Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cell-based logic optimizationGiovanni De MicheliComputer Systems

This chapter surveys techniques for library binding in semicustom technologies. Library binding is the back-end of logic synthesis, and constructs an in-terconnection of cell instances from a given library, starting from a multi-level logic network. Emphasis is placed on the algorithmic approach to library binding, with particular reference to covering and matching techniques.
Controllable metamaterial absorbers

Metamaterial allows tailoring its electromagnetic (EM) properties through careful design of the resonant inclusions, providing much advantage over normal material. In this presentation, we employ active elements into the metamaterial designs and demonstrate several EM wave absorbers based on the metamaterial concept that have controllable EM responses including tunable absorption band, switchable due-band absorption, and switchable operation between absorption and reflection. Both the design procedures and the EM performances will be presented and discussed. We believe these examples would bring significant ability of metamaterial for controlling EM wave propagation.
Analysing of Medical Schemes Complaints by Means of Parametric Proportional Hazard Frailty Models

The objective of the current study was to assess factors that affect the response time to complaints by members of medical schemes. In order to assess these factors, survival analysis techniques were employed, in particular the frailty models. Parametric proportional hazards frailty models controlled for factors such medical scheme type, nature of complaint and analyst effect. The model revealed that scheme type (p<0.0001), nature of complaint (p<0.0001) and the analyst effect (p=0.0004) were significant factors in response time to complaints. The study also revealed that parametric proportional hazards frailty models provide a viable ways to study relationships of factors that affect resolution or response time. Fur- thermore, this research work emphasizes the importance of studying the root cause or nature of complaints as it relates to resolution time and understanding business processes that cause complaints. Lastly, results obtained in this work highlight the need for better understanding of the relations between the complaints handling staff characteristics and response time to complaints, as the latter is critical in deploying appropriate resources to effectively improve on response time.
Concurrent-development process model

The lessons learned in managing a model that lets a user develop multiple functions concurrently over the entire development process, from requirements specification to system test are reviewed. The structure and dynamic behavior of a concurrent development process are discussed. The process management, project management, product management, organization management, and software-engineering environment elements of the concurrent development model are all described, although the focus is on process management. The concurrent development process is compared to sequential development, lean production, software factory, and capability maturity model processes. <<ETX>>
Endoscopic Management of Foreign Bodies in the Upper Gastrointestinal Tract of Adults

Background. Foreign object ingestion and food bolus impaction are a common clinical problem. We report our clinical experiences in endoscopic management for adults, foreign body ingestion, and food bolus impaction. Method. A retrospective chart review study was conducted on adult patients with foreign body ingestion and food bolus impaction between January 2011 and November 2014. Patients with incomplete medical records were excluded. Results. A total of 198 patients (226 incidents) were included in the study (male/female: 1.54/1; age 57 ± 16 years). Among them, 168 foreign bodies were found successfully (74.3%). 75.6% of the foreign bodies were located in the esophagus. Food bolus impaction was most common (41.6%). 93.5% of foreign bodies in current study cohort were successfully extracted and 5 patients required surgical interventions. Comparisons between symptomatic and asymptomatic patients revealed that locations of foreign bodies in the pharynx and esophagus were the significant relevant factors (P < 0.001). Shorter time taken to initiate endoscopic interventions increased detection rate (289.75 ± 465.94 versus 471.06 ± 659.93 minutes, P = 0.028). Conclusion. Endoscopic management is a safe and highly effective procedure in extracting foreign body ingestion and food bolus impaction. Prompt endoscopic interventions can increase the chance of successful foreign bodies' detection.
Flatness and defect of non-linear systems: introductory theory and examples

We introduce flat systems, which are equivalent to linear ones via a special type of feedback called endogenous. Their physical properties are subsumed by a linearizing output and they might be regarded as providing another nonlinear extension of Kalman's controllability. The distance to flatness is measured by a non-negative integer, the defect. We utilize differential algebra where flatness- and defect are best defined without distinguishing between input, state, output and other variables. Many realistic classes of examples are flat. We treat two popular ones: the crane and the car with n trailers, the motion planning of which is obtained via elementary properties of plane curves. The three non-flat examples, the simple, double and variable length pendulums, are borrowed from non-linear physics. A high frequency control strategy is proposed such that the averaged systems become flat.
Bounds Testing Approaches to the Analysis of Long-run Relationships

This paper develops a new approach to the problem of testing the existence of a long-run level relationship between a dependent variable and a set of regressors, when it is not known with certainty whether the underlying regressors are trend- or first-difference stationary. The proposed tests are based on standard F- and t- statistics used to test the significance of the lagged levels of the variables on a first-difference regression. The asymptotic distributions of these statistics are non-standard under the null hypothesis that there exists no level relationship between the dependent variable and the included regressors, irrespective of whether the regressors are I(0) or I(1). Two sets of asymptotic critical values are provided: One set assuming that all the regressors are I(1), and another set assuming that they are all I(0). These two sets of critical values provide a band covering all possible classifications of the regressors into I(0), I(1) or mutually cointegrated. Accordingly, various bounds testing procedures are proposed. It is shown that the proposed tests are consistent, and their asymptotic distribution under the null and suitably defined local alternatives are derived. The empirical relevance of the bounds procedures are demonstrated by a re-examination of the earnings equation included in the UK Treasury macroeconometric model. This is a particularly relevant application as there is considerable doubt concerning the order of integration of the variables such as the unemployment rate, the union strength and the wedge between the "real produce wage" and the "real consumption wage" that enter the earnings equation.
Interpreting a 3D object from a rough 2D line drawing

Visualizing the third dimension while designing three-dimensional (3-D) objects is an awkward process in mechanical computer-aided-design (CAD) systems, given the current state of the art. The authors describe a computer system that automatically constructs the shape of a 3-D object from a single 2-D sketch. The method makes it convenient to create and manipulate 3-D objects, and is thus seen as an intelligent user interface for CAD and 3-D graphics applications. The proposed technique is built on well-known results in image analysis. These results are applied in conjunction with some perceptual rules to determine 3-D structure from a rough line drawing. The principles are illustrated by a computer implementation that works in a nontrivial object domain. <<ETX>>
Gaussian projection: a novel PBR algorithm for real-time rendering

Gaussian Projection is an algorithm based on the Gaussian Pyramid, that can render point-sampled-geometry - obtained from stereo data in the form of range images - without polygonization, and at full native resolution. Gaussian Projection makes use of the GPU to perform efficient and fast multi-resolution rendering of point-based data, with automatic hole-filling (scattered point interpolation), and without any preprocessing other than Image Pyramid generation.
Prognostic Role of MicroRNA-200c-141 Cluster in Various Human Solid Malignant Neoplasms

The miR-200 family has emerged recently as a noticeable marker for predicting cancer prognosis and tumor progression. We aimed to review the evidence of miR-200c-141 genomic cluster as prognostic biomarkers in cancers. The results suggested that high level of miR-200c had no significant impact on OS (HR = 1.14 [0.77–1.69], P = 0.501) and DFS/PFS (HR = 0.72 [0.45–1.14], P = 0.161). Stratified analyses revealed that high miR-200c expression was significantly related to poor OS in serum/plasma (HR = 2.12 [1.62–2.77], P = 0.000) but not in tissues (HR = 0.89 [0.58–1.37], P = 0.599). High miR-200c expression was significantly associated with favorable DFS/PFS in tissues (HR = 0.56 [0.43–0.73], P = 0.000) but worse DFS/PFS in serum/plasma (HR = 1.90 [1.08–3.36], P = 0.027). For miR-141, we found that high miR-141 expression predicted no significant impact on OS (HR = 1.18 [0.74–1.88], P = 0.482) but poor DFS/PFS (HR = 1.11 [1.04–1.20], P = 0.003). Similarly, subgroup analyses showed that high miR-141 expression predicted poor OS in serum/plasma (HR = 4.34 [2.30–8.21], P = 0.000) but not in tissues (HR = 1.00 [0.92–1.09], P = 0.093). High miR-141 expression was significantly associated with worse DFS/PFS in tissues (HR = 1.12 [1.04–1.20], P = 0.002) but not in serum/plasma (HR = 0.90 [0.44–1.83], P = 0.771). Our findings indicated that, compared to their tissue counterparts, the expression level of miR-200c and miR-141 in peripheral blood may be more effective for monitoring cancer prognosis. High miR-141 expression was better at predicting tumor progression than survival for malignant tumors.
Program organization and record keeping for dynamic storage allocation

The material presented in this paper is part of the design plan of the core allocation portion of the ACSI-MATIC Programming System. Project ACSI-MATIC is concerned with the application of computer techniques to the activities of certain headquarters military intelligence operations of the U.S. Army. In describing features of organization and record keeping there has been no attempt at completeness, but rather an exploration of the salient aspects of the system to some reasonable level of technical detail.1
Knowledge based Annotation of Requirements and Reuse of Components

Software engineering nowadays is most often a very complex, inefficient, not clearly schedulable and time consuming task. Most of these facts can be related to the software methods used. These have rarely been upscaled to the needs of modern software development. Although reuse has often been called one key in the solution to those problems no methods for an automatic detection of specific artefacts exist. The development of an automatic method which identifies suitable components based on specific requirements would greatly facilitate the requirements/ software engineer’s life. Yet, the standard way is to use Google or any other search engine to find matching components. This work describes an approach to search automatically for already existing components. One major requirement behind this goal is that the user doesn’t have to incorporate a lot of additional work as he would have to in other approaches. This means that he simply enters the normal requirement text into the software, which, ideally, automatically analyzes the text and recognizes all kinds of information needed. These would then be marked with tags. In a next step, the so annotated text is inserted into an ontology, which is then compared to the ontology of one other artefact at a time. In the end, a similarity and satisfaction value are returned. Both of them should help the user to find matching components more efficiently than it would take him if he did the search manually. This should reduce the amount of time needed to finish the project as also improve the overall quality. Starting with a basic introduction about semantic software engineering, the description of the algorithm and the architecture of the prototype is shown. It is then evaluated on different parameter settings, using different example ontologies.
Generic evaluation framework for games development methodology

In general the evaluation phase serves as a catalyst in software development and particularly within games development. Hence, it plays a vital role in the formulation of an effective a game development methodology. This paper has investigated the evaluation phase and has focused on the provision of general heuristics sets to facilitate the evaluation process. A generic evaluation framework has been defined as an output of this paper which could be used in the majority of game genres, and therefore it can be an important part of generic game development methodology. Furthermore, this evaluation process has been repeated in each iteration of the game development methodology. The results from each iteration should be compared with previous iteration to enhance and improve games before the final game release.
A review of corporate governance in China

The 2005 policy decision to change the status of non-tradable state and non-state shares into tradable A shares ushers in a new era in the stock markets of China. Over time all of these shares will be tradable and potentially transferred to foreign and domestic private sector investors. These changes have the potential to significantly alter the monitoring and control of the majority of listed firms that until now have been controlled by tightly held blockholders of non-tradable shares. It is therefore timely to reassess the corporate governance of Chinese listed firms. This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical corporate governance literature in China. * The corresponding author. School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT University, Victoria 3000, Australia. Tel: 61-3-9925 5638, E-mail: larry.li@rmit.edu. au.
Performance Analysis of TOA Range Accuracy Adaptation for Cognitive Radio Systems

Location awareness is a prominent feature of cog- nitive radio (CR) systems. In order to support goal driven and autonomous location aware applications using CR systems, range accuracy adaptation is an essential task. Therefore, in this paper, performance analysis of optimal maximum likelihood (ML) time of arrival (TOA) range accuracy adaptation technique is conducted to study performance limits of location aware systems. The performance of ML-TOA range accuracy adaptation method is evaluated in dynamic spectrum access environments through computer simulations. The results show that range accuracy adaptation can be achieved by ML-TOA method with a relative error for each desired range accuracy.
Weighted Finite Automata Based Image Compression on Hadoop MapReduce Framework

In this paper, we explore the algorithm for WFA inference from images, and its possibilities. We also provide a brief introduction into Hadoop and its application in image processing. Hadoop MapReduce framework can be extended to work with WFA based compression of images, as the data set of images is very huge.
Low-Wage Countries' Competition, Reallocation Across Firms and the Quality Content of Exports

What is the impact of low-wage countries' competition on the quality of high-wage countries' exports? To answer this question, we develop a new method that uses firm-level data to measure quality changes in sectoral exports. Over 1995-2005, we measure a 11% increase in the mean quality of France's aggregate exports, driven by a reallocation of demand in favor of higher quality producers. The phenomenon is significantly more pronounced in markets where the penetration of developing countries has increased while it is negative where firms face increased competitive pressures from high-wage countries. These results are consistent with within-product specialization along the vertical dimension. They suggest that, over the period, France has specialized in the production of higher quality goods. In our data, around one fifth of the measured quality improvement in France's aggregate exports is attributable to low-wage countries' competition. In turn, its increasing specialization in higher quality goods has limited France's market share loss over the period.
Variable structure PID based visual servoing for robotic tracking and manipulation

This paper presents a practical experiment on the use of visual servoing for robotic tracking and manipulation of objects moving on a plane. In this work, the image is acquired from the camera mounted on the end-effector of a 6 DOF industrial robot, and processed on a standard PC-based vision system in order to close the visual servoing loop with a PID based controller. The PID has been implemented with a variable structure, modified according to the estimated velocity of the target, in order to achieve a good step response and to eliminate steady-state error with a moving target. The possibility to perform a stable tracking and to estimate the target dynamics allows also to grasp the object with a prediction based trajectory planning.
Design of robust PID controller for a CSTR plant with interval parametric uncertainty using Kharitonov theorem

A parameter-plane method based on Kharitonov theorem for the design of a robust proportional integral derivative (PID) controller for the control of a chemical continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR), which is an example for a plant with interval parametric uncertainty, has been presented in this paper. A locus of the stability boundary is plotted for each of the four Kharitonov vortex polynomials in the KP versus KI parameter plane. An intersecting stability region is identified in the KP-KI plane from which the parameters of the stabilizing PID controller are obtained. Simulation results show that the designed controller successfully stabilizes and improves the performance of the uncertain system under consideration.
Both ERK and Wnt/β-catenin pathways are involved in Wnt3a-induced proliferation

The Wnt family of proteins regulates development and cell growth. We identified Wnt3a-based regulatory mechanisms for cell proliferation in NIH3T3 fibroblast cells. The degree of Wnt3a-induced proliferation was reduced by β-catenin small interfering RNA (siRNA) and extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) siRNA, indicating that both the ERK and Wnt/β-catenin pathways are involved in Wnt3a-induced proliferation. Wnt3a immediately and transiently activated the Raf-1-MEK-ERK cascade in a manner distinct from that of the β-catenin increase seen in cells treated with Wnt3a. Wnt3a-induced ERK activation was maintained even though basal ERK activities were reduced by β-catenin siRNA, indicating that Wnt3a may activate the ERK pathway independently of β-catenin. The ERK pathway was however, activated by β-catenin transfection, which was abolished by co-transfection with dominant-negative Tcf-4. Therefore, ERK pathway activation by Wnt signaling could occur at multiple levels, including β-catenin-independent direct signaling resulting from a Wnt3a and β-catenin/Tcf-4-dependent post gene transcriptional event. Wnt3a stimulated the G1 to S phase cell cycle progression. This stimulation was reduced by the ERK pathway inhibitor, indicating that Wnt3a promotes proliferation by stimulating the ERK pathway. Wnt3a therefore stimulates the proliferation of fibroblast cells, at least in part, via activation of the ERK and Wnt/β-catenin pathways.
IS TRADE POLICY OPENNESS GOOD FOR GROWTH

Very few issues are more contentious today than the effects of trade policy on the rate of economic growth and poverty in developing countries. The paper investigates the relationship between trade barriers and growth using a dynamic panel regression model for data on 48 developing countries over 1980-1999. Trade barriers are captured by measures of tariffs, import and export taxes. Particular attention is paid to simultaneity, country-specific effects and the potential contingency of this relation on income. Our preferred specification for growth includes as an explanatory variable an interaction term between trade barriers and initial income levels. The interaction term is meant to capture the non-linearity in the relationship between trade barriers and economic growth. This specification reveals a significant interaction effect under which the marginal impact of tariffs on growth is rising in initial income. In particular, the relationship between tariffs and growth is negative and significant across all alternative policy measures, but is not uniform across income groups. The richer the country, the smaller are the growth-reducing effects of trade protection and the poorer the country the more likelihood that trade protection will affect growth negatively. This finding is particularly interesting for Sub-Saharan Africa (the world’s poorest continent) where trade restrictions are still pervasive and where poverty is widespread.
Enhancement of Phototransduction Protein Interactions by Lipid Surfaces*

The G protein cascade of vision depends on two peripheral membrane proteins: the G protein, transducin (Gt), and cGMP phosphodiesterase (PDE). Each has covalently attached lipids, and interacts with transduction components on the membrane surface. We have found that their surface interactions are critically dependent on the nature of the lipid. Membranes enhance their protein-protein interactions, especially if electrostatic attraction is introduced with positively charged lipids. These interactions are less enhanced on highly curved surfaces, but are most enhanced by unsaturated or bulky acyl chains. On positively charged membranes, Gt assembles at a high enough density to form two-dimensional arrays with short-range crystalline order. Cationic membranes also support extremely efficient activation of PDE by the GTPγS (guanosine 5′-O-(thiotriphosphate)) form of Gαt (Gαt-GTPγS), minimizing functional heterogeneity of transducin and allowing activation with nanomolar Gαt-GTPγS. Quantification of PDE activation and of the amount of Gαt-GTPγS bound to PDE indicated that Gt activates PDE maximally when bound in a 1:1 molar ratio. No cooperativity was observed, even at nanomolar concentrations. Thus, under these conditions, the one binding site for Gαt-GTPγS on PDE that stimulates catalysis must be of higher affinity than one or more additional sites which are silent with respect to activation of PDE.