Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Energy-Efficient Processor Core for Massively Parallel Computing

With the evolution of more sophisticated communication standards and algorithms, embedded applications exhibit demanding performance and efficiency requirements. Massively Parallel Computing based on many simple cores and few powerful cores is becoming the mainstream method of building high performance and low power processor. While aimed at the design of the simple core, this paper proposes an energy-efficient processor architecture named Smart Core. Following the idea of explicitly parallel and accurate computing, Smart Core uses exposed and non-deep pipeline to eliminate the pipeline registers and to reduce the cost of executing instructions. Multi-level data memory organization, consisted of streaming memory, multi-mode register file and fully distributed tiny operand register file, captures various data reuse and locality to reduce the cost of delivering data. To reduce the cost of delivering instructions, an asymmetric and fully distributed instruction register file is used to capture locality and reuse of instructions in a loop. Preliminary results show that Smart Core achieves an energy efficiency that is 25x greater than the traditional embedded RISC processor. When scaled to a 40nm CMOS technology, single chip multi-processor, consisted of many cores like Smart Core, is capable of providing more than 1TOPS performance while achieving efficiency of 100GOPS/W or more.
Practical Applications of Triggers and Constraints: Success and Lingering Issues (10-Year Award)

From about the mid-1980' s to the mid-1990' s there was a flurry of research activity in the area of database triggers and constraints, seeing the development of numerous research proposals and prototypes. Soon thereafter, most mainstream database products ramped up their support for constraints and triggers, with expressive constraint specifications appearing in the SQL-92 standard, and both constraints and triggers in the SQL-99 standard.
Long-term follow-up of prenatally dexamethasone-treated children at risk for congenital adrenal hyperplasia

Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) is a disorder of steroid genesis affecting approximately 1:10 000 children and leading to increased levels of androgens during foetal life and subsequent virilization of external genitalia in affected girls. However, prenatal virilization can be eliminated by antenatal dexamethasone (DEX) treatment. To be fully effective, DEX treatment has to be started in the 6–7th postmenstrual week and continued until the results of the prenatal diagnosis are available at gestational week 11–12. This means that 7 out of 8 foetuses (boys and unaffected girls) are treated unnecessarily during early gestation. CAHaffected girls are treated to term. We performed a long-term follow-up of children treated in Sweden during the years 1985– 1995, and 26 of the 40 treated individuals participated in the study. The control group consisted of 35 sexand age-matched healthy children. In general, the DEX-treated children were as well adjusted as the controls (Studies I and II). There were no between-group differences in major cognitive measures such as IQ, learning and memory. Parents reported that the DEX-treated children performed just as well at school as the controls. However, in a test of verbal working memory (WM), significantly lower results were observed in CAH-unaffected short-term treated children. The CAH-affected children did not differ from the control group, probably owing to small sample size and, consequently, low power. The verbal WM was correlated with the children’s self-perception of difficulties in scholastic ability, another measure in which CAH-unaffected children differed from the controls. In measures of temperament, psychopathology and well-being, parents reported generally as good health in the DEXexposed group as in the control group. The only difference was an observed increase in sociability in DEX-exposed children. In the children’s self-ratings, however, increased social anxiety was observed. This difference was significant in CAH-unaffected short-term-treated children. In order to study gender role behaviour (Studies III and IV), we developed a new instrument, the Karolinska Inventory of Gender Role Behaviour (KI-GRB), which was evaluated in an additional group of 180 school-age children. The underlying dimensions of the inventory were described by the factor structure and the KI-GRB subscales were also associated with sex-specific cognition. In prenatally DEX-exposed, CAH-unaffected boys, more neutral behaviours were observed, while in girls no group differences emerged after controlling for site of residence. A similar pattern was found when CAH-affected children were included in the analyses In summary, these studies indicate that prenatal DEX treatment of CAH may have negative effects on certain aspects of cognitive and affective development, as well as affect gender role behaviour. © Tatja Hirvikoski, 2011 ISBN 978-91-7457-409-8
Activation of Invariant NKT Cells Exacerbates Experimental Visceral Leishmaniasis

We report that natural killer T (NKT) cells play only a minor physiological role in protection from Leishmania donovani infection in C57BL/6 mice. Furthermore, attempts at therapeutic activation of invariant NKT (iNKT) cells with α-galactosylceramide (α-GalCer) during L. donovani infection exacerbated, rather than ameliorated, experimental visceral leishmaniasis. The inability of α-GalCer to promote anti-parasitic immunity did not result from inefficient antigen presentation caused by infection because α-GalCer–loaded bone marrow–derived dendritic cells were also unable to improve disease resolution. The immune-dampening affect of α-GalCer correlated with a bias towards increased IL-4 production by iNKT cells following α-GalCer stimulation in infected mice compared to naïve controls. However, studies in IL-4–deficient mice, and IL-4 neutralisation in cytokine-sufficient mice revealed that α-GalCer–induced IL-4 production during infection had only a minor role in impaired parasite control. Analysis of liver cell composition following α-GalCer stimulation during an established L. donovani infection revealed important differences, predominantly a decrease in IFNγ+ CD8+ T cells, compared with control-treated mice. Our data clearly illustrate the double-edged sword of NKT cell–based therapy, showing that in some circumstances, such as when sub-clinical or chronic infections exist, iNKT cell activation can have adverse outcomes.
Neural Network Language Models for Translation with Limited Data

In this paper we present how to estimate a continuous space language model with a neural network to be used in a statistical machine translation system. We report results for an Italian-English translation task obtained on a small corpus (about 150 K tokens), that can be considered a task with a lack of training data. Different word history length included in the connectionist language model (n-gram order) and distinct continuous space representation (i.e. words appearing in the training corpus more than k times) are considered in the study. The experimental results are evaluated by means of automatic evaluation metrics correlated with fluency and adequacy of the generated translations.
Control of autonomous underwater vehicle using fractional order PIλ controller

Autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) system is complex and highly nonlinear, the controller design for AUV is always a crucial task. Improving the performance of AUV in such applications as seafloor mapping, oil and gas exploration and defense requires improving the vehicle's maneuvering precision. These goals can be achieved through the improvement of the vehicle control system. This paper presents the control of AUV's speed, depth and steering. Fractional order PIλ controller is designed and it is compared with classical integer order PI controller.
Field analysis of commercial PV inverters in the 5 kW power range with respect to MPPT effectively

The aim of this article is to describe how closely PV grid-connected inverters operate at the actual maximum power point. To carry this study out six 50 Hz single-phase inverters were selected from European market. Each one of them was put into an outdoor grid-connected system installed in Leganés (Madrid) Spain (by using flat and concentrating PV modules). Different electrical signals with respect to irradiance, PV module temperature and local time were measured. DC voltage and maximum power point tracking were analysed.
Experimental characterization of elastic-plastic behavior of MEMS electroplated gold specimens

This paper presents the design, FEM modeling and experimental characterization of the elastic-plastic behavior of electroplated gold specimens undergoing tensile loading. The test structures are designed and optimized to achieve high stress values in the double-clamped specimen with a rectangular cross-section in the middle of the test structure. High stresses in the specimen are achieved by using electrostatic actuation to the plates, constrained using hinges. The range of electrostatic actuation is increased using bottom partial-plate electrodes on the substrate. The static deflection of the central specimen in the test structures under multiple loading cycles is obtained using experimental characterization and a change in the static pull-in voltage with each loading cycle is observed evaluating the permanent strain due to plasticity.
Drive quality analysis of lane change maneuvers for naturalistic driving studies

Analysis of naturalistic driving data provides a rich set of semantics which can be used to determine the driving characteristics that could lead to crashes and near-crashes. In this paper, we introduce “drive quality” analysis as part of the drive analysis process of naturalistic driving studies (NDSs) that we have previously introduced in [1]. In this first work on drive quality analysis for NDS data reduction, lane change maneuvers that are reduced from naturalistic driving data are further analyzed in a detailed manner in order to characterize them. Visual data from multiple perspectives and the data from in-vehicle sensors are used to characterize lane changes based on both the ego-vehicle kinematics and ego-vehicle surround dynamics. According to available literature on NDS and data reduction, this is the first work that presents an analysis of visual data from multiple perspectives to characterize and extract semantics related to ego-vehicle maneuvers in NDSs such as SHRP2.
Using Optical-Approaches to Raise Energy Efficiency of Future Central and/or Linked Distributed Data Center Network Services

Novel optical network architectures are proposed for creating future network services. The �rst architecture is a centralized approach for higher energy efficiency; it yields a data centercentric metro/access optical aggregation network based on wavelength/time- multiplexing. Not only higher application layer functions but also all layer-3 or upper traffic are transferred through the simple metro/access optical aggregation network and switched in a huge centralized giant router at the data center. Its simple optical switching is 200 times more energy efficient and only one electrical router is needed, so power consumption of the network can be reduced ten or twenty fold compared to the existing Internet. The second is service mash-up by linked data through a network that uses broadband optical wire for the IoT era. All service contents,
Diagnostic Accuracy of Procalcitonin for Predicting Blood Culture Results in Patients With Suspected Bloodstream Infection

AbstractPrevious studies have suggested that procalcitonin is a reliable marker for predicting bacteremia. However, these studies have had relatively small sample sizes or focused on a single clinical entity. The primary endpoint of this study was to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of procalcitonin for predicting or excluding clinically relevant pathogen categories in patients with suspected bloodstream infections. The secondary endpoint was to look for organisms significantly associated with internationally validated procalcitonin intervals. We performed a cross-sectional study that included 35,343 consecutive patients who underwent concomitant procalcitonin assays and blood cultures for suspected bloodstream infections. Biochemical and microbiological data were systematically collected in an electronic database and extracted for purposes of this study. Depending on blood culture results, patients were classified into 1 of the 5 following groups: negative blood culture, Gram-positive bacteremia, Gram-negative bacteremia, fungi, and potential contaminants found in blood cultures (PCBCs). The highest procalcitonin concentration was observed in patients with blood cultures growing Gram-negative bacteria (median 2.2 ng/mL [IQR 0.6–12.2]), and the lowest procalcitonin concentration was observed in patients with negative blood cultures (median 0.3 ng/mL [IQR 0.1–1.1]). With optimal thresholds ranging from ⩽0.4 to ⩽0.75 ng/mL, procalcitonin had a high diagnostic accuracy for excluding all pathogen categories with the following negative predictive values: Gram-negative bacteria (98.9%) (including enterobacteria [99.2%], nonfermenting Gram-negative bacilli [99.7%], and anaerobic bacteria [99.9%]), Gram-positive bacteria (98.4%), and fungi (99.6%). A procalcitonin concentration ≥10 ng/mL was associated with a high risk of Gram-negative (odds ratio 5.98; 95% CI, 5.20–6.88) or Gram-positive (odds ratio 3.64; 95% CI, 3.11–4.26) bacteremia but dramatically reduced the risk of PCBCs or fungemia. In this large real-life setting experience with more than 35,000 patients, procalcitonin was highly effective at excluding bloodstream infections regardless of pathogen categories. The results from our study are limited by its cross-sectional design and deserve to be validated in prospective longitudinal studies.
MYC or BCL2 copy number aberration is a strong predictor of outcome in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is the most common non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Patients with DLBCL harboring MYC aberrations concurrent with BCL2 or/and BCL6 aberrations constitute a specific group with extremely poor outcome. In this study, we retrospectively investigated the incidence and prognosis of MYC, BCL2, and BCL6 aberrations with DLBCL patients in Chinese population. We applied fluorescence in situ hybridization and immunohistochemical analysis in 246 DLBCL patients. The results showed that patients with MYC or BCL2 copy number aberration (CNA) had significantly worse overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) than negative cases (P < 0.0001). Patients with both MYC and BCL2 CNA had similar outcomes to those with classic double hit lymphoma or protein double expression lymphoma (MYC and BCL2/BCL6 coexpression). By multivariate analysis, MYC CNA, BCL2 CNA and double CNA were the independent worse prognostic factors. In conclusions, patients with MYC or BCL2 CNA constituted a unique group with extremely poor outcome and may require more aggressive treatment regimens.
Minimum Subspace Noise Tracking for noise Power Spectral Density estimation

Speech enhancement is the processing of speech signals in order to improve one or more perceptual aspects. If the statistics of the clean signal and the noise process are explicitly known, enhancement could be ‘optimally’ accomplished (minimizing a distortion measure between the clean and the estimated signals). In practice however, these statistics are not explicitly available, and the overall enhancement accuracy critically depends on the estimation quality of the unknown statistics. The estimation of noise (and speech) statistics is particularly a critical issue and a challenging problem under non-stationary noise conditions. In this paper, we investigate the noise floor estimation using subspace decomposition. We examine the speech DFT rank limited assumption. We propose a new noise PSD estimation scheme (called Minimum Subspace Noise Tracking (MSNT)). The proposed scheme can be interpreted as a combination of the subspace structure and the minimum statistics tracking. Experimental investigation of the MSNT tracking performance and comparison with the state of the art is also presented.
Evolution amplified processing with temporally dispersed slow neuronal connectivity in primates

The corpus callosum (CC) provides the main route of communication between the 2 hemispheres of the brain. In monkeys, chimpanzees, and humans, callosal axons of distinct size interconnect functionally different cortical areas. Thinner axons in the genu and in the posterior body of the CC interconnect the prefrontal and parietal areas, respectively, and thicker axons in the midbody and in the splenium interconnect primary motor, somatosensory, and visual areas. At all locations, axon diameter, and hence its conduction velocity, increases slightly in the chimpanzee compared with the macaque because of an increased number of large axons but not between the chimpanzee and man. This, together with the longer connections in larger brains, doubles the expected conduction delays between the hemispheres, from macaque to man, and amplifies their range about 3-fold. These changes can have several consequences for cortical dynamics, particularly on the cycle of interhemispheric oscillators.
Arabic part of speech tagging using Tranformation-Based Learning

Corpus-based methods have been widely used to tackle NLP tasks after the advent of annotated corpora with a notable success. Inevitably, shifting from classical rule-based to corpus-based method has a major drawback. That is, most of corpus-based ones produce statistical models that are hard to interpret and modify along with their higher complexity in terms of required processing power and memory allocation. Fortunately, that drawback is eliminated with Transformation-based learning technique which is one corpus-based method that embraces the power of both worlds; overcoming obscurity and complexity without relinquishing state-of-the-art accuracy. This paper examines the application of TBL to the task of tagging Modern Standard Arabic text. For unknown words guessing, an n-gram technique has been adopted to select best tag from a list of candidates outputted from a morphological analyzer exploiting previous context. The developed tagger achieved an accuracy of 98.6% when evaluated on the train set and 96.9% on the test set. Furthermore, the same unknown words module has been slightly modified and successfully applied to the task of word-tokenization with an accuracy of 99.6%.
Thoracoscopic lung biopsy in infants and children with endoloops allows smaller trocar sites and discreet biopsies.

BACKGROUND Thoracoscopy is replacing open lung biopsies because it is less invasive. However, most surgeons obtain biopsies with an endostapler, which requires a 12-mm trocar and a minimum of 4.5 cm of intrathoracic space to open, making its use in patients less then 10 kg impractical. This report describes the use of the Endoloop (Ethicon Endosurgery, Cincinnati, OH) in small pediatric patients undergoing thoracoscopic lung biopsies. MATERIALS AND METHODS From 1993 to February 2007, 69 patients underwent thoracoscopic lung biopsy for diagnosis and therapy. Ages ranged from 2 weeks to 4 years and weight from 2 to 22 kg. One 5- and two 3-mm trocars were used in all cases. In all cases, two Endoloops were placed proximal to the segment of lung being biopsied and the lung was divided sharply distal to the Endoloops. The specimen was removed through the 5-mm trocar site. The lung was reexpanded and no chest drains were left in postoperatively. RESULTS All 69 procedures were successfully completed thoracoscopically. Two biopsy specimens were obtained, in most cases. Operative time ranged from 10 to 35 minutes (average, 20). There were no intraoperative complications. One patient required reintubation and ventilator support on postoperative day 1 and developed a pneumothorax on postoperative day 2, requiring a chest tube. There were no other complications. CONCLUSIONS The thoracoscopic approach to lung biopsy is the preferred method of obtaining lung tissue for diagnosis. The use of the Endoloop technique is a safe, effective technique in small pediatric patients, avoiding problems with the limited size of the chest cavity in patients less than 10 kg, and avoids the use of large incisions in a small child.
Mitochondrial Protection and Anti-aging Activity of Astragalus Polysaccharides and Their Potential Mechanism

The current study was performed to investigate mitochondrial protection and anti-aging activity of Astragalus polysaccharides (APS) and the potential underlying mechanism. Lipid peroxidation of liver and brain mitochondria was induced by Fe2+–Vit C in vitro. Thiobarbituric acid (TBA) colorimetry was used to measure the content of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS). Mouse liver mitochondrial permeability transition (PT) was induced by calcium overload in vitro and spectrophotometry was used to measure it. The scavenging activities of APS on superoxide anion (O2•−) and hydroxyl radical (•OH), which were produced by reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH)—N-Methylphenazonium methyl sulfate (PMS) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)–Fe2+ system respectively, were measured by 4-nitrobluetetrazolium chloride (NBT) reduction and Fenton reaction colorimetry respectively. The Na2S2O3 titration method was used to measure the scavenging activities of APS on H2O2. APS could inhibit TBARS production, protect mitochondria from PT, and scavenge O2•−, •OH and H2O2 significantly in a concentration-dependent manner respectively. The back of the neck of mice was injected subcutaneously with D-galactose to induce aging at a dose of 100 mg/kg/d for seven weeks. Moreover, the activities of catalase (CAT), surperoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and anti-hydroxyl radical which were assayed by using commercial monitoring kits were increased significantly in vivo by APS. According to this research, APS protects mitochondria by scavenging reactive oxygen species (ROS), inhibiting mitochondrial PT and increasing the activities of antioxidases. Therefore, APS has the effect of promoting health.
Interattribute Distances do not Represent the Identity of Real World Faces

According to an influential view, based on studies of development and of the face inversion effect, human face recognition relies mainly on the treatment of the distances among internal facial features. However, there is surprisingly little evidence supporting this claim. Here, we first use a sample of 515 face photographs to estimate the face recognition information available in interattribute distances. We demonstrate that previous studies of interattribute distances generated faces that exaggerated by 376% this information compared to real-world faces. When human observers are required to recognize faces solely on the basis of real-world interattribute distances, they perform poorly across a broad range of viewing distances (equivalent to 2 to more than 16 m in the real-world). In contrast, recognition is almost perfect when observers recognize faces on the basis of real-world information other than interattribute distances such as attribute shapes and skin properties. We conclude that facial cues other than interattribute distances such as attribute shapes and skin properties are the dominant information of face recognition mechanisms.
Two Approaches to Class-Based Language Models for ASR

In this work, we propose and formulate two different approaches for the language model employed in an Automatic Speech Recognition application. Both approaches make use of class-based language models, but taking into account that the classes are made up of segments or sequences of words. Experiments, carried out over a spontaneous dialogue corpus in Spanish, demonstrate the ability of the proposed models to learn the way in which the language is generated.