Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GaN-Based Light-Emitting-Diode With a p-InGaN Layer

GaN-based LEDs with a p-InGaN layer was proposed and fabricated. By inserting the 50-nm-thick p-In0.01Ga0. 99N layer, it was found that we could reduce the 20 mA forward voltage from 3.34 to 2.99 V. It was found the inserted p-InGaN layer could also reduce the efficiency droop from 36.7% to 23.8%.
Beyond DCG: user behavior as a predictor of a successful search

Web search engines are traditionally evaluated in terms of the relevance of web pages to individual queries. However, relevance of web pages does not tell the complete picture, since an individual query may represent only a piece of the user's information need and users may have different information needs underlying the same queries. In this work, we address the problem of predicting user search goal success by modeling user behavior. We show empirically that user behavior alone can give an accurate picture of the success of the user's web search goals, without considering the relevance of the documents displayed. In fact, our experiments show that models using user behavior are more predictive of goal success than those using document relevance. We build novel sequence models incorporating time distributions for this task and our experiments show that the sequence and time distribution models are more accurate than static models based on user behavior, or predictions based on document relevance.
Arterial Stiffness and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke: The Rotterdam Study

Background— Arterial stiffness has been associated with the risk of cardiovascular disease in selected groups of patients. We evaluated whether arterial stiffness is a predictor of coronary heart disease and stroke in a population-based study among apparently healthy subjects. Methods and Results— The present study included 2835 subjects participating in the third examination phase of the Rotterdam Study. Arterial stiffness was measured as aortic pulse wave velocity and carotid distensibility. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was performed to compute hazard ratios. During follow-up, 101 subjects developed coronary heart disease (mean follow-up period, 4.1 years), and 63 subjects developed a stroke (mean follow-up period, 3.2 years). The risk of cardiovascular disease increased with increasing aortic pulse wave velocity index. Hazard ratios and corresponding 95% CIs of coronary heart disease for subjects in the second and third tertiles of the aortic pulse wave velocity index compared with subjects in the reference category were 1.72 (0.91 to 3.24) and 2.45 (1.29 to 4.66), respectively, after adjustment for age, gender, mean arterial pressure, and heart rate. Corresponding estimates for stroke were 1.22 (0.55 to 2.70) and 2.28 (1.05 to 4.96). Estimates decreased only slightly after adjustment for cardiovascular risk factors, carotid intima-media thickness, the ankle-arm index, and pulse pressure. The aortic pulse wave velocity index provided additional predictive value above cardiovascular risk factors, measures of atherosclerosis, and pulse pressure. Carotid distensibility as measured in this study was not independently associated with cardiovascular disease. Conclusions— Aortic pulse wave velocity is an independent predictor of coronary heart disease and stroke in apparently healthy subjects.
A Unified Storage and Query Optimization Framework for Sensor Data

With the development of Internet of Things (IoT), large amounts of sensor data, which has the characteristics of multi-source, high speed and large volumes, etc., are generated. Traditional data storage and query approaches cannot handle them properly. To deal with such limitations, a unified storage and query optimization framework, named DeCloud-RealBase, is proposed towards the management of large volumes of sensor data. An adaptation layer is applied to connect the bottom-layer database clusters and basic database operations can be realized by top-layer applications through a unified interface. Furthermore, Caching technology, data partition strategy and multi-threading technology are applied to realize data storage and query in a high performance manner. Experiments demonstrate that DeCloud-RealBase is capable of handling the storage and query of sensor data with an excellent performance.
Species Distribution Patterns in Subgenus Cuspidata (Genus Sphagnum L.) on the East European Plain and Eastern Fennoscandia

The geographic range of 13 species from the subgenus Cuspidata in the East European Plain and Eastern Fennoscandia has been studied. Model maps for each species occurrence were constructed using geostatistics techniques (kriging method). Continuous coverages of 23 climatic factors were used in analysis also. We used dataset that proposed by authors of program WORLDCLIM. To learn how cor-responding values of climatic factors and species occurrence correlation and cluster analysis were conducted. It was found that 7 of 13 species are widespread on the East European Plain and Eastern Fennoscandia, and 6 species have the restricted ranges. Values of occurrence of all species (except Sphagnum lenense ) have a strong correlation with moisture factors (relative air humidity and sum of precipitation) in summer-autumn period. Such preferences allow them to grow successfully in Subarctic and Baltic regions, where high climatic humidity is observed. Restricted species are concentrated around the Baltic Sea and zones of the highest occurrence of widespread species are located at the same region. All species can be divided into four clusters according to its climatic preferences. Distribution of such species as S. obtusum seems to be strongly associated with two tongues of the Last Glacier, and this species seems to be a glacial relic.
Sensing and Cancellation of Tremors in Surgeon's Hands during Microsurgery

Physiological tremors reduce the precision of surgeons during microsurgery. Active cancellation of tremor will improve the results of microsurgery. It will also lead to the development of more sophisticated surgical procedures, previously considered difficult to perform. Tele-robotic systems, steady-hand robot and Micron active hand-held instrument are currently existing techniques for tremor cancellation. We propose the design of an active glove, capable of sensing the surgeon’s hand tremors and compensate them by generating counter forces on the surgeon’s fingers. The proposed mechatronic system for the active glove consists of inertial sensors (accelerometers and gyroscopes) and actuators, to be mounted on the fingers, both interfaced with custom-designed microcontroller board. This work presents the design and development of various aspects of the proposed system. First, a prototype board was designed and developed specifically for this application, using dsPIC33F family microcontroller. The design allows interfacing multiple sensors and actuators, and also provides on-board power management and safety features. Interfacing of inertial sensors and implementation of a complementary filter for estimation of finger tip orientation is successfully demonstrated. Further, the challenge of isolating tremor motion from voluntary surgeon motions is accomplished by implementing an adaptive filter. Future algorithms would need these for efficient cancellation of tremors. The development of actuators (either pneumatic or electro-active polymer-based) to be mounted at the finger nodes was outside the scope of this project. Therefore, an existing single-axis flexure-based manipulator system with voice coil actuator was modified to implement the proposed control algorithm. The proportional plus derivative (PD) control shows promising results in reducing tremors at the surgeon’s tool tip by 92%, when holding at a point and by 31% while carrying out a voluntary motion.
Greek Orthodox fasting rituals: a hidden characteristic of the Mediterranean diet of Crete

The longevity and excellent health status of the population of Crete has been attributed to its lifestyle and dietary habits. The impact of Greek Orthodox Christian Church fasting on these dietary habits has never been studied. One hundred and twenty Greek Orthodox Christians living in Crete participated in a 1-year prospective study. One half of the subjects, who fasted regularly (fasters), and sixty non-faster controls were followed longitudinally for the three main fasting periods over 1 year; Christmas (40 d), Lent (48 d) and the Assumption (15 d). Pre- and end-holy days measurements were performed in each fasting period including: 24 h dietary recall, blood collection and anthropometric measurements. Based on the 24 h recall, fasters as compared with controls had lower intakes of end-holy days dietary cholesterol, total fat, saturated fatty acids, trans-fatty acids and protein (P>0·001). Fasters presented a decrease of 753 kJ (180 kcal) in end-holy days energy intake (P>0·05) compared with an increase of 573 kJ (137 kcal) in the controls (P>0·05). Fasters had a decrease in end-holy days Ca intake (P>0·001) and an increase in end-holy days total dietary fibre (P>0·001) and folate (P>0·05), attributed to their higher consumption of fruit and vegetables in end-holy periods (P>0·001). There were no differences for other vitamins or minerals between pre- and end-holy periods in both groups except for vitamin B2. The Orthodox Christian dietary regulations are an important component of the Mediterranean diet of Crete characterised by low levels of dietary saturated fatty acids, high levels of fibre and folate, and a high consumption of fruit, vegetables and legumes.
Prediction of chamber leak pattern using time-series neural network

A leak of plasma chamber should be strictly monitored to maintain process quality as well as device yield. Using an Auto-Correlated Time Series Neural Network (A-NTS), a prediction model of chamber leak was developed. A total of 47 leak patterns were used to construct and test the monitoring efficacy of model. The validation errors for normal and abnormal data ranged between 51.9 and 61.7, and between 126.0 and 163.8, respectively. The validation errors for the abnormal data were more than two times larger than those for the normal data. This clearly indicates that the A-NTS model can accurately detect a leak from the chamber of plasma equipment.
Recovery-driven design: A power minimization methodology for error-tolerant processor modules

Conventional CAD methodologies optimize a processor module for correct operation, and prohibit timing violations during nominal operation. In this paper, we propose recovery-driven design, a design approach that optimizes a processor module for a target timing error rate instead of correct operation. We show that significant power benefits are possible from a recovery-driven design flow that deliberately allows errors caused by voltage overscaling to occur during nominal operation, while relying on an error recovery technique to tolerate these errors. We present a detailed evaluation and analysis of such a CAD methodology that minimizes the power of a processor module for a target error rate. We demonstrate power benefits of up to 25%, 19%, 22%, 24%, 20%, 28%, and 20% versus traditional P&R at error rates of 0.125%, 0.25%, 0.5%, 1%, 2%, 4%, and 8%, respectively. Coupling recovery-driven design with an error recovery technique enables increased efficiency and additional power savings.
Gene Therapy for Chronic Pain Management

This chapter provides an overview of the main current applications of gene therapy for chronic pain in what concerns animal studies and putative clinical applications. The value of gene therapy in unravelling neuronal brain circuits involved in pain modulation is also analysed. After alerting to the huge socioeconomic impact of chronic pain in modern societies and justifying the need to develop new avenues in pain management, we review the most common animal studies using gene therapy, which consisted on deliveries of replication-defective viral vectors at the periphery with the aim to block nociceptive transmission at the spinal cord. Departing from the data of these animal studies, we present the latest results of clinical trials using gene therapy for pain management in cancer patients. The animal studies dealing with gene delivery in pain control centres of the brain are analysed in what concerns their com‐ plexity and interest in unravelling the neurobiological mechanisms of descending pain modulation. The chapter will finish by analysing possible futures of gene therapy for chronic pain management based on the development of vectors which are safer and more specific for the different types of chronic pain.
DYNAMICAL EVOLUTION OF AGN HOST GALAXIES—GAS IN/OUT-FLOW RATES IN SEVEN NUGA GALAXIES

To examine the role of the host galaxy structure in fueling nuclear activity, we estimated gas flow rates from several kpc down to the inner few 10 pc for seven nearby spiral galaxies, selected from the NUclei of GAlaxies sample. We calculated gravitational torques from near-infrared images and determined gas in/out-flow rates as a function of radius and location within the galactic disks, based on high angular resolution interferometric observations of molecular (CO using Plateau de Bure interferometer) and atomic (H i using the Very Large Array) gas. The results are compared with kinematic evidence for radial gas flows and the dynamical state of the galaxies (via resonances) derived from several different methods. We show that gravitational torques are very efficient at transporting gas from the outer disk all the way into the galaxies centers at ∼100 pc; previously assumed dynamical barriers to gas transport, such as the corotation resonance of stellar bars, seem to be overcome by gravitational torque induced gas flows from other nonaxisymmetric structures. The resulting rates of gas mass inflow range from 0.01 to 50 M☉ yr−1 and are larger for the galaxy center than for the outer disk. Our gas flow maps show the action of nested bars within larger bars for three galaxies. Noncircular streaming motions found in the kinematic maps are larger in the center than in the outer disk and appear to correlate only loosely with the in/out-flow rates as a function of radius. We demonstrate that spiral gas disks are very dynamic systems that undergo strong radial evolution on timescales of a few rotation periods (e.g., 5 × 108 yrs at a radius of 5 kpc), due to the effectiveness of gravitational torques in redistributing the cold galactic gas.
Knowledge-Based assistance for real-time systems

This paper describes a tool called the Real-Time Scheduling Assistant (RTSA) that provides automated assistance in the areas of selection, evaluation, and implementation of scheduling algorithms for complex real-time systems. In RTSA, design elements relevant to real-time scheduling, including task set and processor characteristics, are specified using a graphical user interface. The tool's quantitative evaluation component provides a range of algorithms for analysis of the performance characteristics of systems and scheduling policies under consideration. The RTSA knowledge base contains real-time scheduling expertise that is encoded in the form of production rules, and applied using a forward chaining inference engine. Advice on multiple scheduling algorithms is offered at three levels: conceptual, analysis, and implementation.
An Improved MAGMA GEMM for Fermi GPUs

We present an improved matrix-matrix multiplication routine (GEMM) in the MAGMA BLAS library that targets the Fermi GPUs. We show how to modify the previous MAGMA GEMM kernels in order to make a more efficient use of the Fermi’s new architectural features, most notably their extended memory hierarchy and sizes. The improved kernels run at up to 300 GFlop/s in double and up to 600 GFlop/s in single precision arithmetic (on a C2050), which is 58% of the theoretical peak. We compare the improved kernels with the currently available in CUBLAS 3.1. Further, we show the effect of the new kernels on higher level dense linear algebra (DLA) routines such as the one-sided matrix factorizations, and compare their performances with corresponding, currently available routines running on homogeneous multicore systems. A general conclusion is that DLA has become a better fit for the new GPU architectures, to the point where DLA can run more efficiently on GPUs than on current, high-end homogeneous multicore-based systems.
On Typability for Rank-2 Intersection Types with Polymorphic Recursion

We show that typability for a natural form of polymorphic recursive typing for rank-2 intersection types is undecidable. Our proof involves characterizing typability as a context free language (CFL) graph problem, which may be of independent interest, and reduction from the boundedness problem for Turing machines. We also show a property of the type system which, in conjunction with the undecidability result, disproves a misconception about the Milner-Mycroft type system. We also show undecidability of a related program analysis problem
Affine Structure from Translational Motion with Varying and Unknown Focal Length

In this paper a method for obtaining affine structure from an image sequence taken by a translating camera with varying and unknown focal length is presented. A general geometric constraint, expressed using the camera matrices, is derived and this constraint is used in a least squares solution of the problem. The proposed algorithm extends the previous result of affine structure recovery from an image sequence with a translating camera with constant intrinsic parameters to the case with a camera with varying and unknown focal length and otherwise known intrinsic parameters. The noise sensitivity of the method is evaluated in simulated experiments.
Correcting Estimation Bias in Dynamic Term Structure Models

The affine dynamic term structure model (DTSM) is the canonical empirical finance representation of the yield curve. However, the possibility that DTSM estimates may be distorted by small-sample bias has been largely ignored. We show that conventional estimates of DTSM coefficients are indeed severely biased, and this bias results in misleading estimates of expected future short-term interest rates and of long-maturity term premia. We provide a variety of bias-corrected estimates of affine DTSMs, for both maximally flexible and overidentified specifications. Our estimates imply interest rate expectations and term premia that are more plausible from a macrofinance perspective. This article has supplementary material online.
An ensemble-transform Kalman filter: Full-waveform inversion scheme for uncertainty estimation

Uncertainty Quantification is a major topic for most geophysical tomography techniques, in particular for large-scale problems. In this work, we present an original application of ensemble-based methods to Full Waveform Inversion. This approach relies on a deterministic Ensemble-Transform Kalman Filter borrowed from the Data Assimilation community, and a frequency-domain Full Waveform Inversion. This methodology gives access to a low-rank version of the posterior covariance matrix of our inverse problem, thanks to the ensemble repartition. We can thus extract information from this covariance matrix to assess uncertainty in the Bayesian sense. This proof-of-concept is applied to a 2D Marmousi case, before discussing many questions associated with the design of the scheme.
Disruption of the Borrelia burgdorferi gac Gene, Encoding the Naturally Synthesized GyrA C-Terminal Domain

ABSTRACT The C-terminal domain of the A subunit of DNA gyrase, which we term Gac, is naturally synthesized in Borrelia burgdorferi as an abundant DNA-binding protein. Full-length GyrA, which includes the C-terminal domain, is also synthesized by the spirochete and functions as a subunit of DNA gyrase. We have disrupted synthesis of Gac as an independent protein and demonstrated that it is not essential for growth in a coumarin-resistant background. We detected no alterations in DNA maintenance, condensation, or topology in B. burgdorferi lacking this small DNA-binding protein.
Detection of donor-specific antibodies in kidney transplantation.

INTRODUCTION Precise and timely detection of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) donor-specific antibodies (DSAs) is vital for evaluating humoral immune status of patients pre- and post-transplantation. SOURCE OF DATA Clinically relevant articles on theory, development, methodology and application of HLA-DSA testing in kidney transplantation. AREAS OF AGREEMENT AND CONTROVERSY The availability of solid phase HLA-antibody testing revolutionized our ability to detect HLA-DSA and to appreciate their significance in kidney transplant outcome. The best approach to determine the strength, immunogenicity and pathogenicity of HLA antibodies still remains controversial. GROWING POINTS Assays to identify complement-binding antibodies were developed. Their clinical utilization, pre- and post-transplantation, is currently under investigation. Appreciation of the complexity of HLA-DQ antibodies should lead to better assignment of unacceptable antibodies and cPRA calculation. AREAS TIMELY FOR DEVELOPING RESEARCH Characterization of HLA-antibody epitopes, and utilization of epitope matching to better define compatible donors could contribute to better transplant outcomes.
Proceedings of the 5th Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation Scalability and Accuracy in a Large-scale Network Emulator *

This paper presents ModelNet, a scalable Internet emulation environment that enables researchers to deploy unmodified software prototypes in a config-urable Internet-like environment and subject them to faults and varying network conditions. Edge nodes running user-specified OS and application software are configured to route their packets through a set of ModelNet core nodes, which cooperate to subject the traffic to the bandwidth, congestion constraints, latency, and loss profile of a target network topology. This paper describes and evaluates the ModelNet architecture and its implementation, including novel techniques to balance emulation accuracy against scalability. The current ModelNet prototype is able to accurately subject thousands of instances of a dis-trbuted application to Internet-like conditions with gigabits of bisection bandwidth. Experiments with several large-scale distributed services demonstrate the generality and effectiveness of the infrastructure.
Temporal Selection of Images for a Fast Algorithm for Depth-map Extraction in Multi-baseline Configurations

Obtaining accurate depth maps from multi-view configurations is an essentia l component for dense scene reconstruction from images and videos. In the first part of this paper, plane sweep algorithm for sampling an energy function for every depth label and a dense set of points is pr esented. The distinctive features of this algorithm are 1) that despite a flexible model choice for the underlying geo metry and radiometry, the energy function is performed by merely image operations instead of pixel-wise co mputations, and 2) that it can be easily manipulated by different terms, such as triangle-based smoothing term, or post-processed by one of the numerous state-of-the-art non-local energy minimization algorithms. T he second contribution of this paper is a search for optimal ways to aggregate multiple observations in order to ma ke the cost function more robust near the image border and in occlusions areas. Experiments with differe nt data sets show the relevance of the proposed research, emphasize the potential of the algorithm, and prov i e ideas of future work.