyond.
Community structure benefits the fixation of cooperation under strong selection

Zhi-Xi Wu, ∗ Zhihai Rong, 3, † and Han-Xin Yang ‡ Institute of Computational Physics and Complex Systems, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu 730000, China Web Sciences Center, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu Sichuan 611731, China Department of Electronic and Information Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong Department of Physics, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350108, China (Dated: Received: date / Revised version: date)
AGN-driven perturbations in the intracluster medium of the cool-core cluster ZwCl 2701

We present the results obtained from a total of 123 ks X-ray (Chandra) and 8 hrs of 1.4 GHz radio (Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope - GMRT) observations of the cool core cluster ZwCl 2701 (z = 0.214). These observations of ZwCl 2701 showed the presence of an extensive pair of ellipsoidal cavities along the East and West directions within the central region < 20 kpc. Detection of bright rims around the cavities suggested that the radio lobes displaced X-ray emitting hot gas forming shell-like structures. The total cavity power (mechanical power) that directly heated the surrounding gas and cooling luminosity of the cluster were estimated to be ~2.27 x 10^{45} erg\s and 3.5 x 10^{44} erg\s, respectively. Comparable values of cavity power and cooling luminosity of ZwCL 2701 suggested that the mechanical power of the AGN outburst is large enough to balance the radiative cooling in the system. The star formation rate derived from the H_alpha luminosity was found to be ~0.60 M_sun yr^{-1} which is about three orders of magnitude lower than the cooling rate of ~196 M_sun yr^{-1}. Detection of the floor in entropy profile of ZwCl 2701 suggested the presence of an alternative heating mechanism at the centre of the cluster. Lower value of the ratio (~10^{-2}) between black hole mass accretion rate and Eddington mass accretion rate suggested that launching of jet from the super massive black hole is efficient in ZwCl 2701. However, higher value of ratio (~10^{3}) between black hole mass accretion rate and Bondi accretion rate indicated that the accretion rate required to create cavities is well above the Bondi accretion rate.
Validation of the Spanish Activity Questionnaire in COPD (SAQ-COPD) in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Purpose: The Spanish Activity Questionnaire in COPD (SAQ-COPD) is a short, simple physical activity (PA) measurement instrument for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In this study, we analyzed its validity and sensitivity to change. Methods: Prospective scale validation study. An accelerometer (DynaPort MoveMonitor ® ) and the Yale Physical Activity Survey (YPAS) were used as reference standards. The analyses examined the criterion validity (Spearman correlations), internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha), factorial structure, test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient, ICC), sensitivity to change and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve to classify patients with low PA. Results: A total of 300 patients diagnosed with COPD were analyzed (73% males, mean age 66 ± 8 years, 40.3% with severe airflow limitation). Cronbach’s alpha was 0.60 and Spearman's correlations with accelerometer measurements of PA [number of steps, metabolic equivalents (MET), physical activity level (PAL)] and YPAS ranged from 0.37 to 0.53 (all p < 0.001). ICC was 0.69 (95% CI 0.61–0.74) and the area under the ROC curve to identify low PA was 0.65 (95% confidence interval: 0.58–0.73). Significant variations in SAQ-COPD scores were found between groups defined by YPAS for change. Conclusion: The SAQ-COPD questionnaire is a valid instrument for classifying PA in patients with COPD. Correlations with other instruments provide criterion validity and also demonstrate good sensitivity to change.
INTUITING IGNATIUS IN CORPORATE CULTURE: IGNATIAN VALUES IN THE WORKPLACE

In this exploratory study, I examine Ignatian values to see if they relate to corporate culture. Using values theory and content analysis methodology I find that (1) among the Jesuit colleges and Universities, there is no consistency in the use of the Ignatian values, (2) the Ignatian values are embedded in those colleges and universities that use them relative to Protestant Universities, and (3) the Ignatian values have some similarity with corporate values.
Towards Anthropomorphising Autonomous Vehicles: Speech and Embodiment on Trust and Blame After an Accident

—A novel experiment is presented of our research on the effects of anthropomorphism on trust and blame after an accident involving an Autonomous Vehicle (AV). We presented 147 –out of an expected 300 based on power calculations– participants simulation software generated animations of a hypothetical accident involving an AV, with manipulation of presence of a humanoid robot, and different conversation styles. So far we have found no direct effect on trust, but we have found promising results on factors that correlate with trust; measures of competence and discomfort, and a potential effect on blame.