Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Secure Physical Enclosures from Covers with Tamper-Resistance

Ensuring physical security of multiple-chip embedded systems on a PCB is challenging, since the attacker can control the device in a hostile environment. To detect physical intruders as part of a layered approach to security, it is common to create a physical security boundary that is difficult to penetrate or remove, e.g., enclosures created from tamper-respondent envelopes or covers. Their physical integrity is usually checked by active sensing, i.e., a battery-backed circuit continuously monitors the enclosure. However, adoption is often hampered by the disadvantages of a battery and due to specialized equipment which is required to create the enclosure. In contrast, we present a batteryless tamper-resistant cover made from standard flexPCB technology, i.e., a commercially widespread, scalable, and proven technology. The cover comprises a fine mesh of electrodes and an evaluation unit underneath the cover checks their integrity by detecting short and open circuits. Additionally, it measures the capacitances between the electrodes of the mesh. Once its preliminary integrity is confirmed, a cryptographic key is derived from the capacitive measurements representing a PUF, to decrypt and authenticate sensitive data of the enclosed system. We demonstrate the feasibility of our concept, provide details on the layout, electrical properties of the cover, and explain the underlying security architecture. Practical results including statistics over a set of 115 flexPCB covers, physical attacks, and environmental testing support our design rationale. Hence, our work opens up a new direction of counteracting physical tampering without the need of batteries, while aiming at a physical security level comparable to FIPS 140-2 level 3.
Optimization of Single-Stage FFT Architectures Using Multiple Constant Multiplication

Digital implementations of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) are widely used in communication systems using Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing. These systems currently comprise several communication standards such as IEEE 802.11agjn, IEEE 802.20 mobile wireless broadband access, asymmetric digital subscriber lines and digital audio and video broadcasting. Thus, this work proposes a methodology using a multiple constant multiplication (MCM) solution to optimize single stage, radix-2 decimation-in-time FFT processors. It uses the algorithm proposed by Cooley and Tukey to determine the coefficients of the FFT and the algorithm proposed by Aksoy et al. to solve the MCM problem. Also, we develop an algorithm that automatically elaborates FFT architectures using SystemVerilog hardware description language. Each design is functionally verified and logically synthesized utilizing the XFAB $0.18\mu\text{m}$ cells library. The usage of this methodology reduces the number of real multiplications implemented in 58.33–30.96% on architectures from 8 up to 256 input points. Also, mean squared error is kept below 2.5% and SNR higher than 52dB.
Minimally Invasive Surgery for Rectal Adenocarcinoma Shows Promising Outcomes Compared to Laparotomy, a National Cancer Database Observational Analysis.

PURPOSE/BACKGROUND The surgical approach to adenocarcinoma of the rectum remains a controversial topic. Although current data focus on the noninferiority of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) for rectal cancer compared with laparotomy, conclusions are drawn from smaller sample sizes and may be underpowered. Methods/Interventions: The National Cancer Database (NCDB) from 2010 to 2014 was reviewed for all cases of invasive adenocarcinoma of the rectum (SEER Histology Codes 8140) who underwent surgical resection for malignancy. Groups were separated based on laparotomy or an MIS approach and stratified by NCDB Analytic Stage. Multivariate Cox regression analysis was used to evaluate for survival after diagnosis of adenocarcinoma of the rectum. Results/Outcomes: The inclusion criteria identified 29,199 cases of adenocarcinoma of the rectum managed surgically. After controlling for differences in the cohorts, survival after diagnosis and definitive surgical treatment for adenocarcinoma of the rectum is improved when an MIS approach was used (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] = 0.82, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.77-0.88, P < .001). The protective effect of an MIS approach applied to Stages I, II, III, and IV adenocarcinoma of the rectum. The protective effect of a minimally invasive surgical approach applies to Stages I, II, III, and IV adenocarcinoma of the rectum. The rate of negative circumferential margins (86.2% versus 83.5%, P < .001), proximal and distal margins (94.7% versus 92.1%, P < .001), and lymph node yield >12 (73.2% versus 70.1%, P < .001) was higher in the minimally invasive group compared with laparotomy. The intraoperative conversion rate from MIS to laparotomy was 13.9%. CONCLUSION/DISCUSSION Minimally invasive resection for adenocarcinoma of the rectum shows promising survival benefit compared with open surgery after adjusting for measured confounds.
Collaborative Visual SLAM Using Compressed Feature Exchange

In the field of robotics, collaborative simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is still a challenging problem. The exploration of unknown large-scale environments benefits from sharing the work among multiple agents possibly equipped with different abilities, such as aerial or ground-based vehicles. In this letter, we specifically address data-efficiency for the exchange of visual information in a collaborative visual SLAM setup. For efficient data exchange, we extend a compression scheme for local binary features by two additional modes providing support for local features with additional depth information and an inter-view coding mode exploiting the spatial relations between views of a stereo camera system. To demonstrate the coding framework, we use a centralized system architecture based on ORB-SLAM2, where energy-constrained agents extract local binary features and send a compressed version over a network to a more powerful agent, which is capable of running several visual SLAM instances in parallel. We exploit the information from other agents by detecting the overlap between already mapped areas and subsequent merging of the maps. Henceforth, the participants contribute to a joint representation and benefit from shared map information. We show a reduction in terms of data-rate by 70.8% using the feature compression and a reduction in absolute trajectory error by 53.7% using the collaborative mapping strategy with three agents on the well-known KITTI dataset. For the benefit of the community, we provide a public version of the source code.
The Role of Collective Efficacy in Reducing Health Disparities: A Systematic Review

Many improvements in health equity are spearheaded by community collaborations working to change policy and social norms. But how can collective efficacy (CE), defined as the willingness and ability of a group to work toward a common good, be increased? Eight articles reporting on interventions aiming to reduce health disparities by improving CE were found for this systematic literature review. All studies showed improvements in CE and most found reduction in disparities, but operationalization of CE varied. Findings support a model of how CE can address health disparities, which can guide standardization of CE interventions and measures.
Efficacy of ultra-low-dose (0.1 mg) ranibizumab intravitreal injection for treatment of prethreshold type 1 retinopathy of prematurity: A case series

Aim: To report the results of treatment of type 1 prethreshold retinopathy of prematurity using intravitreal injection of ultra-low dose of ranibizumab (0.1 mg in 0.01 mL). Design: A retrospective observational case series study. Methods: Review of files of eligible infants who received this form of treatment to determine the outcome of treatment and any associated ocular or systemic side effects. Results: The study included 24 eyes of 12 preterm infants with mean gestational age of 29.75 ± 1.54 weeks and mean birth weight of 1074.58 ± 320.59 g. A total of 22 eyes (91.67%) had zone II disease while 2 eyes of one infant (8.33%) had zone I disease. All cases showed regression of the signs of the active retinopathy of prematurity with complete retinal vascularization. None of the cases required retreatment. Three eyes developed ocular complications. Apart from mild feeding intolerance that lasted for 24 h after injection in one infant, none of the cases developed systemic side effects. Conclusion: Intravitreal injection of ultra-low-dose ranibizumab showed promising efficacy and good ocular safety. However, further large-scale studies are required to give stronger evidence about the efficacy and safety of ultra-low-dose ranibizumab.
Erector spinae plane block: Relatively new block on horizon with a wide spectrum of application – A case series

Erector spinae plane (ESP) block is an interfascial plane block where a local anaesthetic is injected in a plane preferably below the erector spinae muscle. It is supposed to work at the origin of spinal nerves based on cadaveric and contrast study. It has emerged as an effective and safe analgesic regional technique. It has a wide variety of applications ranging from control of acute postoperative pain to chronic pain. In this series, we report a series of six cases, which include postoperative pain management in breast, thoracic, and abdominal surgeries along with management of two chronic pain cases to illustrate the potential uses of continuous and single-shot ESP block.
Long non-coding RNA PICSAR decreases adhesion and promotes migration of squamous carcinoma cells by downregulating α2β1 and α5β1 integrin expression

ABSTRACT Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) regulate various cellular processes, and they have emerged as potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets in cancer. We have previously characterized the oncogenic role of lncRNA PICSAR (p38 inhibited cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma associated lincRNA) in cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC), the most common metastatic skin cancer. In this study, we show that knockdown of PICSAR in cSCC cells upregulates expression of α2, α5 and β1 integrins, resulting in increased cell adhesion and decreased cell migration on collagen I and fibronectin. In contrast, overexpression of PICSAR in cSCC cells downregulates expression of α2, α5 and β1 integrins on cell surface, resulting in decreased cell adhesion on collagen I and fibronectin and increased cell migration. These results demonstrate a novel mechanism for regulation of the expression of collagen and fibronectin binding integrins by lncRNA PICSAR, leading to altered adhesion and migration of cSCC cells. This article has an associated First Person interview with the first author of the paper. Summary: Long non-coding RNA PICSAR decreases adhesion and promotes migration of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma cells by regulating the expression of collagen and fibronectin binding α2β1 and α5β1 integrins.
Pediatric and adolescent injury in wilderness and extreme environments

ABSTRACT The participation of children and adolescents in wilderness and extreme environment sports is increasing. Engaging in these activities is not without risk of injury, illness, or death. To date, there is limited research investigating pediatric and adolescent injuries in wilderness and extreme environments. With the intent of creating awareness within the sports medicine field, this review begins by examining the growth in popularity of outdoor sports in wilderness and extreme environments and the injury impact they are registering. The review then examines reported pediatric and adolescent injuries in multiple wilderness and extreme environments. Close examination is paid to youth adventuring on global expeditions and entering high altitude environments. Future studies acquiring denominator data to help establish injury rates while keeping pace with the rapidly diversifying outdoor and extreme wilderness sport trends are necessary.
A Unified Framework for Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access

This paper proposes a unified framework of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) networks. Stochastic geometry is employed to model the locations of spatially NOMA users. The proposed unified NOMA framework is capable of being applied to both code-domain NOMA (CD-NOMA) and power-domain NOMA (PD-NOMA). Since the detection of NOMA users mainly depend on efficient successive interference cancelation (SIC) schemes, both imperfect SIC (ipSIC) and perfect SIC (pSIC) are taken into account. To characterize the performance of the proposed unified NOMA framework, the exact and asymptotic expressions of outage probabilities as well as delay-limited throughput for CD/PD-NOMA with ipSIC/pSIC are derived. In order to obtain more insights, the diversity analysis of a pair of NOMA users (i.e., the nth user and mth user) is provided. Our analytical results reveal that: 1) the diversity orders of mth and nth user with pSIC for CD-NOMA are mK and nK, respectively; 2) due to the influence of residual interference, the nth user with ipSIC obtains a zero diversity order; and 3) the diversity order is determined by the user who has the poorer channel conditions out of the pair. Finally, Monte Carlo simulations are presented to verify the analytical results: 1) when the number of subcarriers becomes lager, the NOMA users are capable of achieving more steep slope in terms of outage probability and 2) the outage behavior of CD-NOMA is superior to that of PD-NOMA.
Dietary Flavonoid Intakes Are Associated with Race but Not Income in an Urban Population

Flavonoids are polyphenolic phytochemicals with health-promoting properties, yet knowledge about their intake in at-risk populations is limited. This study sought to estimate intakes of total flavonoids and six flavonoid classes in the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span (HANDLS) study; determine if differences in intakes exist by race (African American (AA) and White (W)) and income (< or >125% Federal poverty guidelines); and compare intakes to those of a nationally representative population with similar demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Data transformation normalized the flavonoid intake distributions prior to conducting statistical tests. With the exception of the flavanone class, flavonoid intakes of AAs were significantly lower than those of W (p < 0.01), regardless of other potential mediating factors including sex, age, and income. Total flavonoid intakes in HANDLS did not differ from intakes in the nationally representative study, but anthocyanidin and flavone intakes were lower, and race specific differences were found for several flavonoid classes. These findings imply that benefits attributable to flavonoid consumption may not be experienced equally by AAs and Whites, nor in vulnerable populations such as that represented by HANDLS relative to the U.S. population, and may play a role in observed health disparities.
Psychiatric nurses’ knowledge, attitudes, and practice towards the use of physical restraints

PURPOSE This study examines the knowledge, attitudes, and practice of psychiatric nurses towards the use of physical restraint in Saudi Arabia. DESIGN AND METHODS Descriptive explanatory cross-sectional design, 101 participants were invited to complete a set of questionnaires to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice towards the use of physical restraint. FINDINGS Participants had a moderate knowledge and attitude as well as practice in using physical restraint. Less than half reported that they recognized alternative approaches to physical restraint and most of them did not understand the reasons for the restraint. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS This study highlights some important misunderstandings of nurses about using physical restraint. The findings serve as a supporting reason for recognizing the importance of educating nurses about its use.
Multi-cell LSTM Based Neural Language Model

Language models, being at the heart of many NLP problems, are always of great interest to researchers. Neural language models come with the advantage of distributed representations and long range contexts. With its particular dynamics that allow the cycling of information within the network, `Recurrent neural network' (RNN) becomes an ideal paradigm for neural language modeling. Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) architecture solves the inadequacies of the standard RNN in modeling long-range contexts. In spite of a plethora of RNN variants, possibility to add multiple memory cells in LSTM nodes was seldom explored. Here we propose a multi-cell node architecture for LSTMs and study its applicability for neural language modeling. The proposed multi-cell LSTM language models outperform the state-of-the-art results on well-known Penn Treebank (PTB) setup.
Concept design and performance evaluation of UAV-based backhaul link with antenna steering

At present, cellular coverage in many rural areas remains intermittent. Mobile operators may not be willing to deploy expensive network infrastructure to support low-demand regions. For that reason, solutions for the rapid deployment of base stations in areas with insufficient or damaged operator infrastructure are emerging. Utilization of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones serving as data relays holds significant promise for delivering on-demand connectivity as well as providing public safety services or aiding in recovery after communication infrastructure failures caused by natural disasters. The use of UAVs in provisioning high-rate radio connectivity and bringing it to remote locations is also envisioned as a potential application for fifth-generation (5G) communication systems. In this study, we introduce a prototype solution for an aerial base station, where connectivity between a drone and a base station is provided via a directional microwave link. Our prototype is equipped with a steering mechanism driven by a dedicated algorithm to support such connectivity. Our experimental results demonstrate early-stage connectivity and signal strength measurements that were gathered with our prototype. Our results are also compared against the free-space model. These findings support the emerging vision of aerial base stations as part of the 5G ecosystem and beyond.
Why Channel Hopping Makes Sense, even with IEEE802.15.4 OFDM at 2.4 GHz

Since its 2015 revision, IEEE802.15. 4 now supports the OFDM physical layer at 2.4 GHz, on top of the popular O-QPSK modulation. Chips capable of both O-QPSK and OFDM are currently available. The question now is whether OFDM is relevant for low-power wireless mesh networking; given its prevalence in 4G cellular, it could be a game-changer. We start by collecting a comprehensive connectivity dataset, 141,587,000 data points, continuously over 21 days. We then show, in an entirely counter-intuitive manner, that OFDM alone is not enough to cope with external interference and multi-path fading, and we recommend combining OFDM with channel hopping at the link layer. In the presence of WiFi interference, we further recommend using OFDM option 1 MCS3, a fast 800 kbps mode, which does not use frequency repetition, even though the latter is meant to increase frequency diversity.
Using Driver Control Models to Understand and Evaluate Behavioral Validity of Driving Simulators

For a driving simulator to be a valid tool for research, vehicle development, or driver training, it is crucial that it elicits similar driver behavior as the corresponding real vehicle. To assess such behavioral validity, the use of quantitative driver models has been suggested but not previously reported. Here, a task-general conceptual driver model is proposed, along with a taxonomy defining levels of behavioral validity. Based on these theoretical concepts, it is argued that driver models without explicit representations of sensory or neuromuscular dynamics should be sufficient for a model-based assessment of driving simulators in most contexts. As a task-specific example, two parsimonious driver steering models of this nature are developed and tested on a dataset of real and simulated driving in near-limit, low-friction circumstances, indicating a clear preference of one model over the other. By means of closed-loop simulations, it is demonstrated that the parameters of this preferred model can generally be accurately estimated from unperturbed driver steering data, using a simple, open-loop fitting method, as long as the vehicle positioning data are reliable. Some recurring patterns between the two studied tasks are noted in how the model's parameters, fitted to human steering, are affected by the presence or absence of steering torques and motion cues in the simulator.
Integral Barrier Lyapunov Function Based Saturated Dynamic Surface Control for Vision-Based Quadrotors via Back-Stepping

In this paper, we present an attitude restricted dynamic surface (DSC) controller for the vision-based quadrotor to ensure that visual target remains in the camera’s field of view all the time. To ensure stable quadrotor motion, proper perspective image moments are first extracted from the defined virtual image plane to derive the decoupled vision-quadrotor dynamics. Then, by developing a novel saturated DSC controller to limit the roll and pitch commands and employing an integral barrier Lyapunov function to guarantee the boundness of attitude responses, an attitude restricted DSC controller is devised under a back-stepping framework for quadrotors. The designed control scheme can regulate the moment features to their desired values without the violation of visibility constraint with both the attitude inputs and responses of quadrotor keeping inside the predefined state space. The boundedness and convergence of the closed-loop system are proved by the Lyapunov theory. Then, the satisfaction of the pre-specified constraints on the roll and pitch states can be guaranteed. The effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method are validated through extensive simulations and comparisons.
Tag-Based Browsing of Digital Collections with Inverted Indexes and Browsing Cache

In this paper we describe one of the browsing strategies for learning object repositories implemented in the Clavy platform, a platform for the management of repositories with reconfigurable structures. Since Clavy makes it possible to dynamically modify the structure of the repositories, it must support a navigation model independent of that structure. For this purpose, the platform adopts a tag-based browsing model, according to which users select descriptive tags to filter learning objects (in Clavy, these descriptive tags correspond to element-value pairs). In our experience using Clavy, we have realized that updating the browsing state when the user changes the set of selected tags can be a costly process. The proposed strategy alleviates this cost by combining inverted indexes with a multilevel cache model that enables the system, on the one hand, to cache filtered objects (i.e., set of objects filtered by sets of selected tags), and, on the other hand, selectable tags (i.e., set of tags able to shrink sets of objects).