Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Probing the Magnetic Field Structure in Gamma-Ray Bursts through Dispersive Plasma Effects on the Afterglow Polarization

The origin and structure of magnetic fields in gamma-ray burst (GRB) fireball plasmas are two of the most important open questions in all GRB models. It has been claimed that recent measurements of γ-ray polarization suggest the presence of a uniform field originating in the compact object driving the outflow. This interpretation is, however, controversial, since a high degree of linear polarization is also possible in the presence of a random magnetic field, arguably originating in electromagnetic instabilities that develop at the collisionless shock. We show that the structure and strength of the magnetic field may be constrained by radio and IR observations of the early afterglow, where plasma effects on the polarization of the propagating radiation are significant. We calculate these propagation effects for cold and relativistic plasmas, and find that in the presence of a uniform equipartition field the degree of linear polarization is suppressed and circular polarization prevails at low frequencies, below ~1-3 GHz (~a few × 1014 Hz) in the forward (reverse) shock, at the onset of fireball deceleration. At higher frequencies linear polarization dominates. At the frequency of the transition between circular and linear polarization, the net level of polarization is minimal, ~10%-20%. These features are nearly independent of the density of the environment into which the fireball expands. When the uniform field is much weaker than the equipartition value, the transition frequency is smaller by an order of magnitude. Depending on the geometry of the emitting region, oscillations of the polarization position angle may be observed from the optical reverse-shock emission, provided that the strength of the magnetic field is close to equipartition. The dependence of these results on viewing geometry, outflow collimation, and magnetic field orientation is discussed. When the field is entangled over length scales much smaller than the extent of the emitting plasma, the aforementioned effects should not be observed, and a linear polarization at the few percent level is expected. Polarimetric observations during the early afterglow, and particularly of the reverse-shock emission, may therefore place strong constraints on the structure and strength of the magnetic field within the fireball plasma.
Optimizing Distributed Architectures to Improve Performance on Checkpointing Applications

Nowadays, satisfying the global throughput targets of each application in High Performance Computing systems is a difficult task because of the high number of architectural configurations having a considerable impact on the overall system performance, such as the number of storage servers, features of the communication links, number of CPU cores per node, etc. In this paper we have performed a thorough study of the compared performance of scaling up HPC cluster architectures using a checkpointing application model. This study is specifically focused on multi-core HPC clusters and the scaling process is oriented towards the three main resources: computing power, communications and storage. The main goal of this work is to evaluate and analyze how evolves both scalability and bottlenecks existent on different HPC multi-core architectures using different architectural configurations. In order to achieve this goal, a set of simulation experiments has been achieved using a simulation framework, called SIMCAN, specifically designed for modeling and simulating HPC architectures. The results obtained show that the computing power is well suited thanks to the multi-core processors, while the problems are found on the storage and on the communications channels, being the storage network the main bottleneck.
Insulin-releasing and insulin-like activity of the traditional anti-diabetic plant Coriandrum sativum (coriander)

Coriandrum sativum (coriander) has been documented as a traditional treatment of diabetes. In the present study, coriander incorporated into the diet (62·5 g/kg) and drinking water (2·5 g/l, prepared by 15 min decoction) reduced hyperglycaemia of streptozotocin-diabetic mice. An aqueous extract of coriander (1 mg/ml) increased 2-deoxyglucose transport (1·6-fold), glucose oxidation (1·4-fold) and incorporation of glucose into glycogen (1·7-fold) of isolated murine abdominal muscle comparable with 10−8 m-insulin. In acute 20 min tests, 0·25–10 mg/ml aqueous extract of coriander evoked a stepwise 1·3–5·7-fold stimulation of insulin secretion from a clonal B-cell line. This effect was abolished by 0·5 mm-diazoxide and prior exposure to extract did not alter subsequent stimulation of insulin secretion by 10 mm-l-alanine, thereby negating an effect due to detrimental cell damage. The effect of extract was potentiated by 16·7 mm-glucose and 10 mm-l-alanine but not by 1 mm-3-isobutyl-1-methylxanthine. Insulin secretion by hyperpolarized B-cells (16·7 mm-glucose, 25 mm-KCl) was further enhanced by the presence of extract. Activity of the extract was found to be heat stable, acetone soluble and unaltered by overnight exposure to acid (0·1 m-HCl) or dialysis to remove components with molecular mass < 2000 Da. Activity was reduced by overnight exposure to alkali (0·1 m-NaOH). Sequential extraction with solvents revealed insulin-releasing activity in hexane and water fractions indicating a possible cumulative effect of more than one extract constituent. These results demonstrate the presence of antihyperglycaemic, insulin-releasing and insulin-like activity in Coriandrum sativum.
THE LOCATIONS OF SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS AS EVIDENCE FOR COMPACT OBJECT BINARY PROGENITORS

We present a detailed investigation of Hubble Space Telescope rest-frame UV/optical observations of 22 short gamma-ray burst (GRB) host galaxies and sub-galactic environments. Utilizing the high angular resolution and depth of HST we characterize the host galaxy morphologies, measure precise projected physical and host-normalized offsets between the bursts and host centers, and calculate the locations of the bursts with respect to their host light distributions (rest-frame UV and optical). We calculate a median short GRB projected physical offset of 4.5 kpc, about 3.5 times larger than that for long GRBs, and find that ≈25% of short GRBs have offsets of ≳ 10 kpc. When compared to their host sizes, the median offset is 1.5 half-light radii (re), about 1.5 times larger than the values for long GRBs, core-collapse supernovae, and Type Ia supernovae. In addition, ≈20% of short GRBs having offsets of ≳ 5re, and only ≈25% are located within 1re. We further find that short GRBs severely under-represent their hosts' rest-frame optical and UV light, with ≈30%–45% of the bursts located in regions of their host galaxies that have no detectable stellar light, and ≈55% in the regions with no UV light. Therefore, short GRBs do not occur in regions of star formation or even stellar mass. This demonstrates that the progenitor systems of short GRBs must migrate from their birth sites to their eventual explosion sites, a signature of kicks in compact object binary systems. Utilizing the full sample of offsets, we estimate natal kick velocities of ≈20–140 km s−1. These independent lines of evidence provide the strongest support to date that short GRBs result from the merger of compact object binaries (NS–NS/NS–BH).
Many-valued Semantics for Vague Counterfactuals

This paper is an attempt to provide a formal semantics to counterfactual propositions that involve vague sentences as their antecedent or consequent. The initial work on counterfactuals, due to Lewis ([8]), was based on Classical Logic and thus it focused on crisp sentences. Lewis proposed a semantics based on the notion of possible worlds that captures alternative ways a world could be, including here our reality i.e., the world we live in (henceforth: the actual world, or our world). In Lewis’ work, possible worlds can be seen as classical Boolean valuations, each valuation corresponding to a possible world. Our aim is to generalize Lewis’ system of spheres semantics based on Classical Propositional Logic, to a similar semantics based on many-valued logics. On the one hand, as long as the authors know, the claim that Lewis’ systems of spheres provide a good semantics for counterfactual propositions does not seem to be controversial. On the other hand, however, many-valued logics are not universally accepted to be a good semantics for vague sentences (see [4] and [5] for an overview on different approaches to the subject). Even though this is not the right place to discuss whether many-valued logics are suitable tools for reasoning in presence of vagueness, we find necessary to spend a few lines in order to justify at least why our approach is based on this framework to formalize vague sentences. Despite no general agreement exists on what a vague sentence is, there does not seem to be any problem in admitting that sentences involving predicates like bald, young, near, tall are vague sentences. A common feature of the above predicates seems to be the fact that they admit borderline cases, that make it not an easy matter to decide whether the sentences where they appear are either true or false. In our opinion the claim that every sentence has a truth-value (true or false) is a too strong claim indeed. Similarly for the claim that our inability to assign some truth-value (true or false) to some sentence must be a matter of ignorance, even when we happen to know the exact number of hair in a man’s head, somebody’s exact age and so on. An important point in the defense of classical logic as the only tool for formalizing reasoning is usually that it is a very powerful tool. This is certainly true, but it is not a
Quantum Energy of Fuzzy Sphere: Gaussian Variational Method

The matrix model with mass term has a nontrivially classical solution which is known to represent a noncommutative fuzzy sphere. The fuzzy sphere has a lower energy then that of the trivial solution. In this letter we investigate the quantum correction of the energy of the fuzzy sphere by using the Gaussian variational technique, in contrast to the other studying in which only the small fluctuation was considered. Our result, which only considering the boson part, shows that the quantum correction does not change the stability of the fuzzy sphere.
Urban Residents’ Place-Based Funds of Knowledge: An Untapped Resource in Urban Teacher Residencies

Teachers who attended urban schools as students are uniquely positioned to understand both the structural context that urban schools operate within and the many funds of knowledge that urban students bring to school. The purpose of this study is to examine the funds of knowledge that individuals who have been students in urban schools and now wish to teach in a particular city in the northeastern United States bring to an urban teacher residency program. In this article, we describe these urban residents’ funds of knowledge, and argue that residents describe an emerging place-based pedagogical content knowledge.
I can be You: Questioning the use of Keystroke Dynamics as Biometrics

Keystroke dynamics refer to information about the typing patterns of individuals, such as the relative timing when the individual presses and releases each key. Prior studies suggest that such patterns are unique and cannot be easily imitated. This lays the foundation for the use of keystroke biometrics in authentication systems. The research effort in this area has thus far focused on novel detection techniques to differentiate between legitimate users and imposters. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel feedback and training interface named Mimesis. Mimesis provides both positive and negative feedback on the differences between a submitted pattern vs. a reference pattern. This allows one person to imitate another through incremental adjustment of typing pattern. We show that even for targets whose typing patterns are only partially known, training with Mimesis allows attackers to defeat one of the best anomaly detection engines using keystroke biometrics. For a group of 84 participants playing the role of attackers and 2 eight-character passwords of different difficulty, the false acceptance rate (FAR) of the easy and difficult password increases from 0.24 and 0.20 respectively (before Mimesis training) to 0.63 and 0.42 respectively (after Mimesis training with partial information of the victim). With full information, the FAR increases to 0.99 for both passwords for the 14 best attackers.
Exercise in personal protective equipment in a hot, humid environment does not affect risk propensity

ABSTRACT We tested the hypothesis that heat stress created by light exertion in encapsulating personal protective equipment (PPE) in a hot, humid environment increases risk propensity. Ten healthy subjects (29 ± 7 y) completed 2 trials presented in a counter-balanced manner. Subjects donned encapsulating PPE, and in one trial they wore a tube-lined shirt underneath that was perfused with 5°C water. Subjects completed 2 15 min bouts of walking exercise on a treadmill at ˜50% maximal heart rate in a 32°C, 81% RH environment. Subjects completed the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART), an objective measure of risk-taking, before, between the 2 exercise bouts, and following the final exercise bout. Personal cooling lowered (P < 0.01) mean skin temperature by 8.0 ± 1.6°C. Intestinal temperature rose (P < 0.01) in both trials, but was lower (P < 0.01) at the end of exercise in the cooling trial (38.0 ± 0.3°C vs. 37.6 ± 0.3°C). BART derived indices of risk propensity were not affected by trial or time (trial × time interaction: P ≥ 0.33). These data indicate that 60 min of exposure to mild heat stress created by light exertion in encapsulating PPE does not affect risk-taking behavior.
Big Data Analytics in Bioinformatics: A Machine Learning Perspective

Bioinformatics research is characterized by voluminous and incremental datasets and complex data analytics methods. The machine learning methods used in bioinformatics are iterative and parallel. These methods can be scaled to handle big data using the distributed and parallel computing technologies. Usually big data tools perform computation in batch-mode and are not optimized for iterative processing and high data dependency among operations. In the recent years, parallel, incremental, and multi-view machine learning algorithms have been proposed. Similarly, graph-based architectures and in-memory big data tools have been developed to minimize I/O cost and optimize iterative processing. However, there lack standard big data architectures and tools for many important bioinformatics problems, such as fast construction of co-expression and regulatory networks and salient module identification, detection of complexes over growing protein-protein interaction data, fast analysis of massive DNA, RNA, and protein sequence data, and fast querying on incremental and heterogeneous disease networks. This paper addresses the issues and challenges posed by several big data problems in bioinformatics, and gives an overview of the state of the art and the future research opportunities.
Global Sourcing Strategy and Performance of Knowledge-Intensive Business Services: A Two-Stage Strategic Fit Model

This research contributes to the understanding of global sourcing strategy of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBSs) by offering an explanation for the differential performance among firms, even when they use similar global sourcing strategies. Using a systems integrator as the sourcing firm's perspective, the authors argue that complex KIBSs involve a complicated mixture of interfaces in that the performance of an individual KIBS is insufficient in defining the overall performance of the integrated KIBS system. The theoretical framework uses a two-stage strategic fit model that emphasizes the conditions under which global sourcing of KIBSs influences performance. Firms that strategically coalign sourcing strategy with KIBS attributes for each KIBS activity should perform more effectively than firms that lack such a coalignment. After selecting an appropriate sourcing strategy, the firm's dynamic capabilities (i.e., absorptive capacity and integration capability) may accentuate or attenuate the performance of the strategy at the integrated KIBS system level. Thus, although managers may be tempted to source KIBSs globally to reduce labor costs, they must examine both the KIBS attributes and the firm's dynamic capabilities.
The Research of Internet of Things' Supporting Technologies Which Face the Logistics Industry

This paper base on the application of the Internet of things in the logistics industry as the breakthrough point, to investigate the identification technology, network structure, middleware technology support and so on, which is used in the Internet of things, also to analyze the bottleneck of technology that the Internet of things could meet. At last, summarize the Internet of things’ application in the logistics industry with the intelligent port architecture. Keywords-Transportation&Logistics; Internet of Things; Support technology
ImageFARMER: Introducing a Data Mining Framework for the Creation of Large-scale Content-based Image Retrieval Systems

In this paper we introduce imageFARMER, a framework that allows information retrieval researchers and educators to develop and customize domain-specific content-based image retrieval systems with ease while developing a deeper understanding of the underlying representation of domainspecific image data. imageFARMER incorporates different aspects of image processing and content-based information retrieval, such as: image representation via image parameter extraction, validation via image parameters, analysis of multiple dissimilarity measures for accurate data analysis, testing of dimensionality reduction methods for storage and processing optimization, and indexing algorithms for fast and efficient querying. The unique capabilities of this framework have not been available together as an open-source software package designed for research, while offering enhanced knowledge discovery and validation of all steps involved when creating large-scale content-based image retrieval systems. General Terms Image retrieval, content-based image retrieval, open-source software applications, evaluation framework.
On the Height of Random m-ary Search Trees

A random m-ary seach tree is constructed from a random permutation of 1,…, n. A law of large numbers is obtained for the height Hn of these trees by applying the theory of branching random walks. in particular, it is shown that Hn/log nγ in probability as n∞ where γ = γ(m) is a constant depending upon m only. Interestingly, as m∞, γ(m) is asymptotic to 1/log m, the coefficient of log n in the asymptotic expression for the height of the complete m-ary search tree. This proves that for large m, random m-ary search trees behave virtually like complete m-ary trees.
A Transaction Cost Approach to Understanding Ethical Behaviour

This paper attempts to incorporate ethical behaviour within a transaction cost (TC) framework. It discusses the theoretical and practical links between TC economisation and ethical behaviour of entrepreneurs. By engendering a climate of trust at the micro/firm level, ethical behaviour can reduce TCs associated with monitoring and protection against broken contracts. At the macro/societal level, stakeholders’ increasing ethical expectations of entrepreneurs also impose TCs. To distinguish these latter TCs from those at the micro level, the paper terms them social transaction costs (STCs). While entrepreneurs can internalise TCs to achieve economisation, STC cannot be reduced through internalisation. Chris Moore, PhD Professor of Finance and Banking Department of Finance, Banking and Property Massey University Private Bag 11 222 Palmerston North Phone: +64 (0) 6 350 5799 x 2330 Fax: +64 (0) 6 350 5628 Email: c.i. moore@massey.ac. nz Anne de Bruin, PhD Professor of Economics Department of Commerce Massey University Private Bag 102 904, NSMC Auckland, New Zealand Phone + 64 9 414 0800 x 9453 Fax + 64 9 441 8177 Email: a.m.debruin@massey.ac. nz
AUTOMATIC TEXT INTERVIEW ASSESSMENT USING IM DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM

In existing studies of human resource selection, in dividual performance of a single candidate is usual ly considered, whereas the collaborative performance a mong the interviewee using the on-line instant messaging is not taken into consideration. Time is also very consuming to choose and short list thousa nds of applicants. Usually short listed interviewees ar e generated by looking at academics performance without really evaluate the applicants’ skills and knowledg e. An integrated approach and its prototype for emp loyee selection using an instant messaging as a collabora tive tool during the interview process is developed using IM-DSS framework. It includes automatic technical answer scoring and automated ways of extracting ethical values from the interview answer log. Submi ssion count and response time are among supporting features introduced to reduce problem in live inter view sessions.
The Conceptual Framework of Quality Product Design Based on Computer Aided Design (CAD)

Producing a sustainable product quality and innovation ecosystem is not an easy thing, especially in the product development stage. Therefore, Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software can be utilized as an important tool to develop the creative design and quality product. This paper discussed the conception of quality design for the production of product design. This study employed systematic review of producing a conceptual framework to examine the systematic development process of product design quality with the product design requirements, design product concepts, detailed product design and product design evaluation of the aspects of quality products. The result of the conceptual framework developed shows that the initial stage of idea-generating is an essential element in the design, supporting a systematic process that can produce innovative, creative and quality product design.
Control method and snubber selection for a 5 MW wind turbine single active bridge DC/DC converter

In this paper the design and control aspects of the single active bridge DC/DC converter are investigated for the application to be used in a 5 MW wind turbine. The control of the converter is discussed as well as different design considerations as turn-off snubber circuits and leakage inductance of the transformer. It is found that the variable frequency control with a turn-off snubber capacitor gives the lowest losses for the application in a wind turbine. The losses for the single active bridge converter using variable frequency control is 3.2 - 3.8 % of the input power, depending on the position in the wind farm, compared to 3.8 - 4.1 % for the converter with constant frequency control.