Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Approximate Memory for Low-Power Video Applications

In this paper, an error-correction code (ECC)-enabled memory design with selective bit hardening is proposed for approximate data storage. Approximate memory is suitable for error-tolerant applications, and can achieve low-power design goals within targeted quality. Our design offers approximately 90% power savings compared to traditional memory, without compromising perceived quality. To the best of our knowledge, combining selective bit hardening with ECC is a novel approach to ensure the protection of MSBs and protect other faulty bits, respectively. Our proposed method requires no area overhead for MSB hardening, other than one additional input pin; and area overhead for implementing ECC is minimal.
Weather Forecasting Using Deep Learning Algorithms

Weather forecasting aims to predict atmospheric conditions at a particular time and place. Timely alert of weather events is made possible through weather forecasting. For instance, accurate weather predictions enable us to offer early warning of natural disasters that significantly destroy both lives and property, such as cyclones, tsunamis, cloud bursts, etc. The aim of weather scientists has always been to provide accurate weather forecasts in a timely manner. Formerly, pattern recognition was frequently used for weather forecasting and all of such predictions have been lacking performance as far as accurate and precise forecasting is concern. As the conventional weather prediction techniques face a number of difficulties, such as: incomplete knowledge of physical processes, huge volumes of observational data are difficult to analyze, a need for strong computer resources, etc. To tackle these difficulties, this paper proposes to present an automatic weather forecasting model for short-range forecasting based on numerical and time series data using deep learning algorithms. This paper compares and assesses the performance of models created with various transfer functions in order to investigate the applicability of time series algorithms such as LSTM, GRU, and Bi-LSTM to develop an efficient and trustworthy nonlinear forecasting model for automatic weather analysis.
Changing Trends in the Incidence and Clinical Features of Pneumocystis jirovecii Pneumonia in Non-HIV Patients before and during the COVID-19 Era and Risk Factors for Mortality between 2016 and 2022

Fungal superinfections have been reported in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We analyzed the incidence and clinical characteristics of Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (PCP) in non-human immunodeficiency virus patients at a tertiary hospital between 2016 and 2022 to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on PCP. The study period was divided into pre-COVID-19 and COVID-19 eras based on the pandemic declaration by the World Health Organization. Among the 113 patients included, the incidence of PCP in the COVID-19 era (37/1000 patient-years) was significantly higher than that in the pre-COVID-19 era (13.1/1000 patient-years) (p < 0.001). Co-infection with invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) also increased (2.4% vs. 18.3%, p = 0.013). Independent risk factors for PCP-related mortality were previous glucocorticoid use, hypoxemia, acute kidney injury, and IPA co-infection. Risk factors for IPA in patients with PCP included previous use of tyrosine kinase inhibitors, COVID-19 infection within 30 days, leukopenia, and intensive care unit admission. In the COVID-19 era, 12 (16.9%) patients with PCP had a history of COVID-19 infection within 90 days; however, infection was not associated with mortality. Active evaluation of patients with suspected PCP and assessment of IPA co-infection risk may help improve the outcomes of patients with PCP.
Understanding the Reasons That Lead Young People in Bogota to Identify as Atheist and Agnostic

This article uses the frameworks provided by Max Weber’s comprehensive theory to offer insights into why a growing sector of young people residing in Bogota now identifies as either atheist or agnostic. This research attempts to understand why this subgroup rejects or has distanced itself from the Catholic tradition, which is still dominant in Colombia. Quantitative and qualitative data from a survey, along with a series of in-depth interviews of young people aged between 14 and 21 years, is analyzed and interpreted to achieve this purpose.
Large Eddy Simulation of Flow and Heat Transfer in a Staggered 45° Ribbed Duct and a Rotating 90° Ribbed Duct

For the past several years there has been great effort in the analysis of internal duct cooling. The steady increase in power output and thermal efficiency requirements for gas turbine engines has called for significant advancement in turbine blade internal duct cooling technology. Numerical analysis of turbulent duct flow has been largely limited to Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations. This is because of the low computational requirements of such calculations relative to Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS). However, the tides have started to turn in favor of LES, partly because of the exponential increase in computer hardware performance in recent years. Three conference papers make up the contents of this thesis. LES is performed for fully developed flow and heat transfer in a staggered 45o ribbed duct in the first paper. The rib pitch-toheight ratio e P / is 10 and a rib height to hydraulic diameter ratio h D e / is 0.1. The Reynolds number based on the bulk flow rate and hydraulic diameter is 47,300. The overall heat transfer enhancement obtained was a factor of 2.3, which matched experimental data within 2%. The surfaces of highest heat transfer enhancement were the ribbed walls and the outer wall. Results from LES of an orthogonally rotating 90o ribbed duct are presented in the second paper for rotation numbers: Ro = 0.18, 0.35 and 0.67. The Reynolds number is 20,000. The e P / and h D e / were the same as in the first paper. Turbulence and heat transfer are augmented on the trailing surface and reduced at the leading surface. Secondary flows induced by Coriolis forces, increase heat transfer augmentation on the smooth walls. Finally, the third paper studies the same flow conditions of the second paper and goes further by including effects of centrifugal buoyancy forces using LES. Two buoyancy numbers are studied: Bo = 0.12 and 0.29. Centrifugal buoyancy does not have a large effect on leading side augmentation ratios for all rotation numbers, but increases heat transfer significantly on the trailing side. In all papers, mean flow and heat transfer results compare well with experimental data.
Self-monitoring of speech

Declaration of interest None. Auditory hallucinations occur frequently in people with psychiatric disorders, being most common in schizophrenia, and are often described as ‘voices’. Such hallucinations are usually treated with antipsychotic medication, but in 25–30% of patients they are refractory to traditional antipsychotic drugs. Their pathophysiological basis remains unknown, although functional brain imaging studies have demonstrated the involvement of frontal and temporal cortical regions implicated in the generation and perception of verbal material (Shergill et al, 2000a,b).
Traumatic Brain Injury Outcomes in Twins Disconcordant for Correlates with Neuropsychological Corpus Callosum Diffusion Anisotropy

SUMMARY: Conventional and diffusion tensor MR imaging studies in twins sustaining severe pediatric traumatic brain injury identified reduction in fractional anisotropy (FA) in all regions of the corpus callosum, particularly the posterior body, rostral body, and genu, relative to healthy cotwins. FA from the rostrum, genu, anterior body, posterior body, and isthmus were correlated with measures of reading speed and comprehension; verbal working memory and math fact retrieval scores were correlated only with the rostral body FA.
Comparison of Three Cloud Forecast Schemes with In Situ Aircraft Measurements

Abstract In situ aircraft measurements, collected during three research projects, are used to compare forecasts from three explicit cloud schemes. These schemes include the Canadian operational Sundqvist (SUND) scheme, the Tremblay mixed-phase (MIX) cloud scheme, and the Kong and Yau (KY) cloud scheme. The supercooled liquid water forecast accuracy is also determined for the MIX and KY schemes. For the entire in situ dataset, the three cloud forecast schemes show a similar skill in detecting the presence of clouds, with a true skill statistic ranging between 0.27 and 0.34. Quantitative comparisons of total cloud water content (TWC), supercooled liquid water content (SLWC), and ice water content (IWC) suggest that adjustments for autoconversion thresholds for precipitation formation within the different cloud microphysical schemes would improve forecasts of SLWC, IWC, and TWC.
Speculative Denial-of-Service Attacks in Ethereum

The expressiveness of Turing-complete blockchains implies that verifying a transaction’s validity requires executing it on the current blockchain state. Transaction fees are designed to compensate actors for resources expended on transactions, but can only be charged from transactions included in blocks. In this work, we show that adversaries can craft malicious transactions that decouple the work imposed on blockchain actors from the compensation offered in return. We introduce three attacks: (i) ConditionalExhaust, the first conditional resource exhaustion attack (REA) against blockchain actors. (ii) MemPurge, an attack for evicting transactions from victims’ mempools. (iii) These attack are augmented by GhostTX, the first attack on the reputation system used in Ethereum’s proposer-builder separation (PBS) ecosystem. We empirically evaluate the attacks on an Ethereum testnet. The worst-case result we find is that by combining ConditionalExhaust and MemPurge, an adversary can simultane-ously burden victims’ computational resources and clog their mempools, to the point where victims are unable to include transactions in their blocks. Thus, victims create empty blocks, thereby hurting the system’s liveness. The expected cost of a one-shot combined attack is $376, but becomes much cheaper if the adversary is a validator. For other attackers, costs decrease if censorship is prevalent in the network. ConditionalExhaust and MemPurge are made possible by inherent features of Turing-complete blockchains. Potential mitigations may result in reducing a ledger’s scalability, an undesirable outcome likely harming its competitiveness.
Were Archean calcium carbonate precipitation kinetics related to oxygen concentration?

Archean carbonates commonly contain decimetre- to metre-thick beds consisting entirely of fibrous calcite and neomorphosed fibrous aragonite that precipitated in situ on the sea floor. Such thick accumulations of precipitated carbonate are rare in younger marine carbonates suggesting an important change in the modes of calcium carbonate precipitation through time. Kinetics of carbonate precipitation depend on the concentration of inhibitors to precipitation which reduce crystallization rates and crystal nuclei formation, leading to kinetic maintenance of supersaturated solutions. Inhibitors also affect carbonate textures by limiting micrite precipitation and promoting growth of older carbonate crystals on the sea floor. Fe2+, a strong calcite precipitation inhibitor, is thought to have been present at relatively high concentrations in Archean seawater because oxygen concentrations were low. The rise in oxygen concentration at 2.2-1.9 Ga led to the removal of Fe2+ from seawater and resulted in a shift from Archean facies, which commonly include precipitated beds, to Proterozoic facies which contain more micritic sediment and only rare precipitated beds.
Simultaneous Inhibition of Mcl-1 and Bcl-2 Induces Synergistic Cell Death in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Despite the recent approval of new therapies, the prognosis for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains poor. There is a clinical need for new highly effective therapeutic options. Here, we present a combined application of BH3-mimetics as a potential new treatment option for HCC. BH3-mimetics inhibit anti-apoptotic proteins of the BCL-2 family and, thus, trigger the intrinsic apoptosis pathway. Anti-apoptotic BCL-2 proteins such as Bcl-2 and Mcl-1 are frequently overexpressed in HCC. Therefore, we analyzed the efficacy of the two BH3-mimetics ABT-199 (Bcl-2 inhibitor) and MIK665 (Mcl-1 inhibitor) in HCC cell lines with differential expression levels of endogenous Bcl-2 and Mcl-1. While administration of one BH3-mimetic alone did not substantially trigger cell death, the combination of two inhibitors enhanced induction of the intrinsic apoptosis pathway. Both drugs acted synergistically, highlighting the effectivity of this specific BH3-mimetic combination, particularly in HCC cell lines. These results indicate the potential of combining inhibitors of the BCL-2 family as new therapeutic options in HCC.
Advanced Fault-Detection Technique for DC-Link Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors Based on a Random Forest Classifier

In recent years, significant technological advances have emerged in renewable power generation systems (RPGS), making them more economical and competitive. On the other hand, for the RPGS to achieve the highest level of performance possible, it is important to ensure the healthy operation of their main building blocks. Power electronic converters (PEC), which are one of the main building blocks of RPGS, have some vulnerable components, such as capacitors, which are responsible for more than a quarter of the failures in these converters. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that the design of fault diagnosis techniques (FDT) assess the capacitor’s state of health so that it is possible to implement predictive and preventive maintenance plans in order to reduce unexpected stoppage of these systems. One of the most commonly used capacitors in power converters is the aluminum electrolytic capacitor (AEC) whose aging manifests itself through an increase in its equivalent series resistance (ESR). Several advanced intelligent techniques have been proposed for assessing AEC health status, many of which require the use of a current sensor in the capacitor branch. However, the introduction of a current sensor in the capacitor branch imposes practical restrictions; in addition, it introduces unwanted resistive and inductive effects. This paper presents an FDT based on the random forest classifier (RFC), which triggers an alert mechanism when the DC-link AEC reaches its ESR threshold value. The great advantage of the proposed solution is that it is non-invasive; therefore, it is not necessary to introduce any sensor inside the converter. The validation of the proposed FDT will be carried out using several computer simulations carried out in Matlab/Simulink.
Facet Variability in the Light of Rater Training in Measuring Oral Performance: A Multifaceted Rasch Analysis

Due to subjectivity in oral assessment, much concentration has been put on obtaining a satisfactory measure of consistency among raters. However, obtaining consistency might not result in valid decisions. One matter that is at the core of both reliability and validity in oral performance is rater training. Recently, the Multifaceted Rasch Measurement (MFRM) has been adopted to address the problem of rater bias and inconsistency; however, no research has incorporated the facets of test takers’ ability, raters’ severity, task difficulty, group expertise, scale criterion category, and test version together in a piece of research along with their two-sided impacts. Moreover, little research has investigated how long rater training effects endure. Consequently, this study explored the influence of the training program and feedback by having 20 raters score the oral production, as measured by the CEP (Community English Program) test, produced by 300 test takers in three phases, i.e., before, immediately after, and long after the training program. The results indicated that training can lead to higher degrees of interrater reliability and decrease in measures of severity/leniency and biasedness. However, it did not lead the raters into total unanimity, except for making them more self-consistent. Although rater training might result in higher internal consistency among raters, it cannot eradicate individual differences. That is, experienced raters, due to their idiosyncratic characteristics, did not benefit as much as the inexperienced ones. This study also showed that the outcome of training might not endure in long terms after training; thus, it requires ongoing training, letting raters regain consistency.
Functional and Structural Brain Abnormalities and Clinical Characteristics of Male Patients with Alcohol Dependence

Even though many previous studies have reported structural or functional brain abnormalities in patients with alcohol dependence (ADPs), studies observing the structural and functional abnormalities associated with the clinical characteristics of ADPs utilizing a multimodal approach are still scarce. The aim of this study was to demonstrate structural and functional brain abnormalities and their association with the clinical characteristics of alcoholism in male ADPs. Fifteen healthy male controls (HCs) and 15 male ADPs who had been diagnosed according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 criteria underwent T1-weighted imaging and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. The MRI data were postprocessed using statistical parametric mapping for structural analysis and CONN-fMRI functional connectivity (FC) tools for functional analysis. In comparison with male HCs, male ADPs were characterized by significantly reduced volumes of the white matter in the left globus pallidus (GP) (p-FDR < 0.05). This region affected the altered resting-state FC patterns in male ADPs. Interestingly, an abnormal FC in the precuneus and its positive correlation with the alcohol-use disorder identification test score were observed in ADPs (r = 0.546, p = 0.036). Based on the observations, it could be concluded that the GP serves as a neural marker that impacts abnormal functional networks in men with alcohol dependence. These findings have important clinical implications as they provide insights into the neural mechanism underlying the anatomical, functional, and clinical features of alcoholism.
Integrated Bioinformatics Investigation of Novel Biomarkers of Uterine Leiomyosarcoma Diagnosis and Outcome

Uterine leiomyosarcomas (uLMS) have a poor prognosis and a high percentage of recurrent disease. Bioinformatics has become an integral element in rare cancer studies by overcoming the inability to collect a large enough study population. This study aimed to investigate and highlight crucial genes, pathways, miRNAs, and transcriptional factors (TF) on uLMS samples from five Gene Expression Omnibus datasets and The Cancer Genome Atlas Sarcoma study. Forty-one common differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were enriched and annotated by the DAVID software. With protein–protein interaction (PPI) network analysis, we selected ten hub genes that were validated with the TNMplotter web tool. We used the USCS Xena browser for survival analysis. We also predicted TF-gene and miRNA-gene regulatory networks along with potential drug molecules. TYMS and TK1 correlated with overall survival in uLMS patients. Finally, our results propose further validation of hub genes (TYMS and TK1), miR-26b-5p, and Sp1 as biomarkers of pathogenesis, prognosis, and differentiation of uLMS. Regarding the aggressive behavior and poor prognosis of uLMS, with the lack of standard therapeutic regimens, in our opinion, the results of our study provide enough evidence for further investigation of the molecular basis of uLMS occurrence and its implication in the diagnosis and therapy of this rare gynecological malignancy.
Robust Estimation of the Seasonal Auto-correlation of the PAR (1) Model

In this article we are interested in the robust estimation of seasonal autocorrelation for the periodic autoregressive model of order one (PAR (1)). We used three estimators for the first - lag seasonal autocorrelation including the classical moment estimator beside two new proposed robust estimators. The effect of a single additive outlier contaminated in the time series is examined via bias and MSE. We have also studied the effects of some other factors on the quality of those estimators. The investigation is carried out using Monte - Carlo simulation. The results show that our proposed estimators are robust whereas the moment estimator is not. This conclusion is also assured via the bias and MSE of those estimators.
Spherical means on two-point homogeneous spaces and applications

We solve the following fundamental problems of integral geometry for certain integral transformations related to the spherical mean operator: obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for injectivity, describe the kernel in the case of non-injectivity, and find an inversion formula. Our results have unexpected applications to overdetermined interpolation problems in the theory of entire functions.
Closed-Loop Analysis and Control of Cavity Shear Layer Oscillations

This paper focuses on the closed-loop control of an incompressible flow past an open cavity. We propose a delayed feedback controller to suppress the self-sustained oscillations of the shear layer. The control law shows robustness to changes in flow conditions. An extension of the Eigensystem Realization Algorithm (ERA) to closed-loop identification, the so-called OCID technique, is used to extract the unstable linear dynamics of the cavity flow. The model-based analysis actually captures the modes against which the steady flow becomes unstable. The identified model is used to design an optimal controller, which shows both efficiency and robustness to stabilize the cavity flow.
Auditory spatial perception with sources overlapping in frequency and time

The effect of a broadband masker on the localisation of a broadband target stimulus was investigated. Human listeners identified the perceived location of the target stimulus, which was randomly presented with and without the masker. Five stimulus conditions were examined, in which the temporal overlap and total duration of the pair were varied. It was found that, overall, localisation was quite robust in the presence of the masker. However, a small and systematic bias in lateral angle perception that was directed away from the lateral angle of the masker was observed. The effect was most pronounced when the target and masker overlapped in time, and was nearly eliminated when the masker fully preceded the target. Furthermore, the effect was not restricted to stimulus pairs in close proximity. Disruptions to polar angle localisation were far less systematic, varying in both magnitude and direction. In general the results were not consistent with previous models that incorporate spatial channel interactions. When stimuli overlap in both frequency and time, it is likely that interference in the processing of acoustic localisation cues influences perceived location.
Establishing a network of long-term forest monitoring plots in Singapore

We review the history of plot-based studies of forests in Singapore and their contribution to our understanding of tropical forest ecology, especially of the regenerative capabilities of forest remnants after fragmentation, land-use change, and other disturbances. With this, we describe the establishment of the Long-Term Forest Ecological Monitoring plot network that includes the continued utilisation of sets of recently established, standardised plots along with the re-establishment of a historical set of plots surveyed by a team led by Wong Yew Kwan in 1992, ensuring the plot design is harmonised across the network.