Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Blue Straggler Stars Beyond the Milky Way. III. Detection of Evolved Blue Straggler Candidates in Large Magellanic Cloud Clusters

We analyze Hubble Space Telescope observations of nine Large Magellanic Cloud star clusters with ages of 1–2 Gyr to search for evolved counterparts of blue straggler stars. Near the red clump regions in the clusters’ color–magnitude diagrams, we find branches of evolved stars that are much brighter than normal evolved stars. We examine the effects of photometric artifacts, differential reddening, and field contamination. We conclude that these bright evolved stars cannot be explained by any of these effects. Our statistical tests show that the contributions of photometric uncertainties, crowding effects, and differential reddening to these bright evolved stars are insufficient to fully explain their presence. Based on isochrone fitting, we have also ruled out the possibility that these bright evolved stars could be reproduced by an internal chemical abundance spread. The spatial distributions of the bright evolved stars exhibit clear concentrations that cannot be explained by homogeneously distributed field stars. This is further confirmed based on Monte Carlo-based tests. By comparing our observations with stellar evolution models, we find that the masses of most of the bright evolved stars do not exceed twice the average mass of normal evolved stars. We suggest that these bright evolved stars are, in fact, evolved blue straggler stars.
Drag reduction in turbulent flow due to additives: a report on Euromech 52

Euromech 52, on drag reduction in turbulent flows due to additives, was held from 27-30 August 1974in Stockholm, Sweden, under the chairmanship of M. T. Landahl, and was intended to bring together specialists in the various aspects of the drag-reduction phenomenon to discuss current experimental and theoretical work, and to identify promising directions for future research. There were forty-seven participants from eleven countries and twenty-two papers were presented, with ample time for discussion. These papers, which are briefly summarized in this report, could be grouped roughly under the headings of §§ 2-6 below.
Change in pattern diversity during secondary succession in Estonian forests

Comparisons of observed variance in species diver- sity (exp H') and in species richness with expectation assum- ing a random and independent distribution of species are used to assess the relative importance during succession of niche limitation (Wilson, Gitay & Agnew 1987; limitation of the abundance or occurrence of species by competitive interac- tions) and nucleation (Yarranton & Morrison 1974; the develop- ment of a community through chance establishment or per- sistence followed by vegetative expansion from those nuclei). Wilson, Gitay & Agnew (1987) and Palmer (1987) sug- gest a deficit (i.e . lower than expected) in variance of richness is consistent with a 'niche limitation' process where competi- tive sorting makes patches more similar in species number than would be expected. In contrast, variance that is greater than expected is consistent with and could result from underly- ing environmental heterogeneity (i.e. 'waterhole effect'). We extend these ideas to suggest that, in addition, a deficit in variance of diversity ( exp H') can be interpreted as indicating niche limitation. Further, we suggest that a deficit of variance in richness need not be interpreted as resulting from niche limitation, but could result from limited dispersal and estab- lishment followed by localized spread that causes quadrats to have less compositional overlap than might be expected if species were distributed at random. However, there is little reason to expect that such nucleation would cause a similar reduction in the variance of diversity. First, exp H' is relatively insensitive to the presence or absence of rare species, and second, if local competitive processes do restrict the values of exp H' through some form of niche limitation, this could well be independent of the specific species involved. Thus, a com- bination of lower than expected variance in richness and high variance in diversity suggests nucleation to be important, particularly if the mean pairwise similarity between samples is lower than expected. We first examine a secondary successional sere with stands representing post-logging and mature forest. The variance of diversity is low in the establishment phase, but not in subse- quent phases where the tree canopy is well developed. Signifi- cantly low variance of species richness is observed in a young forest just entering the thinning phase. Thus, nucleation may be taking place in the establishment phase of forest develop- ment, and is almost certainly important in the early thinning phase. Second, we examine communities in the process of equilibration following fertilization, logging, and paludi- fication. All these communities have a low variance in diver- sity (exp H') suggesting niche limitation.
Theoretical Trends in IS/T Leadership: A Review of Published Research

One way to examine the research contribution in structuring knowledge about an Information system (IS) phenomenon is to understand its theoretical state, trends and traits (structural nature of theory). We performed a theoretical assessment of one specific IS phenomenon: Information systems/technology (IS/T) leadership. IS/T leadership is a process followed by the top IS executives to affect various stakeholders to achieve the IS/T related goals aligned with the organizational mission and vision. We performed a systematic literature review, and categorized the surveyed articles based on the Gregor’s taxonomy of theory types in IS research to identify the type of theories developed and used in IS/T research. Our findings demonstrate the interest in theory used for explaining and predicting IS/T leadership research.
CONGRESS ON ACOUSTICS MADRID , 2-7 SEPTEMBER 2007 PERCEPTUAL CONSEQUENCES OF CHANGE IN VOCODED SPEECH PARAMETERS FOR VARIOUS REVERBERATION CONDITIONS PACS : 43 . 71

The perceptual consequence of change in parameters of vocoded speech for various reverberation conditions has been examined. The three controlled variables were: number of bands, instantaneous frequency changes rate and reverberation conditions. The effects were quantified in terms of: (a) non-words’ recognition scores for young normal-hearing listeners, (b) ‘ease of listening’ based on the time of reaction (response delay) and (c) the subjective measure of difficulty (ten-degree scale). The results have shown that the fine structure information is a relevant cue in speech perception in reverberation conditions. It has also been observed that only the slow variations of instantaneous frequency are critical in perception. A good correlation was found between all subjective measures considered in this study. INTRODUCTION In order to determine which features of speech signal are critical in speech perception, in given acoustical environment, one can degrade speech and measure speech intelligibility. If a substantial decrease in intelligibility is observed after reducing of some feature in the speech signal, the critical significance is assigned to this feature. There are several ways to degrade the speech signal. Shannon et. Al. [3] showed that the slow modulations are the most important characteristics of the speech signal. These slow modulations carry phonetic information. They showed that four bands of noise modulated by temporal envelope extracted from the original signal can give a high speech intelligibility. However, there is a high decrease in vocoded speech intelligibility in the presence of additive noise [6]. Vocoded speech has much lower intelligibility when the fine structure in respective bands is not transmitted. Smith et al. [5], in experiments with auditory chimeras have shown that fine structure carries the information needed for pitch perception. Thus, it can be said that this feature has an important influence on auditory streaming. Stickney et al. [5] have proved that the fine structure reduced to slow frequency modulations give higher speech intelligibility in the presence of additive noise, especially of concurrent speakers. The signal model can be expressed by the following equation 1 [2]: ( Eq. 1) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ∑ ∫ ∑ = =       + + = ≈ N
Energy‐Efficient Power Allocation for Cognitive Radio Networks with Joint Overlay and Underlay Spectrum Access Mechanism

Traditional designs of cognitive radio (CR) focus on maximizing system throughput. In this paper, we study the joint overlay and underlay power allocation problem for orthogonal frequency‐division multiple access–based CR. Instead of maximizing system throughput, we aim to maximize system energy efficiency (EE), measured by a “bit per Joule” metric, while maintaining the minimal rate requirement of a given CR system, under the total power constraint of a secondary user and interference constraints of primary users. The formulated energy‐efficient power allocation (EEPA) problem is nonconvex; to make it solvable, we first transform the original problem into a convex optimization problem via fractional programming, and then the Lagrange dual decomposition method is used to solve the equivalent convex optimization problem. Finally, an optimal EEPA allocation scheme is proposed. Numerical results show that the proposed method can achieve better EE performance.
Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs

The prevailing view of a wolf (Canis lupus) pack is that of a group of individuals ever vying for dominance but held in check by the "alpha" pair, the alpha male and alpha female. Most research on the social dynamics of wolf packs, however, has been conducted on non-natural assortments of captive wolves. Here I describe the wolf-pack social order as it occurs in nature, discuss the alpha concept and social dominance and submission, and present data on the precise relationships among members in free-living packs, based on a literature review and 13 summers of observations of wolves on Ellesmere Island, Northwest Territories, Canada. I conclude that the typical wolf pack is a family, with the adult parents guiding the activities of the group in a division-of-labor system in which the female predominates primarily in such activities as pup care and defense and the male primarily during foraging and food-provisioning and the travels associated with them.
’ s repository of research publications and other research outputs Stardust Wild 2 Dust Measurements Book Section

During its passage through the coma of comet 81P/Wild 2 in January 2004 to collect dust particles for return to the Earth, instruments on Stardust made extensive measurements of the dust coma environment. The inner coma was characterized by many narrow jets, imaged by the Navigation Camera. Dust fluxes measured by the Dust Flux Monitor Instrument (DFMI) revealed a highly non-uniform spatial distribution, with short duration bursts of impacts implying localized spatial density changes of orders of magnitude on scales of less than a km as well as a second period of high activity ~4000 km from the nucleus where almost 80% of the detected impacts occurred. The Cometary and Interstellar Dust Analyzer (CIDA) obtained 29 dust impact mass spectra near closest approach. The spacecraft Attitude Control System (ACS) detected one event attributable to a large particle impact. The overall mass distribution in the inner coma was dominated by the largest grains, with an average cumulative mass distribution index of α=0.75±0.05 (where the number of particles of mass m or larger, N(m)∝m). The mass distribution was consistent with the ACS detection but not with the CIDA results which implied an impact rate a factor of 10 lower. The mass distribution was also highly variable during the flyby, and during the second period of high activity, small grains dominated, with α=1.13±0.2. The enormous variations in dust spatial density over distances of a few hundred metres, have been interpreted as the result of jets and distributed particle fragmentation, with the second period of high activity resulting from outgassing and/or fragmentation of a large (10s of metres diameter) boulder. This interpretation has been received with some skepticism. We review the data, the evidence for fragmentation and refute the criticisms leveled at this interpretation. Data from other comets indicate that the same processes may have occurred and therefore may be common in comets in general.
Reynolds stress analysis of EMHD-controlled wall turbulence. Part I. Streamwise forcing

In this work we investigate numerically turbulent flow of low electrical conductivity fluid subject to electro-magnetic (EMHD) forcing. The configuration is similar to the one considered in the experimental work of Henoch and Stace [Phys. Fluids 7, 1371 (1995)] but in a channel geometry. The lower wall of the channel is covered with alternating streamwise electrodes and magnets to create a Lorentz force in the positive streamwise direction. Two cases are considered in detail corresponding to interaction parameter values of 0.4 (case 1) and 0.1 (case 2). The effect of switching off and on the electrodes is also studied for the two cases. At the Reynolds number considered (Reτ≈200), a drag increase was obtained for all cases, in agreement with the experiments of Henoch and Stace. A Reynolds stress analysis was performed based on a new decomposition of the gradients normal to the wall of the Reynolds stress −u′v′¯. It was found that the vortex stretching term w′w2′¯ and the spanwise variation of the stress c.
Peanut Bud Necrosis Disease: An Overview

Peanut bud necrosis disease (PBND) was first recorded in India in 1949. The economic importance of the disease was realized during the late 1960s when incidences up to 100% were recorded in many groundnut-growing regions in India. The disease has been described under different names. It was shown to be economically important in parts of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh. Although it was earlier reported to be caused by tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV), recently, the causal virus of PBND in India was shown to be a serologically distinct tospovirus, now referred to as peanut bud necrosis virus (PBNV), transmitted by Thrips palmi. Surveysin many groundnut-growing countries indicate that PBNV is restricted to South and Southeast Asia. Several cultural practices are available to control the disease. Excellent progress has been made in the identification of sources of field resistance. The PBNV genome contains three RNA species and the sRNA has recently been sequenced and the two genes it codes for have been identified. Progress achieved will lead to the production of high quality diagnostic aids and for the development of transgenic resistance. Future research will focus on epidemiology, development of early-maturingresistant cultivars, sequencing of the entire viral genome, the production of high quality diagnostic aids, and assessment of biodiversity among PBNV isolates.
Model selection for regression on a random design

We consider the problem of estimating an unknown regression function when the design is random with values in . Our estimation procedure is based on model selection and does not rely on any prior information on the target function. We start with a collection of linear functional spaces and build, on a data selected space among this collection, the least-squares estimator. We study the performance of an estimator which is obtained by modifying this least-squares estimator on a set of small probability. For the so-defined estimator, we establish nonasymptotic risk bounds that can be related to oracle inequalities. As a consequence of these, we show that our estimator possesses adaptive properties in the minimax sense over large families of Besov balls Bα,l,∞ (R) with R>0 , l ≥ 1 and α > α1 where α1 is a positive number satisfying 1/l - 1/2 ≤ α1 . We also study the particular case where the regression function is additive and then obtain an additive estimator which converges at the same rate as it does when k=1 .
The Kelvin versus the Raoult Term in the Kohler Equation

Abstract A comprehensive sensitivity study was carried out examining the sensitivity of hygroscopic growth and activation as modeled with the Kohler equation. Different parameters in the Kohler equation were varied within the range of their currently known uncertainties. The parameters examined include not only those describing the nature of the soluble substances in a particle/droplet and the surface tension σ of the droplet solution, but also the recently proposed representation of parameters coupling the Raoult and Kelvin terms (i.e., partitioning of solute between the surface and bulk phases, although the recently proposed adsorption to wettable but insoluble material was not considered). The examined variations cause significant changes in both hygroscopic growth and activation. Whereas the hygroscopic growth regime below 95% RH is insensitive toward the surface tension σ, σ has a large influence on the activation, increasing with decreasing particle size. This implies that a cloud condensation nucle.
Drone-View Building Identification by Cross-View Visual Learning and Relative Spatial Estimation

Drones become popular recently and equip more sensors than traditional cameras, which bring emerging applications and research. To enable drone-based applications, providing related information (e.g., building) to understand the environment around the drone is essential. We frame this drone-view building identification as building retrieval problem: given a building (multimodal query) with its images, geolocation and drone's current location, we aim to retrieve the most likely proposal (building candidate) on a drone-view image. Despite few annotated drone-view images to date, there are many images of other views from the Web, like ground-level, street-view and aerial images. Thus, we propose a cross-view triplet neural network to learn visual similarity between drone-view and other views, further design relative spatial estimation of each proposal and the drone, and collect new drone-view datasets for the task. Our method outperforms triplet neural network by 0.12 mAP. (i.e., 22.9 to 35.0, +53% in a sub-dataset [LA])
Potential Mutagenic Activity of Leachate from a Municipal Solid Waste Landfill on Two Higher Plants

The massive storage of municipal solid waste into landfills undergoes physical, chemical and biological decomposition, generating leachate and biogas. Raw leachate can cause local and far distant toxin accumulation, acute and chronic impact, the reduction of biodiversity and populations of sensitive species and can ultimately affect human health. The purpose of the present study was to assess and compare the potential mutagenic activity of the leachate collected in a municipal solid waste landfill (localized in the North-West part of Albania) by the means of Allium cepa and Vicia faba root assays. 5, 15, 30 and 60% concentration solutions (in drinking water, v/v) of raw leachate were used to establish the full-scale rhizotoxicity test on onion bulbs and faba seeds. Endpoints as: root length and 50% toxic effective concentration (EC50), mitotic index, frequencies of micronuclei, chromosome aberrations and types (CA) in root tip meristem, were evaluated and compared. All screened endpoints obviously changed in a leachate dose-dependent manner. The leachate significantly induced delay and reduction in growth and mitotic activity of the treated roots along with the concentration increasing. The results revealed substantial increases of physiological (sticky, vagrant and laggard chromosomes, c-mitosis, multipolar anaphases and stars) and clastogenic (bridges and fragments) CA types. The enhanced frequencies of chromosome aberrations and micronuclei in the root cells of both the plants showed that leachate contains genotoxic and mutagenic substances, thus representing an important source of environmental pollution if not handled properly. Despite a certain difference in sensitivity, data confirmed that A. cepa and V. faba assays are suitable in predicting and monitoring landfill leachate toxicity.
Preparation and Characterization of Desensitized ?-HNIW in Solvent-Antisolvent Recrystallizations

The solubility of hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane (HNIW) in solvent and solvent-antisolvent mixtures, and the temperature at which the HNIW’s polymorph transforms were studied. The solubility of HNIW in solvent-antisolvent mixtures was measured at 30 °C and these data were fitted to a generalized solubility curve. Recrystallization experiments were conducted at 30 °C in the case of saturation with the volume ratio of ethyl acetate to petroleum ether (chloroform) ranging from 0:1 to 4:1. Desensitized HNIW was obtained by ethyl acetate and petroleum ether crystallization and characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The FTIR and XRD spectra confirmed the structural features of ε-HNIW. The blocklike ε-HNIW grains had an average particle size of 160 μm and high purity (98.52%). The decomposition of ε-HNIW was observed in the temperature range of 225-246 °C by Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC). Furthermore, the impact and friction sensitivity tests suggested that the desensitized ε-HNIW was less sensitive than raw HNIW. Small scale gap tests with desensitized ε-HNIW showed that these crystals are less sensitive to shock initiation.
Local Extremes, Runs, Strings and Multiresolution

The paper considers the problem of nonparametric regression with emphasis on controlling the number of local extremes. Two methods, the run method and the taut-string multiresolution method, are introduced and analyzed on standard test beds. It is shown that the number and locations of local extreme values are consistently estimated. Rates of convergence are proved for both methods. The run method converges slowly but can withstand blocks as well as a high proportion of isolated outliers. The rate of convergence of the taut-string multiresolution method is almost optimal. The method is extremely sensitive and can detect very low power peaks. Section 1 contains an introduction with special reference to the number of local extreme values. The run method is described in Section 2 and the taut-string-multiresolution method in Section 3. Low power peaks are considered in Section 4. Section 5 contains a comparison with other methods and Section 6 a short conclusion. The proofs are given in Section 7 and the taut-string algorithm is described in the Appendix.