Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
3D Monte Carlo study of scaled SOI FinFETs using 2D Schrödinger quantum corrections

SOI Si FinFETs scaled to gate lengths of 12.8 nm, 10.7 nm and 8.1 nm are simulated using 3D Finite Element Monte Carlo simulations with 2D Schrödinger based quantum corrections considering two cross-sections: rectangular and triangular, with rounded corners, in the preferred (110) channel orientation. The rectangular FinFETs give larger drive currents per perimeter than the triangular FinFETs but are outperformed by the triangular ones when normalised by channel area. In the scaling process, the drive current increases by about 5% (4%) and 5% (1%) for rectangular (triangular) cross-sections with nearly ideal sub-thresholds of 72 (66) mV/dec. The effect of interface roughness increases during the scaling from 3% to 12% and affects stronger the triangular cross-section FinFETs.
The widening gap in black and white marriage rates: the impact of population composition and differential marriage propensities.

Data from the North Carolina Division of Health Services the Virginia Department of Health the 1970 Public Use Sample tapes and the 1980 Public Use Microdata tapes from the US Bureau of the Census show that marriage rates in Virginia and North Carolina declined between 1970 and 1980. Analysis of the data by race sex and educational level showed that the rate of black marriages declined substantially more than white marriage rates at all levels of education. This paper attempts to determine whether the decline in the black marriage rate is due to factors in the composition of the black population or to differences in the propensity of blacks to marry. Compositional differences include the following: 1) black women outnumber black men; 2) black women have more education than black men and therefore must marry "down" or not at all; and 3) fewer black men have the potential for stable remunerative employment which would qualify them as good providers. Differences in the propensity to marry include the following: 1) blacks are more likely to form consensual unions and rely more on kinship ties outside the nuclear family; 2) black women have low expectations of marriage especially as regards male financial support and they therefore fear being exploited; 3) low income black women fear that marriage will reduce their welfare benefits without the compensation of a regular income-earning husband; 4) public assistance enables black women to have children without marriage; 5) black men hold more traditional beliefs about womens role; and 6) educated black women do not want to marry men with less education. When the data are examined the real effect of compositional differences diminishes. There are more black women than men but the difference is exaggerated because black men are undercounted in census data by 1-44% depending on age and the corrected excess of black women is about the same as that for white women. Interracial marriages reduce the pool of eligible black men by only 2.7%. Moreover although black women do tend to marry men with less education than themselves this pattern is consequence of marital propensity rather than limited availability. Black marriage propensities decline substantially at all educational levels and the data clearly show that marriage propensities play a far larger role than compositional factors on the declining rate of black marriages.
A WEIBULL WEAROUT TEST: FULL BAYESIAN APPROACH

The Full Bayesian Signi cance Test (FBST) for precise hypotheses is presented, with some applications relevant to reliability theory. The FBST is an alternative to signi cance tests or, equivalently, to p-values. In the FBST we compute the evidence of the precise hypothesis. This evidence is the probability of the complement of a credible set \tangent" to the sub-manifold (of the parameter space) that de nes the null hypothesis. We use the FBST in an application requiring a quality control of used components, based on remaining life statistics.
Bis(2-dimethylamino-1,10-phenanthroline-κ2 N,N′)bis(thiocyanato-κN)nickel(II) methanol disolvate

In the title complex, [Ni(NCS)2(C14H13N3)2]·2CH3OH, the NiII atom lies on a crystallographic twofold rotation axis and is in a slightly distorted octahedral NiN6 coordination environment. The crystal structure is stabilized by a combination of weak π–π stacking interactions between symmetry-related 1,10-phenanthroline ligands [centroi–centroid distance between benzene rings = 3.5936 (18) Å] and weak O—H⋯S, C—H⋯O and C—H⋯S hydrogen bonds between methanol and complex molecules.
Shortest Path and Maximum Flow Problems Under Service Function Chaining Constraints

With the advent of Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Physical Network Functions (PNFs) are gradually being replaced by Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) that are hosted on general purpose servers. Depending on the call flows for specific services, the packets need to pass through an ordered set of network functions (physical or virtual) called Service Function Chains (SFC) before reaching the destination. Conceivably for the next few years during this transition, these networks would have a mix of PNFs and VNFs, which brings an interesting mix of network problems that are studied in this paper: (1) How to find an SFC-constrained shortest path between any pair of nodes? (2) What is the achievable SFC-constrained maximum flow? (3) How to place the VNFs such that the cost (the number of nodes to be virtualized) is minimized, while the maximum flow of the original network can still be achieved even under the SFC constraint? In this work, we will try to address such emerging questions. First, for the SFC-constrained shortest path problem, we propose a transformation of the network graph to minimize the computational complexity of subsequent applications of any shortest path algorithm. Second, we formulate the SFC-constrained maximum flow problem as a fractional multicommodity flow problem, and develop a combinatorial algorithm for a special case of practical interest. Third, we prove that the VNFs placement problem is NP-hard and present an alternative Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulation. Finally, we conduct simulations to elucidate our theoretical results.
Differential Distribution of Intracellular Glutamate Receptors in Dendrites

Glutamate receptors are synthesized in the cell body and transported in intracellular compartments to the target synapse. The objective of the present study was to analyze the intracellular pool of glutamate receptors and determine whether the intracellular pool was related to the synaptic distribution of the receptors. As a model system, we chose the fusiform cell of the dorsal cochlear nucleus for which we have previously demonstrated that receptors are selectively targeted to synapses on apical and basal dendrites. A combination of retrograde tracing and postembedding immunogold labeling was used to quantify intracellular receptors in segments of apical and basal dendrites. Immunolabeling for GluR4 and mGluR1α is present at synapses on basal dendrites but not on apical dendrites, whereas immunolabeling for GluR2/3 is present at both populations of synapses. In the analysis of intracellular pools, we find that GluR2/3 is equally distributed in apical and basal dendrites, whereas GluR4 and mGluR1α are more concentrated in basal dendrites than in apical dendrites. These findings indicate that the distribution of intracellular receptors is related to that of synaptic receptors and suggest that a mechanism exists in neurons to target proteins to dendritic domains soon after synthesis. We found no evidence for the existence of a pool of intracellular receptors, which could represent a receptor reserve, near the postsynaptic density. Receptors were often found in clusters associated with tubulovesicular membranes of the endoplasmic reticulum, identified with immunoglobulin binding protein (BIP) or calnexin, suggesting that this organelle is involved in receptor transport in dendrites.
Convivial Greenstreets as Force and Context for Urban Sustainability

This paper introduces the concept of convivial greenstreets and explores their potential contributions to sustainability and inclusive place making in the city. It begins with a focus on private-sector gardens and 'green' paraphernalia along the confines of the western European city street. I observe that particular kinds and intensities of gardens/gardening seem to be serving as both context for, and generator of, conviviality—a crucial trait of local civil society that seeks to advance a sustainability agenda. Next, through an interplay of observed phenomenon and broad reading of social science and planning literatures, I build a working definition that ties together notions of street-side gardening, interacting agents (e.g. resident-gardeners, merchant-gardeners, passersby, etc.), forms of conviviality, and spatial and physical contexts. With this in hand, an initial typology is constructed, with type examples drawn from my photo-inventory corpus. I discuss how streets that pass the intertwined tests of 'green-ness' and open-armed conviviality seem to express a range of positive forces, from idiosyncratic place attachment and personal expression to shared cultural pluralism and ecological activism as counterpoints to globalization. To prompt further social science inquiry I suggest that, beyond the provision of ecosystem services, convivial greenstreets may provide spatial and ontological contexts within which sustainability capital can accrue within the evolving city neighborhood. Lastly, several recommendations are offered as to how convivial greenstreets may be nurtured by policy makers and urban designers.
Social rhythm regularity and the onset of affective episodes in bipolar spectrum individuals.

OBJECTIVES Research suggests that bipolar disorder individuals may have less social rhythm regularity than normal controls and that this may contribute to their affective symptoms and episodes. This study examined whether regularity prospectively predicted time to onset of major depressive, hypomanic and manic episodes in a sample with bipolar spectrum disorders. METHODS We recruited 414 undergraduate students from Temple University and University of Wisconsin diagnosed with cyclothymia, bipolar II disorder, or with no affective disorder (normal controls). Participants completed the Social Rhythm Metric at Time 1 and structured interviews approximately every four months for an average follow-up period of 33 months. RESULTS Participants diagnosed with cyclothymia and bipolar II disorder reported significantly fewer regular activities than normal controls, and approximately half of these participants experienced a worsening course of their illness over the study duration. Survival analyses indicated that both diagnosis and social rhythm regularity significantly predicted the time to participants' first prospective onset of major depressive, hypomanic and manic episodes. CONCLUSION Consistent with the social zeitgeber theory, bipolar spectrum participants reported less social rhythm regularity than normal controls, which prospectively predicted the survival time to affective episodes.
3 Evolutionary-Based Control Approaches for Multirobot Systems

In this chapter, we summarize and synthesize our investigations of the use of evolutionary algorithms to automatically program robots, particularly for application to space exploration. In the Space Robotics Group at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, we were motivated to begin work in this area a decade ago when the concept of network science became popular in the space exploration community. Network science commonly refers to science that requires a distribution of possibly simultaneous measurement devices or a distribution of platforms on a planetary body. Consider, for example, seismology studies of an alien body that will require sending a signal from one point on the surface to be read at several other points in order to analyze the material characteristics of the body. Or, consider the development of a very-low frequency array (VLFA) on the Moon to allow for heretofore unattainable astrophysical observations using radio astronomy. Such an observatory will require a number of dipole units deployed over a region of a few hundred square kilometres. Our original thoughts were that these and other network science experiments could be implemented using a network of small mobile robots, similar to a colony of ants. It is possible for millions of ants to act as a superorganism through local pheromone communication. Thomas (1974) perhaps describes this phenomenon best:
Image retrieval using Markov Random Fields and global image features

In this paper, we propose a direct image retrieval framework based on Markov Random Fields (MRFs) that exploits the semantic context dependencies of the image. The novelty of our approach lies in the use of different kernels in our non-parametric density estimation together with the utilisation of configurations that explore semantic relationships among concepts at the same time as low-level features, instead of just focusing on correlation between image features like in previous formulations. Hence, we introduce several configurations and study which one achieve the best performance. Results are presented for two datasets, the usual benchmark Corel 5k and the collection proposed by the 2009 edition of the ImageCLEF campaign. We observe that, using MRFs, performance increases significantly depending on the kernel used in the density estimation for the two datasets. With respect to the the language model, best results are obtained for the configuration that exploits dependencies between words together with dependencies between words and visual features. For the Corel 5k dataset, our best result corresponds to a mean average precision of 0.32, which compares favourably with the highest value ever obtained, 0.35, achieved by Makadia et al. [22] albeit with different features. For the ImageCLEF09 collection, we obtained 0.32, as mean average precision.
Depth-Based Visual Servoing Using Low-Accurate Arm

This paper proposes a visual-servoing method dedicated to grasping of daily-life objects. In order to obtain an affordable solution, we use a low-accurate robotic arm. Our method corrects errors by using an RGB-D sensor. It is based on SURF invariant features which allows us to perform object recognition at a high frame rate. We define regions of interest based on depth segmentation, and we use them to speed-up the recognition and to improve reliability. The system has been tested on a real-world scenario. In spite of the lack of accuracy of all the components and the uncontrolled environment, it grasps objects successfully on more than 95% of the trials.
Two modules in the BRC repeats of BRCA2 mediate structural and functional interactions with the RAD51 recombinase

The breast and ovarian cancer suppressor protein BRCA2 controls the RAD51 recombinase in reactions that lead to homologous DNA recombination (HDR). BRCA2 binds RAD51 via eight conserved BRC repeat motifs of approximately 35 amino acids, each with a varying capacity to bind RAD51. BRC repeats both promote and inhibit RAD51 assembly on different DNA substrates to regulate HDR, but the structural basis for these functions is unclear. Here, we demarcate two tetrameric clusters of hydrophobic residues in the BRC repeats, interacting with distinct pockets in RAD51, and show that the co-location of both modules within a single BRC repeat is necessary for BRC–RAD51 binding and function. The two modules comprise the sequence FxxA, known to inhibit RAD51 assembly by blocking the oligomerization interface, and a previously unrecognized tetramer with the consensus sequence LFDE, which binds to a RAD51 pocket distinct from this interface. The LFDE motif is essential in BRC repeats for modes of RAD51 binding both permissive and inhibitory to RAD51 oligomerization. Targeted insertion of point mutations in RAD51 that disrupt the LFDE-binding pocket impair its assembly at DNA damage sites in living cells. Our findings suggest a model for the modular architecture of BRC repeats that provides fresh insight into the mechanisms regulating homologous DNA recombination.
Image Segmentation with GVF Flow and Directional Information

Intensity inhomogeneity is a common phenomenon in real-world images and may cause many difficulties in image segmentation. To overcome these difficulties, we propose a new active contour model combining the GVF flow and the directional information about edge location. On one hand, we incorporate the GVF flow into the proposed model to segment the images with intensity inhomogeneity efficiently. On the other hand, we construct an alignment term with the directional information to achieve sub-pixel accuracy and relax the placement of the initial curve. Moreover, a regularization term is also included in our model to ensure accurate computation and avoid time-consuming re-initializations. Experimental results on several synthetic and real images show that the proposed model is effective.
Derivation of parameters used in Spectrum for eligibility for antiretroviral therapy and survival on antiretroviral therapy

Background The Spectrum projection package uses estimates of national HIV incidence, demographic data and other assumptions to describe the consequences of the HIV epidemic in low and middle-income countries. The default parameters used in Spectrum are updated every 2 years as new evidence becomes available to inform the model. This paper reviews the default parameters that define the course of HIV progression among adults and children in Spectrum. Methods For adults, data available from published and grey literature and data from the ART-LINC International epidemiologic Database to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) collaboration were combined to estimate survival among those who started antiretroviral therapy (ART). For children, a review of published material on survival on ART and survival on ART and cotrimoxazole was used to derive survival probabilities. Historical data on the distribution of CD4 cell counts and CD4 cell percentages by age among children who were not treated (before treatment was available) were used to progress children from seroconversion to different CD4 cell levels. Results Based on the updated evidence estimated survival among adults aged over 15 years in the first year on ART was 86%, while in subsequent years survival was estimated at 90%. Survival among children during the first year on ART was estimated to be 85% and for subsequent years 93%. Discussion The revised default parameters based on additional data will make Spectrum estimates more accurate than previous rounds of estimates.
Do Amoral Familism and Political Distrust Really Affect North–South Differences in Italy?

Especially in southern Italy, Banfield’s amoral familism is considered an obstacle to the formation of associations and growth of political participation. This article discusses Banfield’s concept, showing that it has been vulgarized merely as familism and, in particular, demonstrates that Banfield intended amoral familism to be understood in terms of political distrust. We investigated whether amoral familism or political distrust, operationalized as an individual difference variable, mediated the relationships between personality traits, personal values, and conventional and unconventional political acts, controlling for differences in political attitude. We recruited 405 participants, distributed across north, central, and southern Italy, to complete a questionnaire on political participation that also assessed Big Five personality factors, values, sociability and political attitude (expertise, interest, self-efficacy), and a new scale assessing amoral familism as a form of political distrust. Regression analyses were used to identify the best predictors of political acts, then structural equation modeling was used to test a model of political participation. Like political attitudes, familism mediated the relationships between personality traits, especially “openness to experience” and “taking conventional and unconventional political acts. ” However, our data do not confirm the stereotype that northern and southern Italians differ in their tendency to amoral familism as defined by Banfield.
Miniaturized patch antenna on substrate loaded with ring-shape metamaterial

A miniaturized microstrip patch antenna loaded on a ring shape metamaterial is proposed. This antenna is designed to work at Wi-Fi band of 5.725-5.825 GHz. Miniaturization of 68% with good radiation efficiency of 72% is achieved. The unique design of metamaterial has resulted in a small overall volume of the antenna.
Standardized Evaluation of Haptic Rendering Systems

The development and evaluation of haptic rendering algorithms presents two unique challenges. Firstly, the haptic information channel is fundamentally bidirectional, so the output of a haptic environment is fundamentally dependent on user input, which is difficult to reliably reproduce. Additionally, it is difficult to compare haptic results to real-world, “gold standard” results, since such a comparison requires applying identical inputs to real and virtual objects and measuring the resulting forces, which requires hardware that is not widely available. We have addressed these challenges by building and releasing several sets of position and force information, collected by physically scanning a set of real-world objects, along with virtual models of those objects. We demonstrate novel applications of this data set for the development, debugging, optimization, evaluation, and comparison of haptic rendering algorithms.
Spatial Aggregation and the Ecological Fallacy.

In general, ecological studies are characterized by being based on grouped data, with the groups often corresponding to geographical areas, so that spatial aggregation has been carried out. Such studies have a long history in many disciplines including political science [33], geography [40], sociology [49] and epidemiology and public health [39]. Our terminology will reflect the latter application, though the ideas generalize across disciplines. Ecological studies are prone to unique drawbacks, in particular the potential for ecological bias, which describes the difference between estimated associations based on ecologicaland individual-level data. Ecological data are a special case of spatially misaligned data, a discussion of which is the subject of Chapter 29.
Early Detection and Forecasting of Research Trends

Identifying and forecasting research trends is of critical importance for a variety of stakeholders, including researchers, academic publishers, institutional funding bodies, companies operating in the innovation space and others. Currently, this task is performed either by domain experts, with the assistance of tools for exploring research data, or by automatic approaches. The constant increase of research data makes the second solution more appropriate, howeverautomatic methods suffer from a number of limitations. For instance, they are unable to detect emerging but yet unlabelled research areas (e.g., Semantic Web before 2000). Furthermore, they usually quantify the popularity of a topic simply in terms of the number of related publications or authors for each year; hence they can provide good forecasts only on trends which have existed for at least 3-4 years. This doctoral work aims at solving these limitations by providing a novel approach for the early detection and forecasting of research trends that will take advantage of the rich variety of semantic relationships between research entities (e.g., authors, workshops, communities) and of social media data (e.g., tweets, blogs).