Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Maximum likelihood decoding of the partial response signal with analog parallel processing circuits of the CNN

The partial response maximum likelihood (PRML) decoder is designed with the analog parallel processing circuits of the CNN. The PR technology is incorporated with the multi-level coding and normally used for the high density magnetic storage device or DVD. The technology combined with the optimization is called PRML and used for error correction of the storage device. Being required lots of computation in the PRML, the parallel processing structure with the CNN's massive connections is able to be an efficient solution. In this study, a decoder for the PR signal called PR(1 2 2 1) is designed with the analog parallel circuits of the CNN. The circuits are connected circularly, which enables to decode the symbols continually. On-trellis circuit decoding enables faster decoding. The circuit simulations show that the power consumption of the proposed one is 1/3 and its silicon area is 1/2 of the digital Viterbi decoder to achieve the similar error correction performance.
Moving Beyond Market Research

Large-scale mobile data studies can reveal valuable insights into user behavior, which in turn can assist system designers to create better user experiences. After a careful review of existing mobile data literature, we found that there have been no large-scale studies to understand smartphone usage behavior in India -- the second-largest and fastest growing smartphone market in the world. With the goal of understanding various facets of smartphone usage in India, we conducted a mixed-method longitudinal data collection study through an Android app released on Google Play. Our app was installed by 215 users, and logged 11.9 million data points from them over a period of 8 months. We analyzed this rich dataset along the lines of four broad facets of smartphone behavior -- how users use different apps, interact with notihcations, react to different contexts, and charge their smartphones -- to paint a holistic picture of smartphone usage behavior of Indian users. This quantitative analysis was complemented by a survey with 55 users and semi-structured interviews with 26 users to deeply understand their smartphone usage behavior. While our first-of-its-kind study uncovered many interesting facts about Indian smartphone users, we also found striking differences in usage behavior compared to past studies in other geographical contexts. We observed that Indian users spend significant time with their smartphones after midnight, continuously check notifications without attending to them and are extremely conscious about their smartphones’ battery. Perhaps the most dramatic finding is the nature of mobile consumerism of Indian users as shown by our results. Taken together, these and the rest of our findings demonstrate the unique characteristics that are shaping the smartphone usage behavior of Indian users.
Fascicles from energy-storing tendons show an age-specific response to cyclic fatigue loading

Some tendons, such as the human Achilles and equine superficial digital flexor tendon (SDFT), act as energy stores, stretching and recoiling to increase efficiency during locomotion. Our previous observations of rotation in response to applied strain in SDFT fascicles suggest a helical structure, which may provide energy-storing tendons with a greater ability to extend and recoil efficiently. Despite this specialization, energy-storing tendons are prone to age-related tendinopathy. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of cyclic fatigue loading (FL) on the microstructural strain response of SDFT fascicles from young and old horses. The data demonstrate two independent age-related mechanisms of fatigue failure; in young horses, FL caused low levels of matrix damage and decreased rotation. This suggests that loading causes alterations to the helix substructure, which may reduce their ability to recoil and recover. By contrast, fascicles from old horses, in which the helix is already compromised, showed greater evidence of matrix damage and suffer increased fibre sliding after FL, which may partially explain the age-related increase in tendinopathy. Elucidation of helix structure and the precise alterations occurring owing to both ageing and FL will help to develop appropriate preventative and repair strategies for tendinopathy.
BUILDING UNDERSTANDING OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS PRACTICE : RESEARCH IN THE FIELD

Field work is needed to bridge the gap which currently exists between information systems (IS) research and theory, and the practice of IS professionals in organisations. Examining how systems are developed and used, and the problems and concerns of IS professionals, provides the foundations for building understanding of IS practice. This paper examines some methodological issues raised by interpretive field work into one area of IS: systems analysis, also commonly called requirements engineering. The approaches used to tackle and resolve these issues, in particular that of the researcher’s intervention in the research context, have application to IS research in general. Given the lack of empirical reseach into IS practice and the continuing debate about interpretive IS reseach, the experiences from this research may assist IS researchers undertake interpretive field research.
Distinct and Overlapping Brain Areas Engaged during Value-Based, Mathematical, and Emotional Decision Processing

When comparing between the values of different choices, human beings can rely on either more cognitive processes, such as using mathematical computation, or more affective processes, such as using emotion. However, the neural correlates of how these two types of processes operate during value-based decision-making remain unclear. In this study, we investigated the extent to which neural regions engaged during value-based decision-making overlap with those engaged during mathematical and emotional processing in a within-subject manner. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, participants viewed stimuli that always consisted of numbers and emotional faces that depicted two choices. Across tasks, participants decided between the two choices based on the expected value of the numbers, a mathematical result of the numbers, or the emotional face stimuli. We found that all three tasks commonly involved various cortical areas including frontal, parietal, motor, somatosensory, and visual regions. Critically, the mathematical task shared common areas with the value but not emotion task in bilateral striatum. Although the emotion task overlapped with the value task in parietal, motor, and sensory areas, the mathematical task also evoked responses in other areas within these same cortical structures. Minimal areas were uniquely engaged for the value task apart from the other two tasks. The emotion task elicited a more expansive area of neural activity whereas value and mathematical task responses were in more focal regions. Whole-brain spatial correlation analysis showed that valuative processing engaged functional brain responses more similarly to mathematical processing than emotional processing. While decisions on expected value entail both mathematical and emotional processing regions, mathematical processes have a more prominent contribution particularly in subcortical processes.
Chapter 1 PLAN-IN-ADVANCE ACTIVE LEARNING OF CLASSIFIERS Pre-labelling Selection Criteria and Connection to Optimal Design of Experiments

In many sensing problems one has limited labelled data with which to learn a classifier. The acquisition of labels may be expensive, and therefore it is desirable to develop a criterion that defines which labels would be most informative to classifier design if they could be acquired. In addition, it is desirable to determine in advance all examples for which labels are desirable, so one may plan in advance an efficient means of label acquisition (e.g., when labels are labelled manually, by visiting different points in space). Toward this goal ,we present a plan-in-advance approach to active learning of classifiers. We develop selection criteria that are directly related to loss minimization and yet do not involve use of labels. This pre-labelling selection allows the experimenter to plan in advance the visits to the selected data and follow an optimal route to save unnecessary travel. We show the connection of the developed criteria to the theory of optimal experiments and demonstrate their performance on the problem of UXO detection.
The RWTH English lecture recognition system

In this paper, we describe the RWTH speech recognition system for English lectures developed within the Translectures project. A difficulty in the development of an English lectures recognition system, is the high ratio of non-native speakers. We address this problem by using very effective deep bottleneck features trained on multilingual data. The acoustic model is trained on large amounts of data from different domains and with different dialects. Large improvements are obtained from unsupervised acoustic adaptation. Another challenge is the frequent use of technical terms and the wide range of topics. In our recognition system, slides, which are attached to most lectures, are used for improving lexical coverage and language model adaptation.
Return link code acquisition with DS-CDMA for high capacity multiuser systems under realistic conditions

Acquisition of the code timing in a direct-sequence code-division multiple-access system at the base station must take place before signal detection and decoding is possible. Code acquisition under severe multiple access interference conditions with time varying codes makes the task even more difficult. Inefficient designs lead to large number of false alarms and/or missed detections. This paper details a realistic powerful code acquisition technique for the uplink of direct-sequence code-division multiple-access systems under high loaded situations, where the number of users is greater than the processing gain. Under this high multiple access interference condition the DS-CDMA acquisition problem becomes very difficult and conventional search methods simply fail. The method discussed utilises soft data from a multiuser detector to reduce the interference received by the acquisition unit. Numerical results validate performance under realistic conditions with amplitude, phase and frequency impairments
Mechanics and energetics of swinging the human leg

SUMMARY We measured how much metabolic energy is expended to swing a human leg. A previous dynamical model of walking predicted that increasing metabolic costs for walking with step length and step frequency trade-off against each other to determine the optimum step combination at a given speed. Simple pendulum dynamics indicate that the cost of walking at high step frequencies could be associated with driving the legs back and forth relative to the body, at a rate increasing approximately with the fourth power of frequency, possibly due to the low economy of producing muscle force for short durations. A similar cost would be expected for isolated swinging of a leg at faster than its natural frequency. We constructed an apparatus to measure work performed on the leg, and measured metabolic cost as human subjects (N=12) swung one leg at frequencies 0.5-1.1 Hz and fixed amplitude. Rate of mechanical work ranged from 0.02-0.27 W kg-1 over these frequencies. Net metabolic rate for leg swinging (subtracting that for quiet standing) increased from 0.41-2.10 W kg-1, approximately with the fourth power of frequency (R2=0.92) and in proportion to a hypothesized cost of force production for short durations. The costs of producing force and work could account for the increase. In a crude comparison, moving the legs back and forth at a typical stride frequency of 0.9 Hz, might consume about one-third of the net energy (2.8±0.8 W kg-1) needed for walking at 1.3 m s-1.
Round compression for parallel matching algorithms

For over a decade now we have been witnessing the success of massive parallel computation (MPC) frameworks, such as MapReduce, Hadoop, Dryad, or Spark. One of the reasons for their success is the fact that these frameworks are able to accurately capture the nature of large-scale computation. In particular, compared to the classic distributed algorithms or PRAM models, these frameworks allow for much more local computation. The fundamental question that arises in this context is though: can we leverage this additional power to obtain even faster parallel algorithms? A prominent example here is the maximum matching problem—one of the most classic graph problems. It is well known that in the PRAM model one can compute a 2-approximate maximum matching in O(logn) rounds. However, the exact complexity of this problem in the MPC framework is still far from understood. Lattanzi et al. (SPAA 2011) showed that if each machine has n1+Ω(1) memory, this problem can also be solved 2-approximately in a constant number of rounds. These techniques, as well as the approaches developed in the follow up work, seem though to get stuck in a fundamental way at roughly O(logn) rounds once we enter the (at most) near-linear memory regime. It is thus entirely possible that in this regime, which captures in particular the case of sparse graph computations, the best MPC round complexity matches what one can already get in the PRAM model, without the need to take advantage of the extra local computation power. In this paper, we finally refute that possibility. That is, we break the above O(logn) round complexity bound even in the case of slightly sublinear memory per machine. In fact, our improvement here is almost exponential: we are able to deliver a (2+є)-approximate maximum matching, for any fixed constant є>0, in O((loglogn)2) rounds. To establish our result we need to deviate from the previous work in two important ways that are crucial for exploiting the power of the MPC model, as compared to the PRAM model. Firstly, we use vertex–based graph partitioning, instead of the edge–based approaches that were utilized so far. Secondly, we develop a technique of round compression. This technique enables one to take a (distributed) algorithm that computes an O(1)-approximation of maximum matching in O(logn) independent PRAM phases and implement a super-constant number of these phases in only a constant number of MPC rounds.
Inter-laboratory comparison of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and dibenzofurans (PCDFs) in bleaching earth used in the refinement of edible oils

Bleaching earth (dried, powdered, bentonite-montmorillonite clay) is commonly used as a processing aid in edible oil refinement. Used bleaching earth may be incorporated into animal feed indirectly, for example because it is included into seed meal, or directly (e.g., as a binding agent). Control must be demonstrated to ensure that the levels of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and dibenzofurans (PCDFs) in feed ingredients do not infringe European Community regulations. The low legislative action level assigned is analytically challenging and may be at or below the limits of quantification achievable by many laboratories. A statistical comparison (following the IUPAC/ISO/AOAC protocol) was made of analyses of PCDDs and PCDFs in selected bleaching earth samples by laboratories from Europe and the USA to assess the comparability of data. Of 19 sets of results submitted by laboratories for replicate samples, 11 demonstrated acceptable agreement.
Atrial natriuretic factor receptor guanylate cyclase, ANF-RGC, transduces two independent signals, ANF and Ca2+

Atrial natriuretic factor receptor guanylate cyclase (ANF-RGC), was the first discovered member of the mammalian membrane guanylate cyclase family. The hallmark feature of the family is that a single protein contains both the site for recognition of the regulatory signal and the ability to transduce it into the production of the second messenger, cyclic GMP. For over two decades, the family has been classified into two subfamilies, the hormone receptor subfamily with ANF-RGC being its paramount member, and the Ca2+ modulated subfamily, which includes the rod outer segment guanylate cyclases, ROS-GC1 and 2, and the olfactory neuroepithelial guanylate cyclase. ANF-RGC is the receptor and the signal transducer of the most hypotensive hormones, ANF– and B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP). After binding these hormones at the extracellular domain it, at its intracellular domain, signals activation of the C-terminal catalytic module and accelerates the production of cyclic GMP. Cyclic GMP then serves the second messenger role in biological responses of ANF and BNP such as natriuresis, diuresis, vasorelaxation, and anti-proliferation. Very recently another modus operandus for ANF-RGC was revealed. Its crux is that ANF-RGC activity is also regulated by Ca2+. The Ca2+ sensor neurocalcin d mediates this signaling mechanism. Strikingly, the Ca2+ and ANF signaling mechanisms employ separate structural motifs of ANF-RGC in modulating its core catalytic domain in accelerating the production of cyclic GMP. In this review the biochemistry and physiology of these mechanisms with emphasis on cardiovascular regulation will be discussed.
Temporal multiresolution analysis for video segmentation

Video segmentation is an important step in many of the video applications. We observe that the video shot boundary is a multi-resolution edge phenomenon in the feature space. Based on this observation, we have developed a novel temporal multi-resolution analysis (TMRA) based algorithm using Canny wavelets to perform temporal video segmentation. Information across multiple resolution is used to help detect as well as locate abrupt and gradual transitions. We present the theoretical basis of the algorithm followed by the implementation as well as the result. In this paper the TMRA technique has been implemented using color histogram in the raw domain and DCT coefficients in the compressed video streams as the feature space. Experimental result shows that this method can detect as well as characterize both the abrupt and gradual shot boundaries. The technique also shows good noise tolerance characteristics.
Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience

We study the problem of enforcing information flow control (IFC) in eHealth systems. IFC mechanisms allow users to control the release and propagation of sensitive information so that confidential information is not observable to unintended principals while collaborating with other legitimate principals. We describe the methodology for modelling the information flow control requirements in a hospital domain using Pravah, a parameterised lattice-based IFC framework. The key advantage of using the parameterised security class lattice is greater precision in stating policies, enhanced usability and a reduced overhead in creating security tags. We can then use type-checking to statically verify that user programs do not violate stated security policies when accessing or manipulating data records. We discuss the main issues in designing the parameterised security class lattice.
Finasteride Has Regionally Different Effects on Brain Oxidative Stress and Acetylcholinesterase Activity in Acute Thioacetamide-Induced Hepatic Encephalopathy in Rats

Finasteride (FIN) inhibits neurosteroid synthesis and potentially improves the course of hepatic encephalopathy (HE). This study aimed to investigate the effects of FIN on brain oxidative stress and acetylcholinesterase (AchE) activity in acute thioacetamide-induced HE in rats. Male Wistar rats were divided into groups: 1. control; 2. thioacetamide-treated group (TAA; 900 mg/kg); 3. finasteride-treated group (FIN; 150 mg/kg); 4. group treated with FIN and TAA (FIN+TAA). Daily doses of FIN (50 mg/kg) and TAA (300 mg/kg) were administered intraperitoneally during three days and in FIN+TAA group FIN was administered 2h before every dose of TAA. FIN pretreatment prevented TAA-induced rise in malondialdehyde level in the cortex due to restoration of catalase activity and increased expression of superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) and induced an increase in malondialdehyde level in the thalamus due to reduction of glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and glutathione reductase (GR) activity. Although FIN pretreatment did not affect malondialdehyde level in hippocampus and caudate nucleus, hippocampal SOD1 expression was higher (p<0.05) and GR activity lower in FIN+TAA vs. TAA group (p<0.05). GPx activity was lower in caudate nucleus in FIN+TAA vs. TAA group (p<0.01). FIN pretreatment prevented TAA-induced rise in AchE activity in the thalamus and caudate nucleus and AchE activity correlates inversely in the thalamus (p<0.05) and positively in caudate nucleus (p<0.01) with malondialdehyde level. FIN has regionally selective effects on oxidative stress and AchE activity in the brain in acute TAA-induced HE in rats. The prooxidant role of FIN in the thalamus may be causally linked with inhibition of AchE.
An efficient two-phase NOC generator for low frequency applications

In Mixed signal design, we replace the resistor with the switched capacitor. Elimination of resistors leads to very fast and accurate implementation. For realization of the switched capacitor, we need capacitors and switches. These switches are controlled by clocks. Here, clocks wouldn't overlap in active case, so we develop Non-Overlapping Clock (NOC). Here, we design NOC generator based on pass transistor application. For excellent realization of the switched capacitor, the power dissipation and phase noise of the NOC generator must be minimum. Simulation results suggest that proposed circuit is power and area efficient as compared to the conventional NOC circuits.
Pseudomonas fluorescens Encodes the Crohn's Disease-Associated I2 Sequence and T-Cell Superantigen

ABSTRACT Commensal bacteria have emerged as an important disease factor in human Crohn's disease (CD) and murine inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) models. We recently isolated I2, a novel gene segment of microbial origin that is associated with human CD and that encodes a T-cell superantigen. To identify the I2 microorganism, BLAST analysis was used to identify a microbial homologue, PA2885, a novel open reading frame (ORF) in the Pseudomonas aeruginosa genome. PCR and Southern analysis identified Pseudomonas fluorescens as the originating species of I2, with homologues detectable in 3 of 13 other Pseudomonas species. Genomic cloning disclosed a locus containing the full-length I2 gene (pfiT) and three other orthologous genes, including a homologue of the pbrA/pvdS iron response gene. CD4+ T-cell responses to recombinant proteins were potent for I2 and pfiT, but modest for PA2885. pfiT has several features of a virulence factor: association with an iron-response locus, restricted species distribution, and T-cell superantigen bioactivity. These findings suggest roles for pfiT and P. fluorescens in the pathogenesis of Crohn's disease.