Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterizing the effect of matching using linear propensity score methods with normal distributions

SUMMARY Matched sampling is a standard technique for controlling bias in observational studies due to specific covariates. Since Rosenbaum & Rubin (1983), multivariate matching methods based on estimated propensity scores have been used with increasing frequency in medical, educational, and sociological applications. We obtain analytic expressions for the effect of matching using linear propensity score methods with normal distributions. These expressions cover cases where the propensity score is either known, or estimated using either discriminant analysis or logistic regression, as is typically done in current practice. The results show that matching using estimated propensity scores not only reduces bias along the population propensity score, but also controls variation of components orthogonal to it. Matching on estimated rather than population propensity scores can therefore lead to relatively large variance reduction, as much as a factor of two in common matching settings where close matches are possible. Approximations are given for the magnitude of this variance reduction, which can be computed using estimates obtained from the matching pools. Related expressions for bias reduction are also presented which suggest that, in difficult matching situations, the use of population scores leads to greater bias reduction than the use of estimated scores.
A control chart based on sample ranges for monitoring the covariance matrix of the multivariate processes

For the univariate case, the R chart and the S 2 chart are the most common charts used for monitoring the process dispersion. With the usual sample size of 4 and 5, the R chart is slightly inferior to the S 2 chart in terms of efficiency in detecting process shifts. In this article, we show that for the multivariate case, the chart based on the standardized sample ranges, we call the RMAX chart, is substantially inferior in terms of efficiency in detecting shifts in the covariance matrix than the VMAX chart, which is based on the standardized sample variances. The user's familiarity with sample ranges is a point in favor of the RMAX chart. An example is presented to illustrate the application of the proposed chart.
Oxygen reduction performance measurements: Discrepancies against benchmarks

Oxygen electrocatalysis is crucial for renewable energy conversion and storage technologies. Specifically for proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is the primary reaction that determines performance and costs. The ORR activity and durability are commonly assessed using a rotating disk electrode (RDE). However, there are numerous inconsistencies in the RDE measurements among researchers when comparing newly developed ORR catalysts to state‐of‐the‐art ones. These inconsistencies in activity and durability evaluation and deviations from standard protocols result in irreproducible screening and benchmarking of electrocatalysts. Despite the fact that the US Department of Energy has established and regularly revises the standard protocols, many reported studies do not adhere to these guidelines. This perspective aims to draw attention to the discrepancies in ORR activity and stability measurements at RDE as primary screening and emphasizes implementing the mandatory standard for a meaningful comparison of ORR activity and durability. We intend to emphasize the use of available ORR test standards ubiquitously for more accurate comparisons and accelerate the development of fuel cell catalysts.
A general and simple method for obtaining R2 from generalized linear mixed‐effects models

The use of both linear and generalized linear mixed‐effects models (LMMs and GLMMs) has become popular not only in social and medical sciences, but also in biological sciences, especially in the field of ecology and evolution. Information criteria, such as Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), are usually presented as model comparison tools for mixed‐effects models. The presentation of ‘variance explained’ (R2) as a relevant summarizing statistic of mixed‐effects models, however, is rare, even though R2 is routinely reported for linear models (LMs) and also generalized linear models (GLMs). R2 has the extremely useful property of providing an absolute value for the goodness‐of‐fit of a model, which cannot be given by the information criteria. As a summary statistic that describes the amount of variance explained, R2 can also be a quantity of biological interest. One reason for the under‐appreciation of R2 for mixed‐effects models lies in the fact that R2 can be defined in a number of ways. Furthermore, most definitions of R2 for mixed‐effects have theoretical problems (e.g. decreased or negative R2 values in larger models) and/or their use is hindered by practical difficulties (e.g. implementation). Here, we make a case for the importance of reporting R2 for mixed‐effects models. We first provide the common definitions of R2 for LMs and GLMs and discuss the key problems associated with calculating R2 for mixed‐effects models. We then recommend a general and simple method for calculating two types of R2 (marginal and conditional R2) for both LMMs and GLMMs, which are less susceptible to common problems. This method is illustrated by examples and can be widely employed by researchers in any fields of research, regardless of software packages used for fitting mixed‐effects models. The proposed method has the potential to facilitate the presentation of R2 for a wide range of circumstances.
Changing Undergraduate Funding Mix and Graduate Degree Attainment

ABSTRACT Previous studies of the role of college students’ funding sources in their educational outcomes have focused on individual funding sources and have not paid much attention to the mixing of multiple sources. As rising college tuition has heightened the financial burden on college students, the use of multiple funding sources has become an adaptive funding strategy for completing a college degree. Using discrete funding-source information from the National Survey of College Graduates, this study offers the first exploration of the change in funding mixes across three cohorts — born in 1953–1962, 1963–1972, and 1973–1982 respectively — and their association with graduate degree attainment. The proportion of students who utilized only one or two funding sources decreased, while those who juggled three or more sources increased. Contrary to the oldest cohort, for whom the association between undergraduate funding mix and graduate degree attainment was relatively weak, in the recent cohort, students mobilizing multiple sources became less likely to obtain a graduate degree compared to those fully funded by their families.
Three bipods slicer prototype: tests and finite element calculations

For integral field spectroscopy R&D activities in progress at LAM, and particularly in relation with SNAP - SuperNova/Acceleration Probe - spectrograph, LAM has an on-going program to qualify Image Slicers for space instrumentation. In this context, an optomechanical concept of an image slicer supported by three bipods has been designed, realized and tested at the laboratory. This paper presents the mechanical design of the invar mount equipped with three bipods and supporting an assembly of 60 thin zerodur slices tied together thanks to optical contact. We document the design improvement made from last blades flexures prototype and we describe all the tests conducted on this new prototype: optical contact tests, vibration tests and thermal cycles. Thanks to a detailed FEM analysis on this three bipods concept, we correlate simulations with tests.
Influence of Size on Pattern-based Sequence Classification

In this paper we investigate the impact of size of vocabulary, the number of classes in the classification task and the length of patterns in a pattern-based sequence classification approach. So far, the approach has been applied successfully to datasets classifying into two or four classes. We now show results on six different classification tasks ranging from five to fifty classes. In addition, classification results on three different encodings of the data, leading to different vocabulary sizes, are explored. The system in general clearly outperforms the baseline. The encodings with a larger vocabulary size outperform those with smaller vocabularies. When using fixed length patterns the results are better, but vary more compared to using a range of pattern lengths. The number of classes in the classification task does not have an effect on the trends in the results, although, as could be expected, tasks with fewer classes typically lead to higher accuracies.
Wavelength demultiplexing structure based on a plasmonic metal–insulator–metal waveguide

A plasmonic multi-channel filter with individual export for each transmission peak is proposed on the basis of a metal–insulator–metal (MIM) structure. There are a series of slot cavities arrayed on both sides of the MIM slit. Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are captured into the cavities resulting in multiple resonance modes. By choosing the proper positions for the drop waveguides, the first and the second resonance wavelengths can be coupled out from the corresponding exports, respectively. The central transmission-peak wavelengths can be modified by the variation of the length of the slot cavities. For a single export, there is only one peak in a large wavelength range. Two-, four-, and eight-channel filters have been designed and numerically demonstrated by the 2D finite difference time-domain method. This proposed scheme can be used in wavelength demultiplexing and fluorescence spectroscopy areas.
Effects of gelatin and oxytocin supplementation in a long-term semen extender on boar semen quality and fertility potential

Objective This study investigated the efficacy of different concentrations of gelatin supplementation in long-term semen extender on boar semen quality during storage for 10 days at 17°C. Additionally, oxytocin was added to stored semen to enhance fertility. Methods In Experiment 1, boar semen was collected, diluted with gelatin at concentrations between 0% and 2.5% (w/v) and mixed with a semen extender. Then, it was kept in a refrigerator at 17°C and stored for 10 days. In Experiment 2, the sperm quality was examined after adding 0, 5, and 10 IU oxytocin per artificial insemination dose to the most effective semen extender from Experiment 1 and placing it in a refrigerator at 17°C for 10 days. In Experiment 3, the fertility potential in terms of non-return rate and litter size was determined using the most effective solid-stored semen supplemented with oxytocin. Results The results indicated that sperm quality decreased with increasing storage time (p<0.05). The sperm quality in terms of total motility, progressive motility, and viable sperm with intact acrosomes and high mitochondrial potential was the highest with 1.5% gelatin supplementation (p<0.001) on all days of storage. Treatment with oxytocin did not affect sperm quality (p>0.05). The non-return rate and litter size after insemination with semen supplemented with 1.5% gelatin and 10 IU of oxytocin after 8 to 10 days of storage were comparable to those of the control group (p>0.05). Conclusion A semen extender as a solid medium supplemented with 1.5% gelatin successfully preserved boar semen for a long storage duration. Treatment with oxytocin did not affect sperm quality. In addition, the fertility capacity using 1.5% gelatin with 10 IU oxytocin and stored for 8 to 10 days was acceptable and comparable to that of short-term storage.
Two‐wavelength reversible holograms in azo‐dye doped nematic liquid crystals

We describe reversible holographic effects in azo‐dye doped liquid crystals. Surface‐stabilized holograms are recorded at 514 nm using beams polarized parallel to the molecular director of the liquid crystals. While these holograms persist for several hours in the dark, complete erasure is achieved in a few seconds by exposure to 337 nm light.
Printed Coupled-Fed PIFA for Seven-Band GSM/UMTS/LTE WWAN Mobile Phone

A planar printed PIFA is proposed and fabricated in this work, which is promising for internal mobile applications. In the design, the presented antenna consists of a feeding strip and a coupling strip (which is short-circuited to the system ground by a long shorting strip). By the coupled-fed excitation, the proposed antenna can generate multiple resonant modes at lower and upper bands for seven-band WWAN operation, covering GSM850/900/DCS1800/PCS1900/UMTS2100/LTE2300/2500. In detail, the feeding strip can excite high frequency current distributions on the coupling strip by a coupling gap to generate a fundamental resonant mode at around 800 MHz, while the desired upper resonant modes at about 1850 MHz and 2550 MHz can be achieved by the feeding strip itself. The proposed antenna occupies a size of 15 × 45 mm2 and is easily printed on one surface of a FR4 substrate as system circuit board, which makes it suitable for practical mobile applications. Finally, the simulated and measured results are given, which obtain good agreement and illuminate the reliability of the scheme.
Békésy Audiometry at 20 Frequencies from 0.2 to 6 kc/sec

Absolute intensive thresholds are presented from 26 men yielding Bekesy audiograms at 20 frequencies. Results validate the practice of graphic interpolation between thresholds in octave steps to predict mean thresholds at half octave points. Thresholds are almost indistinguishable from those by conventional audiometry in a very similar population. Data are interpreted to confirm in general the practicability of using the proposed 1964 ISO reference threshold level as the norm for young otoscopically negative adults.
Sequential architecture-agnostic black-box attack design and analysis

Although adversarial machine learning attacks on image recognition models have been heavily investigated, the rising popularity of vision transformers revitalized the research on this topic. Due to the fundamental architectural differences be-tween CNNs, which still dominate the image recognition applications, and trans-formers, the state-of-the-art attacks designed for CNNs are not effective against transformers, and vice versa. Such lack of transferability in attacks and the growing architectural heterogeneity in practice make the black-box attack design increasingly challenging. However, skillful attackers can handle the increasing uncertainty in target model architecture following two main approaches: designing transferable attacks that are robust to the architectural uncertainty in target model, and identifying the target architecture for attack selection. In this work, following the latter approach we propose a novel architecture-agnostic black-box attack de-sign and analyze its performance. Experiments show that the proposed method, with a reasonable query overhead, outperforms the recent robust attack designs
Parasitism of Meloidogyne incognita eggs by Native Fungi of Assam

In the current investigation, four fungi viz., Paecilomyces niphetodes, Acremonium falciforme, Fusarium oxysporium, and F. solani were capable of parasitizing Meloidogyne incognita eggs. The high percentage of egg parasitism was recorded by P. niphetodes. Microscopic examinations showed that the hyphae of P. niphetode, A. falcifrome, F. oxysporum and F. solani were closely attached to the egg surface of the parasitized eggs, made perforations, penetrated, ramified, and completely fed upon the internal content of the eggs. The parasitization of the second stage juvenile that emerged from the eggs by P. niphetodes and A. falciforme was seen. Whereas, A. falcifrome, F. oxysporum, and F. solani established as dormant spores inside or outside of M. incognita eggs.
On the Solution of Block-Tridiagonal Systems Arising from Certain Finite-Difference Equations*

We consider the solution of the linear systems arising from certain implicit finite-difference approximations to systems of linear differential equations. In particular, we consider those schemes which lead to matrices of block-tridiagonal form. There are two common methods for solving such equations: using a block-tridiagonal factorization (blocksolve), or treating the matrix as a band matrix (bandsolve). First, we discuss conditions for ensuring the numerical stability of the block-tridiagonal factorization for general matrices of this form. Then, we compare the two methods for general block-tridiagonal matrices (including matrices arising from the Crank-Nicolson scheme for systems of parabolic equations) and for a more specialized block-tridiagonal matrix which arises from schemes of H. B. Keller for systems of two-point boundary value problems and parabolic equations.
Exponential Hedging and Entropic Penalties

We solve the problem of hedging a contingent claim B by maximizing the expected exponential utility of terminal net wealth for a locally bounded semimartingale X. We prove a duality relation between this problem and a dual problem for local martingale measures Q for X where we either minimize relative entropy minus a correction term involving B or maximize the Q‐price of B subject to an entropic penalty term. Our result is robust in the sense that it holds for several choices of the space of hedging strategies. Applications include a new characterization of the minimal martingale measure and risk‐averse asymptotics.
Thermal radiation and effects on transport processes in solid oxide fuel cells

The major processes significant for solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) characteristics are species transport, electrochemical reactions, electronic and ionic transport, heat transfer, and temperature distribution. Of particular significance is an accurate determination of the temperature distribution because material properties, chemical kinetics, and transport properties depend heavily on the temperature. Thermal radiation may play an important role because of the high operating temperature. The present work concerns a review of thermal radiation and effects on heat transfer and gas flow modeling developments in the SOFCs. The different models are compared in terms of cell designs, flow regimes, thermal sources considered, boundary conditions used, and whether the participating gases were concerned in the models. Some useful remarks and conclusions are drawn.
The Global Precipitation Measurement Mission

Precipitation affects many aspects of our everyday life. It is the primary source of freshwater and has significant socioeconomic impacts resulting from natural hazards such as hurricanes, floods, droughts, and landslides. Fundamentally, precipitation is a critical component of the global water and energy cycle that governs the weather, climate, and ecological systems. Accurate and timely knowledge of when, where, and how much it rains or snows is essential for understanding how the Earth system functions and for improving the prediction of weather, climate, freshwater resources, and natural hazard events. The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission is an international satellite mission specifically designed to set a new standard for the measurement of precipitation from space and to provide a new generation of global rainfall and snowfall observations in all parts of the world every 3 h. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency (JAXA) .
Distributions of Error Correction Tests for Cointegration

This paper provides cumulative distribution functions, densities, and finite sample critical values for the single-equation error correction statistic for testing cointegration. Graphs and response surfaces summarize extensive Monte Carlo simulations and highlight simple dependencies of the statistic's quantiles on the number of variables in the error correction model, the choice of deterministic components, and the estimation sample size. The response surfaces provide a convenient way for calculating finite sample critical values at standard levels; and a computer program, freely available over the Internet, can be used to calculate both critical values and p-values. Three empirical examples illustrate these tools.
Impact of Tumor Necrosis Factor Receptor 1 (TNFR1) Polymorphism on Dry Eye Disease

The goal of the study was to examine whether a genetic polymorphism in tumor necrosis factor receptor 1 (TNFR1) gene impacted the dry eye disease (DED) phenotype and response to anti-inflammatory therapy. The prospective study included 328 individuals with various dry eye (DE) symptoms and signs recruited from the Miami Veterans Hospital eye clinic between October 2013 and October 2017. The population underwent genetic profiling for a polymorphism within the TNFR1 gene (rs1800693 [TT, TC, CC]). The study examined the genotype distribution and relationships between the genotype, phenotype, and response to anti-inflammatory therapy. The mean age of the population was 61.7 ± 9.8 years. Here, 92% self-identified as male, 44% as White, and 21% as Hispanic; 13% (n = 42) of individuals had a CC genotype. DED symptoms and signs were similar across the three genotype groups. Thirty individuals (four with CC) were subsequently treated with an anti-inflammatory agent. There was a non-significant trend for individuals with CC genotype to have a partial or complete symptomatic response to treatment compared with the other two groups (100% for CC vs. 40% for TT and 36.4% for TC, p = 0.22). In conclusion, the presence of homozygosity of minor allele C (CC genotype) in a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) within TNFR1 was noted in a minority of individuals with various aspects of DED, but did not impact the DED phenotype. Our findings suggest that the current phenotyping strategies for DED are insufficient to identify underlying disease contributors, including potential genetic contributors.
CHARM2: An updated Catalog of High Angular Resolution Measurements

We present an update of the Catalog of High Angular Resolution Measurements (CHARM, Richichi & Percheron [CITE], A&A, 386, 492), which includes results available until July 2004. CHARM2 is a compilation of direct measurements by high angular resolution methods, as well as indirect estimates of stellar diameters. Its main goal is to provide a reference list of sources which can be used for calibration and verification observations with long-baseline optical and near-IR interferometers. Single and binary stars are included, as are complex objects from circumstellar shells to extragalactic sources. The present update provides an increase of almost a factor of two over the previous edition. Additionally, it includes several corrections and improvements, as well as a cross-check with the valuable public release observations of the ESO Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). A total of 8231 entries for 3238 unique sources are now present in CHARM2. This represents an increase of a factor of 3.4 and 2.0, respectively, over the contents of the previous version of CHARM.