Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of silicon wafer damage due to nanoindentation by microraman spectroscopy and white beam synchrotron X-ray toporaphy

In the semiconductor industry, wafer handling introduces micro-cracks at the wafer edge and the causal relationship of these cracks to wafer breakage is a difficult task. By way of understanding the wafer breakage process, a series of nano-indents were introduced to both 20 x 20mm (100) wafer pieces and into whole 200mm wafers as a means of introducing controlled strain. The indents were introduced to the silicon by way of a Berkovich tip with applied forces of 100mN to 600mN and with a Vickers tip with applied forces of 2N to 50N. The samples were subjected to an array of both in situ and ex situ anneal in order to simulate a production environment. The samples were analysed using both micro-Raman spectroscopy and white beam x-ray topography to study the strain fields produced by the nano-indentation and the effect of annealing on the strain fields which was then compared to FEM models of the indents. A novel process for the creation of three dimensional x-ray images, 3D-XRDI, was defined using ImageJ, a freely available image processing tool. This allowed for the construction of three dimensional images and the ability to rotate these images to any angle for ease of viewing. It will be shown how this technique also provided the ability to travel through the sample to view the dislocation loops at any point within the sample. It was found that the temperature profile across the annealing tool had an effect on the strain fields, the growth and movement of dislocation loops and slip bands and on the opening and propagation of cracks. The behaviour of the cracks during rapid thermal anneal was also observed and from this data a parameter was defined that could predict the possibility of wafer breakage.
Results of pronator quadratus repair in distal radius fractures to prevent tendon ruptures

Background Distal radius fractures are one of the the most common adult fractures encountered during the clinical practice of an orthopedic surgeon. ^1,2 Although several methods of treatment are suggested for these fractures, there are still controversies about the best treatment approach in the literature. Volar plating of distal radius fracture is a method of treatment which has become increasingly popular. One of the complications of this technique is flexor tendon rupture. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the protectiveness of complete repair of pronator quadratus muscle against flexor tendon rupture. Materials and Methods From September 2010 to September 2012, a consecutive series of 157 patients who were younger than 60 years with unstable distal radius fractures were included in the study. A standard volar approach to the distal radius was carried out. The radial and distal ends of pronator quadratus muscle were meticulously elevated from the radius and after volar plate fixation of the fracture, pronator quadratus muscle was restored to its normal insertion. We achieved full coverage of the plate with this muscle and followed the patients postoperatively. Results A total of 135 patients were studied. The mean age of patients was 34 ± 10 years (range 20-60 years). One 55-year-old diabetic female patient with flexor tendon rupture was identified. The flexor pollicis longus tendon had ruptured 16 months after surgery. Conclusions Pronator quadratus repair should be done in distal radius fracture to protect flexor tendons.
Self-assembling nanoparticles for the release of bisphosphonates in the treatment of human cancers [WO2012042024]

The focus of this patent was to manipulate the pharmacokinetic profile of an amino-bisphosphonate (zoledronic acid, ZOL) to make it desirable for anti-tumor uses. This patent disclosed a unique drug loading strategy that was inspired by gene delivery vehicles based on similar materials (calcium phosphate, CaP). The promise of this drug delivery system (DDS) lies not only in a 44% in vivo inhibition of tumor growth compared with free drug, but also in the low toxicity of the drug which guarantees a dosage regimen with higher doses and longer course of treatment. Also, the disclosed DDS has the potential to be further upgraded. In this patent evaluation, the state of the art in the field of CaP-based drug carrier and the novelty of this invention will be discussed.
Distributed principal component analysis on networks via directed graphical models

We introduce an efficient algorithm for performing distributed principal component analysis (PCA) on directed Gaussian graphical models. By exploiting structured sparsity in the Cholesky factor of the inverse covariance (concentration) matrix, our proposed DDPCA algorithm computes global principal subspace estimation through local computation and message passing. We show significant performance and computation/communication advantages of DDPCA for online principal subspace estimation and distributed anomaly detection in real-world computer networks.
Joint estimation of path delay and complex gain for coded systems using the EM algorithm

In this paper, we investigate the performance of a turbo estimation scheme based on the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm for M-PSK modulation and a convolutionally coded system. Estimates of the path delay and the complex gain are updated jointly by combining the training sequence and the soft information provided by the MAP channel decoder. Initial estimates may be obtained through either a data aided or a non data aided algorithm. We show through computer simulation that the iterative process between turbo detection and estimation leads to performances close to those obtained for perfect channel state information in terms of bit error rate (BER). On the other hand, the mean square estimation errors (MSEE) of path delay and the complex gain reach the classical modified Cramer-Rao bound. Comparisons with conventional estimation schemes are carried out.
A Modified High-Efficiency LLC Converter With Two Transformers for Wide Input-Voltage Range Applications

This paper proposed a modified LLC converter with two transformers in series, which has four operation configurations, covering the range of four times the minimum input voltage. To optimize the proposed LLC converter in an attempt to achieve good efficiency, a numerical method is developed based on the LLC converter's steady-state equations. In order to minimize the magnetizing current and thus minimize the conduction and core losses, an optimal objective is proposed to find the maximum magnetizing inductance. An optimization procedure and a design example are given. A 250-W 210-V output prototype with input voltage ranging from 25 to 100 V is built to verify the developed numerical model and optimal design method. The dc gain obtained from experimental data agrees pretty well with that from the developed numerical model. Two conventional LLC converters are designed using fundamental harmonic approximation and the proposed optimal design, respectively, to make comparison with the proposed LLC converter and validate the proposed optimal design. Experimental results show that the proposed converter with proposed optimal design can achieve the peak efficiency up to 98%, while maintaining a very wide input voltage range.
The high-numerical aperture photonic crystal fibers and application in astronomy

In order to detect the weak light of the protostars in astronomy, we design a new type of photonic crystal fibers with high numerical aperture. Through controlling the number and the diameter of the air holes around the central fiber core, the numerical aperture can also be adjusted to apt different applications. With the help of the big air holes, the loss can be reduced to less than 0.1dB/km. So this kind of high numerical aperture fibers has the strong ability to collect light and the loss is very low.
Sensor synaesthesia: touch in motion, and motion in touch

We explore techniques for hand-held devices that leverage the multimodal combination of touch and motion. Hybrid touch + motion gestures exhibit interaction properties that combine the strengths of multi-touch with those of motion-sensing. This affords touch-enhanced motion gestures, such as one-handed zooming by holding one's thumb on the screen while tilting a device. We also consider the reverse perspective, that of motion-enhanced touch, which uses motion sensors to probe what happens underneath the surface of touch. Touching the screen induces secondary accelerations and angular velocities in the sensors. For example, our prototype uses motion sensors to distinguish gently swiping a finger on the screen from 'Sdrags with a hard onset' - to enable more expressive touch interactions.
All Your Biases Belong to Us: Breaking RC4 in WPA-TKIP and TLS

We present new biases in RC4, break the Wi-Fi Protected Access Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (WPA-TKIP), and design a practical plaintext recovery attack against the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. To empirically find new biases in the RC4 keystream we use statistical hypothesis tests. This reveals many new biases in the initial keystream bytes, as well as several new longterm biases. Our fixed-plaintext recovery algorithms are capable of using multiple types of biases, and return a list of plaintext candidates in decreasing likelihood. To break WPA-TKIP we introduce a method to generate a large number of identical packets. This packet is decrypted by generating its plaintext candidate list, and using redundant packet structure to prune bad candidates. From the decrypted packet we derive the TKIP MIC key, which can be used to inject and decrypt packets. In practice the attack can be executed within an hour. We also attack TLS as used by HTTPS, where we show how to decrypt a secure cookie with a success rate of 94% using 9 ċ 227 ciphertexts. This is done by injecting known data around the cookie, abusing this using Mantin's ABSAB bias, and brute-forcing the cookie by traversing the plaintext candidates. Using our traffic generation technique, we are able to execute the attack in merely 75 hours.
Optimal Packet Scheduling on an Energy Harvesting Broadcast Link

The minimization of transmission completion time for a given number of bits per user in an energy harvesting communication system, where energy harvesting instants are known in an offline manner is considered. An achievable rate region with structural properties satisfied by the 2-user AWGN Broadcast Channel capacity region is assumed. It is shown that even though all data are available at the beginning, a non-negative amount of energy from each energy harvest is deferred for later use such that the transmit power starts at its lowest value and rises as time progresses. The optimal scheduler ends the transmission to both users at the same time. Exploiting the special structure in the problem, the iterative offline algorithm, FlowRight, from earlier literature, is adapted and proved to solve this problem. The solution has polynomial complexity in the number of harvests used, and is observed to converge quickly on numerical examples.
Assessment formats in dental medicine: An overview

Aim: At the annual meeting of German dentists in Frankfurt am Main in 2013, the Working Group for the Advancement of Dental Education (AKWLZ) initiated an interdisciplinary working group to address assessments in dental education. This paper presents an overview of the current work being done by this working group, some of whose members are also actively involved in the German Association for Medical Education's (GMA) working group for dental education. The aim is to present a summary of the current state of research on this topic for all those who participate in the design, administration and evaluation of university-specific assessments in dentistry. Method: Based on systematic literature research, the testing scenarios listed in the National Competency-based Catalogue of Learning Objectives (NKLZ) have been compiled and presented in tables according to assessment value. Results: Different assessment scenarios are described briefly in table form addressing validity (V), reliability (R), acceptance (A), cost (C), feasibility (F), and the influence on teaching and learning (EI) as presented in the current literature. Infoboxes were deliberately chosen to allow readers quick access to the information and to facilitate comparisons between the various assessment formats. Following each description is a list summarizing the uses in dental and medical education. Conclusion: This overview provides a summary of competency-based testing formats. It is meant to have a formative effect on dental and medical schools and provide support for developing workplace-based strategies in dental education for learning, teaching and testing in the future.
A Compact UWB Microstrip Antenna with Modified Ground Plane for Bandwidth Enhancement

This paper presents a bandwidth enhancing technique using a modified ground plane with diagonal edges, L-shaped slot and parasitic patches with main patch for the design of compact antennas. The proposed low-cost, compact-size rectangular patch antenna on 4.7 cm × 3.6 cm printed circuit board (FR-4) is designed and validated through simulations and experiments. Results show that the ground plane with Lshaped slot in presence of the diagonal cuts at the top corners and the rectangular parasitic patches can increase the bandwidth. Return losses of −23.6 dB and −29.7 dB for the first and second resonant frequencies, respectively, can be achieved when the depth of the diagonal cut is 3 mm, the dimension of each rectangular parasitic patch is 10 mm×3.5 mm, and the L-shaped slot size is 7.5 mm ×2.5mm, providing a 41.27% wider bandwidth than Federal Communication Commission’s(FCC) standard. General Terms Designing of Microstrip Antenna.
A medium‐throughput analysis of signaling pathways involved in early stages of stem cell reprogramming

The induction of pluripotency from adult cells has enormous potential in regenerative medicine. While initial efforts to study mechanisms and improve efficiency of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) reprogramming focused on the direct roles of transcriptional regulators, increasing evidence indicates that cellular signal transduction pathways can modulate this process. Here, we present a medium‐throughput system to study the effect of signaling pathways on the early stages of reprogramming. We generated a set of lentiviral vectors encoding 38 genes that upregulate or downregulate major signal transduction pathways and quantified each signaling factor's effect on reprogramming. This approach confirmed the role of several factors previously implicated in reprogramming, as well as identified several GTPases‐factors that to date have not been largely studied in reprogramming‐that improve or hinder iPSC reprogramming. In addition, this methodology is useful in determining new targets for enhancing pluripotency reprogramming, lineage reprogramming, and/or cell differentiation. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2015;112: 209–219. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Segmentation of text/graphic from handwritten mathematical documents using gabor filter

Most of handwritten mathematical documents contain graphics in addition to mathematical text. Thus, these documents must be segmented into homogenous areas to facilitate their digitization. Text and graphic segmentation from these documents aims at segmenting the document into two blocks: the first contains the texts and the second includes the graphical objects. In this paper, we focus our interest on document segmentation based on the texture and precisely the frequency methods. These methods are ideal to characterize the texture and allow detecting the frequencies and orientations characteristics. Firstly, we present the main steps of our system (pre-processing, features extraction (using Gabor filter), postprocessing and text/graphic segmentation). Secondly, we discuss and interpret the results obtained by our system.
On the absorption of clavulanic acid

It was not possible to computer fit oral clavulanic acid data using exponential or model equations incorporating a single exponential defining the absorption phase. Using the Loo‐Riegelman method three phases of the absorption process became apparent, an initial slow phase, a more rapid phase and a final slow phase, contributing approximately 20, 70, and 5%, respectively, to the overall absorption process. Statistical moment analysis of clavulanic acid data following intravenous and oral solution administration gave mean values for the mean residence time, mean absorption time, and volume of distribution steady‐state of 56 min, 43 min, and 14.01, respectively. Weibull analysis of the oral solution data gave mean values for lag‐time and mean absorption time of 8 min and 46.8 min, respectively. Administration of clavulanic acid in a capsule formulation increased the lag‐time before absorption but had no significant effect on the mean absorption time.
Telavancin, a Multifunctional Lipoglycopeptide, Disrupts both Cell Wall Synthesis and Cell Membrane Integrity in Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus

ABSTRACT The emergence and spread of multidrug-resistant gram-positive bacteria represent a serious clinical problem. Telavancin is a novel lipoglycopeptide antibiotic that possesses rapid in vitro bactericidal activity against a broad spectrum of clinically relevant gram-positive pathogens. Here we demonstrate that telavancin's antibacterial activity derives from at least two mechanisms. As observed with vancomycin, telavancin inhibited late-stage peptidoglycan biosynthesis in a substrate-dependent fashion and bound the cell wall, as it did the lipid II surrogate tripeptide N,N′-diacetyl-l-lysinyl-d-alanyl-d-alanine, with high affinity. Telavancin also perturbed bacterial cell membrane potential and permeability. In methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, telavancin caused rapid, concentration-dependent depolarization of the plasma membrane, increases in permeability, and leakage of cellular ATP and K+. The timing of these changes correlated with rapid , concentration-dependent loss of bacterial viability, suggesting that the early bactericidal activity of telavancin results from dissipation of cell membrane potential and an increase in membrane permeability. Binding and cell fractionation studies provided direct evidence for an interaction of telavancin with the bacterial cell membrane; stronger binding interactions were observed with the bacterial cell wall and cell membrane relative to vancomycin. We suggest that this multifunctional mechanism of action confers advantageous antibacterial properties.
Process Variation-Aware Test for Resistive Bridges

This paper analyzes the behavior of resistive bridging faults under process variation and shows that process variation has a detrimental impact on test quality in the form of test escapes. To quantify this impact, a novel metric called test robustness is proposed and to mitigate test escapes, a new process variation-aware test generation method is presented. The method exploits the observation that logic faults that have high probability of occurrence and correspond to significant amounts of undetected bridge resistance have a high impact on test robustness and therefore should be targeted by test generation. Using synthesized International Symposium on Circuits and Systems benchmarks with realistic bridge locations, results show that for all the benchmarks, the method achieves better results (less test escapes) than tests generated without consideration of process variation.
The Revised Arabic PropBank

The revised Arabic PropBank (APB) reflects a number of changes to the data and the process of PropBanking. Several changes stem from Treebank revisions. An automatic process was put in place to map existing annotation to the new trees. We have revised the original 493 Frame Files from the Pilot APB and added 1462 new files for a total of 1955 Frame Files with 2446 framesets. In addition to a heightened attention to sense distinctions this cycle includes a greater attempt to address complicated predicates such as light verb constructions and multi-word expressions. New tools facilitate the data tagging and also simplify frame creation.
Deconstructing Diffusion on Tumblr: Structural and Temporal Aspects

Online social networks enable collectives of users to create and share content at scale. The diffusion of content through the network, and the resulting information cascades, are phenomena that have been widely investigated on various platforms, which facilitate information diffusion using diverse technical mechanisms, user interfaces and incentives. This paper focuses on Tumblr, an online microblogging social network with a core 'reblogging' functionality that allows information to diffuse across its network by appearing on multiple user blogs. The formation of any cascade network is visible as a list of reblogging events attached as notes to each appearance of the post in the cascade. In this paper, we examine cascade networks on Tumblr, recreated from the series of diffusion events, and analyse them from structural and temporal perspectives. To achieve this, we utilise a cascade construction model that create cascade networks, overcoming problems of a lack of contextual information and missing/degraded data. Finally, we compare cascades in Tumblr with those appearing on other social network platforms. Our analysis shows that popular content on Tumblr creates 'large' cascades that are deep, branching into a large number of separate and long paths, having a consistent number of reblogs at each depth and at each given time.
In-situ condition monitoring of EPDM composite insulators using Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy

Procedures for determining the amount of polymer oxidation and surface chalking occurring on composite insulators are developed using FTIR spectroscopy. Numerical indicators of surface oxidation and chalking are obtained from ratios of peak heights in the IR spectra. Results of analyses of samples from three different types of EPDM 275 kV insulators suggest that oxidation is affected by surface discharging and weathering and that the amount of surface chalking is related to leakage current.
Life-logging in smart environments: Challenges and security threats

As the world becomes an interconnected network in which objects and humans interact, new challenges and threats appear. In this interconnected world, smart objects seam to have an important role in giving users the chance for life-logging in smart environments. However, the limitation of smart devices with regard to memory, resources and computation power, hinder the opportunity to apply well-established security algorithms and techniques for secure life-logging on the Internet of Things domain. As the need for secure and trustworthy life-logging in smart environments is vital, a lightweight approach has to be considered to overcome the constraints of smart objects. The purpose of this paper is to detail current topics of life-logging in smart environments while describing interconnection issues, security threats and suggesting a lightweight framework for ensuring security, privacy and trustworthy life-logging.
Algebraic Sentential Decision Diagrams in Symbolic Probabilistic Planning

The Sentential Decision Diagram (SDD) is a novel data structure that compactly represents Boolean functions, like Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs), but with a theoretical advantage in some classes of functions, when SDDs may be exponentially smaller than BDDs. Algebraic Decision Diagrams (ADDs) are an extension of BDDs which allows numeric values in terminal nodes, for representing factored case functions onto real numbers. In this paper, we propose an algebraic extension of SDDs, the Algebraic SDD (ASDD), and examine its suitability in probabilistic planning using a symbolic value iteration algorithm that employs ASDDs to maintain and manipulate its functions when solving Markov Decision Problems (MDPs).