Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MODELLING THE GALACTIC BAR USING RED CLUMP GIANTS

The color-magnitude diagrams of ∼ 7×105 stars obtained for 12 fields across the Galactic bulge with the OGLE project reveal a well-defined population of bulge red clump giants. We find that the distributions of the apparent magnitudes of the red clump stars are systematically fainter when moving towards lower galactic l fields. The most plausible explanation of this distinct trend is that the Galactic bulge is a bar, whose nearest end lies at positive galactic longitude. We model this Galactic bar by fitting for all fields the observed luminosity functions in the red clump region of the color-magnitude diagram. We find that almost regardless of the analytical function used to describe the 3-D stars distribution of the Galactic bar, the resulting models have the major axis inclined to the line of sight by 20 − 30 deg, with axis ratios corresponding to x0 : y0 : z0 = 3.5 : 1.5 : 1. This puts a strong constraint on the possible range of the Galactic bar models. Gravitational microlensing can provide us with additional constrains on the structure of the Galactic bar. Subject headings: stars: HR diagram – stars: statistics – Galaxy: general – Galaxy: structure On leave from N. Copernicus Astronomical Center, Bartycka 18, Warszawa 00–716, Poland
Load frequency control by aggregations of thermally stratified electric water heaters

In this paper, we present a dynamic model of an electric water heater which describes the thermal stratification inside the water tank. The goal of this modeling is to accurately describe the power consumption behavior of a large water heater population and to assess customer comfort loss (lack of hot water) in the presence of external control actions. We present four rule-based control approaches for aggregate power setpoint tracking and compare them by means of time-domain simulations and numerical comparisons. As a control signal, we use a scaled load frequency control (LFC) time series added to a time-varying baseline of the aggregate water heater load.
Merging graph-like object structures

1 INTRODUCTION This paper addresses the problem of coordinating a team of software developers concurrently working on a common software system. The standard approach to coordinate concurrent activities on a common set of data is locking. Any part of data used by one person is locked against concurrent use by another person. The second person has to wait until the first person has finished his or her task and releases the lock. In databases, sophisticated locking and transaction concepts minimize the waiting times for concurrent users by offering different lock granularities and different locking levels (e.g. multiple read locks vs. single write locks). However, these locking strategies assume that locks are hold for relatively short times (some seconds), only.
Rethinking Saving Incentives

March 1996 This paper undertakes a review of the existing academic work on tax incentives and personal saving. Its central conclusions are as follows. First, the traditional life cycle hypothesis has had an excessive influence on the design and conceptualization of empirical investigations concerning taxation and saving. Second, there is little reason to believe that households increase their saving significantly in response to a generic increase in the after-tax rate of return. Third, the literature on the relation between Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) and personal saving is inconclusive. Fourth, one can be moderately confident that, all else equal, eligibility for a 401(k) plan significantly stimulates personal saving. Fifth, tax incentives probably have important effects on personal saving through "third party" or institutional channels. Sixth, there is, overall, considerable uncertainty about the effects of policies designed to promote saving, particularly in cases where these policies have the potential to induce significant institutional change (such as a consumption tax).
GPS Tracking Simulation by Path Replaying

GPS (Global Positioning System) has a variety of applications among which real-time tracking finds significance in day-to-day life. GPS tracking is defined as the measurement of object position and orientation in a given coordinate system using GPS data at different points of time. GPS data are collected from GPS receivers attached to the moving objects and these data are used for tracking objects in real-time. Researchers who work in GPS tracking need GPS databases which contain huge volume of GPS data generated by hundreds of GPS receivers. But the presently available GPS databases are owned by private players and are not available for use by the researchers. This work is an attempt to generate a database of GPS data which can be used by the researchers to develop and test GPS applications. The approach consists of three successive steps: Collecting floating car data (FCD) of each path once in a log file; refining the log file; and replaying multiple instances of several log files simultaneously after replacing some old values with new values to simulate GPS tracking. Thus a single path tracked previously can be used to produce a tracking simulation of a number of moving objects by path replaying and each and every execution of the simulation generates a set of new GPS tracking data of several moving objects. These data are stored in a database and can be used as sample data for developing and testing GPS
Performance analysis of distributed raptor codes in wireless relay networks

In this paper, we propose a distributed network coding (DNC) scheme based on the Raptor codes for wireless relay networks (WRNs), where a group of source nodes communicate with a single sink through a common relay network in a multi-hop fashion. At the sink, a graph-based Raptor code is formed on the fly. After receiving a sufficient number of encoded packets, the sink begins to decode. The main contributions of this paper are the derivations of upper and lower bit error rate (BER) bounds for the proposed Raptor-based DNC scheme.
Marketing and compromising for sustainability

The purpose of our article is to propose that compromising is a constitutive characteristic of those marketing systems that entail matters of public interest or concern. In such markets, actors design compromises as they encounter criticisms of and contending justifications for the market’s products, as these refer to price, efficiency in production and use, regulatory compliance or ecological sustainability. Tests and justifications are vital in order to determine what is valuable and by which measure. As a theory framework, the economic sociology of conventions provides a basis for assessing these contests, compromises, and justifications over the issue of worth in a marketing context. Through an ethnographic study of the regulated activities of chemicals service companies supporting the upstream petroleum industry, we assess how actors evaluate and justify the market’s products and services in this environmentally sensitive setting by means of tests drawing from different orders of worth: the green, the industrial and the market order. Our contributions show that by artful and pragmatic compromising around exchanges, actors in marketing systems can balance several conflicting orders of worth over the question of worth without needing to converge on an overriding institutional logic.
hep-th/9707262 SPECIAL GEOMETRY IN HYPERMULTIPLETS

We give a detailed analysis of pairs of vector and hypermultiplet theories with N = 2 supersymmetry in four spacetime dimensions that are related by the (classical) mirror map. The symplectic reparametrizations of the special Kähler space associated with the vector multiplets induce corresponding transformations on the hypermultiplets. We construct the Sp(1)×Sp(n) oneforms in terms of which the hypermultiplet couplings are encoded and exhibit their behaviour under symplectic reparametrizations. Both vector and hypermultiplet theories allow vectorial central charges in the supersymmetry algebra associated with integrals over the Kähler and hyper-Kähler forms, respectively. We show how these charges and the holomorphic BPS mass are related by the mirror map.
GRB 021211 as a Faint Analog of GRB 990123: Exploring the Similarities and Differences in the Optical Afterglows

We present BVRCJHKs photometry of the optical afterglow of the gamma-ray burst GRB 021211 taken at the Magellan, MMT, and WIYN observatories between 0.7 and 50 days after the burst. We find an intrinsic spectral slope at optical and near-infrared wavelengths of 0.69 ± 0.14 at 0.87 days. The optical decay during the first day is almost identical to that of GRB 990123 except that GRB 021211's optical afterglow was intrinsically approximately 38 times fainter and the transition from the reverse shock to the forward shock may have occurred earlier than it did for GRB 990123. We find no evidence for a jet break or the cooling break passing through optical frequencies during the first day after the burst. There is weak evidence for a break in the J-band decay between 0.89 and 1.87 days, which may be due to a jet. The optical and infrared data are consistent with a relativistic fireball where the shocked electrons are in the slow cooling regime and the electron index is 2.3 ± 0.1. The forward shock appears to have been expanding in a homogeneous ambient medium during the first day after the burst. Our analysis suggests that the jet of GRB 021211 may have a small opening angle and that the total gamma-ray energy is likely to be much less than the canonical value of 1.33 × 1051 ergs. If this is the case, then it is possible that most of the energy of the burst is in another form such as a frozen magnetic field, supernova ejecta, or a second jet component. The host galaxy of GRB 021211 is subluminous and has a star formation rate of at least 1 M⊙ yr-1.
Perception of Similar and Dissimilar Lexical Tones by Non‐Tone‐Learning Infants

This study examined the perception of Mandarin lexical tones by non-tone-learning infants. We tested French-learning 4-, 8and 11-month-olds on Tone 2 (rising) versus Tone 3 (dipping), the most acoustically similar contrast in Mandarin, and on Tone 1 (high) versus Tone 4 (falling), an acoustically more dissimilar contrast. We hypothesized that sensitivity should decline with age for the similar contrast, and the dissimilar contrast should remain more discriminable. Infants were habituated to one tone, and tested with the same tone versus the contrastive tone. Results showed that the dissimilar T1-T4 contrast was consistently discriminated by all three ages, whereas the discrimination of the similar T2-T3 contrast revealed a tendency to decline over the ages. These results suggest that relative to consonants and vowels, perceptual sensitivity to lexical tones remains stronger in non-tone-learning infants. Discrimination of lexical tones is affected by both acoustic salience and perceptual attunement to the native-language phonology.
What's On My Plate: Towards Recommending Recipe Variations for Diabetes Patients

As community-based recipe platforms continue to grow in popularity, recipe recommendation is an active research area. Simultaneously, the analysis of online recipes can provide us with insights on dietary patterns in particular communities. In this paper, we focus on recipe recommendation for a user group that is constrained in terms of choices: diabetes patients need to balance their diet more than average persons and to be aware of the nutritional value of their meals. First, we discuss the type of situations where diabetes-specific food recommendations are desirable. Further, we analyze how people’s age and gender interact with food intake. Based on a large dataset, we explore how variations in ‘canonical meals’ can be exploited for recommending which alternatives better fit the user’s dietary requirements.
Evaluation of a Spoken Dialogue System for Virtual Reality Call for Fire Training

Abstract : We present an evaluation of a spoken dialogue system that engages in dialogues with soldiers training in an immersive Call for Fire (CFF) simulation. We briefly describe aspects of the Joint Fires and Effects Trainer System, and the Radiobot-CFF dialogue system, which can engage in voice communications with a trainee in call for fire dialogues. An experiment is described to judge performance of the Radiobot CFF system compared with human radio operators. Results show that while the current version of the system is not quite at human-performance levels, it is already viable for training interaction and as an operator-controller aid.
The Role of Semantics in Spanish Word Recognition: an Insight from Lexical Decision and Categorization Tasks

Abstract This study examines the factors affecting word recognition in a language with a consistent system to map letters into sounds; Spanish. The influence of semantics on the recognition of words in languages with inconsistent mappings, such as English, is well documented. Not much is known for other languages. A lexical decision task and two category verification tasks with varying levels of semantic complexity were used. In contrast to English, none of the semantic variables entered into the analyses had a significant impact on lexical decision latencies or errors. Imageability showed an influence on responses to both category verification tasks while the effect of connectivity was marginally significant in the category verification task with the greatest semantic complexity. Results indicate that word recognition decisions can be made without the involvement of central components of the semantic system. The role of semantics in word recognition in languages with consistent spelling systems will be discussed.
Haptic duplicator

We propose a haptic interface for touching 3DCG models based on the tactile copy & paste technology. In case of conventional systems for providing haptic sensation of touching virtual objects, it is challenging to reproduce realistic surface textures of objects. By scanning vibrotactile stimulation as audio signals, we realized recording of textures of real objects and reproducing of them with a wearable haptic glove with force and vibrotactile feedbacks. In our system, the user can appreciate a number of virtual objects with various scanned textures, and also, change their textures by haptic copy & paste from real objects to virtual 3DCG models.
Penalized Splines as Frequency Selective Filters - Reducing the Excess Variability at the Margins

Penalized splines have become a popular tool to model the trend component in economic time series. The outcome of the spline predominantly depends on the choice of a penalization parameter that controls the smoothness of the trend. This paper derives the penalization of splines by frequency domain aspects and points out their link to rational square wave filters. As a novel contribution this paper focuses on the so called excess variability at the margins that describes the undesired increasing variability of the trend estimation to the ends of the series. It will be shown that the too high volatility at the margins can be reduced considerably by a time varying penalization, which yields more reliable estimations for the most recent periods.
Nest Defense- Grassland Bird Responses To Snakes

Predation is the primary source of nest mortality for most passerines; thus, behaviors to reduce the impacts of predation are frequently quantified to study learning, adaptation, and coevolution among predator and prey species. Video surveillance of nests has made it possible to examine real-time parental nest defense. During 1999-2009, we used video camera systems to monitor 518 nests of grassland birds. We reviewed video of 48 visits by snakes to 34 nests; 37 of these visits resulted in predation of active nests. When adult birds encountered snakes at the nest (n = 33 visits), 76% of the encounters resulted in a form of nest defense (nonaggressive or aggressive); in 47% of the encounters, birds physically struck snakes. When defending nests, most birds pecked at the snakes; Eastern Meadowlarks (Sturnella magna) and Bobolinks (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) pecked most frequently in anyone encounter. Also, two Eastern Meadowlarks ran around snakes, frequently with wings spread, and three Bobolinks ariation in avian responses to predation, with adaptive responses in nest placement, clutch size, sociality/coloniality, and feeding behavior, across both species and broader taxonomic units, demonstrates that nest predation is an struck at snakes from the air. Nest defense rarely appeared to alter snake behavior; the contents of seven nests defended aggressively and two nests defended nonaggressively were partially depredated, whereas the contents of six nests defended each way were consumed completely. One fledgling was produced at each of three nests that had been aggressively defended. During aggressive defense, one snake appeared to be driven away and one was wounded. Our findings should be a useful starting point for further research. For example, future researchers may be able to determine whether the behavioral variation we observed in nest defense reflects species differences, anatomic or phylogenetic constraints, or individual differences related to a bird's prior experience. There appears to be much potential for studying nest defense behavior using video recording of both real and simulated encounters.
A crop population perspective on maize seed systems in Mexico

Improvement of local germplasm through artificial selection is regarded as the main force behind maize evolution and diversity in Mexico, the crop's center of origin. This perspective neglects the larger social context of maize evolution. Using a theoretical approach and Mexico-wide data, we show that farmer-led evolution of maize is largely driven by a technological diffusion and appropriation process that selectively integrates nonlocal germplasm into local seed stocks. Our approach construes farmer practices as events in the life history of seed to build a demographic model. The model shows how random and systematic differences in management combine to structure maize seed populations into subpopulations that can spread or become extinct, in some cases independently of visible agronomic advantages. The process involves continuous population bottlenecks that can lead to diversity loss. Nonlocal germplasm thus might play a critical role in maintaining diversity in individual localities. Empirical estimates show that introduction of nonlocal seed in Central and Southeastern Mexico is rarer than previously thought; prompt replacement further prevents new seed from spreading. Yet introduced seed perceived as valuable diffuses rapidly, contributing variation in the form of type diversity or through introgression into local seed. Maize seed dynamics and evolution are thus part of a complex social process driven by farmers' desire to appropriate the value in maize farming, not always achieved by preserving or improving local seed stocks.
Survey of Geodetic Mapping Methods: Geodetic Approaches to Mapping and the Relationship to Graph-Based SLAM

The ability to simultaneously localize a robot and build a map of the environment is central to most robotics applications, and the problem is often referred to as simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). Robotics researchers have proposed a large variety of solutions allowing robots to build maps and use them for navigation. In addition, the geodetic community has addressed large-scale map building for centuries, computing maps that span across continents. These large-scale mapping processes had to deal with several challenges that are similar to those of the robotics community. In this article, we explain key geodetic map building methods that we believe are relevant for robot mapping. We also aim at providing a geodetic perspective on current state-of-the-art SLAM methods and identifying similarities both in terms of challenges faced and the solutions proposed by both communities. The central goal of this article is to connect both fields and enable future synergies between them.
Applying mobile phone technology for making health and rehabilitation monitoring more affordable

Nowadays, stationary clinical patient monitoring is achieved with professional, but very expensive devices, which are well established and commonly used. Also mobile monitoring is possible through devices from the same vendors of medical instruments, for instance during diagnosis and rehabilitation. A look on the sports consumer market shows that there are similar devices and systems available. For instance, heart rate monitoring with warning signals can be achieved at a much lower price with such devices quite easily. Furthermore, the versatile sensors, which are available today as sports equipment, can be linked through an open RF communication standard to other computing units, in particular to smartphones, which meanwhile also implement this new protocol. In this work, the possibilities and capabilities of such semi-professional device approaches are discussed. Scenarios like health and rehabilitation activities are under major scope in this comparative evaluation. The argumentation as also the derived concepts are complemented by experiments on the behavior and reliability of such sports sensors.
Successful management of bleeding in a patient with factor V inhibitor by platelet transfusions.

A 71 -yr-old male was seen because of the development of severe bleeding diathesis secondary to an acquired factor V inhibitor. The lack of clinical and laboratory response to fresh frozen plasma prompted us to treat him with platelet transfusions during 4 separate bleeding episodes; on each occasion he received 1 0-1 5 U of homologous platelet concentrates. There was a remarkable clinical response associated with a marked correction of the prolonged prothrombin time. prolonged partial thromboplastin time. and prolonged Russell viper venom time; this correlated with higher factor V levels and complete neutralization of the inhibitor. The beneficial effect of platelet transfusion lasted 5-6 days. The inhibitor was of low titer. and it was precipitated by staphylococcal protein A. The in vivo response to platelet transfusion correlated with subsequently performed in vitro experiments. Nonwashed control platelet pellets mixed with inhibitor plasma partially corrected the prolonged PTT. whereas washed platelets or albumin density gradient separated samples did not. Similarly, nonwashed platelets from a patient with congenital factor V deficiency had no corrective effect. Likely mechanisms of the effect of transfused platelets might include: (A) factor V was provided by platelets; (B) the platelet surface provided receptor sites for the factor V inhibitor; or (C) platelet participated in local hemostasis. Treatment of this patient with immunosuppression (cyclophosphamide and prednisone) resulted in disappearance of the inhibitor. Thus. platelet transfusions could be an alternative therapy to fresh frozen plasma in the treatment of bleeding in patients with factor V inhibitors.
On Lars Hörmander s remark on the characteristic Cauchy problem

Nous etendons des resultats dus a L. Hormander [9] concernant la resolution du probleme de Cauchy caracteristique pour des equations d'onde du second ordre avec un potentiel regulier du premier ordre. Le cadre geometrique de [9] etait un espace-temps spatialement compact avec une metrique reguliere. L'hypersurface sur laquelle les donnees initiales sont fixees etait spatiale ou caracteristique en chaque point et simplement de regularite Lipschitz. Nous affaiblissons les hypotheses de regularite sur la metrique et le potentiel et nous obtenons des resultats analogues. Le probleme de Cauchy pour une hypersurface spatiale est resolu dans le cas d'une metrique Lipschitz et pour un potentiel dont les coefficients sont localement L ∞ , avec le meme espace de solutions que dans le cas regulier. Nous resolvons egalement le probleme de Cauchy totalement caracteristique dans un cadre tres legerement plus regulier: essentiellement, une metrique C 1 et un potentiel dont les coefficients des termes du premier ordre sont continus et ceux des termes d'ordre 0 sont localement L°°.