Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improving the reliability of on-chip data caches under process variations

On-chip caches take a large portion of the chip area. They are much more vulnerable to parameter variation than smaller units. As leakage current becomes a significant component of the total power consumption, the leakage current variations induced thermal and reliability problem to the on-chip caches become an important design concern. This paper studies the impact of process variations, particular the leakage variations, on the temperature and reliability of on-chip caches. Our statistical simulation shows that, under process variation, 85% of the caches see shortened lifetime, with average lifetime being 81.6% of the ideal cache. At runtime, unevenly distributed dynamic power and the corresponding thermal variation would further deteriorate the situation. To mitigate this problem, we propose a dynamic cache subarray permutation scheme that can alleviate the thermal stress on a high-leakage area to improve the reliability of the caches. Experiments on 17 Spec2k benchmarks show that our scheme can extend the cache lifetime by up to 20.3%, and reduce the peak temperature by 7 degrees on average and more on data-intensive applications.
Simple equalization of time-varying channels for OFDM

We present a block minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) equalizer for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems over time-varying multipath channels. The equalization algorithm exploits the band structure of the frequency-domain channel matrix by means of a band LDL/sup H/ factorization. The complexity of the proposed algorithm is linear in the number of subcarriers and turns out to be smaller with respect to a serial MMSE equalizer characterized by a similar performance.
Antioxidant and Antiproliferative Activities of Heated Sterilized Pepsin Hydrolysate Derived from Half-Fin Anchovy (Setipinna taty)

In this paper we studied the antioxidant and antiproliferative activities of the heated pepsin hydrolysate from a marine fish half-fin anchovy (HAHp-H). Furthermore, we compared the chemical profiles including the amino acid composition, the browning intensity, the IR and UV-visible spectra, and the molecular weight distribution between the half-fin anchovy pepsin hydrolysate (HAHp) and HAHp-H. Results showed that heat sterilization on HAHp improved the 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazil (DPPH) radical-scavenging activity and reducing power. In addition, the antiproliferative activities were all increased for HAHp-H on DU-145 human prostate cancer cell line, 1299 human lung cancer cell line and 109 human esophagus cancer cell line. The contents of free amino acid and reducing sugar of HAHp-H were decreased (P < 0.05). However, hydrophobic amino acid residues and the browning intensity of HAHp-H were increased. FT-IR spectroscopy indicated that amide I and amide III bands of HAHp-H were slightly modified, whereas band intensity of amide II was reduced dramatically. Thermal sterilization resulted in the increased fractions of HAHp-H with molecular weight of 3000–5000 Da and below 500 Da. The enhanced antioxidant and antiproliferative activities of HAHp-H might be attributed to the Maillard reaction.
Limits on detecting eavesdropper in QKD protocols

Quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols form a natural choice for encryption in optical networks. All the QKD protocols use errors caused due to random measurements by Eve to detect her presence. In this paper, we present a fundamental limitation of using such bases to detect an eavesdropper in two QKD protocols - the BB84 and the new quantum Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol. It is shown that the eavesdropper will go undetected in each exchange in both the protocols at least half the time.
Sweetening WORDNET with DOLCE

Despite its original intended use, which was very different, WORDNET is used more and more today as an ontology, where the hyponym relation between word senses is interpreted as a subsumption relation between concepts. In this article, we discuss the general problems related to the semantic interpretation of WORDNET taxonomy in light of rigorous ontological principles inspired by the philosophical tradition. Then we introduce the DOLCE upper-level ontology, which is inspired by such principles but with a clear orientation toward language and cognition. We report the results of an experimental effort to align WORDNET'S upper level with DOLCE. We suggest that such alignment could lead to an "ontologically sweetened" WORD-NET, meant to be conceptually more rigorous, cognitively transparent, and efficiently exploitable in several applications.
Stakeholders’ attitudes towards biobanks in Malaysia

The Malaysian Cabinet’s approval of MyCohort in 2005 was seen as the crucial step toward the country having its very first biobank to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Past studies have shown that public attitudes towards biobanking depend heavily upon several factors including public engagement with biobanks, trust in key actors, privacy and data security, perceived benefit, altruism and certain demographic variables. The objective of this paper is to assess and compare the attitude levels of the Malaysian stakeholders’ towards the application of biobanks across education levels and religion. A survey was carried out on 509 adult respondents in the Klang Valley region of Malaysia. Results of the study have substantiated that the Malaysian stakeholders’ attitudes towards biobank were classified as high. Despite their high levels of perceived benefit and religious acceptance, they also expressed moderately high levels of concern when it comes to issues of data and specimen protection; this suggests that the Malaysian stakeholders also tend to be critical upon expressing their views towards a complex system such as biobanks. One-way MANOVA initially has detected a significant difference of attitude towards biobanks across stakeholder groups, education level and religion. Series of univariate analysis following the MANOVA, as well as Post Hoc analysis, also confirm significant difference of attitude existing across stakeholders; however, no significant differences were detected across education level and religion. The research finding serves as a useful benchmark for scientists and government regulators to understand public attitudes to biobanks before they are set into use.
Voltage-Mode Universal Filter Employing Two Plus-TypeDDCCs

paper introduces a voltage-mode universal filter with three inputs and four outputs employing two plus-type differential difference current conveyors (DDCCs), two grounded capacitors and two resistors. The proposed circuit can act as a high-input impedance multifunction voltage-mode filter with single input and four outputs and can simultaneous realization of voltage-mode lowpass, highpass and two bandpass filter responses from the four output terminals, respectively, without any component choice conditions. On the other hand, it also can act as a universal voltage-mode filter with three inputs and a single output and can realize all five different generic filtering responses from the same configuration without any component matching conditions. The circuit dose not require inverting-type voltage single to realize all the filtering functions. Active and passive sensitivity performances are low. HSPICE simulation results using TSMC 0. 18µm 1P6M CMOS process technology and ±0.9V supply voltages validate the theoretical predictions.
Thyroid hormone mediated changes in gene expression can be initiated by cytosolic action of the thyroid hormone receptor β through the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase pathway

Thyroid hormone (TH) action is mediated principally through binding of the hormone ligand, 3,3,5-triiodothyronine (T3), to TH receptors (TRs). This hormone-receptor interaction recruits other proteins to form complexes that regulate gene expression by binding to DNA sequences in the promoter of target genes. We recently described an extranuclear mechanism of TH action that consists of the association of TH-liganded TRβ with p85α [regulatory subunit of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)] in the cytosol and subsequent activation of the PI3K, generating phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-triphosphate [PtdIns(3,4,5)P3]. This initiates the activation of a signaling cascade by phosphorylation of Akt, mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) and its substrate p70S6K, leading to the stimulation of ZAKI-4α synthesis, a calcineurin inhibitor. Furthermore, we found that this same mechanism leads to induction of the transcription factor hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF-1α), and its target genes, glucose transporter (GLUT)1, platelet-type phosphofructokinase (PFKP), and monocarboxylate transporter (MCT) 4. These genes are of special interest, because their products have important roles in cellular glucose metabolism, from glucose uptake (GLUT1) to glycolysis (PFKP) and lactate export (MCT4). These results demonstrate that the TH-TRβ complex can exert a non-genomic action in the cytosol leading to changes in gene expression by direct (HIF-1α) and indirect (ZAKI-4α, GLUT1, PFKP) means.
Analysis of a Decoding Approach for Goppa Codes

— Algebraic-geometry family of codes contains sequences with excellent asymptotic behaviour, but few work have been reported in the literature concerning their hardware implementation. In this paper, we investigate an algorithm for decoding AG codes under the hardware feasibility point of view. We modify the original strategy in order to obtain a new structure more suitable for hardware implementation.
Detecting smoothness of pedestrian flows by participatory sensing with mobile phones

In this paper, we propose a novel system for estimating crowd density and smoothness of pedestrian flows in public space by participatory sensing with mobile phones. By analyzing walking motion of the pedestrians and ambient sound in the environment that can be monitored by accelerometers and microphones in off-the-shelf smartphones, our system classifies the current situation at each area into four categories that well represent the crowd behavior. Through field experiments using Android smartphones, we show that our system can recognize the current situation with accuracy of 60--78%.
A Joint Foundation for Configuration in the Semantic Web

Product configuration is a major commercial application of knowledge-based systems, and joint configuration by multiple business partners is becoming a key application in today’s highly specialized economy. The required integration of configuration knowledge is a challenging task due to the variety of knowledge representation formalisms used in commercial configurators. Ontology languages such as DAML+OIL provide an infrastructure for the Semantic Web with the goal of intelligent information integration. The aim of this paper is to show the applicability of such languages for building configuration knowledge bases. We join the two major streams in knowledge-based configuration (description logics on one hand and predicate logic, including constraint-based and resource-balancing techniques on the other) by giving a description logic based definition of a configuration task and showing its equivalence with existing consistency-based definitions. We show that Semantic Web ontology languages can be applied to configuration by formalizing language elements relevant for building configuration knowledge bases and discuss extensions needed in order to provide full fledged configuration knowledge representation. The result is a common basis for current configuration approaches on the Semantic Web that is necessary for the provision of joint configuration services.
First-person tele-operation of a humanoid robot

Remote control of robots is often necessary to complete complex unstructured tasks in environments that are inaccessible (e.g. dangerous) for humans. Tele-operation of humanoid robots is often performed trough motion tracking to reduce the complexity deriving from manually controlling a high number of DOF. However, most commercial motion tracking apparatus are expensive and often uncomfortable. Moreover, a limitation of this approach is the need to maintain visual contact with the operated robot, or to employ a second human operator to independently maneuver a camera. As a result, even performing simple tasks heavily depends on the skill and synchronization of the two operators. To alleviate this problem we propose to use augmented-reality to provide the operator with first-person vision and a natural interface to directly control the camera, and at the same time the robot. By integrating recent off-the-shelf technologies, we provide an affordable and intuitive environment composed of Microsoft Kinect, Oculus Rift and haptic SensorGlove to tele-operate in first-person humanoid robots. We demonstrate on the humanoid robot iCub that this set-up allows to quickly and naturally accomplish complex tasks.
Low Serum Creatine Kinase Level Predicts Mortality in Patients with a Chronic Kidney Disease

Background Serum creatine kinase (sCK) reflects CK activity from striated skeletal muscle. Muscle wasting is a risk factor for mortality in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). The aim of this study is to evaluate whether sCK is a predictor of mortality and end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in a CKD population. Methods We included 1801 non-dialysis-dependent CKD patients from the NephroTest cohort. We used time-fixed and time-dependent cause-specific Cox models to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) for the risk of death and for the risk of ESRD associated with gender-specific sCK tertiles. Results Higher sCK level at baseline was associated with a lower age, a higher body mass index, and a higher level of 24 h urinary creatinine excretion, serum albumin and prealbumin (p<0.001). Men, patients of sub-Saharan ancestry, smokers and statin users also experienced a higher level of sCK. In a time-fixed Cox survival model (median follow-up 6.0 years), the lowest gender-specific sCK tertile was associated with a higher risk of death before and after adjustment for confounders (Crude model: hazard ratio (HR) 1.77 (95% CI: 1.34–2.32) compared to the highest tertile; fully-adjusted model: HR 1.37 (95% CI: 1.02–1.86)). Similar results were obtained with a time-dependent Cox model. The sCK level was not associated with the risk of ESRD. Conclusion A low level of sCK is associated with an increased risk of death in a CKD population. sCK levels might reflect muscle mass and nutritional status.
The Web Ecology

the laws of nature and the rules of human society is the grand challenge of sciences. The World Wide Web, its expanding resources, applications and users have constituted an enormous information sharing space. People's daily life and work have become increasingly relying on it. However, it is still young compared with our society and the nature. What it will be in the future? Billions of years' evolution creates the most elegant and efficient natural ecosystem. It will be ideal if the Web can eventually evolve into an artificial ecosystem that harmoniously evolves with society, economy, culture, sciences, and technologies. This paper proposes the Web ecology as the blueprint of the future interconnection environment, including its definition, scientific issues, method, and general architecture. The study of the Web ecology may lead to a new branch of sciences.
Extracting Dependency Frames from Existing Lexical Resources

One method for evaluating a wide-coverage parser involves measuring how accurately it identifies dependency relations. The construction of a grammar which outputs dependency relations requires a lexicon with detailed information on subcategorization and dependency. We discuss how such a lexicon can be constructed automatically for a wide-coverage lexicalist grammar for Dutch by extracting the relevant information from existing lexical resources. We compare the coverage of the two sources relative to each other, and the coverage of the resulting lexicon with respect to a dependency treebank.
MBE: Model-Based Available Bandwidth Estimation for IEEE 802.11 Data Communications

Wireless bandwidth estimation is a critical issue for quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning in IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs). Current bandwidth estimation solutions focus on either probing techniques or cross-layer techniques and require either significant bandwidth resources or protocol modifications. To alleviate these problems, this paper proposes an analytical model-based bandwidth estimation algorithm (MBE) for multimedia services over IEEE 802.11 networks. The MBE module for available bandwidth estimation is developed based on novel transmission control protocol/user datagram protocol throughput models for wireless data communications. The novel aspects in comparison with other works include the fact that no probing traffic is required and that no modification of medium access control (MAC) protocol is needed. Extensive simulations and real tests were performed, demonstrating that MBE has very good bandwidth estimation results for content delivery in conditions with different packet sizes, dynamic wireless link rate, and different channel noises. Additionally, MBE has lower overhead and lower error rate than other state-of-the-art bandwidth estimation techniques.
Reliable ranging technique based on statistical RSSI analyses for an ad-hoc proximity detection system

We propose a proximity detection system that supports pedestrian traffic. Active radio tags are utilized for building the system to reduce the overall system cost. But accurate ranging based on utilizing active radio tags only is difficult to achieve, since the RSSI is affected by small-scale fading of a radio signal in real-world environments. In this paper, 4 simple statistical RSSI filtering methods and a packet exchange protocol for reducing the fading effect are proposed. Combinations of proposed methods are thoroughly experimented in real-world environments and discussed for determining the best combination for the system. Our results show that the variation of detecting distance is successfully reduced to 4 meters for particular combinations.
Long Term Study of Protective Mechanisms of Human Adipose Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells on Cisplatin Induced Kidney injury in Sprague-Dawley Rats

Background/Aims: Long-term evaluation of cisplatin induced nephrotoxicity and the probable renal protective activities of stem cells are lacking up until now. We evaluated the early and long-term role of human adipose derived mesenchymal stem cells (ADMSCs) in prevention or amelioration of cisplatin induced acute kidney injury (AKI) in Sprague-Dawley rats. For this, we determined the kidney tissue level of oxidative stress markers in conjugation with a renal histopathological scoring system of both acute and chronic renal changes. Methods: This study used eighty Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats weighing 250-300g. They were assigned into four equal groups (each group n=20): (I) Negative control group, rats injected with single dose of 1 ml normal saline. (II) Positive control cisplatin, rats injected with a single dose of 5 mg/kg I.P in 1 ml saline. (III) Cisplatin and culture media group, rats injected with 0.5 ml of culture media single dose into the tail vein and (IV) Cisplatin and ADMSCs group, rats injected with a single dose of 0.5 ml of culture media containing 5 x106ADMSCs into the tail vein one day after cisplatin administration. Each main group was further divided according to the timing of sacrifice into four subgroups (each subgroup n=5). Rats in the subgroup A were sacrificed after 4 days; subgroup B were sacrificed after 7 days; subgroup C were sacrificed after 11 days; and subgroup D were sacrificed after 30 days. Before sacrifice, 24 hrs. -urine was collected using a metabolic cage. Renal function was evaluated through blood urea nitrogen (BUN), serum creatinine and creatinine clearance. Kidney tissue homogenate oxidative stress parameters, Malondialdehyde (MDA), Superoxide dismutase (SOD) and Glutathione (GSH) were determined. In addition, histopathological analysis for active injury, regenerative and chronic changes was performed. Results: ADMSCs were characterized and their capability of differentiation was proved. Cisplatin induced a significant increase in plasma creatinine and tissue MDA and induced a decrease in SOD, GSH and creatinine clearance. ADMSCs attenuated these changes. Cisplatin resulted in prominent histopathological changes in the term of tubular necrosis, atrophy, inflammatory cells infiltration and fibrosis. ADMSCs significantly lowered the injury score at day 4, 7, 11 and 30 with marked regenerative changes starting from day 4 and limited fibrotic score at day 30. Conclusion: ADMSCs have both protective and regenerative abilities with consequent limitation of the development of renal fibrosis after the cisplatin induced acute tubular necrosis, largely through an anti-oxidative activity.
Sensor architecture for the robotic control of large flexible space structures

The future construction and maintenance of very large space structures such as orbital solar power stations and telescopes will require teams of free‐flying space robots. For robots to effectively perform these tasks, they will require knowledge of the structure's vibrations. Here, a robotic based sensor architecture for the vibration estimation of very large structures is presented. It is shown that this information can be effectively estimated by combining data provided by free‐flying remote robot “observers” equipped with range sensors with structure‐mounted acceleration sensors. A modified Kalman filter fuses low‐bandwidth vision data from the remote sensing robots with the high bandwidth, but spatially sparse structure‐mounted acceleration sensors. Results from experimental studies are presented that confirm the effectiveness of this approach. 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Metaphor and social action: how worker attention is translated into capital

ABSTRACT Using the example of attention, this paper argues that there is a tendency to treat conceptual metaphors as representational resources at the expense of critically examining how they are implicated in the material structuring of social action. Rather than understanding metaphor in terms of transference, it is proposed that the concept of translation be applied to how we theorise the workings of metaphor. By translating rather than merely transferring concepts from one domain to another, metaphors function as semiotic materialisations that give structure to social action. It is through metaphor that human attentional processes are made to be translated into the material practices of knowledge work under cognitive capitalism. However, for attention to be translated from cognitive process into labour more than a simple associative process must take place. The attention-as-labour metaphor does not just transform how we think about work, it lends itself to transforming how work is performed and managed. In this way, as discursive resources metaphors participate in the constitution not only of our understanding of social realities but also how we build and act within those realities. Thus, metaphors are not just evidence of asymmetries in power relations but also function as instruments of those asymmetries.