Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dispersive Transport and Negative Bias Temperature Instability: Boundary Conditions, Initial Conditions, and Transport Models

Negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) has evolved into one of the most serious reliability concerns for highly scaled pMOSFETs. It is most commonly interpreted by some form of reaction-diffusion model, which assumes that some hydrogen species is first released from previously passivated interface defects and then diffuses into the oxide. It has been argued, however, that hydrogen motion in the oxide is trap-controlled, resulting in dispersive transport behavior. This defect-controlled transport modifies the characteristic exponent in the power law that describes the threshold-voltage shift. So far, a number of NBTI models based on dispersive transport have been published. Interestingly, although seemingly based on similar physical assumptions, these models result in different predictions. Most notably, both an increase and a decrease in the power-law time exponent with increasing dispersion have been reported. Also, different functional dependences on the dispersion parameter have been given in addition to differences in the prefactors and the saturation behavior. We clarify these discrepancies by identifying the boundary and initial conditions which couple the transport equations to the electro-chemical reaction at the interface as the crucial component. We proceed by deriving a generalized reaction (dispersive) diffusion formalism and provide the missing link between the various published models by demonstrating how each of them can be derived from this generalized model.
Production of biodiesel from feedstocks with high free fatty acids and its effect on diesel engine performance and emissions

Biodiesel is a fuel consisting of the alkyl monoesters of fatty acids from vegetable oils or animal fats. Biodiesel is receiving increasing attention as an alternative, non-toxic, biodegradable and renewable diesel fuel. Many studies have shown that the properties of biodiesel are very close to diesel fuel. Therefore, biodiesel can be used in diesel engines with little or no modification. Biodiesel is usually produced from food-grade vegetable oils that are more expensive than diesel fuel. Therefore, use of biodiesel produced from food-grade vegetable oil may be limited to cases of severe shortages or emergencies. However, lower cost feedstocks are available. Rendered animal fats and restaurant waste oils are an attractive source to produce biodiesel. The problem with processing rendered fats and oils is that they usually contain large amounts of free fatty acids that cannot be converted to biodiesel using an alkaline catalyst due to the formation of soaps. An alternative way is to use acid catalysts, which are more tolerant of free fatty acids. The objective of this study was to develop a process to utilize rendered fats, known as yellow grease, as a biodiesel feedstock and to build a pilot plant to implement this process. The pilot plant was successfully constructed and was shown to be capable of processing rendered fats containing 40% free fatty acids. After preparing a sufficient amount of biodiesel from rendered animal fats and restaurant waste oils, the impact of the biodiesel on diesel engine exhaust emissions and engine performance was evaluated and compared to No. 2 diesel fuel and soybean oil methyl ester. The methyl esters produced from yellow grease gave nearly the same thermal efficiency but higher fuel consumption compared with No. 2 diesel fuel. At the operating
Early mobilization versus immobilization after ankle ligament stabilization

Functional outcome, stability at radiographic investigation and ankle joint torque after anatomical reconstruction of the lateral ankle ligaments were evaluated in patients with early postoperative mobilization versus those with cast immobilization. Thirty patients with chronic lateral ligament instability of the ankle underwent anatomical reconstruction of the ligaments. Postoperatively the patients were randomly allocated to two groups: Group A (n= 15) were immobilized in a below‐knee plaster for 6 weeks and Group B (n= 15) underwent early controlled range of motion training using an Air‐Cast® ankle brace. The funtional results were evaluated using a scoring scale and objective results using standardized stress radiographs. Also eccentric and concentric muscle torque at 60°/s was measured in plantar flexion and dorsiflexion, respectively. The functional results were satisfactory in 12/15 ankles in Group A and 14/15 in Group B (n.s.). All the patients with satisfactory results regained normal range of motion. Patients with unsatisfactory results had either residual pain or recurrent instability. In Group B, the strength measurements revealed significantly higher peak torque values after three months in plantar flexion at 60°/s. Six months postoperatively, the torque values did not differ significantly between the groups. Also, there was no group difference in the laxity of the ankle joint, including both anterior talar translation test and talar tilt test, at the two‐year follow‐up. One patient had a superficial wound infection. We conclude that after the reconstruction of chronic lateral ligament instability of the ankle the functional and stability results were equally good with early postoperative mobilization and 6‐week immobilization. However, using early mobilization plantar flexion strength was regained earlier than with cast immonbilization, without any risk of short‐ or medium‐term complications, such as increased ankle laxity. We recommend early mobilization after anatomical reconstruction of the lateral ankle ligaments.
Asymptotic Efficiency in Parametric Structural Models with Parameter-Dependent Support

In certain auction, search, and related models, the boundary of the support of the observed data depends on some of the parameters of interest. For such nonregular models, standard asymptotic distribution theory does not apply. Previous work has focused on characterizing the nonstandard limiting distributions of particular estimators in these models. In contrast, we study the problem of constructing efficient point estimators. We show that the maximum likelihood estimator is generally inefficient, but that the Bayes estimator is efficient according to the local asymptotic minmax criterion for conventional loss functions. We provide intuition for this result using Le Cam's limits of experiments framework.
Intersection homology and Alexander modules of hypersurface complements

Let $V$ be a degree $d$, reduced hypersurface in $\mathbb{CP}^{n+1}$, $n \geq 1$, and fix a generic hyperplane, $H$. Denote by $\mathcal{U}$ the (affine) hypersurface complement, $\mathbb{CP}^{n+1}-V \cup H$, and let $\mathcal{U}^c$ be the infinite cyclic covering of $\mathcal{U}$ corresponding to the kernel of the total linking number homomorphism. Using intersection homology theory, we give a new construction of the Alexander modules $H_i(\mathcal{U}^c;\mathbb{Q})$ of the hypersurface complement and show that, if $i \leq n$, these are torsion over the ring of rational Laurent polynomials. We also obtain obstructions on the associated global polynomials: their zeros are roots of unity of order $d$ and are entirely determined by the local topological information encoded by the link pairs of singular strata of a stratification of the pair $(\mathbb{CP}^{n+1},V)$. As an application, we give obstructions on the eigenvalues of monodromy operators associated to
Early enhancement of plating efficiency of primary mouse embryo cells by the carcinogen methylnitrosourea.

Primary mouse embryo cells, when placed on a regular pattern of replating, initially exhibit a cyclical pattern of proliferation. When such cells recover from the primary injury caused by the carcinogen methylnitrosourea, they acquire a markedly enhanced plating efficiency. This change is independent of the density of plating at which the cells were treated and is probably a true, induced, heritable change rather than a selection of a preexisting cell population. The change may be independent of changes in contact inhibition and may be one of the steps in the development of cancer in tissue culture.
Houses as Atms? Mortgage Refinancing and Macroeconomic Uncertainty

We estimate a structural model of household liquidity management in the presence of long-term mortgages. Households face counter-cyclical idiosyncratic labor income uncertainty and borrowing constraints, which affect optimal choices of leverage, precautionary saving in liquid assets and illiquid home equity, debt repayment, mortgage refinancing, and default. Taking the observed historical path of house prices, aggregate income, and interest rates as given, the model quantitatively accounts for the run-up in household debt and consumption boom prior to the financial crisis, their subsequent collapse, and mild recovery following the Great Recession, especially among the most constrained households.
Hypoxia Is a Critical Parameter for Chondrogenic Differentiation of Human Umbilical Cord Blood Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Type I/III Collagen Sponges

Umbilical cord blood (UCB) is an attractive alternative to bone marrow for isolation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to treat articular cartilage defects. Here, we set out to determine the growth factors (bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP-2) and transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β1)) and oxygen tension effects during chondrogenesis of human UCB-MSCs for cartilage engineering. Chondrogenic differentiation was induced using 3D cultures in type I/III collagen sponges with chondrogenic factors in normoxia (21% O2) or hypoxia (<5% O2) for 7, 14 and 21 days. Our results show that UCB-MSCs can be committed to chondrogenesis in the presence of BMP-2+TGF-β1. Normoxia induced the highest levels of chondrocyte-specific markers. However, hypoxia exerted more benefit by decreasing collagen X and matrix metalloproteinase-13 (MMP13) expression, two chondrocyte hypertrophy markers. However, a better chondrogenesis was obtained by switching oxygen conditions, with seven days in normoxia followed by 14 days in hypoxia, since these conditions avoid hypertrophy of hUCB-MSC-derived chondrocytes while maintaining the expression of chondrocyte-specific markers observed in normoxia. Our study demonstrates that oxygen tension is a key factor for chondrogenesis and suggests that UBC-MSCs 3D-culture should begin in normoxia to obtain a more efficient chondrocyte differentiation before placing them in hypoxia for chondrocyte phenotype stabilization. UCB-MSCs are therefore a reliable source for cartilage engineering.
Big Data Reduction and Optimization in Sensor Monitoring Network

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are increasingly being utilized to monitor the structural health of the underground subway tunnels, showing many promising advantages over traditional monitoring schemes. Meanwhile, with the increase of the network size, the system is incapable of dealing with big data to ensure efficient data communication, transmission, and storage. Being considered as a feasible solution to these issues, data compression can reduce the volume of data travelling between sensor nodes. In this paper, an optimization algorithm based on the spatial and temporal data compression is proposed to cope with these issues appearing in WSNs in the underground tunnel environment. The spatial and temporal correlation functions are introduced for the data compression and data recovery. It is verified that the proposed algorithm is applicable to WSNs in the underground tunnel.
Plasmodesmata-Mediated Cell-to-Cell Communication in the Shoot Apical Meristem: How Stem Cells Talk

Positional information is crucial for the determination of plant cell fates, and it is established based on coordinated cell-to-cell communication, which in turn is essential for plant growth and development. Plants have evolved a unique communication pathway, with tiny channels called plasmodesmata (PD) spanning the cell wall. PD interconnect most cells in the plant and generate a cytoplasmic continuum, to mediate short- and long-distance trafficking of various molecules. Cell-to-cell communication through PD plays a role in transmitting positional signals, however, the regulatory mechanisms of PD-mediated trafficking are still largely unknown. The induction and maintenance of stem cells in the shoot apical meristem (SAM) depends on PD-mediated cell-to-cell communication, hence, it is an optimal model for dissecting the regulatory mechanisms of PD-mediated cell-to-cell communication and its function in specifying cell fates. In this review, we summarize recent knowledge of PD-mediated cell-to-cell communication in the SAM, and discuss mechanisms underlying molecular trafficking through PD and its role in plant development.
An Empirical Examination of Global Software Piracy : Implications for Pricing and Public Policy

Policy Implications Ramnath K. Chellappa ram@bus.emory.edu Yuanyuan Chen yychen@bus.emory.edu Sriram Venkataraman svenka2@emory.edu Goizueta Business School, Emory University, Atlanta GA 30322 Abstract Piracy threatens the very existence of the global software industry, and there is relatively little understanding of the impact of so called benefits of piracy, and the efficacy of legal strategies at a global level. Our research combines analytical approaches to studying piracy along with data from over 53 countries to empirically model global piracy behavior. Our analyses show that software piracy is not a price-dependent decision alone and is indeed expressed as a two-stage behavior as suggested by extant analytical models, where some consumers buy outright while some others first pirate and turn buyers. We develop a set of latent constructs from extant literature called consumers’ moral and legal costs so as to capture the non-monetary costs of pirating as influenced by country-specific cultural and institutional factors. Our results suggest that while moral costs play a role in only preventing a consumer from pirating at all, legal costs manifest themselves in both stages where they not only play role in piracy prevention but they also can deter pirates from holding on to pirated copies. Further, contrary to popular arguments that piracy necessarily leads to future sales, the overall beneficial effects of software piracy, while indeed present, are quite limited across the software industry. We also demonstrate the superiority of country-specific pricing strategies while underscoring the importance of enforcement actions in mitigating piracy. We conclude that a focus on secondstage deterrence is superior to prevention strategies.
Dimensions of family rituals across two generations: relation to adolescent identity.

Family rituals are considered part of a generational process that fosters a sense of identity for individual members and is reflective of the family's shared belief system. The symbolic significance attached to family rituals is considered central to the force of family rituals. Three questions were addressed in the study: (1) Are the dimensions of family rituals viewed similarly across generations? ; (2) Is level of ritualization related to adolescent identity? ; (3) If there is disagreement about the relative level of ritualization in a family, is there a negative relation to adolescent identity? A total of 77 families with an adolescent member completed the Family Ritual Questionnaire, and the adolescents completed a measure of self-esteem. Results of a factor analysis demonstrated shared representation of family rituals across two generations, with one factor loading on the symbolic qualities of family rituals and the second factor loading on the routine aspects of family rituals. Positive relations were found between adolescent identity and the family's report of symbolic significance and affect associated with family rituals. A negative relation was found between mother-adolescent disagreement about family rituals and adolescent feelings of belonging. Distinguishing between meaning and routine aspects of family rituals is discussed as well as clinical implications.
Attitudes to Food and the Role of Food in Life in the U.S.A., Japan, Flemish Belgium and France: Possible Implications for the Diet–Health Debate

For human beings, food is a critical contributor to physical well being, a major source of pleasure, worry and stress, a major occupant of waking time and, across the world, the single greatest category of expenditures. This is a first study of the way food functions in the minds and lives of people from four cultures. Adults and college students from Flemish Belgium, France, U.S.A. and Japan were surveyed with questions dealing with beliefs about the diet-health link, worry about food, the degree of consumption of foods modified to be "healthier" (e.g. reduced in salt or fat), the importance of food as a positive force in life, the tendency to associate foods with nutritional vs. culinary contexts, and satisfaction with the healthiness of one's own diet. In all domains except beliefs about the importance of diet for health, there are substantial country (and usually gender) differences. Generally, the group associating food most with health and least with pleasure is the Americans, and the group most food-pleasure-oriented and least food-health-oriented is the French. In all four countries, females, as opposed to males, show a pattern of attitudes that is more like the American pattern, and less like the French pattern. In either gender, French and Belgians tend to occupy the pleasure extreme, Americans the health extreme, with the Japanese in between. Ironically, the Americans, who do the most to alter their diet in the service of health, are the least likely to classify themselves as healthy eaters. We conclude that there are substantial cross-cultural differences in the extent to which food functions as a stressor vs. a pleasure. These differences may influence health and may partially account for national differences in rates of cardiovascular diseases (the "French paradox").
PVSAE: A Public Verifiable Searchable Encryption Service Framework for Outsourced Encrypted Data

Outsource encrypted data is a popular trend for storing sensitive data in third party clouds. Many cloud applications need privacy preserving data encryption services with two capabilities: On one hand, they need querying over encrypted data in Web based data hosting services. On the other hand, they also need to keep the query keywords and associated search operations private such that data hosting service providers cannot gain access to unauthorized content or trace and infer sensitive data stored in the third party data hosting servers. In this paper we present a novel service oriented framework for verifiable searchable asymmetric encryption, called PVSAE. PVSAE offers strong support for outsourced encrypted data with two formal security properties in terms of IND-CKA security and search pattern privacy. Our framework supports two concrete PVSAE schemes. The first scheme l-PVSAE is based on the l-dimensional vectors and achieves strong security notions, namely statistical IND-CKA security and statistical search pattern privacy. The second scheme 3-PVSAE is a light-weight version based on 3-dimensional vectors. 3-PVSAE maintains the strong security properties and offers higher efficiency for search over encrypted data compared with existing verifiable searchable asymmetric encryption schemes. We experimentally evaluate the proposed PVSAE schemes and show that they not only offer strong security but also are practical and deployable.
SR4GN: A Species Recognition Software Tool for Gene Normalization

As suggested in recent studies, species recognition and disambiguation is one of the most critical and challenging steps in many downstream text-mining applications such as the gene normalization task and protein-protein interaction extraction. We report SR4GN: an open source tool for species recognition and disambiguation in biomedical text. In addition to the species detection function in existing tools, SR4GN is optimized for the Gene Normalization task. As such it is developed to link detected species with corresponding gene mentions in a document. SR4GN achieves 85.42% in accuracy and compares favorably to the other state-of-the-art techniques in benchmark experiments. Finally, SR4GN is implemented as a standalone software tool, thus making it convenient and robust for use in many text-mining applications. SR4GN can be downloaded at: http://www.ncbi. nlm.nih. gov/CBBresearch/Lu/downloads/SR4GN
Is Wide Resection Obsolete for Desmoid Tumors in Children and Adolescents? Evaluation of Histological Margins, Immunohistochemical Markers, and Review of Literature

Desmoid fibromatosis is a benign fibroblastic neoplasm with high recurrence rates predominantly observed in pediatric and adolescent patients. The use of wide resection margins has been discussed controversially in literature. In addition, data on non-surgical treatment is limited as phase III studies are still missing. Nineteen patients under the age of 18 years were identified. Tumor location, surgical treatment for primary or recurrent tumors, resection margins, medical neo-/adjuvant treatment, time to recurrence as well as immunohistochemical markers (estrogen receptor, ER α and β, progesterone and androgen receptors, somatostatin, Ki-67, c-kit, platelet-derived growth factor receptors, PDGFRs, α and β, β-catenin) were evaluated. The mean age at diagnosis was 6.6 years, with a mean follow-up of 114 months. Recurrences were detected in four out of nineteen patients. Surprisingly, the recurrence rate was not influenced by type of resection used (R0, R1/2). All samples were tested negative for ER α, somatostatin, and progesterone receptor. In contrast, a majority of tumors showed positive results for PDGFR α and β and β-catenin. No correlation between positive immunohistochemical markers and tumor recurrences was detectable. In conclusion, recurrence rates are not depending on resection type and immunohistochemical markers seem to behave differently in children and adolescents in contrast to adult patients.
Virtual network embedding by exploiting topological information

Network virtualization provides a powerful way to run multiple heterogeneous virtual networks (VNs) at the same time on a shared substrate network. A major challenge in network virtualization is the efficient virtual network embedding: mapping virtual nodes and virtual edges onto substrate networks. Previous researches have presented several heuristic algorithms, which fail to consider the topology attributes of substrate and virtual networks. However, the topology information affects the performance of the embedding obviously. In this paper, for the first time, we exploit the topology attributes of substrate and virtual networks, introduce network centrality analysis into the virtual network embedding, and propose virtual network embedding algorithms based on closeness centrality. Due to considering the topology information, our study is more reasonable than the existing work in coordinating node and edge embedding. In addition, with the guidance of topology quantitative evaluation, the proposed network embedding approaches largely improve the network utilization efficiency and decrease the embedding complexity. Experimental results demonstrate the usability and feasibility of the proposed approach.