SFR vs. dense gas mass correlations. Left: correlation between the self-gravitating gas mass obtained from N-PDF and the star formation rates, for nearby and for high-mass star-forming regions. The black line is a fitting for both nearby and massive clouds, with a slope of 1.01 ± 0.07. Three regions from CMZ are marked in the plot, whose SFRs from the literature (Longmore et al. 2013), and dense gas mass calculated by the N-PDF method (green triangles) and by a fixed threshold method (blue triangles). Right: similar to the left panel, but for dense gas masses calculated by a fixed extinction or column density threshold method.