cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
Η πρόσφατη πανδημία θα επηρεάσει τις γεννήσεις και την γονιμότητα των νεότερων γενεών στην Ελλάδα; (CODIV-19 will affect the births and fertility of the younger cohorts in Greece?) DIRAP Flash News 1, 2021
Creators: name: BYRON KOTZAMANIS
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: 160399 Demography not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Sociology

description: COVID-19 has affected all developed countries, and deaths worldwide are likely to reach 3,000,000 by the end of 2021. So far, particular emphasis has been placed on the effects of the pandemic on mortality. However, the question that arises is whether it will affect only mortality and not the other key components of population reproduction (fertility, internal and external migration), especially in countries like Greece, affected significantly by the economic crisis in the last decade. Even if it is still too early to evaluate the CODIV impact on fertility, we estimate that the negative effects of the pandemic in this country, in combination with those of the economic crisis, have created an unfavorable environment for having a child and are likely, in the current decade, to lead to a further decline in both the fertility of the younger cohorts and a decrease of births. Thus, women born around 1980 are not expected to have more than 1.5 children while births, taking into account that the population of women of childbearing age will continue to decline, will be in the current decade 130 thousand less than those (950 thousand) of the previous one (2010-19).
Η πανδημία του COVID-19 έχει επηρεάσει όλες τις ανεπτυγμένες χώρες του πλανήτη μας αυξάνοντας τους θανάτους και μειώνοντας για πρώτη φορά τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες το προσδόκιμο ζωής. Αναπόφευκτα, ιδιαίτερη έμφαση έχει δοθεί μέχρι στιγμής στις επιπτώσεις της πανδημίας αυτής στην θνησιμότητα. Τίθεται όμως το ερώτημα εάν ο COVID-19 θα επηρεάσει αρνητικά μόνον την μεταβλητή αυτή και όχι και τις άλλες δημογραφικές μεταβλητές, ειδικότερα δε στις χώρες εκείνες που θίχθηκαν ιδιαίτερα από την οικονομική κρίση την προηγούμενη δεκαετία. Στο κείμενο που ακολουθεί επιχειρούμε να δώσουμε μια πρώτη απάντηση στο ερώτημα του αν η πανδημία θα επηρεάσει την γονιμότητα και τις γεννήσεις στη χώρα μας. Εάν και δεν διαθέτουμε ακόμη όλα τα αναγκαία δεδομένα, εκτιμούμε ότι οι επιπτώσεις του COVID-19, σωρευτικά με αυτές της οικονομικής κρίσης, έχουν επιδεινώσει το περιβάλλον για την απόκτηση ενός παιδιού, και θα οδηγήσουν τόσο σε μια πτώση της γονιμότητας των νεότερων γενεών όσο και σε μια επί πλέον μείωση των γεννήσεων. Έτσι, οι γυναίκες που γεννήθηκαν γύρω από το 1980 δεν αναμένεται να κάνουν κατά μέσο όρο περισσότερα από 1,5 παιδιά ενώ οι γεννήσεις, λαμβάνοντας υπόψη και ότι το πλήθος των γυναικών σε αναπαραγωγική ηλικία θα συνεχίσει να μειώνεται, θα είναι την τρέχουσα δεκαετία, σε ένα αισιόδοξο σενάριο, 130 χιλ. λιγότερες από αυτές (950 χιλ.) της δεκαετίας 2010-19.
Factors Influencing Value of Agribusiness Firms Marketing Animal Proteins
Creators: name: Campbell, Victoria
name: Thompson, Jada M.
name: Campbell, Victoria
name: Thompson, Jada M.
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: Agribusiness
subject: hedonic pricing
subject: stocks diversification
subject: animal protein

description: In today’s globalized world, some agribusinesses are diversifying to other agricultural and non-agricultural products to combat the inherent risks associated with marketing agricultural goods, while others have intensified in one particular area. For example, Tyson Foods, Incorporated, one of the largest publicly-traded and globally recognized agribusinesses, began making poultry products in the 1930s and has since diversified to market beef, pork, and other food products through either acquisitions or expansion of core business strategy, while Cal-Maine Foods has continued to stay true to its core business of egg production and marketing. A diversified portfolio is expected to alleviate the effects of business disrupting events such as product recalls, droughts, or animal disease events. Protein companies specifically face risks associated with feed sourcing, animal health and welfare, and food safety. The aim of this work is to analyze the value of product diversification on an agribusiness’ worth using stock prices to value each of the top 100 meat companies that are publically traded in the United States. Daily stock prices from 2007-2016 have been collected and are used to identify the factors that contribute to the value of a company, while accounting for the heterogeneity of agribusiness management and strategy.
Re/searching, art/making, m/othering
Creators: name: Ward-Davies, Anastaszia
Publisher: name: The University of Melbourne
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 360299
subject: Creative and professional writing not elsewhere classified
classificationCode: 360602
subject: Fine arts
classificationCode: 390101
subject: Creative arts, media and communication curriculum and pedagogy

description: The first zine in this project was a series of hundred-word reflections (Lauren & Berlandt, 2019) [“four hundreds for me”] I wrote sitting under my desk at 7am in the middle of winter, underneath my a/r/tographic playmat. Somewhat compulsively, I wrote zine after zine as a sense-making exercise (Greene, 1987; Haynes, 2001), initially to examine my inability to participate in my own research. The turn occurs when I see these zines as a/r/tographic openings (Irwin, 2013) for and as research.These zines unfolded to story reasons why I could not participate in my own research, including being tired [“four hundreds for me”], being overwhelmed [“how to do dishes”], discomfort around being a working mother [“Re/searching, art/making, m/othering”] and the feeling of drowning [“What Are You Doing in Gloomy Hollow?”]. I explored my inability to participate in a living inquiry that felt haunted by postpartum psychosis and the unravelling of significant childhood trauma [“eeexxxccceessss” and “[sur]renderings: contiguity and living inquiry”]. I folded a longtime friend into the process [“how to make a zine when your life is falling apart”] and started to see the boundaries between my personal zine-making and the zines made as da/r/ta by participants shift; they started to overlap. I started to see their grief for their schools mirrored in my own grief for my research [“an ode to our goals for education (or something”] and my drowning in motherhood as contiguous with their drowning in schools [“neither of these wolves can do it”].This is an 8-page zine that explores my complicated feelings about working motherhood, the way I perform motherhood and how it interferes with my ability to make research.This is an 8-page zine that explores my complicated feelings about working motherhood, the way I perform motherhood and how it interferes with my ability to make research.
RG decimation-based approach to confinement and computation on coarser lattices
Creators: name: Tomboulis, E. T.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2005
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Lattice (hep-lat)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: A systematic procedure is presented for connecting short to long scales in LGT. Approximate decimations are used which can provide both upper and lower bounds on the partition function. Its exact value is then obtained by interpolation between the bounds. By iterating the procedure representations of the partition function as well as other physical quantities can be obtained on progressively coarser lattices. For SU(2) IR flow into the confining strong coupling regime results for any initial $β$.
description: 6 pages, Latex + PoS.cls, Lattice 2005, Topology and Confinement
An Improved Measurement of the Secondary Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies from the SPT-SZ + SPTpol Surveys
Creators: name: Reichardt, C. L.
name: Patil, S.
name: Ade, P. A. R.
name: Anderson, A. J.
name: Austermann, J. E.
name: Avva, J. S.
name: Baxter, E.
name: Beall, J. A.
name: Bender, A. N.
name: Benson, B. A.
name: Bianchini, F.
name: Bleem, L. E.
name: Carlstrom, J. E.
name: Chang, C. L.
name: Chaubal, P.
name: Chiang, H. C.
name: Chou, T. L.
name: Citron, R.
name: Moran, C. Corbett
name: Crawford, T. M.
name: Crites, A. T.
name: de Haan, T.
name: Dobbs, M. A.
name: Everett, W.
name: Gallicchio, J.
name: George, E. M.
name: Gilbert, A.
name: Gupta, N.
name: Halverson, N. W.
name: Harrington, N.
name: Henning, J. W.
name: Hilton, G. C.
name: Holder, G. P.
name: Holzapfel, W. L.
name: Hrubes, J. D.
name: Huang, N.
name: Hubmayr, J.
name: Irwin, K. D.
name: Knox, L.
name: Lee, A. T.
name: Li, D.
name: Lowitz, A.
name: Luong-Van, D.
name: McMahon, J. J.
name: Mehl, J.
name: Meyer, S. S.
name: Millea, M.
name: Mocanu, L. M.
name: Mohr, J. J.
name: Montgomery, J.
name: Nadolski, A.
name: Natoli, T.
name: Nibarger, J. P.
name: Noble, G.
name: Novosad, V.
name: Omori, Y.
name: Padin, S.
name: Pryke, C.
name: Ruhl, J. E.
name: Saliwanchik, B. R.
name: Sayre, J. T.
name: Schaffer, K. K.
name: Shirokoff, E.
name: Sievers, C.
name: Smecher, G.
name: Spieler, H. G.
name: Staniszewski, Z.
name: Stark, A. A.
name: Tucker, C.
name: Vanderlinde, K.
name: Veach, T.
name: Vieira, J. D.
name: Wang, G.
name: Whitehorn, N.
name: Williamson, R.
name: Wu, W. L. K.
name: Yefremenko, V.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We report new measurements of millimeter-wave power spectra in the angular multipole range $2000 \le \ell \le 11,000$ (angular scales $5^\prime \gtrsim θ\gtrsim 1^\prime$). By adding 95 and 150\,GHz data from the low-noise 500 deg$^2$ SPTpol survey to the SPT-SZ three-frequency 2540 deg$^2$ survey, we substantially reduce the uncertainties in these bands. These power spectra include contributions from the primary cosmic microwave background, cosmic infrared background, radio galaxies, and thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effects. The data favor a thermal SZ (tSZ) power at 143\,GHz of $D^{\rm tSZ}_{3000} = 3.42 \pm 0.54~ μ{\rm K}^2$ and a kinematic SZ (kSZ) power of $D^{\rm kSZ}_{3000} = 3.0 \pm 1.0~ μ{\rm K}^2$. This is the first measurement of kSZ power at $\ge 3\,σ$. We study the implications of the measured kSZ power for the epoch of reionization, finding the duration of reionization to be $Δz_{re} = 1.0^{+1.6}_{-0.7}$ ($Δz_{re}< 4.1$ at 95% confidence), when combined with our previously published tSZ bispectrum measurement.
description: Submitted to ApJ, 16 pages. (revised portions of the introduction and description of bandpower estimation)
The cytokine IL‐17A as a marker of treatment resistance in major depressive disorder?
Creators: name: Nothdurfter, Caroline
name: Milenkovic, Vladimir M.
name: Sarubin, Nina
name: Hilbert, Sven
name: Manook, André
name: Weigl, Johannes
name: Almeqbaali, Khalifa
name: Wetzel, Christian H.
name: Rupprecht, Rainer
name: Baghai, Thomas C.
Publisher: name: Universität Regensburg
Year: 2019
Subjects: subject: affective disorder antidepressant cytokines inflammation
subject: 150 Psychologie
subject: 610 Medizin

description: Major depression is a complex disease and—among others, inflammation appears to play an important role in its pathophysiology. In this study, we investigated a broad range of cytokines in depressed patients. Plasma levels of interleukin (IL)‐12/ IL‐23p40, IL‐15, IL‐16, IL‐17A, IL‐1α, IL‐7, tumor necrosis factorβ and vascular endothelial growth factor were compared in 48 patients suffering from major depression before, after one and after six weeks of antidepressive treatment in relation to therapy response. Interestingly, the level of IL‐17A turned out to rise significantly in the non‐responder group compared to responder during antidepressive treatment. IL‐17A is a pro‐inflammatory cytokine that initiates the production of other cytokines, thereby inducing and mediating immune response. It is also involved in allergic and autoimmune‐related diseases. The database investigating the role of IL‐17A in major depressive disorder has grown within the last few years comparing levels of this cytokine in depressed patients versus healthy subjects. However, little is known about the expression of IL‐17A during the course of antidepressive treatment. In summary, our study provides valuable evidence that this cytokine might serve as a marker of therapy resistance to antidepressants.
title: Atmospheric Super-Rotation on Venus With a Simplified Global Circulation Model
Creators: name: Dawson, Jon
Publisher: name: The Open University
Year: 2014

description: A spectral GCM for Mars was converted to Venus parameters (radius, gravity, rotation rate), and tested to determine the optimum configuration for use as a Venus Global Circulation Model.

 Super-rotation, a circulation of the atmosphere faster than the underlying planet, is a particular feature of the of Venus’ atmosphere where the wind speed at the cloud tops is ~100 ms-1. It is important that the model developed can reproduce this feature.

 A reference simulation was performed at T21 resolution and forced with a realistic temperature profile, super-rotation was achieved of ~50 ms-1 with strong meridional circulation. Topography was added and found to make little difference to the superrotation, the meridional circulation was stronger than the reference with counter cells developing above the high elevation features. Tests were performed with increased background temperature profiles, and therefore stability, used for the forcing. It was found that peak zonal winds increased and the meridional circulation weakened as the stability increased. Realistic wind speeds could be achieved by tuning the temperature increase. A simple diurnal cycle was introduced and the results presented when run with a maximum temperature increase of 100 K over the reference simulation temperature profile.

 The sensitivity of the model to vertical and horizontal resolution was tested. It was found at that 50 vertical levels provided the best compromise between good results and the computer time required. The final value of global super-rotation and the time taken for the simulation to reach equilibrium were found to be strongly dependent on the horizontal resolution. T42 resolution reaching equilibrium faster than the lower resolutions tested thus offsetting the additional computer time required.
Alcohol consumption among adults in Germany: risky drinking levels
Creators: name: Lange, Cornelia
name: Manz, Kristin
name: Kuntz, Benjamin
Publisher: name: Robert Koch-Institut, Epidemiologie und Gesundheitsberichterstattung
Year: 2017
Subjects: subject: ADULTS
subject: HEALTH MONITORING
subject: ALCOHOL
subject: RISKY CONSUMPTION
subject: GERMANY
subject: 610 Medizin

description: Consuming harmful amounts of alcohol is considered a contributing factor in over 200 diseases. Women who drink over 10 g and men who drink more than 20 g of pure alcohol daily are already consuming risky amounts. According to GEDA 2014/2015-EHIS data, 13.8% of women and 18.2% of men consume risky amounts of alcohol at least weekly. The consumption of potentially dangerous levels of alcohol is most widespread in the 45-64 age group. Across all age groups, the prevalence of risky alcohol consumption patterns is higher among highly educated women compared to women with a lower level of education. For men, this pattern only appears in those aged 65 and over. Preventive measures including social and environmental interventions and responsible drinking campaigns should contribute to further reducing risky alcohol consumption among the population.
title: Studies of the Links Between Quasar Black Hole Accretion and Star Formation in Their Host Galaxies: Data Analysis of the Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey
Creators: name: Goodfellow, Mark Damian Dominic
Publisher: name: The Open University
Year: 2013

description: The topic of this thesis is to gather evidence for a link between star formation in galaxies that contain a quasar in their nuclei. For quasars I argue that the best technique to measure the star formation rates is to use the far infrared. I used the Herschel PACS 100 and 160 micron infrared data from the Herschel ATLAS programme to examine star formation rates in quasar host galaxies. I performed a stacking analysis of the PACS 100 and 160 micron data of a sample of 411 quasar candidates from the SDSS and 2SLAQ catalogues. The quasars are detected at up to 32σ, which I infer is from star formation in the galaxies that contain these quasars. In order to obtain this data I have written a new timeline filtering subprogramme, plus a cross-scan filtering subprogramme, for the PACS data analysis pipeline. The outputs of this programme, using the early science phase Herschel data, were used to do the quasar stacking analysis. I was also able to derive the formal minimuin-variance point source filter using the calculus of variations with undertermined Langrangian multiplers. This kernel optimises the signal to noise but leads to false positive signals. I opted to use a modified kernel that whitens the power spectrum of the noise, and gives us a more reliable point source detection. However, the SNR penalty, for different PACS pixels and data sets, lies in the range 30% to 40%.
On The Nature of the Variable Infrared Emission from Sgr A*
Creators: name: Yuan, Feng
name: Quataert, Eliot
name: Narayan, Ramesh
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2004
Subjects: subject: Astrophysics (astro-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Recent infrared (IR) observations of the center of our Galaxy indicate that the supermassive black hole source Sgr A* is strongly variable in the IR. The timescale for the variability, $\sim 30$ min, is comparable to that of the X-ray flares observed by {\em Chandra} and {\em XMM}, suggesting a common physical origin. In this paper, we investigate the nature of the IR emission in the context of models recently proposed to interpret the X-ray flares. We show that the IR emission in Sgr A* can be well explained by nonthermal synchrotron emission if a small fraction of the electrons in the innermost region of the accretion flow around the black hole are accelerated {into a broken power-law distribution}, perhaps due to transient events such as magnetic reconnection. The model predicts differences in the variability amplitudes of flares in the IR and X-rays, in general agreement with observations. It also predicts that the IR emission should be linearly polarized, as has indeed been observed during one epoch. IR and X-ray flares analogous to those observed in Sgr A* may be detectable from other accreting SMBHs, provided $L \lsim 10^{-8} L_{EDD}$; at higher luminosities the flaring emission is dominated by thermal synchrotron-self Compton emission, which is likely to be less variable.
description: 17 pages, 5 figures, accepted by ApJ
title: Combined Neutron Imaging and Diffraction: Instrumentation and Experimentation
Creators: name: Burca, Genoveva
Publisher: name: The Open University
Year: 2013

description: A combined neutron imaging and diffraction facility, IMAT (Imaging and Materials Science & Engineering) is developed at ISIS (Target Station 2). One subject of this thesis was focused on the design and optimization of the imaging part of IMAT, using the Monte Carlo calculation software package McStas. Hence, the neutron guide dimensions, the effects of the gaps in the neutron guide on imaging detectors, gravitation effects in the neutron guide and also the influence of the pinhole size on the image were studied. All these investigations were made taking into account the most important design criteria: to maximise the neutron flux, to obtain a good energy resolution whilst retaining a large neutron bandwidth and a long flight path and to minimize the artefacts obtained in the neutron radiographies. After a compromise between imaging, diffraction and engineering requirements had been reached, the results from simulations specific to the current IMAT design were studied: wavelength distribution, beam profiles at different points along the beamline, beam divergence, neutron intensity distribution and flux depending on the pinhole size and the wavelength bands. Moreover, generation of IMAT imaging data with a sample led to full tomographic simulations and modelling wavelength effects. Another objective of the thesis was to study the complementarity between neutron imaging and neutron diffraction experiments. For this, a new instrument control concept that exploits tomography data to guide diffraction experiments on samples with complex structures and shapes named “tomography driven diffraction” (henceforth, TDD) was developed. The method has been proved to be viable using combinations of individual tomography and diffraction instruments: NEUTRA (PSI) and ENGIN-X (ISIS) for different samples drawn from the engineering and heritage sciences. On IMAT it will be possible to perform tomography, mark the measurement points and proceed to the diffraction measurements as one continuous process.
Probabilities in the inflationary multiverse
Creators: name: Garriga, Jaume
name: Schwartz-Perlov, Delia
name: Vilenkin, Alexander
name: Winitzki, Sergei
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2005
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
subject: Astrophysics (astro-ph)
subject: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Inflationary cosmology leads to the picture of a "multiverse," involving an infinite number of (spatially infinite) post-inflationary thermalized regions, called pocket universes. In the context of theories with many vacua, such as the landscape of string theory, the effective constants of Nature are randomized by quantum processes during inflation. We discuss an analytic estimate for the volume distribution of the constants within each pocket universe. This is based on the conjecture that the field distribution is approximately ergodic in the diffusion regime, when the dynamics of the fields is dominated by quantum fluctuations (rather than by the classical drift). We then propose a method for determining the relative abundances of different types of pocket universes. Both ingredients are combined into an expression for the distribution of the constants in pocket universes of all types.
description: 18 pages, RevTeX 4, 2 figures. Discussion of the full probability in Sec.VI is sharpened; the conclusions are strengthened. Note added explaining the relation to recent work by Easther, Lim and Martin. Some references added
Eco-design Strategy - Designing products to be more sustainable
Creators: name: Lydia, Peraki
name: Anastasia, Gkika
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022
Subjects: Open Innovation Test Bed
Biomaterials
Nanomaterials
Circular Economy
Circular Economy Action Plan
Ecodesign
Circular Production
Strategies
Benefits

description: EU is moving towards a smart, digital and sustainable industry economy, setting decarbonisation and zero net emission targets by 2050. The European Green Deal offers a set of policies initiatives and measures to achieve climate neutrality. In addition, the New Industrial Strategy for Europe aims to strengthen SMEs and empower industry to apply the green transformation, while the updated Circular Economy Action plan, adopted in 2020, paves the way for circular economy.INN-PRESSME aims at developing and implementing a sustainable OITB to support European companies to manufacture new market-ready products and goods from bio-based materials by feedstock conversion and support them to adopt a digital transition. INN-PRESSME gathers 16 pilot lines, organized in routes and processes for feedstock conversion (PLA, PHA, fibre-based, cellulose-based), together with other nanoadditives and nanofeatures, in packaging, energy/automotive, and consumer goods applications for making them more sustainable and greener, meeting the current specifications.Eco-design considers environmental aspects at all stages of the product development process, striving for products which make the lowest possible environmental impact throughout the product life cycle. In the frame of circular economy and digitisation, providing guidance to companies to follow and apply eco-design strategies from the very early stages of product design would boost and enhance the transition from linear to circular production.Thus, INN-PRESSME has incorporated in the implementation phase the development of an eco-design strategy to improve and ensure the sustainability of the INN-PRESSME products. At first, eco-design principles awareness, potential barriers, benefits, and business opportunities when implementing eco-design have been identified by partners and PL owners through dedicated surveys and questionnaires. The analysis of the results indicated critical parameters and highlighted the impact of eco-design principles on the benefits within the entire life cycle of INN-PRESSME products. Eco-design concepts will be balanced throughout the project duration with requirements of other crucial entities involved in the product (stakeholder requirements, quality, recyclability, health, and safety issues). The eco-design methodology will be updated/fine-tuned by using data from LCA/LCC studies and nanosafety and upgraded pilot line quality control activities for accurate representation of benefits and risks.
title: PIRATE: A Remotely Operable Telescope for Research and Education
Creators: name: Holmes, Stefan
Publisher: name: The Open University
Year: 2013

description: This thesis introduces PIRATE, a remotely operable telescope facility for use in research and education, constructed from off-the-shelf hardware, operated by the Open University. It focuses on the PIRATE Mark 1 and PIRATE Mark 1.5 phases of operation; the telescope facility has been in the Mark 2 phase since September 2011. Situated at the Observatori Astronomic de Mallorca, PIRATE is currently used to follow up potential transiting extrasolar planet candidates produced by the SuperWASP North experiment, as well as to hunt for novae in M31 and other nearby galaxies. It is operated by a mixture of commercially available software and proprietary software. In this thesis I discuss the hardware and its characterisation, problems with performing precision time-series photometry when using a German Equatorial Mount, and the PIRATE pipeline developed to assist with the fast and effective production of results from the follow-up observations of potential transiting extrasolar planets. I then go on to discuss the logistics of the follow-up program, and present the results from the PIRATE Mark 1 and 1.5 follow-up data, followed by the results from observational work on known transiting systems (such as WASP-12b). A discussion of areas for improvement and possible avenues for future work concludes the thesis.
First-Principles Experimental Demonstration of Ferroelectricity in a Thermotropic Nematic Liquid Crystal: Spontaneous Polar Domains and Striking Electro-Optics
Creators: name: Chen, Xi
name: Korblova, Eva
name: Dong, Dengpan
name: Wei, Xiaoyu
name: Shao, Renfan
name: Radzihovsky, Leo
name: Glaser, Matthew
name: Maclennan, Joseph
name: Bedrov, Dmitry
name: Walba, David
name: Clark, Noel
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We report the experimental determination of the structure and response to applied electric field of the lower-temperature nematic phase of the previously reported calamitic compound 4-[(4-nitrophenoxy)carbonyl]phenyl2,4-dimethoxybenzoate (RM734). We exploit its electro-optics to visualize the appearance, in the absence of applied field, of a permanent electric polarization density, manifested as a spontaneously broken symmetry in distinct domains of opposite polar orientation. Polarization reversal is mediated by field-induced domain wall movement, making this phase ferroelectric, a 3D uniaxial nematic having a spontaneous, reorientable, polarization locally parallel to the director. This polarization density saturates at a low temperature value of ~ 6 microcoulombs/cm-sqd, the largest ever measured for an organic material or for any fluid. This polarization is comparable to that of solid state ferroelectrics, and is close to the average value obtained by assuming perfect, polar alignment of molecular long axes in the nematic. We find a host of spectacular optical and hydrodynamic effects driven by ultra-low applied field (E~1V/cm), produced by the coupling of the large polarization to nematic birefringence and flow. Electrostatic self-interaction of the polarization charge renders the transition from the nematic phase mean-field-like and weakly first-order, and controls the director field structure of the ferroelectric phase. Atomistic molecular dynamics simulation reveals short-range polar molecular interactions that favor ferroelectric ordering, including a tendency for head-to-tail association into polar, chain-like assemblies having polar lateral correlations. These results indicate a significant potential for transformative new nematic science and technology based on the enhanced understanding, development, and exploitation of molecular electrostatic interaction.
description: main paper: 23 pages; SI 34 pages
Structural Controllability of Undirected Diffusive Networks with Vector-Weighted Edges
Creators: name: Zhang, Yuan
name: Xia, Yuanqing
name: Gao, Han
name: Zhang, Guangchen
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Systems and Control (eess.SY)
subject: FOS: Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

description: In this paper, controllability of undirected networked systems with {diffusively coupled subsystems} is considered, where each subsystem is of {identically {\emph{fixed}}} general high-order single-input-multi-output dynamics. The underlying graph of the network topology is {\emph{vector-weighted}}, rather than scalar-weighted. The aim is to find conditions under which the networked system is structurally controllable, i.e., for almost all vector values for interaction links of the network topology, the corresponding system is controllable. It is proven that, the networked system is structurally controllable, if and only if each subsystem is controllable and observable, and the network topology is globally input-reachable. These conditions are further extended to the cases {with multi-input-multi-output subsystems and matrix-weighted edges,} or where both directed and undirected interaction links exist.
description: Fix some typos. The full version of an accepted version of IEEE Control Systems Letters 10.1109/LCSYS.2020.2986250
title: Elicitation of Subjective Probability Distributions
Creators: name: Elfadaly, Fadlalla Ghaly Hassan Mohamed
Publisher: name: The Open University
Year: 2012

description: To incorporate expert opinion into a Bayesian analysis, it must be quantified as a prior distribution through an elicitation process that asks the expert meaningful questions whose answers determine this distribution. The aim of this thesis is to fill some gaps in the available techniques for eliciting prior distributions for Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) and multinomial models. A general method for quantifying opinion about GLMs was developed in Garthwaite and Al-Awadhi (2006). They model the relationship between each continuous predictor and the dependant variable as a piecewise-linear function with a regression coefficient at each of its dividing points. However, coefficients were assumed a priori independent if associated with different predictors. We relax this simplifying assumption and propose three new methods for eliciting positive-definite variance-covariance matrices of a multivariate normal prior distribution. In addition, we extend the method of Garthwaite and Dickey (1988) for eliciting an inverse chi-squared conjugate prior for the error variance in normal linear models. We also propose a novel method for eliciting a lognormal prior distribution for the scale parameter of a gamma GLM. For multinomial models, novel methods are proposed that quantify expert opinion about a conjugate Dirichlet distribution and, additionally, about three more general and flexible prior distributions. First, an elicitation method is proposed for the generalized Dirichlet distribution that was introduced by Connor and Mosimann (1969). Second, a method is developed for eliciting the Gaussian copula as a multivariate distribution with marginal beta priors. Third, a further novel method is constructed that quantifies expert opinion about the most flexible alternate prior, the logistic normal distribution (Aitchison, 1986). This third method is extended to the case of multinomial models with explanatory covariates. All proposed methods in this thesis are designed to be used with interactive Prior Elicitation Graphical Software (PEGS) that is freely available at http://statistics.open.ac.uk/elicitation.
A Simple Nested Test of AIDS
Creators: name: McLaren, Keith R.
name: Fry, Jane M.
name: Fry, Tim R. L.
name: McLaren, Keith R.
name: Fry, Jane M.
name: Fry, Tim R. L.
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 1993
Subjects: subject: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods
subject: Compositional data
subject: MAIDS
subject: AIDS
subject: stochastic specification
subject: unit simplex

description: The MPIGLOG specification of an indirect utility function gives rise to Cooper and McLaren's (1992) Modified AIDS (MAIDS) specification, which nests AIDS. Following the 'combined' approach outlined by Fry, Fry and McLaren (1993), we transform our deterministic equations to logratio form for estimation. This procedure not only restricts the shares implied by the model to the unit simplex, but also provides a transparent representation of the restriction implied by AIDS. We estimate MAIDS (with and without the AIDS restriction imposed) using the 'combined' approach and proceed to test the AIDS restriction.
Final state interaction effects in semi-inclusive DIS off the deuteron
Creators: name: Atti, C. Ciofi degli
name: Kaptari, L. P.
name: Kopeliovich, B. Z.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2003
Subjects: subject: Nuclear Theory (nucl-th)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The effects of the final state interaction (FSI) in semi-exclusive deep-inelastic scattering of electrons off the deuteron are analyzed paying particular attention to two extreme kinematical regions: i) the one where FSI effects are minimized, so that the quark distribution of bound nucleons could be investigated, and ii) the one where the re-interaction of the produced hadrons with the spectator nucleon is maximized, which would allow one to study the mechanism of hadronization of highly virtual quark. It is demonstrated that when the recoiling spectator nucleon is detected in the backward hemisphere with low momentum the effects from FSI are negligible, whereas at large transverse momenta of the spectator the FSI effects are rather large. Numerical estimates show that the FSI corrections are sensitive to the theoretical models of the hadronization mechanism.
description: 18 pages 6 figures A draft of the paper was erroneously sent instead of the paper itself
Convolutional Neural Networks for Image-based Corn Kernel Detection and Counting
Creators: name: Khaki, Saeed
name: Pham, Hieu
name: Han, Ye
name: Kuhl, Andy
name: Kent, Wade
name: Wang, Lizhi
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV)
subject: Machine Learning (cs.LG)
subject: Machine Learning (stat.ML)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Precise in-season corn grain yield estimates enable farmers to make real-time accurate harvest and grain marketing decisions minimizing possible losses of profitability. A well developed corn ear can have up to 800 kernels, but manually counting the kernels on an ear of corn is labor-intensive, time consuming and prone to human error. From an algorithmic perspective, the detection of the kernels from a single corn ear image is challenging due to the large number of kernels at different angles and very small distance among the kernels. In this paper, we propose a kernel detection and counting method based on a sliding window approach. The proposed method detect and counts all corn kernels in a single corn ear image taken in uncontrolled lighting conditions. The sliding window approach uses a convolutional neural network (CNN) for kernel detection. Then, a non-maximum suppression (NMS) is applied to remove overlapping detections. Finally, windows that are classified as kernel are passed to another CNN regression model for finding the (x,y) coordinates of the center of kernel image patches. Our experiments indicate that the proposed method can successfully detect the corn kernels with a low detection error and is also able to detect kernels on a batch of corn ears positioned at different angles.
description: 14 pages, 9 figures
A demonstration of the law of the flowering plants
Creators: name: Auerbach, Jonathan
Publisher: name: Real World Data Science
Year: 2023
Subjects: prediction
history of data science
statistics

description: The day a flower blooms is one of the earliest phenomena studied with systematic data collection and analysis. The prediction rule developed nearly three centuries ago is still used by scientists – with relatively few changes – to plan harvests, manage pests, and study ecosystems stressed by climate change. In this tutorial, Jonathan Auerbach introduces the “law of the flowering plants” and demonstrates how it can be applied to modern datasets. Published online at https://realworlddatascience.net/ideas/tutorials/posts/2023/04/13/flowers.html
Aggregation and the Long Run Behaviour of Economic Time Series
Creators: name: Korosi, Gabor
name: Lovrics, Laszlo
name: Matyas, Laszlo
name: Korosi, Gabor
name: Lovrics, Laszlo
name: Matyas, Laszlo
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 1993
Subjects: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods

description: The aggregation problem is a well—known difficulty in macroeconometric modelling. It is frequently assumed in these models that the behaviour of economic agents is uniform. Thus the behaviour of a single agent characterizes the aggregate behaviour of the agents (representative agent). However, there may always be some "outliers", some uncharacteristically behaving agents. Such outliers may well determine the time dynamics of the aggregate time series. The paper presents different Monte Carlo experiments to demonstrate this feature. This phenomenon may have an utmost significance in models assuming the cointegration of the variables.
Hypothesis Testing in the Presence of Nuisance Parameters
Creators: name: King, Maxwell L.
name: King, Maxwell L.
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 1993
Subjects: subject: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods
subject: Bayesian methods
subject: first-order autocorrelation
subject: linear regression
subject: marginal likelihood
subject: Monte Carlo simulation
subject: p-values

description: How to deal with nuisance parameters is an important problem in econometrics because of the non-experimental nature of economic data. This paper suggests a new approach to dealing with such parameters in the context of hypothesis testing. It involves calculating p-values conditional on values for key nuisance parameters and then taking a weighted average of these values with the weights reflecting the likelihood or posterior probabilities of these values being true. Two specific applications are discussed. These are testing linear regression coefficients in the presence of first-order autoregressive (AR(1)) disturbances and testing for AR(1) disturbances in the dynamic linear regression model. For the former testing problem, a Monte Carlo experiment demonstrates that the new procedure provides more accurate inferences than accepted conventional procedures:
Interface resistances and AC transport in a Luttinger liquid
Creators: name: Pham, K. -V.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2003
Subjects: subject: Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
subject: Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We consider a Luttinger liquid (LL) connected to two reservoirs when the two sample-reservoir interface resistances $R_{S}$ and $R_{D}$ are arbitrary (not necessarily quantized at half-the-quantum of resistance). We compute exactly the dynamical impedance of a Luttinger liquid and generalize earlier expressions for its dynamical conductance in the following situations. (i) We first consider a gated Luttinger liquid. It is shown that the Luttinger liquid parameters $u$ and $K$ and the interface resistances $R_{S}$ and $% R_{D}$ can be experimentally determined by measuring both the dynamical conductance and impedance of a gated wire at second order in frequency. The parallel law addition for the charge relaxation resistance $R_{q}$ is explicitly recovered for these non-trivial interface resistances as $R_{q}^{-1} = R_{S}^{-1} + R_{D}^{-1}$. (ii) We discuss the AC response when only one electrode is connected to the LL. (iii) Thirdly we consider application of an arbitrary AC electric field along the sample and compute the dynamical response of the LL with arbitrary interface resistances. The discussion is then specialized to the case of a uniform electric field.
An Investigation into Sustainable Options for The New Student Union Building Washrooms: Recycled Paper Towels or Electric Hand Dryers
Creators: name: Arnaut, Nikola
name: Heidyeh, Houman
name: Adeeb, Ebrahim
Publisher: name: The University of British Columbia
Year: 2010

description: Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”
Marginal Likelihood Based Tests of Regression Disturbances
Creators: name: Ara, Ismat
name: King, Maxwell L.
name: Ara, Ismat
name: King, Maxwell L.
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 1993
Subjects: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods

description: This paper presents general formulae for the likelihood ratio (LR), Wald (W), Lagrange multiplier (LM) and asymptotic locally most mean powerful (ALMMP) tests of linear regression disturbances using marginal likelihood methods. These tests can be derived by treating the maximal invariant statistic for these testing problems as the observed data. By way of illustration, the marginal-likelihood-based LR, W, LM and ALMMP tests are constructed for the separate problems of testing for general AR(4) disturbances and testing for the presence of Hildreth-Houck random coefficients. Empirical size calculations reported here and elsewhere suggest that this approach results in tests whose true sizes are much closer to the nominal size than their conventional counterparts.
Long Range Bond-Bond Correlations in Dense Polymer Solutions
Creators: name: Wittmer, J. P.
name: Meyer, H.
name: Baschnagel, J.
name: Johner, A.
name: Obukhov, S.
name: Mattioni, L.
name: Mueller, M.
name: Semenov, A. N.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2004
Subjects: subject: Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The scaling of the bond-bond correlation function $C(s)$ along linear polymer chains is investigated with respect to the curvilinear distance, $s$, along the flexible chain and the monomer density, $ρ$, via Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations. % Surprisingly, the correlations in dense three dimensional solutions are found to decay with a power law $C(s) \sim s^{-ω}$ with $ω=3/2$ and the exponential behavior commonly assumed is clearly ruled out for long chains. % In semidilute solutions, the density dependent scaling of $C(s) \approx g^{-ω_0} (s/g)^{-ω}$ with $ω_0=2-2ν=0.824$ ($ν=0.588$ being Flory's exponent) is set by the number of monomers $g(ρ)$ contained in an excluded volume blob of size $ξ$. % Our computational findings compare well with simple scaling arguments and perturbation calculation. The power-law behavior is due to self-interactions of chains on distances $s \gg g$ caused by the connectivity of chains and the incompressibility of the melt. %
description: 4 pages, 4 figures
title: Holocene Environmental History and Palaeoecology of the Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall
Creators: name: Garbett, Geoffrey George
Publisher: name: The Open University
Year: 2013

description: The vegetational history and palaeoenvironments of the Lizard Peninsula are poorly understood with previous palynological research providing only fragmentary data from coastal sediments and inland palaeosols. In this study sediments from the plateau in the centre of the peninsula are analysed. This addresses questions regarding a possible preanthropogenic forest, the origins of the heathlands and the history of the endemic Erica vagans L.

Three sites were identified as having suitable pollen archives. The longest sequence has a basal 14C date of 7489±64 cal. years BP and provides firm evidence of a closed canopy birch/pine forest with hazel understory and a ground flora of ferns. There is evidence of a Mesolithic clearance phase before the rise of alder and oak at ca. 5175±125 cal. years BP. This site is 50 m below and 4 km south of the high point of the plateau on Goonhilly Downs. The sequence here has a basal 14C date of 4152±254 cal. years BP and provides evidence of Bronze Age arable farming. This ceases at ca. 3000 years BP coinciding with evidence of cooler, wetter weather. Discontinuities in the sedimentary record at both sites interrupt the landscape reconstruction.

Iron Age arable farming and heathland is indicated at the lower site at ca. 2230±82 cal. years BP with the heathland largely disappearing during the medieval period. The third site, on the edge of the Downs, indicates a predominantly heathland environment at ca. 1100 AD with some pastoral agriculture. Less than 100 years later there is unequivocal evidence of arable farming alongside heathland, and a shift from Calluna to E. vagans dominated heathland. The landscape remains stable until the 19th century when pine and later fir plantations are evidenced. Changes in the pollen assemblage in this agriculturally marginal area appear to reflect socio-political rather than climatic changes.
Performance Trade-off Between Uplink and Downlink in Full-Duplex Communications
Creators: name: Khalili, Ata
name: Mili, Mohammad Robat
name: Ng, Derrick Wing Kwan
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Information Theory (cs.IT)
subject: Optimization and Control (math.OC)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: FOS: Mathematics

description: In this paper, we formulate two multi-objective optimization problems (MOOPs) in orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA)-based in-band full-duplex (IBFD) wireless communications.~The aim of this study is to exploit the performance trade-off between uplink and downlink where a wireless radio simultaneously transmits and receives in the same frequency.~We consider maximizing the system throughput as the first MOOP and minimizing the system aggregate power consumption as the second MOOP between uplink and downlink,~while taking into account the impact of self-interference~(SI)~and quality of service provisioning.~We study the throughput and the transmit power trade-off between uplink and downlink via solving these two problems.~Each MOOP is a non-convex mixed integer non-linear programming~(MINLP)~which is generally intractable. In order to circumvent this difficulty, a penalty function is introduced to reformulate the problem into a mathematically tractable form.~Subsequently,~each MOOP is transformed into a single-objective optimization problem~(SOOP)~via the weighted Tchebycheff method which is addressed by majorization-minimization~(MM)~approach. Simulation results demonstrate an interesting trade-off between the considered competing objectives.
description: This paper is accepted by IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC)