Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A 0.20 $\text {mm}^2$ 3 nW Signal Acquisition IC for Miniature Sensor Nodes in 65 nm CMOS

Miniature mm3-sized sensor nodes have a very tight power budget, in particular, when a long operational lifetime is required, which is the case, e.g., for implantable devices or unobtrusive IoT nodes. This paper presents a fully integrated signal acquisition IC for these emerging applications. It integrates an amplifier with 32 dB gain and 370 Hz bandwidth that includes positive feedback to enhance input impedance and dc offset compensation. The IC includes also a 10 bit 1 kS/s SAR ADC as well as a clock generator and voltage and current biasing circuits. The overall system achieves an input noise of 27 μVrms, consumes 3 nW from a 0.6 V supply, occupies 0.20 mm2 in 65 nm CMOS, and has a single-wire data interface. The amplifier achieves an noise-efficiency factor (NEF) of 2.1 and the ADC has a figure-of-merit (FoM) of 1.5 fJ/conversion-step. Measurements confirm reliable operation for supplies from 0.50 to 0.70 V and temperatures in the range of 0-85 °C. As an application example, an ECG recording is successfully performed with the system while a 0.69 mm2 photodiode array provides its power supply in indoor lighting conditions.
Estimating location and avoiding collision against unknown obstacles for the mobile robot using omnidirectional image sensor COPIS

Proposes a new omnidirectional image sensor, COPIS (conic projection image sensor), for guiding navigation of a mobile robot. It features passive sensing of omnidirectional images of the environment in real-time (at the frame rate of a TV camera) using a conic mirror. COPIS is a suitable sensor for visual navigation in real world environment with moving objects. The paper describes a method for estimating the location and the motion of the robot by detecting the azimuth of each object in the omnidirectional image. It also presents a method to avoid collision against unknown obstacles and estimates their locations by detecting their azimuth changes while the robot is moving in the environment. <<ETX>>
A Study towards Application-driven Social Network Analysis

Social network is a social structure of nodes that are tied by various kinds of relationships, such as kinships, friends, web links, colleagues, citation links, etc. Recently, large on-line social networks have become very popular among web users. In this paper, we present a thoroughly overview towards the recent efforts in social network research from a graph data management perspective. We identify a series of research areas that have drew much attention in last few years, such as viral marketing, community identification, information diffusion, link prediction and evolution analysis, social influence study and privacy issues. In each of these areas, we present a detailed comparison over a series of corresponding approaches showing their pros and cons, based on which we conclude and summarize some future research directions and potential applications for each of these areas.
Prevalence of depression and anxiety in patients requesting physicians’ aid in dying: cross sectional survey

Objective To determine the prevalence of depression and anxiety in terminally ill patients pursuing aid in dying from physicians. Design Cross sectional survey. Setting State of Oregon, USA. Participants 58 Oregonians, most terminally ill with cancer or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, who had either requested aid in dying from a physician or contacted an aid in dying advocacy organisation. Main outcome measures Diagnosis of depression or anxiety according to the hospital anxiety and depression scale and the structured clinical interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Results 15 study participants met “caseness” criteria for depression, and 13 met criteria for anxiety. 42 patients died by the end of the study; 18 received a prescription for a lethal drug under the Death with Dignity Act, and nine died by lethal ingestion. 15 participants who received a prescription for a lethal drug did not meet criteria for depression; three did. All three depressed participants died by legal ingestion within two months of the research interview. Conclusion Although most terminally ill Oregonians who receive aid in dying do not have depressive disorders, the current practice of the Death with Dignity Act may fail to protect some patients whose choices are influenced by depression from receiving a prescription for a lethal drug.
HETEROGENEOUS CROWDSOURCING AND DATA FUSION MODEL FOR DISASTER MANAGEMENT SERVICES

In the present study of heterogeneous crowd sourcing is a novel field which shall bring marked improvement in the field of decision support system. At this point of time, the world is evolving technologically and thus we have started emphasizing on human brains as a specific physical sensors as far sensing capabilities are concerned. There are many human beings who are actually Subject Matters Experts (SME). We need to tap this potential of human brain and make them as sensors for our decision support system. Thus transforming the humans in to sensors is a new concept of getting data attributes which shall help in decision support system. With humans evolving and being utilized as a sensor the concept of crowd sourcing has evolved and the focus has now been shifted to new paradigm of crowd sensing (C-SENSE) of events along with the traditional sensors. This paper presents a conceptual communication mechanism for heterogeneous crowd sourcing which is fusion a of hierarchical-IMS (IDmapping server) and data fusion model to support hand-in-hand for disaster management’s services.
Multistep modelling of receiver‐based seismic and ambient noise data from WOMBAT array: crustal structure beneath southeast Australia

SUMMARY A limitation of most forms of passive seismic tomography using distant earthquakes lies in the fact that crustal structure is poorly resolved. An attempt is made here to address this issue by modelling teleseismic receiver functions (RFs) and dispersion curves derived from ambient noise through a multistep approach. The SEAL3 experiment in central and southern New South Wales (NSW) used here, represents one of 13 array deployments that so far comprise the large WOMBAT project, which aims to cover a significant portion of the Australian continent with a rolling array of seismometers. An interactive, forward-modelling software package (IRFFM2) is introduced and applied to the observed RFs and surface wave dispersion curves to define a prior, physically acceptable range of elastic parameters in the lithosphere, which is combined with a grid-search and a linearized inversion. Our results emphasize the importance of a joint treatment of RFs and dispersion data as the predictions from 1-D velocity models at individual stations derived from only RFs display large departures from the observed ambient noise dispersion curves. In total, 27 jointly constrained 1-D shear wave models are produced, which provide sufficient sampling of the crust beneath SEAL3 to permit detailed inferences about lateral variations in structure to be made. Of particular note is the observation that the Moho deepens towards the mountainous southeast, where it exceeds 50 km in depth beneath the Southern Highlands of NSW, thus marking out some of the thickest crust in Australia. The complex lateral variations in mid-lower crustal velocity that we observe probably reflect the manifold interactions of a thinning lithosphere, associated igneous underplating, recent hot-spot-related volcanism and uplift. Our results image an important part of the lithosphere that is poorly constrained by regional and teleseismic tomography, and contribute to the understanding of the formation of the southern highlands and the Palaeozoic Lachlan Orogen.
Implementing semantic frames as typed feature structures with XMG

This work presents results on the integration of frame-based representations into the framework of eXtensible MetaGrammar (XMG). Originally XMG allowed for the description of tree-based syntactic structures and underspecified representations of predicate-logical formulae, but the representation of frames as a sort of typed feature structure, particularly type unification, was not supported. Therefore, we introduce an extension that is capable of handling frame representations directly by means of a novel -dimension. The aim is not only to make possible a straightforward specification of frame descriptions, but also to offer various ways to specify constraints on types, be it as a contiguous type hierarchy or a loose set of feature structure constraints. The presented extensions to XMG are fully operational in a new prototype.
Role of build orientation in layered manufacturing: a review

Layered manufacturing, also called rapid prototyping or additive manufacturing is a revolutionary development in the field of manufacturing processes in last two decades. Unlike material removed from a stock in the machining process, layered manufacturing builds the solid volume from a CAD model by successively adding material layer by layer. Since parts are fabricated layer by layer, build orientation plays a critical role in the layered manufacturing process as it can improve part quality in terms of accuracy and surface finish, reduce the support volume required, support contact area and build time. It also affects the part strength and cost of manufacturing. This paper presents review of various strategies developed to decide the optimum part build orientation based on different criteria and related issues. This paper also discusses the effect of build orientation on fabricated parts and future directions to improve part quality by selecting suitable and feasible build orientation.
Tissue biotype and its relation to the underlying bone morphology.

BACKGROUND Tissue biotypes have been linked to the outcomes of periodontal and implant therapy. The purpose of this study is to determine the dimensions of the gingiva and underlying alveolar bone in the maxillary anterior region and to establish their association. METHODS Tissue biotypes of 22 fresh cadaver heads were assessed clinically and radiographically with cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) scans. Maxillary anterior teeth were atraumatically extracted. The thickness of both soft tissue and bone were measured using a caliper to the nearest 0.1 mm by two calibrated examiners. Probing depths and gingival recession were measured at two points (mid-labial and mid-palatal). Clinical and CBCT measurements of both soft tissue and bone thickness were subsequently compared and correlated. RESULTS No statistically significant differences were observed between the clinical and CBCT measurements of both soft tissue and bone thickness except the palatal soft tissue measurements. The labial gingival thickness was moderately associated with the underlying bone thickness measured with CBCT (R = 0.429; P <0.05). Gingival recession was not associated with the thickness of both labial gingiva and bone. CONCLUSIONS CBCT measurements were an accurate representation of the clinical thickness of both labial gingiva and bone. In addition, the thickness of the labial gingiva had a moderate association with the underlying bone radiographically.
A multilevel variable neighborhood search heuristic for a practical vehicle routing and driver scheduling problem

The world's second largest producer of pork, Danish Crown, also provides a fresh meat supply logistics system within Denmark. This is used by the majority of supermarkets in Denmark. This article addresses an integrated vehicle routing and driver scheduling problem arising at Danish Crown in their fresh meat supply logistics system. The problem consists of a 1‐week planning horizon, heterogeneous vehicles, and drivers with predefined work regulations. These regulations include, among other things, predefined workdays, fixed starting time, maximum weekly working duration, and a break rule. The objective is to minimize the total delivery cost that is a weighted sum of two kinds of delivery costs. A multilevel variable neighborhood search heuristic is proposed for the problem. In a preprocessing step, the problem size is reduced through an aggregation procedure. Thereafter, the aggregated weekly planning problem is decomposed into daily planning problems, each of which is solved by a variable neighborhood search. Finally, the solution of the aggregated problem is expanded to that of the original problem. The method is implemented and tested on real‐life data consisting of up to 2,000 orders per week. Computational results show that the aggregation procedure and the decomposition strategy are very effective in solving this large scale problem, and our solutions are superior to the industrial solutions given the constraints considered in this work. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 58(4), 311–322 2011
Cable Rotation and Twist Pitch Variation for ITER TF Conductor in China

Toroidal field (TF) coil is made of cable-in-conduit conductor (CICC) with an operating current of 68 kA. In total, 900 Nb3Sn strands and 522 copper strands are cabled around the central spiral and then wrapped with stainless-steel tape of 0.1-mm thickness. The cable is then inserted into a jacket under tensile force that is increasing with length of insertion. Insertion and compaction are key technologies injacketing. The tensile force can lead to rotation of a cable, resulting into an increase in a twist pitch. Understanding the twist pitch variation is very important; in particular, the twist pitch of a cable inside a CICC strongly affects properties such as ac loss. In this paper, we present the results of a Chinese TF conductor during manufacture. A rotation sensor and a straight line on the cable surface were used to measure the rotation during insertion and compaction. X-ray was used to check the changed twist pitch during compaction. Short samples were subjected to destructive examination to assess the exact twist pitch. The test results show that the Chinese TF conductor has a slight rotation and very small twist pitch variation during conductor manufacture.
Testing and diagnosis of interconnects using boundary scan architecture

A built-in self-test of interconnects based on boundary scan architecture is described. Detection and diagnosis schemes are proposed which provide minimal-size test vector sets. I/O scan chains order independent test vector sets and walking sequences. Properties like ease of test vector generation, structure-independent detection and diagnosis, and local response compaction have made the developed schemes suitable for built-in-self-test implementation. An example board-interconnect test session is described using one of the proposed schemes. <<ETX>>
Differential expression of the two closely related LIM-class homeobox genes LH-2A and LH-2B during limb development.

We have isolated the chicken homeobox genes LH-2A and LH-2B encoding two related LIM domain-containing homeodomain proteins and examined the expression pattern during chick limb development. LH-2A is most closely related to human and rat LH-2, while LH-2B is less conserved. Although both LH-2A and LH-2B are expressed in the limb mesenchyme throughout stage 16 to stage 32, LH-2A transcripts are detectable in the distal limb bud and LH-2B transcripts are detectable in the anterior limb bud. Signals from the apical ectodermal ridge positively regulate LH-2A expression, since removal of the apical ectoderm resulted in the rapid reduction of LH-2A expression in the distal limb mesenchyme. Ectopic expression of the sonic hedgehog gene in the anterior margin of the limb bud resulted in the rapid reduction of LH-2B expression accompanying respecification of the positional value to the posterior phenotype. These results suggest that LH-2A and LH-2B play important roles in the determination and specification of the proximal-distal and anterior-posterior positional values, respectively.
Two New Phenolic Glycosides from Viburnum plicatum var. plicatum f. plicatum

Two new glycosides, named dideoxyplicatumoside A (1) and erythro-syringylglycerol-β-O-4′-(+)-isoeucommin A 4′″-O-β-D-glucopyrano-side (2), together with seven known compounds, were isolated from the leaves of Viburnum plicatum Thunb. ex Murray var. plicatum f. plicatum. Their structures were established on the basis of NMR, MS and chemical data.
Arrays of EAP micro-actuators for single-cell stretching applications

Mechanical stimuli are critical for the development and maintenance of most tissues such as muscles, cartilage, bones and blood vessels. The commercially available cell culture systems replicating the in vivo environment are typically based on simple membrane cell-stretching equipment, which can only measure the average response of large colonies of cells over areas of greater than one cm2. We present here the conceptual design and the complete fabrication process of an array of 128 Electro-Active Polymer (EAP) micro-actuators which are uni-axially stretched and hence used to impose unidirectional strain on single cells, make it feasible to do experiments on the cytomechanics of individual cells. The Finite Element Method is employed to study the effect of different design parameters on achievable strain, leading to the optimized design. Compliant gold electrodes are deposited by low-energy ion implantation on both sides of a PDMS membrane, as this technique allows making electrodes that support large strain with minimal stiffening of the elastomer. The membrane is bonded to a rigid support, leading to an array of 100×100 μm2 EAP actuators.
Exploring the use of signals in the venture emergence of new technology-based firms

New technology-based firms have to deal with the technology development and market search challenges at the same time. The venture emergence in technology entrepreneurship symbolizes that the new venture has been able to find the right fit for its technology and becomes an operating business. The complex nature and dynamism of technology markets suggest the need to look beyond the venture resources in order to explain how new ventures overcomes the market uncertainty towards their technological products, and become operational businesses. We use a multiple case study of three new technology-based firms to explore the use of signals as market creation strategies in the context of venture emergence. The results suggest that entrepreneurs rely on market, technology and social capital signaling to reduce the uncertainty and advance towards venture emergence. This research holds implications for researchers interested in further exploring the integration of marketing, signaling and entrepreneurship theories and for entrepreneurs interested in overcoming the market uncertainty towards their technology, products and venture performance.
Willingness to test for BRCA1/2 in high risk women: Influenced by risk perception and family experience, rather than by objective or subjective numeracy?

Genetic testing for breast and ovarian cancer can help target prevention programs, and possibly reduce morbidity and mortality. A positive result of BRCA1/2 is a substantial risk factor for breast and ovarian cancer, and its detection often leads to risk reduction interventions such as increased screening, prophylactic mastectomy and oophorectomy. We examined predictors of the decision to undergo cancer related genetic testing: perceived risk, family risk of breast or ovarian cancer, and numeracy as predictors of the decision to test among women at high risk of breast cancer. Stepwise regression analysis of survey responses from 459 women registered in the Cancer Genetics Network revealed greater likelihood to test for women with more family history, higher perceived risk of mutation, or Ashkenazi descent. Neither subjective nor objective numeracy was associated with the decision to test, although we replicated an earlier finding that subjective numeracy predicted willingness to pay for testing. Findings underscore the need for genetic counselling that disentangles risk perception from objective information to promote better decision-making in the context of genetic testing. Highlighting these factors is crucial for public health campaigns, as well as to clinic-based testing and direct-to-consumer testing.
Adaptive Spatially Variant Optimization of a Temporal Spline Basis for Dynamic PET Reconstruction

In this paper we try to find an optimal temporal basis to reconstruct dynamic list-mode PET data. The goal of this method is to avoid over-fitting of and to avoid the introduction of too much bias in the reconstructed Time Activity Curves (TACs). The optimal basis is estimated from the list-mode data during reconstruction. In particular we have evaluated the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) as objective function for the determination of the optimal number of temporal B-spline basis functions. The optimal number is spatially variant and is determined for different physiological regions in the image. The required segmentation based on the image sequences clusters the pixels of different physiological regions. We have evaluated different clustering methods. Numerical experiments of simulated cardiac PET data showed that the method based on an initial Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) which includes a Poissonian noise model performed the best. Our results show that the AIC based determination of the optimal number of basis functions was useful for dynamic PET reconstruction, especially for an accurate reconstruction of the blood input curves.
Vegetarians have a reduced skeletal muscle carnitine transport capacity.

BACKGROUND Ninety-five percent of the body carnitine pool resides in skeletal muscle where it plays a vital role in fuel metabolism. However, vegetarians obtain negligible amounts of carnitine from their diet. OBJECTIVE We tested the hypothesis that muscle carnitine uptake is elevated in vegetarians compared with that in nonvegetarians to maintain a normal tissue carnitine content. DESIGN Forty-one young (aged ≈22 y) vegetarian and nonvegetarian volunteers participated in 2 studies. The first study consisted of a 5-h intravenous infusion of l-carnitine while circulating insulin was maintained at a physiologically high concentration (≈170 mU/L; to stimulate muscle carnitine uptake) or at a fasting concentration (≈6 mU/L). The second study consisted of oral ingestion of 3 g l-carnitine. RESULTS Basal plasma total carnitine (TC) concentration, 24-h urinary TC excretion, muscle TC content, and muscle carnitine transporter [organic cation transporter 2 (OCTN2)] messenger RNA and protein expressions were 16% (P < 0.01), 58% (P < 0.01), 17% (P < 0.05), 33% (P < 0.05), and 37% (P = 0.09) lower, respectively, in vegetarian volunteers. However, although nonvegetarians showed a 15% increase (P < 0.05) in muscle TC during l-carnitine infusion with hyperinsulinemia, l-carnitine infusion in the presence or absence of hyperinsulinemia had no effect on muscle TC content in vegetarians. Nevertheless, 24-h urinary TC excretion was 55% less in vegetarians after l-carnitine ingestion. CONCLUSIONS Vegetarians have a lower muscle TC and reduced capacity to transport carnitine into muscle than do nonvegetarians, possibly because of reduced muscle OCTN2 content. Thus, the greater whole-body carnitine retention observed after a single dose of l-carnitine in vegetarians was not attributable to increased muscle carnitine storage.