The Representation of Cultural Content in Global Elementary Coursebook

This study was to find out the types of cultural content source found in the reading and listening texts presented in Global elementary coursebook (2012) and the similarities and differences of the types of cultural content source found in those texts. The data were analyzed using the theory of types of cultural content source proposed by Matsuda (2012). The findings of this study showed that the reading texts met 54.9% of global culture, 35.3% of target culture, and 9.8% of local culture while the listening texts met 72.5% of global culture, 25% of target culture, and 2.5% of local culture. All in all, as proposed by Matsuda (2012), a good coursebook is the one that has multiple sources of cultural content; and Global elementary coursebook fulfills this criterion as it has three types of cultural content source

Universal strangeness production and size fluctuactions in small and large systems

Strangeness production in high multiplicity events gives indications on the transverse size fluctuactions in nucleus-nucleus ($AA$), proton-nucleus ($pA$) and proton-proton ($pp$) collisions. In particular the behavior of strange particle hadronization in "small" ($pp,pA$) and "large" ($AA$) initial configurations of the collision can be tested for the specific particle species, for different centralities and for large fluctuations of the transverse size in $pA$ and $pp$ by using the recent ALICE data. A universality of strange hadron production emerges by introducing a dynamical variable proportional to the initial parton density in the transverse plane.Comment: talk at EPS-HEP conference , Venice, 201

Limits on the cosmic-ray ionization rate toward massive young stars

Recent models of the envelopes of seven massive protostars are used to analyze observations of H3+ infrared absorption and H13CO+ submillimeter emission lines toward these stars, and to constrain the cosmic-ray ionization rate zeta. The H13CO+ gives best-fit values of zeta=(2.6+/- 1.8) x 10^-17 s^-1, in good agreement with diffuse cloud models and with recent Voyager/Pioneer data but factors of up to 7 lower than found from the H3+ data. No relation of zeta with luminosity or total column density is found, so that local (X-ray) ionization and shielding against cosmic rays appear unimportant for these sources. The difference between the H3+ and H13CO+ results and the correlation of N(H3+) with heliocentric distance suggest that intervening clouds contribute significantly to the H3+ absorptions in the more distant regions. The most likely absorbers are low-density (<~10^4 cm^-3) clouds with most carbon in neutral form or in CO.Comment: To be published in A&A 358 (Letters); 4 pages including 3 figure

Structure and Evolution of the Envelopes of Deeply Embedded Massive Young Stars

The physical structure of the envelopes around a sample of fourteen massive (1000-100,000 solar L) young stars is investigated on 100- 100,000 AU scales using maps and spectra in submillimeter continuum and lines of C17O, CS and H2CO. The total column densities and the temperature profiles are obtained by fitting self-consistent dust models to submillimeter photometry. Both the molecular line and dust emission data indicate density gradients ~r^{-alpha}, with alpha=1.0-1.5, significantly flatter than the alpha=2.0 generally found for low-mass objects. This flattening may indicate that in massive young stellar objects, nonthermal pressure is more important for the support against gravitational collapse, while thermal pressure dominates for low-mass sources. We find alpha=2 for two hot core-type sources, but regard this as an upper limit since in these objects, the CS abundance may be enhanced in the warm gas close to the star.Comment: To be published in The Astrophysical Journal. 54 pages including 14 figures Revised version with references adde

Electronic, dynamical and superconducting properties of CaBeSi

We report first-principles calculations on the normal and superconducting state of CaBe(x)Si(2-x) (x=1), in the framework of density functional theory for superconductors (SCDFT). CaBeSi is isostructural and isoelectronic to MgB2 and this makes possible a direct comparison of the electronic and vibrational properties and the electron-phonon interaction of the two materials. Despite the many similarities with MgB2 (e.g. sigma bands at the Fermi level and a larger Fermi surface nesting), according to our calculations CaBeSi has a very low critical temperature (Tc ~ 0.4 K, consistent with the experiment). CaBeSi exhibits a complex gap structure, with three gaps at Fermi level: besides the two sigma and pi gaps, present also in MgB2, the appearance of a third gap is related to the anisotropy of the Coulomb repulsion, acting in different way on the bonding and antibonding electronic pi states.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Deep Learning for Galaxy Mergers in the Galaxy Main Sequence

Starburst galaxies are often found to be the result of galaxy mergers. As a result, galaxy mergers are often believed to lie above the galaxy main sequence: the tight correlation between stellar mass and star formation rate. Here, we aim to test this claim. Deep learning techniques are applied to images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to provide visual-like classifications for over 340 000 objects between redshifts of 0.005 and 0.1. The aim of this classification is to split the galaxy population into merger and non-merger systems and we are currently achieving an accuracy of 91.5%. Stellar masses and star formation rates are also estimated using panchromatic data for the entire galaxy population. With these preliminary data, the mergers are placed onto the full galaxy main sequence, where we find that merging systems lie across the entire star formation rate - stellar mass plane.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure. For Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 34

Towards the prediction of the quality of experience from facial expression and gaze direction

In this paper we investigate on the potentials to implicitly estimate the Quality of Experience (QoE) of a user of video streaming services by acquiring a video of her face and monitoring her facial expression and gaze direction. To this, we conducted a crowdsourcing test in which participants were asked to watch and rate the quality when watching 20 videos subject to different impairments, while their face was recorded with their PC's webcam. The following features were then considered: the Action Units (AU) that represent the facial expression, and the position of the eyes' pupil. These features were then used, together with the respective QoE values provided by the participants, to train three machine learning classifiers, namely, Support Vector Machine with quadratic kernel, RUSBoost trees and bagged trees. We considered two prediction models: only the AU features are considered or together with the position of the eyes' pupils. The RUSBoost trees achieved the best results in terms of accuracy, sensitivity and area under the curve scores. In particular, when all the features were considered, the achieved accuracy is of 44.7%, 59.4% and 75.3% when using the 5-level, 3level and 2-level quality scales, respectively. Whereas these results are not satisfactory yet, these represent a promising basis