Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Power optimization with interconnect repeater heat transferance effect

With the development of Integrated Circuit (IC) process, the power of a chip increases dramatically. To improve the power and temperature characteristics of a chip, the method that reduces power by increasing delay is presented in the paper based on the electro-thermal coupling among power, temperature and delay by taking repeater heat transfer effect into consideration. Optimized interconnect length and repeater size are obtained in 45nm process technology by using MATLAB. The simulation results show that the length of optimized interconnect, considering repeaters heat transferred, can be longer by two percent while temperature is lower than no considering. Besides, when the inserted repeater numbers increase on the base of optimization, the temperature of interconnect can be reduced while the chip temperature increase little when the length of interconnect is shorter than 15mm. Low temperature of interconnect can contribute to keeping signal integrity.
Partisan Vision Biases Determination of Voter Intent

Abstract In close, disputed elections, outcomes can depend on determinations of voter intent for ballots that have been filled out improperly. We surveyed 899 adult Minnesotans during a time when the state's U.S. Senate election was still disputed and presented them with ambiguous ballots similar to ballots under dispute in the same election. We randomized participants to three experimental groups, across which we varied the names on the ballot. We found that participants' judgments of voter intent were strongly biased by their voting preferences (p < .002 in all four ballots).
Casting a wider performance net: The role of entrepreneurial orientation in boosting overall firm stakeholder value

Abstract This study offers a broader perspective on the effects of entrepreneurial orientation beyond its well-established implications for firm financial performance. Herein, it is suggested that through higher firm innovativeness, risk taking, and proactiveness entrepreneurial orientation contributes to an increase in the overall value accrued by the firm’s base of stakeholders. In doing so, we offer a broader perspective on the significance of an entrepreneurial orientation strategic posture for increasing stakeholder value beyond simply the financial value captured by firm shareholding stakeholders. Results from a comprehensive sample of 1,015 public US corporations indicate significant relationships between the three core dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation (innovativeness, risk taking, proactiveness) and stakeholder value, suggesting that how organizations behave entrepreneurially plays an important role in the firms generation of stakeholder value.
The decay of grid turbulence in polymer and surfactant solutions

The decay of turbulence behind a towed grid is studied in polymer and surfactant solutions with the use of particle image velocimetry. Unlike in water, the turbulent energy components show marked anisotropy, and decay more slowly. These differences are stronger for initial periods of time, but persist through the entire period of decay. The major difference between the polymer and surfactant solutions is that the small scales are more strongly damped in the former.The decay of turbulence behind a towed grid is studied in polymer and surfactant solutions with the use of particle image velocimetry. Unlike in water, the turbulent energy components show marked anisotropy, and decay more slowly. These differences are stronger for initial periods of time, but persist through the entire period of decay. The major difference between the polymer and surfactant solutions is that the small scales are more strongly damped in the former.
Mediatorless Impedance Studies with Titanium Dioxide Conjugated Gold Nanoparticles for Hydrogen Peroxide Detection

An impedimetric-based biosensor constructed using gold nanoparticles (AuNP) entrapped within titanium dioxide (TiO2) particles for hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) detection is the main feature of this research. The matrix of the biosensor employed the surface of TiO2, which was previously modified with an amine terminal group using 3-Aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTS) at a low temperature to create a ready to immobilise surface for the biosensor application. Hemoglobin (Hb), which exhibits peroxidase-like activity, was used as the bioreceptor in the biosensor to detect H2O2 in solution. The analysis was carried out using an alternative impedance method, in which the biosensor exhibited a wide linear range response between 1 × 10−4 M and 1.5 × 10−2 M and a limit of detection (LOD) of 1 × 10−5 M without a redox mediator.
Interactive effects of culture and sex hormones on the sex role self-concept

Sex role orientation, i.e., a person's masculinity or femininity, influences cognitive and emotional performance, like biological sex. While it is now widely accepted that sex differences are modulated by the hormonal status of female participants (menstrual cycle, hormonal contraceptive use), the question, whether hormonal status and sex hormones also modulate participants sex role orientation has hardly been addressed previously. The present study assessed sex role orientation and hormonal status as well as sex hormone levels in three samples of participants from two different cultures (Northern American, Middle European). Menstrual cycle phase did not affect participant's masculinity or femininity, but had a significant impact on reference group. While women in their follicular phase (low levels of female sex hormones) determined their masculinity and femininity in reference to men, women in their luteal phase (high levels of female sex hormones) determined their masculinity and femininity in reference to women. Hormonal contraceptive users rated themselves as significantly more feminine and less masculine than naturally cycling women. Furthermore, the impact of biological sex on the factorial structure of sex role orientation as well as the relationship of estrogen to masculinity/femininity was modulated by culture. We conclude that culture and sex hormones interactively affect sex role orientation and hormonal status of participants should be controlled for when assessing masculinity and/or femininity.
Pre‐exposure to adenosine, acting via A2A receptors on endothelial cells, alters the protein kinase A dependence of adenosine‐induced dilation in skeletal muscle resistance arterioles

The adenosine‐dependent component of functional dilation of small resistance arterioles acts via A2A receptors located on endothelium to activate KATP channels on associated vascular smooth muscle. A2A receptors are Gs‐coupled, hence receptor occupancy should activate cAMP/protein kinase A (PKA) cell signalling pathways However, pre‐exposure to adenosine alters the PKA dependence of the response and renders the vessel insensitive to PKA inhibition. The adenosine pre‐exposure effect is mimicked by pre‐activation of PKA and is specific to adenosine, as the PKA dependence of dilation to isoproterenol (another Gs‐coupled agonist) is not affected by pre‐exposure. Activation of PKA alone does not induce dilation. An additional signalling mechanism, dependent on increased EC Ca2+ via activation of cyclic nucleotide gated channels, is required together with PKA activation to produce A2A‐dependent vasodilation. This novel identification of variability in signalling downstream from a single receptor to produce the same response may reflect a mechanism for integration of key homeostatic responses.
CH3OH abundance in low mass protostars

We present observations of methanol lines in a sample of Class 0 low mass protostars. Using a 1-D radiative transfer model, we derive the abundances in the envelopes. In two sources of the sample, the observations can only be reproduced by the model if the methanol abundance is enhanced by about two order of magnitude in the inner hot region of the envelope. Two other sources show similar jumps, although at a lower confidence level. The observations for the other three sources are well reproduced with a constant abundance, but the presence of a jump cannot be ruled out. The observed methanol abundances in the warm gas around low mass protostars are orders of magnitude higher than gas phase chemistry models predict. Hence, in agreement with other evidence, this suggests that the high methanol abundance reflects recent evaporation of ices due to the heating by the newly formed star. The observed abundance ratios of CH3OH, H2CO and CO are in good agreement with grain surface chemistry models. However, the absolute abundances are more difficult to reproduce and may indicate the presence of multiple ice components in these regions.
A Practical Dynamic Buffer Overflow Detector

Despite previous efforts in auditing software manually and automatically, buffer overruns are still being discovered in programs in use. A dynamic bounds checker detects buffer overruns in erroneous software before it occurs and thereby prevents attacks from corrupting the integrity of the system. Dynamic buffer overrun detectors have not been adopted widely because they either (1) cannot guard against all buffer overrun attacks, (2) break existing code, or (3) incur too high an overhead. This paper presents a practical detector called CRED (C Range Error Detector) that avoids each of these deficiencies. CRED finds all buffer overrun attacks as it directly checks for the bounds of memory accesses. Unlike the original referent-object based bounds-checking technique, CRED does not break existing code because it uses a novel solution to support program manipulation of out-of-bounds addresses. Finally, by restricting the bounds checks to strings in a program, CRED’s overhead is greatly reduced without sacrificing protection in the experiments we performed. CRED is implemented as an extension of the GNU C compiler version 3.3. 1. The simplicity of our design makes possible a robust implementation that has been tested on over 20 open-source programs, comprising over 1.2 million lines of C code. CRED proved effective in detecting buffer overrun attacks on programs with known vulnerabilities, and is the only tool found to guard against a testbed of 20 different buffer overflow attacks[34]. Finding overruns only on strings impose an overhead of less This research was performed while the first author was at Stanford University, and this material is based upon work supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0086160. than 26% for 14 of the programs, and an overhead of up to 130% for the remaining six, while the previous state-ofthe-art bounds checker by Jones and Kelly breaks 60% of the programs and is 12 times slower. Incorporating wellknown techniques for optimizing bounds checking into CRED could lead to further performance improvements.
A deep neural network integrated with filterbank learning for speech recognition

Deep neural networks (DNN) have achieved significant success in the field of speech recognition. One of the main advantages of the DNN is automatic feature extraction without human intervention. Therefore, we incorporate a pseudo-filterbank layer to the bottom of DNN and train the whole filterbank layer and the following networks jointly, while most systems take pre-defined mel-scale filterbanks as acoustic features to DNN. In the experiment, we use Gaussian functions instead of triangular mel-scale filterbanks. This technique enables a filterbank layer to maintain the functionality of frequency domain smoothing. The proposed method provides an 8.0% relative improvement in clean condition on ASJ+JNAS corpus and a 2.7% relative improvement on noise-corrupted ASJ+JNAS corpus compared with traditional fully-connected DNN. Experimental results show that the frame-level transformation of filterbank layer constrains flexibility and promotes learning efficiency in acoustic modeling.
Comparative in vitro activity of finafloxacin against staphylococci displaying normal and small colony variant phenotypes.

OBJECTIVES Staphylococcal small colony variants (SCVs) are associated with chronic and relapsing infections and their intracellular location may shield them from host defences and antibiotics. Finafloxacin is a novel fluoroquinolone that exhibits optimal activity at slightly acidic conditions where the activity of other marketed fluoroquinolones decreases. Here, the in vitro activity of finafloxacin against clinical strain pairs consisting of an SCV and its clonally identical parental strain displaying the normal phenotype (NP) was compared with those of other fluoroquinolones at standard and low pH. METHODS In vitro activities of finafloxacin, ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin and moxifloxacin were tested against 28 methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) and three methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) SCV-NP strain pairs. Additionally, two S. aureus mutants (ΔhemB and ΔthyA) displaying the SCV phenotype and their wild-type strains as well as four SCV-NP pairs of coagulase-negative staphylococcal (CoNS) strains were included. MIC(50,) MIC(90) and MIC ranges were calculated based on MIC determination by Etest(®) at pH 5.8 and pH 7.2. RESULTS Under acidic conditions, finafloxacin demonstrated superior activity against MSSA, MRSA and CoNS regardless of the phenotype. At neutral conditions, the activity against MSSA was as follows: moxifloxacin > finafloxacin > levofloxacin > ciprofloxacin. In comparison with methicillin-susceptible NP isolates, ciprofloxacin was less active against their corresponding SCVs. For other fluoroquinolones, there was no marked difference in activity against SCVs compared with NPs. CONCLUSIONS Particularly in acidic body compartments, finafloxacin appears to be a promising new antibiotic for the treatment of persistent staphylococcal infections, including those caused by SCVs.
‘A very valuable tool’

The intermediary is the first new, active role to be introduced into the criminal trial in two centuries, and could be seen as a potential threat to the principle of party control of the evidential process. The merits of the scheme are of considerable interest to jurisdictions such as New Zealand, Australia and even South Africa, where similar ideas are under discussion. This article reports on findings from a recent series of interviews with judges, advocates and Registered Intermediaries in England and Wales as to how the scheme is received by practitioners and as to whether it is in fact being experienced as a threat to the counsel’s ability to examine witnesses. The findings suggest that there is in fact little to fear from the intermediary system.
Therapy-resistant focal and segmental glomerulosclerosis.

The clinical course of a young female patient with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) who failed to respond to any of the recommended therapeutic protocols will represent the background of a discussion of currently available alternative treatments for FSGS. Traditionally, FSGS has been believed to have a poor prognosis, with a low response rate to treatment and a progressive course terminating with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Some 40% of patients respond to prolonged corticosteroid treatment. Steroid resistance in adults should perhaps be assumed only after failure to respond to a 6-month course of daily steroid therapy. Regarding recent recommendations, the use of cytotoxic therapy (cyclophosphamide, chlorambucil or azathioprine) may be considered as second-line therapy (evidence D). Treatment with cyclosporin A at doses of 4-6 mg/kg/day has been successful in reducing proteinuria. There is little information available on the effects of such treatment on the progression of FSGS. Even fewer data are available on the success rate of the use of tacrolimus in resistant forms of FSGS in adults. Mycophenolate mofetil has been used with impressive success in a few high-risk patients who failed on previous therapeutic regimens. There is preliminary evidence in an uncontrolled series of patients with resistant primary FSGS that the addition of plasmapheresis may provide effective long-term benefits in some patients. The accurate assessment of the role of plasmapheresis and possibly immunoadsorption in the management of patients with FSGS requires further evaluation. Non-immunosuppressive therapy (i.e. angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, angiotensin II receptor blockers, lipid-lowering drugs, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) should be applied to almost all patients with primary FSGS.
Renoprotection From Diabetic Complications in OVE Transgenic Mice by Endothelial Cell Specific Overexpression of Metallothionein: A TEM Stereological Analysis

We previously demonstrated that OVE transgenic diabetic mice are susceptible to chronic complications of diabetic nephropathy (DN) including substantial oxidative damage to the renal glomerular filtration barrier (GFB). Importantly, the damage was mitigated significantly by overexpression of the powerful antioxidant, metallothionein (MT) in podocytes. To test our hypothesis that GFB damage in OVE mice is the result of endothelial oxidative insult, a new JTMT transgenic mouse was designed in which MT overexpression was targeted specifically to endothelial cells. At 60 days of age, JTMT mice were crossed with age‐matched OVE diabetic mice to produce bi‐transgenic OVE‐JTMT diabetic progeny that carried the endothelial targeted JTMT transgene. Renal tissues from the OVE‐JTMT progeny were examined by unbiased TEM stereometry for possible GFB damage and other alterations from chronic complications of DN. In 150 day‐old OVE‐JTMT mice, blood glucose and HbA1c were indistinguishable from age‐matched OVE mice. However, endothelial‐specific MT overexpression in OVE‐JTMT mice mitigated several DN complications including significantly increased non‐fenestrated glomerular endothelial area, and elimination of glomerular basement membrane thickening. Significant renoprotection was also observed outside of endothelial cells, including reduced podocyte effacement, and increased podocyte and total glomerular cell densities. Moreover, when compared to OVE diabetic animals, OVE‐JTMT mice showed significant mitigation of nephromegaly, glomerular hypertrophy, increased mesangial cell numbers and increased total glomerular cell numbers. These results confirm the importance of oxidative stress to glomerular damage in DN, and show the central role of endothelial cell injury to the pathogenesis of chronic complications of diabetes. Anat Rec, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Anat Rec, 300:560–576, 2017. © 2016 The Authors. The Anatomical Record published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Association of Anatomists.
On the stoichiometry with space charge and breakdown behaviour of an epoxy based system with nano-sized and micro-sized fillers

Epoxy resin and its composites filled with micro-sized fillers have been commonly used in different electrical applications. A large amount of research has also considered the effects of the large interfacial areas associated with nanoscopic fillers on material properties, but little has concentrated on systems with stoichiometric proportions. This paper investigates electrical properties, including the space charge behaviour, and breakdown strength as a function of resin stoichiometry of an epoxy resin system and its composites filled with silica particles of different sizes.
Identifiability of Causal Graphs using Functional Models

This work addresses the following question: Under what assumptions on the data generating process can one infer the causal graph from the joint distribution? The approach taken by conditional independence-based causal discovery methods is based on two assumptions: the Markov condition and faithfulness. It has been shown that under these assumptions the causal graph can be identified up to Markov equivalence (some arrows remain undirected) using methods like the PC algorithm. In this work we propose an alternative by defining Identifiable Functional Model Classes (IFMOCs). As our main theorem we prove that if the data generating process belongs to an IFMOC, one can identify the complete causal graph. To the best of our knowledge this is the first identifiability result of this kind that is not limited to linear functional relationships. We discuss how the IFMOC assumption and the Markov and faithfulness assumptions relate to each other and explain why we believe that the IFMOC assumption can be tested more easily on given data. We further provide a practical algorithm that recovers the causal graph from finitely many data; experiments on simulated data support the theoretical findings.
DEEP MIXING AND METALLICITY: CARBON DEPLETION IN GLOBULAR CLUSTER GIANTS

We present the results of an observational study of the efficiency of deep mixing in globular cluster red giants as a function of stellar metallicity. We determine [C/Fe] abundances based on low-resolution spectra taken with the Kast spectrograph on the 3 m Shane telescope at Lick Observatory. Spectra centered on the 4300 Å CH absorption band were taken for 42 bright red giants in 11 Galactic globular clusters ranging in metallicity from M92 ([Fe/H] = −2.29) to NGC 6712 ([Fe/H] = −1.01). Carbon abundances were derived by comparing values of the CH-band strength index S2(CH) measured from the data with values measured from a large grid of SSG synthetic spectra. Present-day abundances are combined with theoretical calculations of the time since the onset of mixing, which is also a function of stellar metallicity, to calculate the carbon depletion rate across our metallicity range. We find that the carbon depletion rate is twice as high at a metallicity of [Fe/H] = −2.3 than at [Fe/H] = −1.3, which is a result qualitatively predicted by some theoretical explanations of the deep mixing process.
Optimal On-line Sampling Period Assignment for Real-Time Control Tasks Based on Plant State Information

The paper presents a feedback scheduling strategy for multiple control tasks that uses feedback from the plant states to distribute the computing resources optimally among the tasks. Linear-quadratic controllers are analyzed, and expressions relating the expected cost to the sampling period and the plant state are derived and used for on-line sample-rate adjustments. In the case of minimum-variance control of multiple integrator processes, an exact expression for the optimal sampling periods is obtained. For the general case, an on-line optimization procedure is developed. The approach is exemplified on a set of controllers for first-order systems. The issues of computational delay and the choice of the feedback scheduler period are also discussed.
Probabilistic characterization of sleep architecture: Home Based study on healthy volunteers

The quantification of sleep architecture has high clinical value for diagnostic purposes. While the clinical standard to assess sleep architecture is in-lab based polysomnography, higher ecological validity can be obtained with multiple sleep recordings at home. In this paper, we use a dataset composed of fifty sleep EEG recordings at home (10 per study participant for five participants) to analyze the sleep stage transition dynamics using Markov chain based modeling. The statistical analysis of the duration of continuous sleep stage bouts is also analyzed to identify the speed of transition between sleep stages. This analysis identified two types of NREM states characterized by fast and slow exit rates which from the EEG analysis appear to correspond to shallow and deep sleep respectively.