Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A survey on systematic innovation strategies for product design and development

Method: The survey is based on a literature review of academic publications present in indexed DBs. Twenty-nine case studies were collected and analyzed about non-TRIZ tools used in combination with TRIZ tools. For each case, the level of systematic innovation introduced by the use of the different methodologies is qualitatively evaluated using the so-called individual innovation index. This index is based on two other specific indices: the solution innovativeness and the synergy level. Then a brief overview of the four most used non-TRIZ tools adopted in the selected case studies, quality function deployment, ecodesign, casebased reasoning, and axiomatic design, is offered.
Observations of inertia‐gravity wave motions in the stratosphere over Jicamarca, Peru

We present results obtained with the MST radar at Jicamarca, Peru over 10 days in January, 1993. During this campaign, inertia-gravity waves with observed periods of ∼36 hours were seen in the stratosphere (19–30 km). The radar was operated with a high (400-m) range resolution allowing accurate determination of wave propagation characteristics. The large variation of wave amplitude (∼2–10 ms−1) with height and time suggests a superposition of several wave motions. As consistent with upward energy propagation, the phase fronts descended with time, and a vertical wavelength of ∼5 km was inferred from the rate of this phase descent. Orbital ellipses imply largely zonal propagation with an intrinsic period of roughly 30 hours, somewhat less than the observed period. The shorter intrinsic period suggests eastward wave propagation, in opposition to the predominantly westward mean motion.
A Clock Skew Minimization Technique Considering Temperature Gradient

Due to the scaling of process parameters, the density on chips has been increasing. This trend increases not only the temperature on chips but also the gradient of the temperature depending on distances. In this paper, we propose the balanced skew tree generation technique for minimizing the clock skew that is affected by the temperature gradients on chips. We calculate the interconnect delay using Elmore delay equation, and find out the optimal balanced clock tree by modifying the clock trees that are generated through the DME(Deferred Merge Embedding) algorithm. We have implemented the proposed technique using C language for the performance evaluation. The experimental results show that the clock insertion point generated by the temperature gradient can be lowered below 54% and we confirm that the skew is remarkably decreased after applying the proposed technique.
Block-based static timing analysis with uncertainty

Static timing analysis is a critical step in design of any digital integrated circuit. Technology and design trends have led to significant increase in environmental and process variations which need to be incorporated in static timing analysis. This paper presents a new, efficient and accurate block-based static timing analysis technique considering uncertainty. This new method is more efficient as its models arrival times as cumulative density functions (CDFs) and delays as probability functions (PDFs). Computationally simple expression are presented for basic static timing operations. The techniques are valid for any form of the probability distribution, though the use piecewise linear modeling of CDFs is highlighted in this paper. Reconvergent fanouts are handled using a new technique that avoids path tracing. Variable accuracy timing analysis can be performed by varying the modeling accuracy of the piecewise linear model. Regular and statistical timing on different parts of the circuit can be incorporated into a single timing analysis run. Accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method is demonstrated for various ISCAS benchmark circuits.
The Millstone Grit of Gower

THE Millstone Grit described in this paper forms a belt of country about a mile wide, stretching from west-north-west to east-south-east across the north of the Gower Peninsula. Reference is also made to small areas of Millstone Grit preserved in synclines at Oxwich and Porteynon on the south coast of Gower. These areas form the most important outcrops of this formation on the south of the South Wales Coalfield. Further east the Millstone Grit is thinner and it is not exposed for some miles to the east of Swansea Bay, as it is concealed by Mesozoic rocks.
Thyroid function and prevalence of anti-thyroperoxidase antibodies in a population with borderline sufficient iodine intake: influences of age and sex.

BACKGROUND We present a large European population-based study of thyroid function, performed in a population with longstanding borderline sufficient iodine intake. METHODS The Nijmegen Biomedical Study is a population-based survey conducted in the eastern part of The Netherlands. Randomly selected inhabitants received a postal questionnaire on lifestyle and medical history, which was filled out by 9371 individuals (41.7%). We measured serum thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), free thyroxine (FT4), and anti-thyroperoxidase antibodies (TPOAbs) in 6434 responders. A reference population of 5167 individuals was selected by excluding those at risk for thyroid disease. RESULTS Overt thyrotoxicosis was found in 0.4% of the total population and subclinical thyrotoxicosis in 0.8%. Overt hypothyroidism was found in 0.4% and subclinical hypothyroidism in 4.0%. In individuals older than 60 years, mean FT4 concentrations increased with age. Mean TSH decreased with age, from 1.46 mIU/L at 18-24 years to 1.07 mIU/L after 85 years. The mean TSH in the total population did not differ from the mean TSH in the reference population; the exclusion of those at risk for thyroid disease, however, lowered the upper limit of the TSH reference interval considerably. In the total population, 8.6% of males and 18.5% of females had positive TPOAbs. The presence of TPOAbs was associated with abnormally high and low TSH concentrations. CONCLUSION In inhabitants of the eastern part of The Netherlands, serum TSH gradually decreases with age, whereas after age 60, serum FT4 increases, possibly because of the development of thyroid autonomy after longstanding borderline sufficient iodine intake.
Vertebral Body Stapling: A Fusionless Treatment Option for a Growing Child With Moderate Idiopathic Scoliosis

Study Design. Retrospective review. Objective. To report the results of vertebral body stapling (VBS) with minimum 2-year follow-up in patients with idiopathic scoliosis. Summary of Background Data. While bracing for idiopathic scoliosis is moderately successful, its efficacy has been called into question, and it carries associated psychosocial ramifications. VBS has been shown to be a safe, feasible alternative to bracing for idiopathic scoliosis. Methods. We retrospectively reviewed 28 of 29 patients (96%) with idiopathic scoliosis treated with VBS followed for a minimum of 2 years. Inclusion criteria: Risser sign of 0 or 1 and coronal curve measuring between 20° and 45°. Results. There were 26 thoracic and 15 lumbar curves. Average follow-up was 3.2 years. The procedure was considered a success if curves corrected to within 10° of preoperative measurement or decreased >10°. Thoracic curves measuring <35° had a success rate of 77.7%. Curves which reached ≤20° on first erect radiograph had a success rate of 85.7%. Flexible curves >50% correction on bend film had a success rate of 71.4%. Of the 26 curves, 4 (15%) showed correction >10°. Kyphosis improved in 7 patients with preoperative hypokyphosis (<10° of kyphosis T5–T12). Of the patients, 83.5% had remaining normal thoracic kyphosis of 10° to 40°. Lumbar curves demonstrated a success rate of 86.7%. Four of the 15 lumbar curves (27%) showed correction >10°. Major complications include rupture of a unrecognized congenital diaphragmatic hernia and curve overcorrection in 1 patient. Two minor complications included superior mesenteric artery syndrome and atelectasis due to a mucous plug. There were no instances of staple dislodgement or neurovascular injury. Conclusion. Analysis of patients with idiopathic scoliosis (IS) with high-risk progression treated with vertebral body stapling (VBS) and minimum 2-year follow-up shows a success rate of 87% in all lumbar curves and in 79% of thoracic curves <35°. Thoracic curves >35° were not successful and require alternative treatments.
Training object class detectors with click supervision

Training object class detectors typically requires a large set of images with objects annotated by bounding boxes. However, manually drawing bounding boxes is very time consuming. In this paper we greatly reduce annotation time by proposing center-click annotations: we ask annotators to click on the center of an imaginary bounding box which tightly encloses the object instance. We then incorporate these clicks into existing Multiple Instance Learning techniques for weakly supervised object localization, to jointly localize object bounding boxes over all training images. Extensive experiments on PASCAL VOC 2007 and MS COCO show that: (1) our scheme delivers high-quality detectors, performing substantially better than those produced by weakly supervised techniques, with a modest extra annotation effort; (2) these detectors in fact perform in a range close to those trained from manually drawn bounding boxes; (3) as the center-click task is very fast, our scheme reduces total annotation time by 9× to 18×.
Lysosomal Activity Associated with Developmental Axon Pruning

Clearance of cellular debris is a critical feature of the developing nervous system, as evidenced by the severe neurological consequences of lysosomal storage diseases in children. An important developmental process, which generates considerable cellular debris, is synapse elimination, in which many axonal branches are pruned. The fate of these pruned branches is not known. Here, we investigate the role of lysosomal activity in neurons and glia in the removal of axon branches during early postnatal life. Using a probe for lysosomal activity, we observed robust staining associated with retreating motor axons. Lysosomal function was involved in axon removal because retreating axons were cleared more slowly in a mouse model of a lysosomal storage disease. In addition, we found lysosomal activity in the cerebellum at the time of, and at sites where, climbing fibers are eliminated. We propose that lysosomal activity is a central feature of synapse elimination. Moreover, staining for lysosomal activity may serve as a marker for regions of the developing nervous system undergoing axon pruning.
Sentiment Analysis in Student Experiences of Learning

In this paper we present an evaluation of new techniques for automatically detecting sentiment polarity (Positive or Negative) in the students responses to Unit of Study Evaluations (USE). The study compares categorical model and dimensional model making use of five emotion categories: Anger, Fear, Joy, Sadness, and Surprise. Joy and Surprise are taken as a Positive polarity, whereas Anger, Fear and Sadness belong to Negative polarity in the binary classes, respectively. We evaluate the performances of category-based and dimension-based emotion prediction models on the 2,940 textual responses. In the former model, WordNet-Affect is used as a linguistic lexical resource and two dimensionality reduction techniques are evaluated: Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF). In the latter model, ANEW (Affective Norm for English Words), a normative database with affective terms, is employed. Despite using generic emotion categories and no syntactical analysis, NMF-based categorical model and dimensional model result in better performances above the baseline.
Taming Non-stationary Bandits: A Bayesian Approach

We consider the multi armed bandit problem in non-stationary environments. Based on the Bayesian method, we propose a variant of Thompson Sampling which can be used in both rested and restless bandit scenarios. Applying discounting to the parameters of prior distribution, we describe a way to systematically reduce the effect of past observations. Further, we derive the exact expression for the probability of picking sub-optimal arms. By increasing the exploitative value of Bayes' samples, we also provide an optimistic version of the algorithm. Extensive empirical analysis is conducted under various scenarios to validate the utility of proposed algorithms. A comparison study with various state-of-the-arm algorithms is also included.
Fine-grain parallelism with minimal hardware support: a compiler-controlled threaded abstract machine

In this paper, we present a relatively primitive execution model for fine-grain parallelism, in which all synchronization, scheduling, and storage management is explicit and under compiler control. This is defined by a threaded abstract machine (TAM) with a multilevel scheduling hierarchy. Considerable temporal locality of logically related threads is demonstrated, providing an avenue for effective register use under quasidynamic scheduling. A prototype TAM instruction set, TLO, has been developed, along with a translator to a variety of existing sequential and parallel machines. Compilation of Id, an extended functional language requiring fine-grain synchronization, under this model yields performance approaching that of conventional languages on current uniprocessors. Measurements suggest that the net cost of synchronization on conventional multiprocessors can be reduced to within a small factor of that on machines with elaborate hardware support, such aa proposed dataflow architectures. This brings into question whether tolerance to latency and inexpensive synchronization require specific hardware support or merely an appropriate compilation strategy and program representation.
Lower Bounds on the Dilation of Plane Spanners

(I) We exhibit a set of 23 points in the plane that has dilation at least $1.4308$, improving the previously best lower bound of $1.4161$ for the worst-case dilation of plane spanners. (II) For every integer $n\geq13$, there exists an $n$-element point set $S$ such that the degree 3 dilation of $S$ denoted by $\delta_0(S,3) \text{ equals } 1+\sqrt{3}=2.7321\ldots$ in the domain of plane geometric spanners. In the same domain, we show that for every integer $n\geq6$, there exists a an $n$-element point set $S$ such that the degree 4 dilation of $S$ denoted by $\delta_0(S,4) \text{ equals } 1 + \sqrt{(5-\sqrt{5})/2}=2.1755\ldots$ The previous best lower bound of $1.4161$ holds for any degree. (III) For every integer $n\geq6 $, there exists an $n$-element point set $S$ such that the stretch factor of the greedy triangulation of $S$ is at least $2.0268$.
Weighted Approximations of Tail Processes under Mixing Conditions

While the extreme value statistics for i.i. d. data is well developed, much less is known about the asymptotic behavior of statistical procedures in the presence of dependence. We establish convergence of tail empirical processes to Gaussian limits for {mixing stationary time series. As a consequence one obtains weighted approximations of the tail empirical quantile function that is based on a random sequence with marginal distribution belonging to the domain of attraction of an extreme value distribution. Moreover, the asymptotic normality is concluded for a large class of estimators of the extreme value index. These results are applied to stationary solutions of a general stochastic diierence equation.
Effect of pindolol and milnacipran versus milnacipran and placebo on plasma prolactin and adrenocorticotrophic hormone in depressed subjects

Evidence that pindolol accelerates the action of antidepressants has been contradictory, and it is not clear why. The present study analyses the relationship between plasma prolactin (PRL) and ACTH levels and changes in relation to a milnacipran and pindolol combination versus milnacipran plus placebo.
Violence and Social Repair: Rethinking the Contribution of Justice to Reconciliation

Close relatives and friends are dead or missing. Homes lie in ruins. Property has been destroyed. With everybody experiencing trouble, severe privations and physical suffering, it is still something altogether different whether one retains a home and household goods or has been ruined by bombs; whether he sustained his suffering and losses in combat at the front, at home, or in a concentration camp; whether he was a hunted. , victim or one of those who, even though in fear, profited by the regime . Men have come to the limits of humanity and returned home, unable to forget what really was . The suffering differs in kind, and most people have sense only for their
BMI–Mortality Paradox and Fitness in African American and Caucasian Men With Type 2 Diabetes

OBJECTIVE To assess the association between BMI, fitness, and mortality in African American and Caucasian men with type 2 diabetes and to explore racial differences in this association. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We used prospective observational data from Veterans Affairs Medical Centers in Washington, DC, and Palo Alto, California. Our cohort (N = 4,156; mean age 60 ± 10.3 years) consisted of 2,013 African Americans (mean age, 59.5 ± 9.9 years), 2,000 Caucasians (mean age, 60.8 ± 10.5 years), and 143 of unknown race/ethnicity. BMI, cardiac risk factors, medications, and peak exercise capacity in metabolic equivalents (METs) were assessed during 1986 and 2010. All-cause mortality was assessed across BMI and fitness categories. RESULTS There were 1,074 deaths during a median follow-up period of 7.5 years. A paradoxic BMI–mortality association was observed, with significantly higher risk among those with a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 kg/m2 (hazard ratio [HR] 1.70 [95% CI 1.36–2.1]) compared with the obese category (BMI ≥35 kg/m2). This association was accentuated in African Americans (HR 1.95 [95% CI 1.44–2.63]) versus Caucasians (HR 1.53 [1.0–2.1]). The fitness–mortality risk association for the entire cohort and within BMI categories was inverse, independent, and graded. Mortality risks were 12% lower for each 1-MET increase in exercise capacity, and ∼35–55% lower for those with an exercise capacity >5 METs compared with the least fit (≤5 METs). CONCLUSIONS A paradoxic BMI–mortality risk association was observed in African American and Caucasian patients with diabetes. The exercise capacity–mortality risk association was inverse, independent, and graded in all BMI categories but was more potent in those with a BMI ≥25 kg/m2.
Multi-stable perception balances stability and sensitivity

We report that multi-stable perception operates in a consistent, dynamical regime, balancing the conflicting goals of stability and sensitivity. When a multi-stable visual display is viewed continuously, its phenomenal appearance reverses spontaneously at irregular intervals. We characterized the perceptual dynamics of individual observers in terms of four statistical measures: the distribution of dominance times (mean and variance) and the novel, subtle dependence on prior history (correlation and time-constant). The dynamics of multi-stable perception is known to reflect several stabilizing and destabilizing factors. Phenomenologically, its main aspects are captured by a simplistic computational model with competition, adaptation, and noise. We identified small parameter volumes (~3% of the possible volume) in which the model reproduced both dominance distribution and history-dependence of each observer. For 21 of 24 data sets, the identified volumes clustered tightly (~15% of the possible volume), revealing a consistent “operating regime” of multi-stable perception. The “operating regime” turned out to be marginally stable or, equivalently, near the brink of an oscillatory instability. The chance probability of the observed clustering was <0.02. To understand the functional significance of this empirical “operating regime,” we compared it to the theoretical “sweet spot” of the model. We computed this “sweet spot” as the intersection of the parameter volumes in which the model produced stable perceptual outcomes and in which it was sensitive to input modulations. Remarkably, the empirical “operating regime” proved to be largely coextensive with the theoretical “sweet spot. ” This demonstrated that perceptual dynamics was not merely consistent but also functionally optimized (in that it balances stability with sensitivity). Our results imply that multi-stable perception is not a laboratory curiosity, but reflects a functional optimization of perceptual dynamics for visual inference.
Rapid acquisition of helium‐3 and proton three‐dimensional image sets of the human lung in a single breath‐hold using compressed sensing

To develop and validate a method for acquiring helium‐3 (3He) and proton (1H) three‐dimensional (3D) image sets of the human lung with isotropic spatial resolution within a 10‐s breath‐hold by using compressed sensing (CS) acceleration, and to assess the fidelity of undersampled images compared with fully sampled images.
Biases in the Atlantic ITCZ in Seasonal–Interannual Variations for a Coarse- and a High-Resolution Coupled Climate Model

AbstractUsing two fully coupled ocean–atmosphere models—Climate Model version 2.1 (CM2.1), developed at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and Climate Model version 2.5 (CM2.5), a new high-resolution climate model based on CM2.1—the characteristics and sources of SST and precipitation biases associated with the Atlantic ITCZ have been investigated.CM2.5 has an improved simulation of the annual mean and the annual cycle of the rainfall over the Sahel and northern South America, while CM2.1 shows excessive Sahel rainfall and lack of northern South America rainfall in boreal summer. This marked improvement in CM2.5 is due to not only high-resolved orography but also a significant reduction of biases in the seasonal meridional migration of the ITCZ. In particular, the seasonal northward migration of the ITCZ in boreal summer is coupled to the seasonal variation of SST and a subsurface doming of the thermocline in the northeastern tropical Atlantic, known as the Guinea Dome. Improvements in the ITCZ al.