Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Control of Clock Jitter in High Speed Data Links

Fast data links require a low phase noise reference clock. An alternative is to reduce the noise of a low cost clock part using the band pass filtering inherent to the clocking architecture in the link. This study has a two-fold objective: to verify clock noise filtering in a 16 Gbps data link, and to prove the degree of filtering is adjustable. Two measured band pass filters are presented. Clock jitter reduction can be achieved by narrowing the difference in the loop bandwidths of the Tx PLL and Rx PLL, and by setting the band pass filter at the noise floor of the reference clock. Therefore, 16 Gbps data links can be designed to filter the reference timing signal, eliminating the need for a clean, expensive clock source.
Looking high and low: Learning place-dependent Gaussian mixture height models for terrain assessment

Assessing terrain ahead of a robot when repeating previously driven safe paths can be accomplished by looking for geometric changes (e.g., due to the appearance of humans or other obstacles). Previous work has shown that the incorporation of data-driven learning and place-dependence are useful aspects of making terrain classification viable in challenging terrain. This paper presents a learning, place-dependent (LPD) terrain classifier that uses a probabilistic model of the terrain to improve detection of small obstacles in uncluttered terrain while avoiding false positives in more challenging environments. Specifically, a Gaussian mixture model is used to account for multi-height terrain cells that arise in heavily vegetated areas (where both a ground plane and overhanging vegetation can occupy the same cell). A variational Bayesian technique is used to automatically determine the number of components required for each cell using a Dirichlet prior on mixing proportions and a Normal-Inverse-Wishart prior on the means and covariances of the components. The probabilistic nature of the model allows for the detection of much smaller obstacles in regions that exhibit low variance in the terrain surface, whilst still avoiding false positives in regions where the terrain is highly cluttered (e.g., vegetation). The algorithm is tested on almost 10 km of autonomous traverse and is shown to be able to classify a wider range of obstacles than two baseline change-detection algorithms based on absolute geometric differences.
Overexpression of virD1 and virD2 genes in Agrobacterium tumefaciens enhances T-complex formation and plant transformation

The VirD1 and VirD2 proteins encoded by an inducible locus of the virulence (vir) region of the Agrobacterium tumefaciens Ti plasmid are required for site-specific nicking at T-DNA border sites. We have determined the nucleotide sequence of a 3.6-kilobase-pair fragment carrying the virD locus from nopaline Ti plasmid pTiC58. In contrast to the previous report (Hagiya et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 82:2669-2673, 1985), we found that the first three open reading frames were capable of encoding polypeptides of 16.1, 49.7, and 21.4 kilodaltons. Deletion analysis demonstrated that the N-terminal conserved domain of VirD2 was absolutely essential for its endonuclease activity. When extra copies of the virD1 and virD2 genes were present in an A. tumefaciens strain carrying a Ti plasmid, increased amounts of T-strand and nicked molecules could be detected at early stages of vir induction. Such strains possessed the ability to transform plants with higher efficiency.
Possible role of the Nt-4/1 protein in macromolecular transport in vascular tissue

The Arabidopsis thaliana 4/1 (At-4/1) protein has a highly α-helical structure with potential to interact both with itself and other protein ligands, including the movement proteins of some plant viruses; the Nicotiana tabacum ortholog (Nt-4/1) has similar structure. Here we describe localization of GUS expression in transgenic N. tabacum seedlings under control of the Nt-4/1 promoter, which indicates that transcription is associated with the veins at certain developmental stages, and especially in the hypocotyl. Viroid accumulation and movement was altered in plants in which 4/1 expression was reduced by virus-induced gene silencing. These localization studies support a role of 4/1 in signaling in the vasculature, including mobility of pathogen-related and cellular RNAs.
Dswitch : Write-aware Dynamic Inclusion Property Switching for Emerging Asymmetric Memory Technologies

Emerging non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies, such as spin-transfer torque RAM (STT-RAM), are attractive options for replacing or augmenting SRAM in implementing last-level caches (LLCs). However, the asymmetric read/write energy and latency associated with NVM introduces new challenges in designing caches where, in contrast to SRAM, dynamic energy from write operations can be responsible for a larger fraction of total cache energy than leakage. These properties lead to the fact that no single traditional inclusion policy being dominant in terms of LLC energy consumption for asymmetric LLCs. We propose a novel selective inclusion policy, Dswitch, to reduce energy consumption in LLCs with asymmetric read/write properties. Dswitch dynamically selects the better inclusion property between non-inclusive and exclusive modes at individual program phases, depending on the cache capacity requirement and the write traffic to the LLC. Results show that Dswitch outperforms other variants of selective inclusion policies and provides up to 48% (average 10%) and 34% (average 2%) energy savings over non-inclusive and exclusive STT-RAM LLCs, respectively. In the system with SRAM/STTRAM hybrid LLCs, Dswitch can also help to save energy with minimal hardware overheads.
Prophage Rs551 and Its Repressor Gene orf14 Reduce Virulence and Increase Competitive Fitness of Its Ralstonia solanacearum Carrier Strain UW551

We previously characterized a filamentous lysogenic bacteriophage, ϕRs551, isolated directly from the race 3 biovar 2 phylotype IIB sequevar 1 strain UW551 of Ralstonia solanacearum grown under normal culture conditions. The genome of ϕRs551 was identified with 100% identity in the deposited genomes of 11 race 3 biovar 2 phylotype IIB sequevar 1 strains of R. solanacearum, indicating evolutionary and biological importance, and ORF14 of ϕRs551 was annotated as a putative type-2 repressor. In this study, we determined the effect of the prophage and its ORF14 on the virulence and competitive fitness of its carrier strain UW551 by deleting the orf14 gene only (the UW551 orf14 mutant), and nine of the prophage’s 14 genes including orf14 and six out of seven structural genes (the UW551 prophage mutant), respectively, from the genome of UW551. The two mutants were increased in extracellular polysaccharide production, twitching motility, expression of targeted virulence and virulence regulatory genes (pilT, egl, pehC, hrPB, and phcA), and virulence, suggesting that the virulence of UW551 was negatively regulated by ϕRs551, at least partially through ORF14. Interestingly, we found that the wt ϕRs551-carrying strain UW551 of R. solanacearum significantly outcompeted the wt strain RUN302 which lacks the prophage in tomato plants co-inoculated with the two strains. When each of the two mutant strains was co-inoculated with RUN302, however, the mutants were significantly out-competed by RUN302 for the same colonization site. Our results suggest that ecologically, ϕRs551 may play an important role by regulating the virulence of and offering a competitive fitness advantage to its carrier bacterial strain for persistence of the bacterium in the environment, which in turn prolongs the symbiotic relationship between the phage ϕRs551 and the R. solanacearum strain UW551. Our study is the first toward a better understanding of the co-existence between a lysogenic phage and its carrier plant pathogenic bacterial strain by determining the effect of the prophage Rs551 and its repressor on the virulence and competitive fitness of its carrier strain UW551 of R. solanacearum.
Linkage disequilibrium between two chromosomally distinct loci associated with increased resistance to chloroquine in Plasmodium falciparum

Chloroquine-resistance in Plasmodium falciparum is associated with polymorphisms in a locus on or near the cg2 gene on chromosome 7, and in the pfmdr1 gene on chromosome 5. In this study we typed P. falciparum DNA from uncomplicated malaria cases in The Gambia in 1990, 1995 and 1996 for size polymorphism in the omega repeat of cg2, for sequence polymorphisms in pfmdr1 at codons 86 and 184, in dhfr at codon 108 and in the msp2 gene. Chloroquine sensitivity tests were conducted in vitro. A significant but incomplete association was found between the presence of the cg2 Dd2-like omega repeat size polymorphism and in vitro resistance, and between the tyr-86 allele of pfmdr1 and in vitro resistance. Furthermore there was strong linkage disequilibrium between the pfmdr1 asn-86 allele and the cg2 not Dd2-like omega repeat allele located on different chromosomes. In contrast, no linkage disequilibrium was found between these alleles and either the dhfr ser-108 allele or the msp2 IC sequence polymorphism. No significant linkage was measured between pfmdr1 asn-86 and phe-184 although these loci are separated only by 296 base pairs. Our results suggest that genetic elements linked to the cg2 and the pfmdr1 genes are important determinants of chloroquine resistance. It can be concluded that the observed linkage disequilibrium is maintained epistatically through selection by chloroquine.
A novel (288delC) mutation in exon 2 of GPIIb associated with type I Glanzmann's thrombasthenia

This work reports the molecular genetic analysis of two patients who suffer mucocutaneous haemorrhages, prolonged bleeding time and failure of platelets to aggregate, either spontaneously or in response to agonists. The absence of platelet surface glycoprotein (GP)IIb–IIIa complexes confirmed the clinical diagnosis of Glanzmann's thrombasthenia (GT). Polymerase chain reaction single‐strand conformation polymorphism (PCR‐SSCP) analysis of exon 2 of GPIIb showed polymorphic bands caused by the homozygous deletion of a cytosine at position 288 relative to the translation start site, causing a shifting of the reading frame and appearance of a premature termination codon. The heterozygous relatives showed a reduced platelet content of GPIIb–IIIa, and a correlation was found between the levels of GPIIb mRNA and surface expression of GPIIb–IIIa complexes. Unlike other mRNAs carrying a nonsense mutation, (288Cdel)GPIIb does not force alternative splicing of GPIIb mRNA. As expected, co‐transfection of Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells with cDNAs encoding GPIIIa and (288delC)GPIIb failed to enhance the surface exposure of GPIIIa. It is concluded that the (288delC)GPIIb mutation is responsible for the thrombasthenic phenotype of the patients. In addition, it has also been determined that heterodimerization of GPIIb–IIIa requires the integrity of exons 2 and 3 of GPIIb.
Benefits and risks of antiobesity agents

In your June editorial, “Is Blockade of Pancreatic Lipase the Answer? ” (1), you suggest that the success of the 2-y clinical trials of orlistat is diminished by the propensity of obese patients to regain weight. I disagree. The North American Association for the Study of Obesity (NAASO) considers a weight loss of ≥5% to be clinically significant (2). In each of the published clinical trials of orlistat, the average weight loss for orlistat-treated patients at the end of the treatment period met or exceeded these guidelines. The efficacy of antiobesity therapies must also be measured by evaluating outcomes other than weight loss. These include positive changes in serum lipids, blood pressure, fasting insulin concentrations, and glycemic control (3, 4). The clinical efficacy of orlistat is greatly enhanced by its effects on these outcomes. As with other treatments for chronic illness, however, efficacy also demands patient compliance with prescribed treatment regimens. The fact that some patients outside the clinical trial environment may have less behavior-modification reinforcement than is provided by a controlled clinical setting should not undermine the potential benefits of orlistat to patients who are motivated to succeed. In addition, you failed to acknowledge the intrinsic design of the study as a weight-regain study rather than a weight-loss study. The editorial suggests that the benefits of weight reduction may be erased over time. Yet, in the same issue of the Journal, Hill et al (5) present data showing that orlistat is significantly more effective than placebo in preventing weight regain. Patients were prescribed a diet of higher energy value to ensure weight maintenance and those who gained weight were asked to maintain the higher weight. Despite the introduction of this bias, after 1 y of treatment with orlistat, nearly one-quarter of patients gained no weight at all or continued to lose weight (5). It is imperative to consider the intention of the initial study design when critiquing the findings of a study.
Osteoporosis in postmenopausal women (Mexico City): 1. Risk factors.

OBJECTIVE To determine risk factors for osteoporosis in postmenopausal women from Mexico City. METHOD The following prognostic variables for low bone density were analyzed in 400 postmenopausal women: age, body mass index (BMI), time since menopause (TM), previous and current hormone replacement therapy (HRT), previous use of corticosteroids, thyroid disease, and previous fractures. All patients were submitted to bone absorptiometry (DEXA) considering the diagnostic criteria for osteoporosis established by the WHO. All variables were analyzed in a bivariate mode, and logistic regression analysis was performed for variables that proved significant (age, TM, and BMI), estimating odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals. RESULTS Age, TM and BMI resulted as significant risk factors for osteoporosis (P < .01), with the following cut-off points: age < or = 48 and >48 years; TM < or = 5 and >5 years; and BMI < or = 32 and >32 for L1-L4 average, BMI < or = 30 and >30 for femoral neck (FN), < or = 27 and >27 for trochanter, and < or = 32 and >32 for Ward's triangle (WT). Odds ratio (OR) for age was 1.57 at L1-L4 average (95% CI 1.01-2.47); OR for TM was 2.09 at L1-L4 average (95% CI 1.24-3.55), 2.05 at FN (95% CI 1.23-3.47) and 1.78 in WT (95% CI 1.05-2.99). OR for BMI was 0.36 at L1-L4 average (95% CI 0.17-0.80), 0.25 at FN (95% CI 0.12-0.5), 0.18 at trochanter (95% CI 0.10-0.32) and 0.29 at WT (95% CI 0.13-0.63). CONCLUSIONS The various risk factors exerted different influences on the bone areas analyzed. Age increased the risk for lumbar spine osteoporosis, TM had a deleterious effect, while BMI showed a beneficial effect on bone density. These factors should be considered to establish the risk of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women, and to decide which patients should be submitted to absorptiometry.
{N′-[(E)-1-(5-Bromo-2-oxidophenyl)ethylidene-κO]-4-methylbenzohydrazidato-κ2 N′,O}(pyridine-κN)nickel(II)

The central NiII atom in the title complex, [Ni(C16H13BrN2O2)(C5H5N)], is in a square-planar trans-N2O2 environment defined by the NO2 donor atoms of the tridentate hydrazone ligand and the monodentate pyridine ligand. The pyridine molecule forms a dihedral angle of 9.99 (11)° with the least-squares plane through the NiN2O2 atoms.
Classification Of Spanish Election Tweets (COSET) with Neural Networks

Obtaining information from tweets has become a field of interest in recent years due to its power to provide information about the insights of the users when any relevant event occurs. This is useful for companies and political parties that take advantage of this information in order to plan their next actions or to know whether or not their current actions are being received well by their public. In this work we show our approach for addressing COSET shared task (a tweet classification problem) using neural networks trained only with the data provided. With this approach we achieve the third position in the competition.
Three-dimensional MBCFET as an ultimate transistor

We successfully fabricated the three-dimensional multibridge channel MOSFET (MBCFET) with the channel length of 240 nm by using epitaxial growth technology and damascene gate process. Its subthreshold swing is 60 mV/dec, a nearly ideal value, resulting from the thin body completely surrounded by the gate. And its current drivability is 4.6 times larger than that of a planar dynamic random access memory (DRAM) MOSFET. This outstanding performance of MBCFET originates from the vertically increased width due to the multibridge channel, and the enhanced mobility due to the reduced vertical electric field in the thin body.
Silicon Schottky Photodetector Based on Non-Conventional Materials

In this work we have investigated the performance of Schottky photodetectors based on materials nonconventionally used to detect near-infrared wavelengths. In the proposed devices the absorption mechanism is based on the internal photoemission effect. Both three-dimensional (sputtered erbium and evaporated germanium) and two-dimensional materials (graphene) have been considered and their performance compared. Our insights show that silicon Schottky photodetectors have the potentialities to play a key role in the telecommunications opening new frontiers in the field of low-cost silicon photonics. Keywords—internal photoemission effect; photodetector; Fabry-Perot; near-infrared; silicon; graphene
Deep Learning of Cell Mixtures in Timelapse Videos

In this paper,we investigate the use of CNN architectures to quantitatively estimate mixtures of smooth muscle cells and fibroblasts. This is a nontrivial task as both cell behavior and cell structure in time-lapse images contribute to the quantitative differences. We show that a new architecture, the Differerential Convolutional Neural Network (dCNN) outperforms the traditional architecture when provided temporal features as well as single images as input (binary cross entropy: 0.526 dCNN vs 0.535 CNN). We hope that this work can be extended to studying more complex mixtures (i.e., mixtures of more than one cell type) and can be used for non-invasive clinical screens of stem cell differentiation and cancer cells in vitro.
Effects of static stretching on functional capacity in older women: randomized controlled trial

Gallo LH, Gurjão ALD, Gobbi S, Ceccato M, Prado AKG, Jambassi Filho JC, Gomes ARS. Effects of Static Stretching on Functional Capacity in Older Women: Randomized Controlled Trial. JEPonline 2015;18(5):13-22. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of static stretching on functional capacity of older women. Thirty-one older women (68.2 ± 7.4 yrs) were randomly assigned to two groups: Control Group (n = 16) and Training Group (n = 15). Functional capacity was assessed by a motor test battery and the global functional fitness index (GFFI) calculated by summing the scores of all motor tests. Maximal voluntary contraction was evaluated during unilateral isometric knee extension. After 8 wks of training, the TG had significantly (P<0.001) better flexibility levels (59.0 ± 9.9 cm) than the CG (49.5 ± 10.1 cm). The TG also improved the GFFI overall classification, which changed from "Fair" (200-299 points) to "Good" (300-399 points), while the CG remained classified as "Fair". No difference was observed between groups for the other variables. Thus, the findings indicate that static stretching training is effective in improving flexibility and general functional activities in older women.
Forecasting Stock Market Using Wavelet Transforms and Neural Networks: An integrated system based on Fuzzy Genetic algorithm (Case study of price index of Tehran Stock Exchange)

The jamor purpose of the present research is to predict the total stock market index of Tehran Stock Exchange, using a combined method of Wavelet transforms, Fuzzy genetics, and neural network in order to predict the active participations of finance market as well as macro decision makers.To do so, first the prediction was made by neural network, then a series of price index was decomposed by wavelet transform and the prediction made by neural network was repeated, finally, the extracted pattern from the neural network was stated through discernible rules using Fuzzy theory. The main focus of this paper is based on a theory in which investors and traders achieve a method for predicting stock market. Concerning the results of previous researches, which confirmed the relative superiority of non-linear models in price index prediction, an appropriate model has been offered in this research by combining the non-linear methods such as Wavelet transforms, Fuzzy genetics, and neural network, The results indicated the superiority of the designed system in predicting price index of Tehran Stock Exchange.
Recognition of speech from live sports coverage using acoustic and language model adaptation

In this paper we use large vocabulary continuous speech recognition to detect highlight scenes in live radio coverage of baseball games and extract information for indexing (keywords). To make the speech recognition unit more robust we perform MLLR and MAP adaptation of the acoustic models proposing a two-level adaptation procedure using both supervised and unsupervised adaptation. By performing acoustic model adaptation, we are able to adapt to the announcer’s speaking style and the recording environment, achieving an improvement of 28% in word accuracy over the baseline. Regarding the language model, we performed adaptation via language model fusion, created classes for players’ and commentators’ names, and adjusted the pronunciation dictionary, resulting in an improvement of 13% in word accuracy over the baseline. By combined adaptation of both models we achieved an improvement of 38% in word accuracy. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 36(8): 40–48, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley. com). DOI 10.1002/scj.20314
Summary and discussion of : “ Capturing Heterogeneity in Gene Expression Studies by Surrogate Variable Analysis ”

Gene expression study is well known to focus on finding association between expression levels of particular genes and some interesting variables, for example, a disease state. In such studies, besides the primary variable of interest, some other covariates are usually measured and included in the model of association tests. However, it is not possible to measure all the variables related to gene expression. In addition to the known and measured variables, there might be some other unknown and unmeasured factors, which would contribute to the heterogeneity of expression levels of particular genes. Their effect cannot be simply ignored as the unmodeled factors, either biological or technical, may induce extra variability in the gene expression, which would decrease the power to detect the association between gene expression and the primary variable. Or they might introduce spurious signals of the association as the variation on the gene expression could be confounded by a unmodeled factor and the primary variable.The model of Surrogate variable analysis(SVA) was designed to address this problem. In this paper, SVA was shown to able to identify and estimate the components of Expression Heterogeneity(EH), and parse the signal and noise more accurately and reproducibly.