Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deep u*- and g-Band Imaging of the Spitzer Space Telescope First Look Survey Field: Observations and Source Catalogs

We present deep u*- and g-band images taken with the MegaCam on the 3.6 m Canada-France-Hawai'i Telescope to support the extragalactic component of the Spitzer First Look Survey (FLS). In this paper we outline the observations, present source catalogs, and characterize the completeness, reliability, astrometric accuracy, and number counts of this data set. In the central 1 deg2 region of the FLS, we reach depths of g ~ 26.5 mag and u* ~ 26.2 mag (AB magnitude, 5 σ detection over a 3'' aperture) with ~4 hr of exposure time for each filter. For the entire FLS region (~5 deg2 coverage), we obtained u*-band images to the shallower depth of u* = 25.0-25.4 mag (5 σ, 3'' aperture). The average seeing of the observations is 0. ″85 for the central field and ~1. ″00 for the other fields. Astrometric calibration of the fields yields an absolute astrometric accuracy of 0. ″15 when matched with the SDSS point sources between 18 < g < 22. Source catalogs have been created using SExtractor. The catalogs are 50% complete and >99.3% reliable down to g ≃ 26.5 mag and u* ≃ 26.2 mag for the central 1 deg2 field. In the shallower u*-band images, the catalogs are 50% complete and 98.2% reliable down to 24.8-25.4 mag. These images and source catalogs will serve as a useful resource for studying the galaxy evolution using the FLS data.
On a Comparison of four Ad-hoc Routing Protocols when taking into account the Radio Interferences

In this paper, the influence of radio interferences is taken into account on the performance of an ad-hoc network, and a performance comparison of four ad-hoc routing algorithms, AODV, DSR, LANMAR and OLSR is presented. This last comparison is a simulation study taking into account a propagation model and the influence of the interferences. When taking into account the interferences, the quantitative results are compared from other studies using a simpler radio model, but are qualitatively coherent with the preceding studies. Our simulations show that, when the mobility increases, OLSR becomes more efficient in terms of throughput than AODV, even if AODV remains rather efficient for a reactive routing algorithm. Even when the mobility increases, OLSR generates less load than AODV.
Global Probes of the Impact of Baryons on Dark Matter Halos

The halo mass function, dn/dM, predicted by hierarchical clustering models can be measured indirectly using dynamical probes like the distribution of gravitational lens image separations, dn/dΔθ, or halo circular velocities, dn/dvc. These dynamical variables depend on the halo structure as well as the halo mass. Since baryonic physics, particularly cooling, significantly modifies the central density structure of dark matter halos, both observational distributions show a feature corresponding to the mass scale below which the baryons in the halo can cool (i.e., galaxies versus clusters). We use simplified but self-consistent models to show that the structural changes to the halos produced by the cooling baryons explain both distributions. Given a fixed halo mass function, matching the observed image separation distribution or local velocity function depends largely on Ωb through its effects on the cooling timescales. These baryonic effects on the halo structure also affect the evolution of the velocity function of galaxies with redshift.
The Influence of Environmental Friendliness on Green Trust: The Mediation Effects of Green Satisfaction and Green Perceived Quality

As global green trends became more prevalent, green marketing also developed into an important issue. Although prior literature explored the main factors affecting green trust, it was inconclusive as to how environmental friendliness could affect the green trust in green marketing. This study aims to focus on the positive influence of environmental friendliness on green trust, and explore the mediation effects of green satisfaction and green perceived quality. This study undertakes an empirical study by means of questionnaire survey. The respondents are consumers who have experience purchasing green products. This study applies structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypotheses. The findings of this study indicate that (1) environmental friendliness has a significant positive impact on green satisfaction, green perceived quality, and green trust; (2) both green satisfaction and green perceived quality positively affect green trust; and (3) green satisfaction and green perceived quality partially mediate the positive relationship between environmental friendliness and green trust.
EDA Challenges for Memristor-Crossbar based Neuromorphic Computing

The increasing gap between the high data processing capability of modern computing systems and the limited memory bandwidth motivated the recent significant research on neuromorphic computing systems (NCS), which are inspired from the working mechanism of human brains. Discovery of memristor further accelerates engineering realization of NCS by leveraging the similarity between synaptic connections in neural networks and programming weight of the memristor. However, to achieve a stable large-scale NCS for practical applications, many essential EDA design challenges still need to be overcome especially the state-of-the-art memristor crossbar structure is adopted. In this paper, we summarize some of our recent published works about enhancing the design robustness and efficiency of memristor crossbar based NCS. The experiments show that the impacts of noises generated by process variations and the IR-drop over the crossbar can be effectively suppressed by our noise-eliminating training method and IR-drop compensation technique. Moreover, our network clustering techniques can alleviate the challenges of limited crossbar scale and routing congestion in NCS implementations.
Association between high ultrafiltration rates and mortality in uraemic patients on regular haemodialysis. A 5-year prospective observational multicentre study.

BACKGROUND High ultrafiltration rate on haemodialysis (HD) stresses the cardiovascular system and could have a negative effect on survival. METHODS The effect of ultrafiltration rate (UFR; ml/h/kg BW) on mortality was prospectively evaluated in a cohort of 287 prevalent uraemic patients in regular HD from 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2005. PATIENTS 165 men and 122 women, age 66 +/- 13 years, on regular HD for at least 6 months, median: 48 months (range 6-372 months). Mean UFR was 12.7 +/- 3.5 ml/h/kg BW, Kt/V: 1.27 +/- 0.13, body weight (BW): 62 +/- 13 kg, PCRn: 1.11 +/- 0.20 g/kg/day, duration of dialysis: median 240 min (range 180-300 min), mean arterial blood pressure (MAP) 99 +/- 9 mm/Hg. One hundred and forty nine patients (52%) died, mainly for cardiovascular reasons (69%). Multivariate Cox regression analysis was utilized to evaluate the effect on mortality of UFR, age, sex, dialytic vintage, cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, dialysis modality, duration of HD, BW, interdialytic weight gain (IWG), body mass index (BMI), MAP, pulse pressure (PP), Kt/V, PCRn. RESULTS Age (HR 1.06; CI 1.04-1.08; P < 0.0001), PCRn (HR 0.17, CI 0.07-0.43; P < 0.0001), diabetes (HR 1.81, CI 1.24-2.47; P = 0.007), CVD (HR 1.86; CI 1.32-2.62; P = 0.007) and UFR (HR 1.22; CI 1.16-1.28; P < 0.0001) were identified as factors independently correlated to survival. We estimated the discrimination potential of UFR, evaluated at baseline, in predicting death at 5 years, calculating the relative receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and the cut-off that minimizes the absolute difference between sensitivity and specificity. CONCLUSIONS High UFRs are independently associated with increased mortality risk in HD patients. Better survival was observed with UFR < 12.37 ml/h/kg BW. For patients with higher UFRs, longer or more frequent dialysis sessions should be considered in order to prevent the deleterious consequences of excessive UFR.
City traffic management model using Wireless Sensor Networks

Road network of a region is an important mean of overall development. To manage the traffic in a city environment is a key factor for the city authority. In this perspective, reducing the road traffic congestion is a significant challenge. In this paper, a dynamic mathematical model for managing road traffic in important intersections of a city by reducing congestion is presented. This system will be built based on wireless sensor network which will detect the congestion on the road and broadcast the congestion information to the drivers in order to detour for avoiding congestion. Matlab simulation of this proposed model was performed with traffic generated following Poisson Distribution for twelve selected important intersections of a city and cost function was estimated for the generated traffic. Simulation results show that this traffic scheme succeeds in reducing the congestion compared to the traffic situation without this scheme.
Hand gesture recognition based on surface electromyography

Human hands are the most dexterous of human limbs and hand gestures play an important role in non-verbal communication. Underlying electromyograms associated with hand gestures provide a wealth of information based on which varying hand gestures can be recognized. This paper develops an inter-individual hand gesture recognition model based on Hidden Markov models that receives surface electromyography (sEMG) signals as inputs and predicts a corresponding hand gesture. The developed recognition model is tested with a dataset of 10 various hand gestures performed by 25 subjects in a leave-one-subject-out cross validation and an inter-individual recognition rate of 79% was achieved. The promising recognition rate demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed approach for discriminating between gesture-specific sEMG signals and could inform the design of sEMG-controlled prostheses and assistive devices.
Observability, Identifiability and Sensitivity of Vision-Aided Navigation

We analyze the observability of motion estimates from the fusion of visual and inertial sensors. Because the model contains unknown parameters, such as sensor biases, the problem is usually cast as a mixed identification/filtering, and the resulting observability analysis provides a necessary condition for any algorithm to converge to a unique point estimate. Unfortunately, most models treat sensor bias rates as noise, independent of other states including biases themselves, an assumption that is patently violated in practice. When this assumption is lifted, the resulting model is not observable, and therefore past analyses cannot be used to conclude that the set of states that are indistinguishable from the measurements is a singleton. In other words, the resulting model is not observable. We therefore re-cast the analysis as one of sensitivity: Rather than attempting to prove that the indistinguishable set is a singleton, which is not the case, we derive bounds on its volume, as a function of characteristics of the input and its sufficient excitation. This provides an explicit characterization of the indistinguishable set that can be used for analysis and validation purposes.
Improved PSO Algorithm-Based Online Optimization Design for ADRC Controller

This paper deals with the ADRC controller design. Aiming at its three main parameters related to interference rejection, a PSO algorithm-based on-line optimization method is proposed. In order to raise the efficiency of on-line optimization, two improvements are applied in the PSO algorithm, one is using the threshold of system error to trigger the PSO algorithm, and the other is using the Pareto elitism strategy in the PSO algorithm. The simulation results show that the proposed PSO-based ADRC controller has strong robustness and adaptability for the systems with large time delay and strong interference.
Training MT Model Using Structural SVM

This paper presents a training method of log-linear model for statistical machine translation based on structural support vector machine. This method is designed to directly optimize parameters with respect to translation quality. By adopting maximum-margin principle of SVM, the MT model can learn from training samples with generalization capability. Experiments are carried out on a hierarchical phrase-based MT system facing Chinese to English translation. Result shows that structural SVM training has the ability of re-ranking the k-best list of MT system according to automatic evaluation criteria BLEU, and it can enhance the average quality of MT system outputs.
Learning from Incidents and Incident Reporting

This article examines how incidents are governed in a Belgian Nuclear Research Center by way of an incident reporting system (IRS) named Retour d’Experiences (REX). Drawing on a documentary analysis of incident reports, interviews, and focus groups with personnel, it illustrates how REX enacts a safety governmentality centered on identifying incident causes and culprits. As this governmentality mode obscures the epistemic and political character of incidents, it closes down important opportunities for collective learning about safety and safety governance. It is argued that joint reflection about incidents and resistances toward incident reporting serve as fruitful starting points for a more reflexive safety governance that makes explicit how decisions are made in high-risk contexts. Social scientists can enhance governance of this kind by pointing to different perceptions and evaluations of incidents and by insisting that contending interpretations are confronted and accounted for.
A Procedure for Determining the Exact Solution to a 2x2 First Order Homogeneous Nonautonomous System

Although numerous attempts have been made by various researchers to find a method to solve the general case, a successful technique remains elusive. For example, a paper by Caviglia and Morro [2] disproves an effort to do so using quadratures. The authors express the notion that such an achievement would be remarkable, but the ability to solve a first order homogeneous nonautonomous system using quadratures is a claim that still remains to be proven. Nonautonomous systems, particularly periodic systems, are of great interest to mathematicians as well researchers from an assortment of scientific and engineering fields. The application of these systems is extensive. For example, electronics circuits are driven by clock signals with a specific period [4]. The dynamics of these circuits can be investigated with an appropriate nonautonomous system as a model. The oscillator is a recurring feature in numerous physical systems. With the use of Floquet and Lyapunov theories the stability of these linear periodic systems can be analyzed. Floquet theory, specifically, governs the structure of the solutions to periodic systems. In this paper the author develops a technique for solving certain 2×2 first order homogeneous nonautonomous systems. While most mathematicians prefer to convert nonlinear differential equations into linear equations when seeking a solution, the method presented as the primary result solves a nonlinear equation in order to construct the exact solution of a linear system. The author’s findings show that the exact solution to a 2×2 nonautonomous system is directly related to the solution of a Riccati differential equation that is constructed from the coefficients in the matrix A(t) of a system x′ = A(t)x, and the general structure of the exact solution to a nonautonomous system is similar to the general form of the exact solution for an autonomous system. However, without a method of solving the general Riccati differential equation, a procedure for determining the exact solution to a general 2×2 nonautonomous system remains elusive. Nevertheless, the main result does develop an approach for finding solutions to many complicated special cases.
Abnormally high plasma levels of vitamin B6 in children with autism not taking supplements compared to controls not taking supplements.

BACKGROUND There have been many studies of the effect of high-dose supplementation of vitamin B6 on children and adults with autism, with all but one reporting benefits. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to investigate the biochemical basis for vitamin B6 therapy by measuring the level of total vitamin B6 in the plasma of unsupplemented children with autism spectrum disorder compared to unsupplemented control subjects. PARTICIPANTS Children with autism spectrum disorders (n = 35, age 3-9 years) and unrelated typical children (n = 11, age 6-9 years), all from Arizona, were studied. (This includes the data from 24 children with autism from our previous study.) METHODOLOGY A microbiologic assay was used to measure the level of total vitamin B6 (including phosphorylated and unphosphorylated forms), in a blinded fashion. RESULTS Children with autism had a 75% higher level of total vitamin B6 than the controls (medians of 56 versus 32 ng/mL, respectively, p = 0.00002). Most of the autistic children (77%) had levels that were more than 2 standard deviations above the median value of the controls. The autistic girls (n = 5) also had elevated levels (mean of 54.6 ng/mL, median of 60 ng/mL). DISCUSSION These results are consistent with previous studies that found that: (1) pyridoxal kinase had a very low activity in children with autism and (2) pyridoxal 5 phosphate (PLP) levels are unusually low in children with autism. Thus, it appears that the low conversion of pyridoxal and pyridoxine to PLP results in low levels of PLP, which is the active cofactor for 113 known enzymatic reactions, including the formation of many key neurotransmitters. CONCLUSIONS Total vitamin B6 is abnormally high in autism, consistent with previous reports of an impaired pyridoxal kinase for the conversion of pyridoxine and pyridoxal to PLP. This may explain the many published studies of benefits of high-dose vitamin B6 supplementation in some children and adults with autism.
Absence of heme oxygenase‐1 exacerbates atherosclerotic lesion formation and vascular remodeling

To examine the role of heme oxygenase (HO)‐1 in the pathophysiology of vascular diseases, we generated mice deficient in both HO‐1 and apolipoprotein E (HO‐1−/−apoE−/−). Despite similar total plasma cholesterol levels in response to hypercholesterolemia, HO‐1−/−apoE−/− mice, in comparison with HO‐1+/+apoE−/− mice, had an accelerated and more advanced atherosclerotic lesion formation. In addition to greater lipid accumulation, these advanced lesions from HO‐1−/−apoE−/− mice contained macrophages and smooth muscle α‐actin‐positive cells. We further tested the role of HO‐1 on neointimal formation in a mouse model of vein graft stenosis. Autologous vein grafts in HO‐1−/− mice showed robust neointima consisting of α‐actin‐positive vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC) 10 days after surgery in comparison to the smaller neointima formed in autologous vein grafts in HO‐1+/+ mice. However, at 14 days after surgery, the neointima from composite vessels of HO‐1−/− mice was composed mainly of acellular material, indicative of substantial VSMC death. VSMC isolated from HO‐1−/− mice were susceptible to oxidant stress, leading to cell death. Our data demonstrate that HO‐1 plays an essential protective role in the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis and vein graft stenosis.
Efficiency of Nonlinear Particle Acceleration at Cosmic Structure Shocks

We have calculated the evolution of cosmic-ray (CR) modified astrophysical shocks for a wide range of shock Mach numbers and shock speeds through numerical simulations of diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) in one-dimensional quasi-parallel plane shocks. The simulations include thermal leakage injection of seed CRs, as well as preexisting, upstream CR populations. Bohm-like diffusion is assumed. We model shocks similar to those expected around cosmic structure pancakes, as well as other accretion shocks driven by flows with upstream gas temperatures in the range T0 = 104-107.6 K and shock Mach numbers spanning Ms = 2.4-133. We show that CR-modified shocks evolve to time-asymptotic states by the time injected particles are accelerated to moderately relativistic energies (p/mc ≳ 1), and that two shocks with the same Mach number, but with different shock speeds, evolve qualitatively similarly when the results are presented in terms of a characteristic diffusion length and diffusion time. We determine and compare the "efficiencies" of CR acceleration in our simulated shocks by calculating the ratio of the total CR energy generated at the shock to the total kinetic energy that would pass through the shock over time in its initial frame of reference. For these models the time-asymptotic value for this efficiency ratio is controlled mainly by shock Mach number, as expected from the aforementioned similarity in CR shocks. In the presence of a preexisting CR population, shock evolution proceeds similarly to that for higher thermal injection rates compared to thermal leakage CR sources alone. This added contribution has little or no impact on the postshock or CR properties of the high Mach number shocks simulated. The modeled high Mach number shocks all evolve toward efficiencies ~50%, regardless of the upstream CR pressure. On the other hand, the upstream CR pressure increases the overall CR energy in moderate strength shocks (Ms ~ a few), since it is a significant fraction of the shock ram pressure. These shocks have been shown to dominate dissipation during cosmic structure formation, so such enhanced efficiency could significantly increase their potential importance as sources of cosmic rays.