Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
All-sky Search for Continuous Gravitational Waves from Isolated Neutron Stars in the Early O3 LIGO Data

We report on an all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves in the frequency band 20-2000\,Hz and with a frequency time derivative in the range of $[-1.0, +0.1]\times10^{-8}$\,Hz/s. Such a signal could be produced by a nearby, spinning and slightly non-axisymmetric isolated neutron star in our galaxy. This search uses the LIGO data from the first six months of Advanced LIGO's and Advanced Virgo's third observational run, O3. No periodic gravitational wave signals are observed, and 95\%\ confidence-level (CL) frequentist upper limits are placed on their strengths. The lowest upper limits on worst-case (linearly polarized) strain amplitude $h_0$ are $~1.7\times10^{-25}$ near 200\,Hz. For a circularly polarized source (most favorable orientation), the lowest upper limits are $\sim6.3\times10^{-26}$. These strict frequentist upper limits refer to all sky locations and the entire range of frequency derivative values. For a population-averaged ensemble of sky locations and stellar orientations, the lowest 95\%\ CL upper limits on the strain amplitude are $\sim1. \times10^{-25}$. These upper limits improve upon our previously published all-sky results, with the greatest improvement (factor of $\sim$2) seen at higher frequencies, in part because quantum squeezing has dramatically improved the detector noise level relative to the second observational run, O2. These limits are the most constraining to date over most of the parameter space searched.
Making Sense of the Challenge: Forecasting and Reflecting on Challenging Experiences on the Talent Pathway

Challenging experiences appear to be an important element of the talent pathway with the potential to derail as well as propel young athletes’ progress. The purpose of this study was to examine how young athletes and their coaches experienced the most difficult challenges (self-identified by the young athletes) in the early years on a talent pathway in the United Kingdom. Eight young athletes ( M age = 15.8, SD = 0.9 years) and five talent pathway coaches ( M age = 35.6, SD = 5.9 years) were purposefully sampled from a range of sports based on their involvement at the phase of the talent pathway equivalent to the transition between specializing and investment years. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted at two time points separated by five months. Data was analyzed via interpretative phenomenological analysis. In relation to the young athlete’s most difficult challenges, participants forecast their perception of the challenge and what lay ahead on the pathway. Participants reflected on the application of psychobehavioral skill for the challenge, the navigation of the challenge experience, the complexities of the challenge, and the lessons learned through the experience in preparation for future challenges. Specifically, talent pathway coaches should be aware of the individuality and complexity of the challenge experience as interpreted by the youth athletes, more so than the type of challenge itself. In doing so, talent pathway coaches should support young athletes in the development of forecasting and reflection skills to aid in navigating challenging experiences.
Examining the Effects of Structured Word Inquiry on the Reading and Spelling Skills of Persistently Poor Grade 3 Readers

Background : The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of Structured Word Inquiry (SWI; an orthography intervention with a focus on morphology and how morphology interrelates with phonology and etymology) and compare them to those of Simplicity intervention (a novel phonics intervention) on the reading and spelling skills of persistently poor Grade 3 readers. Methods : Forty-eight English-speaking Canadian children (19 females, M age = 8.73 years) with persistent reading difficulties were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: SWI, Simplicity, and Control. Interventions were delivered by trained graduate students over 10 weeks, 3 times a week, for 30 minutes. Children were tested three times (pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-test) on measures of phonological awareness, morphological awareness, reading (Word Reading, Morphological Relatedness, Word Attack), and spelling. Results : Results of hierarchical linear modeling showed a significant main effect of condition for Morphological Relatedness at post-test favouring SWI and Simplicity over Control and a significant interaction between a latent variable of all secondary decoding measures and morphological awareness. Effect sizes (Cohen’s d ) showed medium to large effects for both interventions on primary outcomes of Word Reading and Morphological Relatedness. Conclusions : These findings suggest that SWI and Simplicity can help persistently poor readers improve in some reading skills, but neither program is a panacea as a number of children continued to struggle after the intervention. (a) “Word Taught” (words that children may have been exposed to over the course of the intervention), (b) “Base Taught” (words that were never presented in lessons but that shared a base with a “Word Taught” word), and (c) “Affix Taught” (words that included trained affixes but with bases that had been carefully avoided). Results showed that the SWI group outperformed the control group in both “Word Taught” and “Base Taught” words. No significant differences between groups were obtained in the “Affix Taught” condition.
IntPhys: A Framework and Benchmark for Visual Intuitive Physics Reasoning

In order to reach human performance on complex visual tasks, artificial systems need to incorporate a significant amount of understanding of the world in terms of macroscopic objects, movements, forces, etc. Inspired by work on intuitive physics in infants, we propose an evaluation framework which diagnoses how much a given system understands about physics by testing whether it can tell apart well matched videos of possible versus impossible events. The test requires systems to compute a physical plausibility score over an entire video. It is free of bias and can test a range of specific physical reasoning skills. We then describe the first release of a benchmark dataset aimed at learning intuitive physics in an unsupervised way, using videos constructed with a game engine. We describe two Deep Neural Network baseline systems trained with a future frame prediction objective and tested on the possible versus impossible discrimination task. The analysis of their results compared to human data gives novel insights in the potentials and limitations of next frame prediction architectures.
Germline sequencing of DNA-damage-repair genes in two hereditary prostate cancer cohorts reveals new disease risk-associated gene variants.

Background: Knowledge of rare, inherited variants in DNA damage repair (DDR) genes is informing clinical management in common cancers. However, defining the rare disease-associated variants in prostate cancer (PrCa) is challenging due to their low frequency. Methods: Here, whole-genome and -exome sequencing data from two independent, high-risk Australian and North American familial PrCa datasets were interrogated for novel, rare DDR variants. Segregating, high-risk, likely pathogenic DDR gene variants were identified and subsequently genotyped in 1,963 individuals (700 familial and 459 sporadic PrCa cases, 482 unaffected relatives, and 322 screened controls) and association analyses performed accounting for relatedness (M QLS ). Results: Rare variants significantly associated with PrCa risk were identified in ERCC3 (rs145201970, p=2.57x10 -4 ) and BRIP1 (rs4988345, p=0.025) in the combined datasets. A PARP2 (rs200603922, p=0.028) variant in the Australian dataset and a MUTYH (rs36053993, p=0.031) variant in the North American dataset were also associated with PrCa risk. No evidence for a younger age or higher-grade disease at diagnosis was evident in variant carriers. Conclusions : Here, we provide new evidence for four novel germline DDR PrCa risk variants. Defining the full spectrum of PrCa associated DDR genes is important for effective clinical screening and disease management.
Educational Technology Trends for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The purpose of this study is to explore a variety of technologies used in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) education by examining published studies. A systematic literature review was conducted by using the Web of Science database to collect related studies. In total, 100 studies were reviewed comprehensively to investigate the trend regarding type and purpose of technology use, the kinds of technology commonly used for targeted skill development and instructional delivery tool. The results revealed that 1) the trend of scholarly publications have increased until 2016, 2) there are more studies targeted social skill rather than academic skills, 3) video, computer software, and mobile applications are commonly used software/multimedia, and 4) computers, mobile devices, and nondigital object are the most frequent used hardware for targeted skills.
Antipatterns for Architectural Knowledge Management

Recent research on Software Architecture has recovered its original emphasis on keeping track of design decisions and their rationales during software development, compiling them under the name of architectural knowledge (AK). This knowledge is composed of decision assets, which relate to each other creating a decision network structure. We argue that relationships in these networks of AK contain valuable information, in particular when they describe negative semantics. We use antipatterns to exploit and manage these negative relationships systematically. After examining and classifying the kinds of AK relationships, we describe a method that enriches this network by means of antipattern structures. To show the feasibility and suitability of this approach, we provide a proof-of-concept by applying it to an existing process, ATRIUM, with a concrete example, the Gas Station metaphor. Results of the use of the presented approach into three different projects with different complexities show both its feasibility and applicability.
Study of biometric technology in Face recognition and its approaches

: The biometric is the study of physical or behavioral Characteristics used for the identification of a Person. Facial recognition system (FRS) is the fastest growing biometric technology today. In this paper, a survey is being done on the techniques used for face recognition and compared with face recognition done with the histogram equalization. Results obtained with these techniques are more accurate and robust. Results are compared at the end of the paper. Algorithm is tested and check on the ORL database as well as images taken outside from the database. Tables regarding recognition rates are compared for PCA, LDA and Histogram Equalization.
Impacts of changes in environmental exposures and health behaviours due to the COVID-19 pandemic on cardiovascular and mental health: A comparison of Barcelona, Vienna, and Stockholm ☆ COVID-19

(6, 1156)), depression (7903 (5202, 10,936)), and anxiety (16,677 (926, 27,002)) would be anticipated. To decrease cardiovascular and mental health impacts, reductions in NO 2 and noise from the first COVID-19 surge should be sustained, but without reducing physical activity. Focusing on cities ’ connectivity that promotes active transportation and reduces motor vehicle use assists in achieving this goal.
Inverted Echo Sounder Data Report. Ulleung Basin of Japan/East Sea. June 1999 to July 2001

Abstract : Observations were conducted from June 1999 to July 2001 to study the shallow and deep current variability in the southwest Japan/East Sea. Data were collected during the field experiment with a two-dimensional array of pressure-gauge equipped inverted echo sounders (PIES) and deep recording current meters (RCM). The collection, processing and calibration of the PIES are documented in this report. Descriptions of the processes used to identify and remove jumps (offsets) in the pressure and travel time records, that resulted when the instruments were jostled or moved by deep crab-fishing activities in the Japan/East Sea, are given. Time series plots of travel time, bottom pressure, and temperature are presented for the 24 recovered instruments. Basic statistics of the hourly data are tabulated.
Automatic Facial Expression Analysis and Recognition using Zone Based Active and Salient Facial Patches

Recognition of facial expression has many useful applications that have drawn researcher’s interest over the past decade. Extraction of features is a major step in the analysis of expression which leads to fast and accurate recognition of expression. Recognition of facial expressions is not an easy issue for methods of machine learning, as different people can vary in the way they show their expressions and for one expression the image of the same person can differ for brightness, background and position. Recognition of facial expression is therefore still a challenging computer vision problem. In this thesis work, we aim to design a robust technique of automatic facial expression analysis and recognition using zone based active and salient patches of the human face by combining various techniques from computer vision and pattern recognition. Expression recognition is closely related to face recognition where a lot of research has been done and a vast array of algorithms have been introduced. Facial expression recognition (FER) can also be considered as a special case of a pattern recognition problem and many techniques are available. In the designing of an FER system, we divided the system into 4 modules, i.e. preprocessing, active and salient patch extraction and classification. Voila Jones algorithm is used for face detection and after that features are extracted from the facial patches. The active facial patches are located on the facial regions that during different expressions undergo a major change. The active patches are located after detection of facial landmarks and hybrid features are determined from these patches. The use of small parts of face instead of the whole face for extracting features reduces the computational cost. Zoning is applied and got remarkable results. The dimensionality of the function is reduced by using linear discriminant analysis, which is further defined using the support vector machine (SVM). On the basis of classification expression is recognized. We evaluated our algorithm on Extended Cohn-Kanade (CK+) dataset.
Identifying the influence of transient thermal tensioning treatments on minimizing distortion and improving fatigue behavior of steel welded

Due to the cost efficiency of welding repairs, the use of transient thermal tensioning (TTT) has begun to be applied to minimize distortion and residual stresses, particularly on thin plates. However, it requires a long preheating time especially on large structures, so that the efficiency of welding process cannot be maximized. Application of TTT treatment using flame heater on TTT treatment which require no preheating time so that welding efficiency can be increased. The aims of this study are to investigate the TTT treatment in reducing distortion, investigate the effect of TTT treatment on tensile strength and hardness, investigate the microstructure and its effect on tensile strength and hardness, investigated the effect of TTT treatment on fatigue crack growth rate. In this research, TTT treatment was performed by flame heating on the both side of weld line integrated in welding process. Temperature in both side plates were controlled and measured using thermocouple. The tests on the weld joints were carried out including distortion measurement, microstructure examination, hardness measurement, tensile test and fatigue test. Results showed that the TTT (60) treatment is the most effective in decreasing the longitudinal distortion which placing the flame heating a 60 mm behind welding torch. It tends to increase the tensile strength of weld metal supported by its increasing hardness. The increase in the percentage of the acicular ferrite phase is linearly related to the tensile strength and hardness of the weld joint. The fatigue behavior could be improved by TTT treatment (60) which is associated with the effect of decreasing residual stress in the weld metal region. This treatment is the best parameter in an effort to increase the welding efficiency of the TTT method
Final Document on the Second Year Third Activity : 'Analysis of the Hydrometeorological Chain Performances on a Real Basin'

This report is the final document related to the second year, third activity whose title is: "Analysis of the hydrometeorological chain performances on a real basin". The purpose of the collaboration between LAMPIT (Department of Soil Defence, University of Calabria) and CMCC is to develop an hydrometeorological chain in order to obtain a reliable tool in the context of flood evolution prediction able to provide quantitative information of practical importance within the civil protection activities.The LAMPIT contribution to the project concerns the mathematical description of both the generation and propagation of flood events at basin scale. The work here presented has been carried out in close cooperation with CIRA researchers (dr. Pasquale Schiano and dr. Paola Mercogliano). The evaluation in time and magnitude of the overland flow phenomena caused by rainfall is very important in a variety of environmental and hydraulics situations, such as flood predictions, surface erosion, waste water treatment, irrigation and drainage. The mathematical representation of the flow processes is based on the fully dynamic shallow water equations. The solution of these equations, excluding some simplified cases, can be obtained by numerical integration only. Many schemes based on fully dynamic and simplified shallow water equations have been proposed in literature. Some of these schemes are implemented in the LAMPIT laboratory and applied to simulate simple cases of overland flow as already presented in the previous reports. In this period the implemented code has been applied to simulate the surface runoff over a real topography. In literature few articles deal with the simulation of real events and many difficulties are reported in each of them. Indeed the presence of small water depth over high slope and irregular topography may induce numerical anomalies. In this work some numerical techniques have been implemented to prevent these problems. Finally the implemented scheme has been applied to simulate the surface runoff over three different real watersheds.The work has been organized as follows:- Analysis of the models proposed in the technical literature with particular reference to the simulation of real event. - Development and implementation of numerical scheme and techniques - Simulation of overland flow events on real watersheds.
On the fit of models implied by unit-weighted scales

Abstract Unit-weighted scales are often computed in order to estimate the scores of individuals on common factors. Previous work has shown that unit-weighted scales imply a model that can be evaluated. The algebraic framework for this approach was presented here. The relationship between the fit of the model implied by unit-weighted scales, the scale length, and the item inter-correlations was evaluated algebraically and by means of a simulation study. The standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) excluding the elements in the main-diagonal of the item inter-correlation matrix can be used for the fit evaluation of the unit-weighted scale model.
Multiscale modelling of neutron star oceans

Type I X-ray bursts are thermonuclear burning events which occur on the surface of accreting neutron stars. Burning begins in a localised spot in the star’s ocean layer before spreading across the entire surface. By gaining a better understanding of X-ray bursts, tighter limits can be determined for other neutron star properties such as the mass, radius, spin frequency and magnetic field. The ocean environment is very extreme, involving much higher pressure, temperature and magnetic field strength compared to the conditions typically found in terrestrial systems. We shall be looking at the effects of the strong gravitational field, modelling the ocean using general relativistic hydrodynamics. The physics of X-ray bursts acts over a wide range of scales, which introduces a number of challenges when modelling them. In this work, we use the multiscale approach to couple together multiple physical models in order to best capture the physics across these various scales. On the smallest scales, the physics is dominated by turbulent burning. The speed of propagation of the burning front is much slower than the acoustic speed, making it difficult to model this with conventional numerical schemes. We therefore instead use the low Mach number approximation, which we have derived and implemented for the relativistic fluid equations based on the existing approach developed for the Newtonian case. On larger scales, the burning front can be thought of as a discontinuity. To model this, we investigate the reactive Riemann problem for relativistic deflagrations and detonations and develop a numerical solver. The large scale propagation of the burning front is believed to be dominated by the Coriolis force. To capture this behaviour, we have derived and implemented a model for the relativistic form of the shallow water equations. Finally, we construct a hybrid scheme to combine the best features of these approximations, extending existing adaptive mesh refinement techniques to include different physical models at different scales.
Motion-induced blindness and microsaccades: Cause and effect

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The breaching of temporary open/closed estuaries.

Intermittent breaching of sand barriers at temporary open estuaries plays a key role in the functioning of these systems. Breaching events lead to large and rapid changes in the physico-chemical environment which in turn triggers major biological responses. The breaching process can cause significant morphological changes as strong breach outflows can scour large quantities of accumulated sediments from an estuary. Simple laboratory experiments are reported that investigate the temporal ev? lution of the breach and the scaling of the breach characteristics namely the breach width W, volume Vb, formation time TF and peak outflow Qp. The experiments were specifically designed to investigate the influence of the outflow volume S, the hydraulic head Hand the barrier breadth B on the breach characteristics. The breach width W was found to be proportional to Sl/3, whilst the breach volume % was found to be proportional to H BS1/ 3 . The breach formation time TF was found to be proportional to (gj Sl/3)-1/2 (Hj Sl/3)-3/2 (B j Sl/3)1 and the peak outflow Qp was found to be proportional to (gS5/3)1/2 (HjS1/3)3/2 (BjS1/3)-1. These scalings are also shown to be consistent with observed breach characteristics for actual estuaries and earth dam failures where outflow volumes are typically six orders of magnitude larger than for the models. Preface I, Michael Gerald Parkinson hereby declare that the whole of this dissertation is my own work and has not been submitted in part, or in whole to any other University. Where use has been made of the work of others, it has been duly acknowledged in the text. The research work was carried out in the Department of Civil Engineering, Surveying and Construction, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Roward College, Durban, under the supervision of Professor Derek Stretch. Signature: . Date: .