Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Integrated circuit reliability prediction based on physics-of-failure models in conjunction with field study

Microelectronics device reliability has been improving with every generation of technology whereas the density of the circuits continues to double approximately every 18 months. We studied field data gathered from a large fleet of mobile communications products that were deployed over a period of 8 years in order to examine the reliability trend in the field. We extrapolated the expected failure rate for a series of microprocessors and found a significant trend whereby the circuit failure rate increases approximately half the rate of the technology, going up by approximately √2 in that same 18 month period.
Explorer Working Memory Units are All in Your Head

We compared two contrasting hypotheses of how multi-featured objects are stored in visual working memory (vWM): as integrated objects or as independent features. A new procedure was devised to examine vWM representations of several concurrently-held objects and their features and our main measure was reaction time (RT), allowing an examination of the realtime search through features and/or objects in an array in vWM. Response speeds to probes with color, shape or both were studied as a function of the number of memorized colored shapes. Four testing groups were created by varying the instructions and the way in which probes with both color and shape were presented. The instructions explicitly either encouraged or discouraged the use of binding information and the task-relevance of binding information was further suggested by presenting probes with both color and shapes as either integrated objects or independent features. Our results show that the unit used for retrieval from vWM depends on the testing situation. Search was fully object-based only when all factors support that basis of search, in which case retrieving two features took no longer than retrieving a single feature. Otherwise, retrieving two features took longer than retrieving a single feature. Additional analyses of change detection latency suggested that, even though different testing situations can result in a stronger emphasis on either the feature dimension or the object dimension, neither one disappears from the representation and both concurrently affect change detection performance.
Expression of functional neurotransmitter receptors in Xenopus oocytes after injection of human brain membranes

The Xenopus oocyte is a very powerful tool for studies of the structure and function of membrane proteins, e.g., messenger RNA extracted from the brain and injected into oocytes leads to the synthesis and membrane incorporation of many types of functional receptors and ion channels, and membrane vesicles from Torpedo electroplaques injected into oocytes fuse with the oocyte membrane and cause the appearance of functional Torpedo acetylcholine receptors and Cl− channels. This approach was developed further to transplant already assembled neurotransmitter receptors from human brain cells to the plasma membrane of Xenopus oocytes. Membranes isolated from the temporal neocortex of a patient, operated for intractable epilepsy, were injected into oocytes and, within a few hours, the oocyte membrane acquired functional neurotransmitter receptors to γ-aminobutyric acid, α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid, kainate, and glycine. These receptors were also expressed in the plasma membrane of oocytes injected with mRNA extracted from the temporal neocortex of the same patient. All of this makes the Xenopus oocyte a more useful model than it already is for studies of the structure and function of many human membrane proteins and opens the way to novel pathophysiological investigations of some human brain disorders.
Unsupervised models of entity reference resolution

A central aspect of natural language understanding consists of linking information across multiple sentences and even combining multiple sources (for example: articles, conversations, blogs and tweets). Understanding this global information structure requires identifying the people, objects, and events as they evolve over a discourse. While natural language processing (NLP) has made great progress on sentence-level tasks such as parsing and machine translation, far less progress has been made on the processing and understanding of large units of language such as a document or a conversation. The initial step in understanding discourse structure is to recognize the entities (people, artifacts, locations, and organizations) being discussed and track their references throughout. Entities are referred to in many ways: with proper names (Barack Obama), nominal descriptions (the president), and pronouns (he or him). Entity reference resolution is the task of deciding to which entity a textual mention refers. Entity reference resolution is influenced by a variety of constraints, including syntactic, discourse, and semantic constraints. Even some of the earliest work (Hobbs, 1977, 1979), has recognized that while syntactic and discourse constraints can be declaratively specified, semantic constraints are more elusive. While past work has successfully learned many of the syntactic and discourse cues, there has yet to be an entity reference resolution system that exploits semantic cues and operationalizes these observations into a coherent model. This dissertation presents unified statistical models for entity reference resolution that can be learned in an unsupervised way (without labeled data) and models soft semantic constraints probabilistically along with hard grammatical constraints. While the linguistic insights which underlie this model have been observed in some of the earliest anaphora resolution literature (Hobbs, 1977, 1979), the machine learning techniques which allow these cues to be used collectively and effectively are relatively recent (Blei et al., 2003; Teh et al., 2006; Blei and Frazier, 2009). In particular, our models use recent insights into Bayesian nonparametric modeling (Teh et al., 2006) to effectively learn entity partition structure when the number of entities is not known ahead of time. The primary contribution of this dissertation is combining the linguistic observations of past researchers with modern structured machine learning techniques. The models presented herein yield state-of-the-art reference resolution results against other systems, supervised or unsupervised.
Effects of Chronic Bryophyllum pinnatum Administration on Wistar Rat Pregnancy

Background: Drugs used in preterm labor (PTL) have side effects. Research into new tocolytic agents is recommended. The plant Bryophyllum pinnatum (Lam.) Oken (Kalanchoe pinnata (Lam.) Pers) is used in Anthroposophic Medicine for PTL, insomnia, and emotional disturbances. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of B. pinnatum mother tincture (MT) on Wistar rats and their fetuses throughout pregnancy. Method: Sixty animals were divided into 6 equal groups: controls C1 and C2 received 1 and 25 × the maximum daily dose of a 30% ethanol / water solution, serving as vehicle of B. pinnatum MT; B1 and B2 received 1 and 25 × the maximum daily dose of B. pinnatum MT; and B3 and B4 received 50 and 100 × B. pinnatum concentrate. The following parameters were assessed: weight gain; maternal and fetal mortality; implantations and resorptions; number and weight of fetuses and placentas; major external fetal malformations. Results: Rat weight gain (excluding fetal and placental weight) was higher in group B4 and lower in group B2. There were no maternal or fetal deaths and no group differences in implantations and resorptions or number and weight of fetuses and placentas. No macroscopic fetal abnormalities were observed at the 4 dosage levels investigated. Conclusion: Daily administration of B. pinnatum MT at high doses to pregnant Wistar rats interfered with maternal weight gain and did not interfere with fetal compartment.
The teleface project multi-modal speech-communication for the hearing impaired

The Teleface Project, a project that aims at evaluating the possibilities for a telephone communication aid for hard of hearing persons, is presented as well as the different parts of the project: audio-visual speech synthesis, visual speech measurement and multimodal speech intelligibility studies. The experiments showed a noticeable intelligibility advantage for the addition of the face information, both for natural and synthetic
Stress of Male Homosexual Students: A Structure Model

Objective: To investigate male homosexual students’ stress and validate the consistency of the male homosexual students’ stress model and empirical data. Materials and Methods: A snowball technique was used to recruit 416 male homosexual students studying in the academic year 2010 at the institutions of higher education in the northeastern region of the Kingdom of Thailand. The instrument used was a questionnaire eliciting data concerning stress with fifteen item, 3 factors namely depressive factor consisted of 5 aspects including feeling of inferiority, loneliness, lament, committing suicide, and despair. The anxiety factor consisted of 5 aspects including feeling fear, jittery, impatient, restless, and terrorized. The hostility factor consisted of 5 aspects including feeling moody, cross, agitated, hassle, and pernicious. The collected data were analyzed through computer program. Results: The male homosexual students showed stress, as a whole, in a moderate level. The confirmatory factor analysis of stress model revealed 3 factors namely depressive anxiety and hostility factor. The results revealed that depressive factor was the most important for stress model, anxiety and hostility factor, followed by factor loading ranking. The validation of a goodness of fitted model yielded ? 2 = 220.55, df = 113, p = . 00, ? 2/df = 1.95, GFI =. 95, AGFI =. 94, CFI = . 99, RMR = . 04 and RMSEA = . 04. Conclusion: The stress model of male homosexual students revealed 3 factors namely depressive anxiety and hostility factors. The variables in this stress model exhibited congruence with the empirical data collected by the researcher at a statistically significant level.
Minimizing Flows for the Monge-Kantorovich Problem

In this work, we formulate a new minimizing flow for the optimal mass transport (Monge-Kantorovich) problem. We study certain properties of the flow, including weak solutions as well as short- and long-term existence. Optimal transport has found a number of applications, includ- ing econometrics, fluid dynamics, cosmology, image processing, automatic control, transportation, statistical physics, shape optimization, expert systems, and meteorology. 1. Introduction. In this paper, we derive a novel gradient descent flow for the computation of the optimal transport map (when it exists) in the Monge-Kantorovich framework. Besides being quite useful for the efficient computation of the transport map, we believe that the flow presented here is quite interesting from a theoretical point of view as well. In the present work, we undertake a study of some of its key
Validation of a Thin-Layer Chromatography for the Determination of Hydrocortisone Acetate and Lidocaine in a Pharmaceutical Preparation

A new specific, precise, accurate, and robust TLC-densitometry has been developed for the simultaneous determination of hydrocortisone acetate and lidocaine hydrochloride in combined pharmaceutical formulation. The chromatographic analysis was carried out using a mobile phase consisting of chloroform + acetone + ammonia (25%) in volume composition 8 : 2 : 0.1 and silica gel 60F254 plates. Densitometric detection was performed in UV at wavelengths 200 nm and 250 nm, respectively, for lidocaine hydrochloride and hydrocortisone acetate. The validation of the proposed method was performed in terms of specificity, linearity, limit of detection (LOD), limit of quantification (LOQ), precision, accuracy, and robustness. The applied TLC procedure is linear in hydrocortisone acetate concentration range of 3.75 ÷ 12.50 μg·spot−1, and from 1.00 ÷ 2.50 μg·spot−1 for lidocaine hydrochloride. The developed method was found to be accurate (the value of the coefficient of variation CV [%] is less than 3%), precise (CV [%] is less than 2%), specific, and robust. LOQ of hydrocortisone acetate is 0.198 μg·spot−1 and LOD is 0.066 μg·spot−1. LOQ and LOD values for lidocaine hydrochloride are 0.270 and 0.090 μg·spot−1, respectively. The assay value of both bioactive substances is consistent with the limits recommended by Pharmacopoeia.
Computing Technology for Learning - in Need of a Radical New Conception

Many have had high expectations for the impact of computer-based technology on educational practice. By and large, these expectations have not been realised. It has become evident that innovative technology alone does not necessarily guarantee progress - nor perhaps even significant change - in educational practice. This has led educational researchers to place greater emphasis on cultural issues that could account for the unexpectedly limited influence of technology-enhanced learning. This perception of the relationship between technology and learning is elaborated in the first section of the paper. It is complemented by a review of an alternative conception of computing, rooted in a methodology for modelling with dependency directed at the development of construals rather than programs, that is far better aligned to the demands of developing environments for learning. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential implications of this approach.
Multivoxel proton MR spectroscopy and hemodynamic MR imaging of childhood brain tumors: preliminary observations.

PURPOSE To assess multivoxel proton MR spectroscopy combined with MR imaging and hemodynamic MR imaging in the evaluation of brain tumors in children and young adults. METHODS Fifteen patients with brain tumors and 10 healthy children underwent MR imaging and MR spectroscopy on a 1.5-T system. Ten patients with tumors had both MR spectroscopy and hemodynamic MR imaging. MR spectroscopy data sets with 1 cm3 to 3.4 cm3 resolution were acquired within 8.5 minutes by using a point-resolved spectroscopic, chemical-shift imaging technique in two dimensions with volume preselection. MR imaging was performed using fast spin-echo techniques. Hemodynamic MR imaging data were acquired every 2.5 seconds at one anatomic level using a spoiled gradient-echo sequence during intravenous bolus administration of contrast material. RESULTS Assessment with multivoxel MR spectroscopy and hemodynamic MR imaging added about 30 minutes to the total MR examination time. Normal tissue exhibited spectral peaks from biologically significant compounds such as N-acetylaspartate (NAA), choline-containing compounds (Cho), and total creatine (tCr). Twelve biopsy-proved tumors exhibited prominent Cho, reduced NAA, variable tCr, and/or lactate or lipids, and two showed increased hemodynamic parameters. Three of the tumors treated with radiation did not reveal prominent levels of Cho. Tissue necrosis had no Cho, NAA, or tCr, and reduced hemodynamics. CONCLUSIONS Preliminary findings by MR spectroscopy combined with MR imaging and hemodynamic MR imaging suggest that regions of active tumor may be differentiated from areas of normal tissue and areas of necrosis. These findings may enable metabolic and hemodynamic characterization of childhood brain tumors as well as suggest their response to therapy.
An Empirical Evaluation of Test Suite Reduction for Boolean Specification-Based Testing (Short Paper)

As the cost of executing and maintaining a large test suite is always expensive, many test suite reduction techniques have been proposed and some empirical studies of test suite reduction techniques have already been reported. The aim of this paper is to provide a guideline for choosing the appropriate test suite reduction techniques for Boolean specification-based testing. Four typical heuristic reduction strategies: G, GE, GRE, and H are introduced to be compared empirically. Furthermore, testing requirement optimization is combined to enhance these four reduction strategies. This paper presents the empirical evaluation of these reduction strategies based on a set of Boolean specifications from TCAS II.
Quantifying Recent Ecological Changes in Remote Lakes of North America and Greenland Using Sediment Diatom Assemblages

Background Although arctic lakes have responded sensitively to 20th-century climate change, it remains uncertain how these ecological transformations compare with alpine and montane-boreal counterparts over the same interval. Furthermore, it is unclear to what degree other forcings, including atmospheric deposition of anthropogenic reactive nitrogen (Nr), have participated in recent regime shifts. Diatom-based paleolimnological syntheses offer an effective tool for retrospective assessments of past and ongoing changes in remote lake ecosystems. Methodology/Principal Findings We synthesized 52 dated sediment diatom records from lakes in western North America and west Greenland, spanning broad latitudinal and altitudinal gradients, and representing alpine (n = 15), arctic (n = 20), and forested boreal-montane (n = 17) ecosystems. Diatom compositional turnover (β-diversity) during the 20th century was estimated using Detrended Canonical Correspondence Analysis (DCCA) for each site and compared, for cores with sufficiently robust chronologies, to both the 19th century and the prior ∼250 years (Little Ice Age). For both arctic and alpine lakes, β-diversity during the 20th century is significantly greater than the previous 350 years, and increases with both latitude and altitude. Because no correlation is apparent between 20th-century diatom β-diversity and any single physical or limnological parameter (including lake and catchment area, maximum depth, pH, conductivity, [NO3 −], modeled Nr deposition, ambient summer and winter air temperatures, and modeled temperature trends 1948–2008), we used Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to summarize the amplitude of recent changes in relationship to lake pH, lake:catchment area ratio, modeled Nr deposition, and recent temperature trends. Conclusions/Significance The ecological responses of remote lakes to post-industrial environmental changes are complex. However, two regions reveal concentrations of sites with elevated 20th-century diatom β-diversity: the Arctic where temperatures are increasing most rapidly, and mid-latitude alpine lakes impacted by high Nr deposition rates. We predict that remote lakes will continue to shift towards new ecological states in the Anthropocene, particularly in regions where these two forcings begin to intersect geographically.
Phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-Triphosphate-Dependent Rac Exchanger 1 (P-Rex-1), a Guanine Nucleotide Exchange Factor for Rac, Mediates Angiogenic Responses to Stromal Cell-Derived Factor-1/Chemokine Stromal Cell Derived Factor-1 (SDF-1/CXCL-12) Linked to Rac Activation, Endothelial Cell Migration, and 

Stromal cell-derived factor-1 (SDF-1/CXCL-12) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which can be secreted by hypoxic tumors, promote the generation of new blood vessels. These potent angiogenic factors stimulate endothelial cell migration via the activation of Rho GTPases and the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/AKT signaling pathway. Thus, characterization of guanine nucleotide exchange factors critical in the angiogenic signaling cascades offers the possibility of identifying novel molecular targets. We demonstrated previously that mammalian target of rapamycin, an important effector and regulator of PI3K/AKT, activates phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-triphosphate-dependent Rac exchanger 1 (P-Rex1), a Rac guanine nucleotide exchange factor identified as a target of Gβγ and PI3K, via direct interactions. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that P-Rex1 is involved in the angiogenic responses elicited by SDF-1 and VEGF. Using a knockdown approach, we demonstrate that P-Rex1 is indeed required for SDF-1 promoted signaling pathway, because there is decreased Rac activation, cell migration, and in vitro angiogenesis in P-Rex1 knockdown cells stimulated with SDF-1. In contrast, P-Rex1 knockdown does not affect responses to VEGF, and signaling to extracellular signal-regulated kinase in response to either angiogenic factor is not sensitive to P-Rex1 knockdown. We also demonstrate that in endothelial cells, VEGF promotes an increase in the expression of endogenous P-Rex1 and the SDF-1 receptor CXCR4, In addition, VEGF-pretreated cells show an increased migratory and angiogenic response to SDF-1, suggesting that VEGF stimulation can complement SDF-1/CXCR4 signaling to induce angiogenesis. We conclude that P-Rex1 is a key element in SDF-1-induced angiogenic responses and a potential target for therapeutic intervention.
Abnormal behavior detection in video protection systems

In this work we present a system to extract in an unsu- pervised manner the main activities that can be observed by a camera monitoring a scene on the long-term and with the ultimate aim to dis- cover abnormal events. To allow for semantically interpretable results, the activities are characterised by referring them to contextual elements of the observed scene. By contextual elements, we understand activity areas such as building entrances, people meeting areas, road areas,. etc. The system thus stars in a first step by the unsupervised learning of the main activity areas of the scene. We employ trajectory-based analysis of mobiles in the video to discover the points of entry and exit of mobiles ap- pearing in the scene and ultimately deduce the different areas of activity. In a second step, mobile objects are then characterised in relation to the learned activity areas. Two kind of behaviours can then be defined either 'staying in a given activity zone' or 'transferring from an activity zone to another' or a sequence of the previous two behaviours. In a third step we employ a high-level clustering algorithm to group mobiles according to their behaviours and discover both, frequent/normal behaviours and unusual/abnormal events. We employ soft computing techniques in the first two steps to handle the uncertainty inherently present in low-level trajectory data. The high-level clustering algorithm is based on relational analysis methodology. We have applied our system in two domains, the monitoring of activities in the hall entrance of an underground station and to traffic control by monitoring a bus reserved street lane. We show that our current results are encouraging.
Pragmatic approaches to aphasia therapy : Promoting aphasics' communicative effectiveness

The functional approach to the treatment of aphasia is embodied in the methods and techniques of Promoting Aphasic's Communicative Effectiveness (PACE), which has had an international influence on the way therapists approach the rehabilitation of aphasia patients. However, there is a shortage of research into the approach and little up-to-date practical guidance on its application. D. Carlomagno's concise book aims to provide a guide to the use and efficacy of PACE methodology which should be useful for aphasia therapists.