Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cognitive and neurobehavioral benefits of an enriched environment on young adult mice after chronic ethanol consumption during adolescence

Binge drinking (BD) is a common pattern of ethanol (EtOH) consumption by adolescents. The brain effects of the acute EtOH exposure are well‐studied; however, the long‐lasting cognitive and neurobehavioral consequences of BD during adolescence are only beginning to be elucidated. Environmental enrichment (EE) has long been known for its benefits on the brain and may serve as a potential supportive therapy following EtOH exposure. In this study, we hypothesized that EE may have potential benefits on the cognitive deficits associated with BD EtOH consumption. Four‐week‐old C57BL/6J male mice were exposed to EtOH following an intermittent 4‐day drinking‐in‐the‐dark procedure for 4 weeks. Then they were exposed to EE during EtOH withdrawal for 2 weeks followed by a behavioral battery of tests including novel object recognition, novel location, object‐in‐place, rotarod, beam walking balance, tail suspension, light–dark box and open field that were run during early adulthood. Young adult mice exposed to EE significantly recovered recognition, spatial and associative memory as well as motor coordination skills and balance that were significantly impaired after adolescent EtOH drinking with respect to controls. No significant permanent anxiety or depressive‐like behaviors were observed. Taken together, an EE exerts positive effects on the long‐term negative cognitive deficits as a result of EtOH consumption during adolescence.
Distributed Scheduling of Electric Vehicles in a Residential Area in Thailand

The number of Electric Vehicles (EVs) is expected to rise in the coming future as an aim to be eco-friendly. However, a high penetration of EVs may result in power outages or transformer damage due to overloading. Smart Grid technology enables us to manage the charging of EVs in the form of demand side management. In this paper we applied the distributed scheduling algorithm, which we called Aggregate Power Sharing (APS), proposed by [Chen et al, 2014] to coordinate the charging schedules of EVs in a residential area in Pattaya, Thailand, being supplied by a distribution transformer. This area was one of the pilot projects for Smart Grid in Thailand. We compare APS with a popular water-filling scheduling algorithm and with the no scheduling case. With the two scheduling algorithms, the aggregate power consumption in the area does not violate the target aggregate load profile and more EVs can be supported by the transformer, compared to the no-scheduling case. In addition, the APS scheduling provides better fairness than water-filling since each EV is essentially charged at the same rate, independent of the state of charge of the batteries.
Nanomechanical Characterization of Intermetallic Compounds in Lead Free Solder Joints

Intermetallics (IMCs) in the solder joints have received a great deal of attention due to their increasing volume fraction with continuously decreasing package size. They possess very different mechanical behavior than those of the Sn rich dendrites and Cu pads in the solder joint. Understanding the behavior of interfacial IMCs has become a major concern for the researchers as fracturing near the interfacial IMC layers is often found to be the primary reason for failures caused by drop impacts. While subjected to Isothermal aging, Pb-free Sn–Ag–Cu (SAC) solder joints lead to growth of intermetallic (IMC) particles in the solder bulk as well as growth of intermetallic layers at the joint interfaces with copper bond pads. The most common IMCs found in SAC joints are Ag3Sn and Cu6Sn5 binary compounds. Ternary IMCs like Cu-Ni-Sn can also form at the interface of Ni containing surface finish (i.e. ENIG) and SAC solder. The continuous performance demand and improvement in 3D packaging has led to increased joule heating and higher operating temperatures, which necessitates measuring the mechanical properties and time dependent deformation (creep) behaviors of these IMCs as a function of temperature. In this study, the mechanical behaviors of IMC particles and layers in SAC solder joints have been characterized using nanoindentation. SAC solder joints extracted from BGA packages were first aged for 6 months at T = 125 oC. Nanoindentation test samples were subsequently prepared by cross-sectioning the aged solder joints, and then mounting them in epoxy mold and polishing them to prepare the joint surfaces for nanoindentation. Intermetallics formed in the bulk solder region, copper pad to SAC solder and ENIG to SAC solder interfaces were observed and detected using SEM and energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) technique. They were then indented to measure their mechanical properties which includes the elastic modulus and hardness at room temperature and at elevated temperatures (T = 50, 75, 100 and 125 oC) using a heating stage. Time dependent deformation (creep) behaviors were also evaluated at room temperature and at 100 oC to see the effect of high temperature on the creep rate of IMCs. The measured properties of the IMCs were found to be significantly higher than the Sn-matrix forming the solder joints. However, with the increased temperature, the elastic modulus and hardness value gradually decreased and significantly dropped at 125 oC compared to their room temperature measurements. The creep strain rate was found to increase as the temperature approached 100 oC for all of the IMC materials.
A Speech-Driven Hand Gesture Generation Method and Evaluation in Android Robots

Hand gestures commonly occur in daily dialogue interactions, and have important functions in communication. We first analyzed a multimodal human–human dialogue data and found relations between the occurrence of hand gestures and dialogue act categories. We also conducted a clustering analysis on gesture motion data, and associated text information with the gesture motion clusters through gesture function categories. Using the analysis results, we proposed a speech-driven gesture generation method by taking text, prosody, and dialogue act information into account. We then implemented a hand motion control to an android robot, and evaluated the effectiveness of the proposed gesture generation method through subjective experiments. The gesture motions generated by the proposed method were judged to be relatively natural even under the robot hardware constraints.
Privacy Preserving and Cost Optimal Mobile Crowdsensing Using Smart Contracts on Blockchain

The popularity and applicability of mobile crowdsensing applications are continuously increasing due to the widespread of mobile devices and their sensing and processing capabilities. However, we need to offer appropriate incentives to the mobile users who contribute their resources and preserve their privacy. Blockchain technologies enable semi-anonymous multi-party interactions and can be utilized in crowdsensing applications to maintain the privacy of the mobile users while ensuring first-rate crowdsensed data. In this work, we propose to use blockchain technologies and smart contracts to orchestrate the interactions between mobile crowdsensing providers and mobile users for the case of spatial crowdsensing, where mobile users need to be at specific locations to perform the tasks. Smart contracts, by operating as processes that are executed on the blockchain, are used to preserve users' privacy and make payments. Furthermore, for the assignment of the crowdsensing tasks to the mobile users, we design a truthful, cost-optimal auction that minimizes the payments from the crowdsensing providers to the mobile users. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed privacy preserving auction outperforms state-of-the-art proposals regarding cost by ten times for high numbers of mobile users and tasks.
High Efficiency Wireless Power Transfer System Using Spiral DGS Resonators Through Biological Tissues

This paper presents a wireless power transfer (WPT) system to transfer power through the tissues using Defected Ground Structure (DGS) resonators. The proposed DGS resonator is made of a spiral structure at the ground plane to increase the quality (Q-) factor, and when two DGS resonators are coupled back to back, it transforms to a bandpass filter resulting in the wireless power transfer. Experiment on the proposed WPT system shows an efficiency of 67.7% in air and 61% when placed in the tissue environment at 20MHz frequency.
Harnessing AI for Speech Reconstruction using Multi-view Silent Video Feed

Speechreading or lipreading is the technique of understanding and getting phonetic features from a speaker's visual features such as movement of lips, face, teeth and tongue. It has a wide range of multimedia applications such as in surveillance, Internet telephony, and as an aid to a person with hearing impairments. However, most of the work in speechreading has been limited to text generation from silent videos. Recently, research has started venturing into generating (audio) speech from silent video sequences but there have been no developments thus far in dealing with divergent views and poses of a speaker. Thus although, we have multiple camera feeds for the speech of a user, but we have failed in using these multiple video feeds for dealing with the different poses. To this end, this paper presents the world's first ever multi-view speech reading and reconstruction system. This work encompasses the boundaries of multimedia research by putting forth a model which leverages silent video feeds from multiple cameras recording the same subject to generate intelligent speech for a speaker. Initial results confirm the usefulness of exploiting multiple camera views in building an efficient speech reading and reconstruction system. It further shows the optimal placement of cameras which would lead to the maximum intelligibility of speech. Next, it lays out various innovative applications for the proposed system focusing on its potential prodigious impact in not just security arena but in many other multimedia analytics problems.
MCL: A Cost-Efficient Nonblocking Multicast Interconnection Network

Interconnection networks lie in the heart of all types of parallel architectures, because how processors or memory modules are connected to each other has a significant impact on the scalability, reliability, cost and performance. For example, a <italic>nonblocking</italic> interconnection network delivers guaranteed path availability to any connection requests, without interference to existing connections. Also, an interconnection network with <italic> multicast</italic> capability can distribute data from a single source to all the destinations in a one-shot manner, eliminating unnecessary duplications and minimizing communication delays. However, implementing nonblocking multicast networks imposes great challenges to designers because both of them demand high hardware cost. To deal with this problem, in this paper we propose a novel interconnection network, named <italic>Multicast Capable Low-cost Network (MCL)</italic>, which is both nonblocking for multicast traffic and cost-efficient. We first design the topologies and routing algorithms for MCL, and then prove its nonblocking multicast properties. Most importantly, we show that MCL achieves the lowest hardware cost in terms of asymptotic number of crosspoints. Specifically, the theoretical upper bound on the crosspoints of an <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$N \times N$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:href="yang-ieq1-2817623.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> MCL is <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O(N \log ^{3.39} N)$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:href="yang-ieq2-2817623.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>. The explicitly constructed instance of an <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$N \times N$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:href="yang-ieq3-2817623.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> MCL has a cost of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O(N^\frac{5}{4})$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:href="yang-ieq4-2817623.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> and constant delay from the input ports to the output ports. These theoretical and practical costs are both the lowest compared to previous designs which deliver the same performance.
Narrowband Internet of Things: Simulation and Modeling

As a new type of low power wide area (LPWA) technology, the narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) technology supports wide coverage and low bitrate services, thus it has a great potential to be the future commercial technology of LPWA network. Therefore, it has attracted attention of both academia and industry. In this paper, we present the NB-IoT development, and main characteristics and design objectives of NB-IoT according to 3GPP R13. In addition, we provide the review of related literatures about NB-IoT modeling and algorithm analysis. And we explain current problems of NB-IoT system-level modeling based on visualized simulation platform. Moreover, this paper is devoted to the construction of the NB-IoT model based on OPNET and the verification of its characteristics, such as wide coverage and high channel utilization. This paper mainly considers NB-IoT model design and realization in terms of NB-IoT physical layer characteristics. We summarize the correlated characteristics of NB-IoT uplink and downlink. Then we design and construct the NB-IoT model based on Long Term Evolution (LTE) network. Lastly, we use the constructed NB-IoT model for simulations and conduct an experiment on it using the LTE network with channel bandwidths of 3 MHz, 5 MHz, 10 MHz, 15 MHz, and 20 MHz. The simulation results have verified the performance of NB-IoT, wherein uplink time delay is lower than 10 s, channel utilization is higher than that of LTE network, and coverage area is larger than LTE network.
Mechanical and Thermal Performance of Macro-Encapsulated Phase Change Materials for Pavement Application

Macro-encapsulated phase change material (PCM) lightweight aggregates (ME-LWA) were produced and evaluated for their mechanical and thermal properties in road engineering applications. The ME-LWAs were first characterised in terms of their physical and geometrical properties. Then, the ME-LWAs were investigated in detail by applying the European Standards of testing for the Bulk Crushing Test and the Polished Stone Value (PSV) coefficient as well as Micro-Deval and laboratory profilometry. In addition, the thermal performance for possible construction of smart pavements with the inclusion of ME-LWAs for anti-ice purposes was determined. The crushing resistance of the ME-LWAs was improved, while their resistance to polishing was reduced. Thermal analysis of the encapsulated PCM determined it to possess excellent thermal stability and a heat storage capacity of 30.43 J/g. Based on the research findings, the inclusion of ME-LWAs in surface pavement layers could be considered a viable solution for the control of surface temperatures in cold climates. Road safety and maintenance could benefit in terms of reduced ice periods and reduced treatments with salts and other anti-ice solutions.
TaiJiNet: Towards Partial Binarized Convolutional Neural Network for Embedded Systems

We have witnessed the tremendous success of deep neural networks. However, this success comes with the considerable computation and storage costs which make it difficult to deploy these networks directly on resource-constrained embedded systems. To address this problem, we propose TaiJiNet, a binary-network-based framework that combines binary convolutions and pointwise convolutions, to reduce the computation and storage overhead while maintaining a comparable accuracy. Furthermore, in order to provide TaiJiNet with more flexibility, we introduce a strategy called partial binarized convolution to efficiently balance network performance and accuracy. We evaluate TaiJiNet with the CIFAR-10 and ImageNet datasets. The experimental results show that with the proposed TaiJiNet framework, the binary version of AlexNet can achieve 26x compression rate with a negligible 0.8% accuracy drop when compared with the full-precision AlexNet.
Genetic variation underlying local adaptation of diapause induction along a cline in a butterfly

Diapause is a life history strategy allowing individuals to arrest development until favourable conditions return, and it is commonly induced by shortened day length that is latitude specific for local populations. Although understanding the evolutionary dynamics of a threshold trait like diapause induction provides insights into the adaptive process and adaptive potential of populations, the genetic mechanism of variation in photoperiodic induction of diapause is not well understood. Here, we investigate genetic variation underlying latitudinal variation in diapause induction and the selection dynamics acting upon it. Using a genomewide scan for divergent regions between two populations of the butterfly Pararge aegeria that differ strongly in their induction thresholds, we identified and investigated the patterns of variation in those regions. We then tested the association of these regions with diapause induction using between‐population crosses, finding significant SNP associations in four genes present in two chromosomal regions, one with the gene period, and the other with the genes kinesin, carnitine O‐acetyltransferase and timeless. Patterns of allele frequencies in these two regions in population samples along a latitudinal cline suggest strong selection against heterozygotes at two genes within these loci (period, timeless). Evidence for additional loci modifying the diapause decision was found in patterns of allelic change in relation to induction thresholds over the cline, as well as in backcross analyses. Taken together, population‐specific adaptations of diapause induction appear to be due to a combination of alleles of larger and smaller effect size, consistent with an exponential distribution of effect sizes involved in local adaption.
Mental fatigue in central-field and peripheral-field steady-state visually evoked potential and its effects on event-related potential responses

The steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP) is a natural response of the brain to visual stimulation at specific frequencies and is used widely for electroencephalography-based brain–computer interface (BCI) systems. Although the SSVEP is useful for its high level of decoding accuracy, visual fatigue from the repetitive visual flickering is an unavoidable problem. In addition, hybrid BCI systems that combine the SSVEP with the event-related potential (ERP) have been proposed recently. These hybrid BCI systems would improve the decoding accuracy; however, the competing effect by simultaneous presentation of the visual stimulus could possibly supervene the signal in the hybrid system. Nevertheless, previous studies have not sufficiently reported these problems of visual fatigue with SSVEP stimuli or the competing effect in the SSVEP+ERP system. In this study, two different experiments were designed to explore our claims. The first experiment evaluated the visual fatigue level and decoding accuracy for the different types of SSVEP stimuli, which were the peripheral-field SSVEP (pSSVEP) and the central-field SSVEP (cSSVEP). We report that the pSSVEP could reduce the visual fatigue level by avoiding direct exposure of the eye-retina to the flickering visual stimulus, while also delivering a decoding accuracy comparable to that of cSSVEP. The second experiment was designed to examine the competing effect of the SSVEP stimuli on ERP performance and vice versa. To do this, the visual stimuli of ERP and SSVEP were presented simultaneously as part of the BCI speller layout. We found a clear competing effect wherein the evoked brain potentials were influenced by the SSVEP stimulus and the band power at the target frequencies was also decreased significantly by the ERP stimuli. Nevertheless, these competing effects did not lead to a significant loss in decoding accuracy; their features preserved sufficient information for discriminating a target class. Our work is the first to evaluate the visual fatigue and competing effect together, which should be considered when designing BCI applications. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the pSSVEP is a viable substitution for the cSSVEP because of its ability to reduce the level of visual fatigue while maintaining a minimal loss of decoding accuracy.
A Simulation Analysis of Redundancy and Reliability in Primary Storage Deduplication

Deduplication has been widely used to improve storage efficiency in modern primary and secondary storage systems, yet how deduplication fundamentally affects storage system reliability remains debatable. This paper aims to analyze and compare storage system reliability with and without deduplication in primary workloads using public file system snapshots from two research groups. We first study the redundancy characteristics of the file system snapshots. We then propose a trace-driven, deduplication-aware simulation framework to analyze data loss in both chunk and file levels due to sector errors and whole-disk failures. Compared to without deduplication, our analysis shows that deduplication consistently reduces the damage of sector errors due to intra-file redundancy elimination, but potentially increases the damages of whole-disk failures if the highly referenced chunks are not carefully placed on disk. To improve reliability, we examine a deliberate copy technique that stores and repairs first the most referenced chunks in a small dedicated physical area (e.g., 1 percent of the physical capacity), and demonstrate its effectiveness through our simulation framework.
Modeling and simulation practices in engineering education

Much can be learned from the vast work on the use of computer simulations for inquiry learning for the integration of modeling and simulation practices in engineering education. This special issue presents six manuscripts that take steps toward evidence‐based teaching and learning practices. These six studies present learning designs that align learning objectives, with evidence of the learning, and pedagogy. Here we highlight the main contributions from each paper individually, but also themes identified across all of them. These themes include (a) approaches for modeling‐and‐simulation‐centric course design; (b) teaching practices and pedagogies for modeling and simulation implementation; and (c) evidence of learning with and about modeling and simulation practices. We conclude our introduction by highlighting desirable characteristics of studies that report on the effectiveness of modeling and simulation in engineering education, and with that we provide some recommendations for improving the scholarship of teaching and learning in this field.
Group Methodologies and Simulations for the Development of Transversal Skills: A Pilot Study on Health Sciences Higher Education

One of the methodologies based on group dynamics is Role Playing (RP). This method consists on the simulation of a real situation, allowing its study and understanding. Knowledge and technical skills are not the only prerequisites for proper practice in health sciences. RP has been used as Communication Skills Training (CST) amongst health professionals. In the teaching of odontology and stomatology, object of our research, dental assistance brings up situations where the professional must develop transversal skills, which improve the interaction with the patient and the dental treatment itself. The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed RP methodology through the students’ opinion. The study sample is made out of dental students (n=80), all of them on the 4th year at the College of Dentistry (University of Seville, Spain). The students who took part in the activity considered the incorporation of RP in the syllabus as relevant, though further study should be considered in order to analyze the efficacy of this teaching methodology in depth.