Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding deposition rate loss in high power impulse magnetron sputtering: I. Ionization-driven electric fields

The lower deposition rate for high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS) compared with direct current magnetron sputtering for the same average power is often reported as a drawback. The often invoked reason is back-attraction of ionized sputtered material to the target due to a substantial negative potential profile, sometimes called an extended presheath, from the location of ionization toward the cathode. Recent studies in HiPIMS devices, using floating-emitting and swept-Langmuir probes, show that such extended potential profiles do exist, and that the electric fields Ez directed toward the target can be strong enough to seriously reduce ion transport to the substrate. However, they also show that the potential drops involved can vary by up to an order of magnitude from case to case. There is a clear need to understand the underlying mechanisms and identify the key discharge variables that can be used for minimizing the back-attraction. We here present a combined theoretical and experimental analysis of the problem of electric fields Ez in the ionization region part of HiPIMS discharges, and their effect on the transport of ionized sputtered material. In particular, we have investigated the possibility of a ‘sweet spot’ in parameter space in which the back-attraction of ionized sputtered material is low. It is concluded that a sweet spot might possibly exist for some carefully optimized discharges, but probably in a rather narrow window of parameters. As a measure of how far a discharge is from such a window, a Townsend product ΠTownsend is proposed. A parametric analysis of ΠTownsend shows that the search for a sweet spot is complicated by the fact that contradictory demands appear for several of the externally controllable parameters such as high/low working gas pressure, short/long pulse length, high/low pulse power and high/low magnetic field strength.
Layoffs and Survivors' Career Motivation

How do survivors of downsizing react to the initial effort? What sort of impact does it have on career objectives, commitment to the organization, job satisfaction? Do workers realize that over the past decade the traditionally linear career path has been warped, skewed, and in some cases split? How can organizations improve their post-downsizing work environment by managing survivors' career motivation? Fowke provides some insights into downsizing effects on career motivation by considering factors that contribute to or detract from positive career motivations, factors including affective and continuance commitment, trust in management, social justice, psychological states, job insecurity, and perceptions of management planning. The author tests a model including these factors by surveying a large company's layoff survivors, and presents positive results, identifying the various relationships between factors and positive post-layoff outcomes, and contributing suggestions for change to both individuals' behaviours and organizational approaches regarding career motivation. In the end, Fowke calls for shared responsibility to develop career motivation.
Optimal Life Cycle Unemployment Insurance

We argue that US welfare would rise if unemployment insurance were increased for younger and decreased for older workers. This is because the young tend to lack the means to smooth consumption during unemployment and want jobs to accumulate high-return human capital. So unemployment insurance is most valuable to them, while moral hazard is mild. By calibrating a life cycle model with unemployment risk and endogenous search effort, we find that allowing unemployment replacement rates to decline with age yields sizeable welfare gains to US workers.
A Novel Weighted Multidimensional Scaling Analysis for Time-of-Arrival-Based Mobile Location

Recently, multidimensional scaling (MDS) algorithms have been verified to be robust for the mobile localization. However, they do not achieve the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB), even though the measurement noise is small. In this paper, a novel weighted MDS method is proposed for time-of-arrival based mobile location. It can achieve the CRLB at moderate noise level before the threshold effect occurs. In addition, unlike the classical MDS methods depending on the eigendecomposition of the scalar product matrix, the proposed method is based on the matrix itself directly, which in turn decreases the computational complexity.
Structural web search engine

We present a new approach in web search engines. The web creates new challenges for information retrieval. The vast improvement in information access is not the only advantage resulting from the keyword search. Additionally, much potential exists for analyzing interests and relationships within the structure of the web. The creation of a hyperlink by the author of a web page explicitly represents a relationship between the source and destination pages which demonstrates the hyperlink structure between web pages. Our web search engine searches not only for the keywords in the web pages, but also for the hyperlink structure between them. Comparing the results of structural web search versus keyword-based search indicates an improved ability to access desired information. We also discuss steps toward mining the queries input to the structural web search engine.
A Wavelet-Packet Based Speech Coding Algorithm

The trend toward real-time, low-bit-rate speech coders dictates current research efforts in speech compression. Such coders are desirable for a number of applications including transmission of digital speech signals and multimedia applications. Multimedia and video conferencing, dynamic web-site access with voice and video introduces the idea of using voice over the Internet. This idea also opens up new commercial opportunities in the area of self-service and other service applicability [1]. Another area of interest, where speech compression has gained widespread attention is the area of cellular and mobile stations. Both Internet and wireless communications channels are characterized by limited bandwidth conditions, which determine the research efforts of designing low bit-rate speech coders with admissible quality. There have been a number of speech coders developed for lossy coding of speech signals, and recently linear predictive coders (LPC) have been widely used for achieving low bit-rate speech [2]. They are based on the speech production mechanism and widely use the periodicity and the autoregressive structure of the speech signal. They differ mainly in the methods, aimed at coding the LPC residual carrying information about the exciting source. The RLP based GSM standard [3] for mobile communications and the G.728 CELP based standard for computer network communications are most commonly applied [4]. They have fixed bit-rate based on the linear predictive models used. An alternative, offering variable bit-rate speech coders is based on certain decorrelating linear transform and successive transform coefficients quantization. The wavelet transform (WT) has been most widely used because of its nice properties. It is
Antioxidant activity of Hedychium spicatum Buch.- Ham. rhizomes

The different extracts of Hedychium spicatum Buch. -Ham. (Zingiberaceae) were evaluated for antioxidant activity by 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging activity and reducing power determination method. Total phenol and total flavonoid content in each extracts were also determined. Gallic acid and ascorbic acid were used as reference standards. They exhibited strong antioxidant DPPH radical scavenging activity with IC50 value of 0.43, 259.1, 386.7, 414.3, 77.01 and 51.54 μg/mL for gallic acid, petroleum ether, benzene, chloroform, methanol and aqueous extracts of rhizomes of H. spicatum, respectively. The absorbance for reducing power was found to be 0.540, 0.036, 0.042, 0.046, 0.050 and 0.072 for ascorbic acid, petroleum ether, benzene, chloroform, methanol and aqueous extracts of rhizomes of H. spicatum, respectively. Total phenol content was found to be 13, 33, 24, 32 and 35 mg equivalent to gallic acid per gram of petroleum ether, benzene, chloroform, methanol and aqueous extracts of rhizomes of H. spicatum, respectively. Total flavonoid content was found to be 4.6, 7, 7.5, 34.5 and 40 mg equivalent to rutin per gram of petroleum ether, benzene, chloroform, methanol and aqueous extracts of rhizomes of H. spicatum, respectively. The strongest antioxidant activity of the methanol and aqueous extracts could be due to the presence of flavonoids and phenols.
Where and Who? Automatic Semantic-Aware Person Composition

Image compositing is a method used to generate realistic yet fake imagery by inserting contents from one image to another. Previous work in compositing has focused on improving appearance compatibility of a user selected foreground segment and a background image (i.e. color and illumination consistency). In this work, we instead develop a fully automated compositing model that additionally learns to select and transform compatible foreground segments from a large collection given only an input image background. To simplify the task, we restrict our problem by focusing on human instance composition, because human segments exhibit strong correlations with their background and because of the availability of large annotated data. We develop a novel branching Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) that jointly predicts candidate person locations given a background image. We then use pre-trained deep feature representations to retrieve person instances from a large segment database. Experimental results show that our model can generate composite images that look visually convincing. We also develop a user interface to demonstrate the potential application of our method.
Retrieving phrases by selecting the history: application to automatic speech recognition

This paper focuses on statistical language modeling for automatic speech recognition. We present a method which aims at finding linguistic units in corpus. This method, called the Selected History Principle, consists in finding strong distant relationships between words. The new units are phrases made up of basic units of our vocabulary linked by these distant relationships. We adapt the multigram principle to large vocabularies in order to introduce an optimal subset of these sequences into a bigram model. The bigram model using these sequences outperforms the baseline bigram model by 21% in terms of Perplexity, and increases the recognition rate of the large vocabulary system Sirocco by 8.7%. The word error rate is decreased by 12.7%.
An open source multi-agent software toolkit for intelligent power distribution PROJECT PROPOSAL SUMMARY

The electricity industry in many countries is facing new pressures due to escalating demand and environmental concerns such as climate change. The application of information technology to power systems in order to make electricity grids intelligent is gaining momentum as a means to achieve electricity networks which are more efficient, can accommodate greater amounts of distributed and renewable energy resources and provide demand management. This document presents a project proposal for the development of an open source multi-agent software toolkit for intelligent power distribution to support learning, research and collaboration in this area. An introduction to the topic of intelligent power grids and an overview of the purpose and aims of the project are presented. Introduction This document presents a project proposal for the development of an open source toolkit for developing multi-agent software systems for power system control. The project is being undertaken as part of an honours year thesis towards a Bachelor of Software Engineering degree. The Future of Electricity Grids The Need for Change The electricity industry around the world is facing new challenges driven by issues such as environmental concerns, greater need for energy efficiency, diversification of energy sources and market deregulation. Current grid systems are proving inadequate to address these issues and have been termed both inefficient and unreliable [1]. One key issue is the fact that there is a growing trend to introduce renewable energy sources as well as other types of electricity generation distributed throughout the grid [2], but existing systems were designed only to support centralised remote generation sites [3]. These distributed resources present a substantial change to way the electricity infrastructure is managed and controlled [2]. In order to cope with such issues there is agreement within the electricity industry that a massive transformation is inevitable [1]. The Intelligent Grid The intelligent grid, or smart grid, refers to the application of information technology to power systems, and is expected to address many of the shortcomings of the current grid [1]. Electricity grids are expected to evolve into networks in which the nodes become active and intelligent and a vast number of system parts communicate with and influence each other [2]. The goals of a more intelligent grid would be to provide utility companies with precise control over their assets and services as well to empower consumers to adjust
Effect of perinatal asphyxia on thyroid‐stimulating hormone and thyroid hormone levels

Aim: To compare serum concentrations of thyroid hormones—T4, T3, free T4 (FT4) and reverse T3 (rT3)—and thyroid‐stimulating hormone (TSH) found in the umbilical cord blood of term newborns with and without asphyxia and those found in their arterial blood collected between 18 and 24 h after birth. A further aim of the study was to assess the association between severity of hypoxic‐ischemic encephalopathy and altered thyroid hormone and TSH levels, and between mortality and FT4 levels in the arterial blood of newborns between 18 and 24 h of life. Methods: A case‐control study was carried out. The case group comprised 17 term newborns (Apgar score ≤3 and ≤5 at the first and fifth minutes; umbilical cord blood pH ≤7.15) who required bag and mask ventilation for at least one minute immediately after birth. The control group consisted of 17 normal, term newborns (Apgar score ≥8 and ≥9 at the first and fifth minutes; umbilical cord blood pH ≥7.2). Cord blood and arterial blood samples were collected immediately after birth and 18 to 24 h after birth, respectively, and were used in the blood gas analysis and to determine serum concentrations of T4, T3, FT4, rT3 and TSH by radioimmunoassay. All newborns were followed‐up until hospital discharge or death. Results: Gestational age, birthweight, sex, size for gestational age, mode of delivery and skin color (white and non‐white) were similar for both groups. No differences were found in mean levels of cord blood TSH, T4, T3 and FT4 between the groups. In the samples collected 18 to 24 h after birth, mean levels of TSH, T4, T3 and FT4 were significantly lower in the asphyxiated group than in the control group. Mean concentrations of arterial TSH, T4 and T3 between 18 and 24 h of life were lower than concentrations found in the cord blood analysis in asphyxiated newborns, but not in controls. In addition, asphyxiated newborns with moderate/severe hypoxic‐ischemic encephalopathy presented significantly lower mean levels of TSH, T4, T3 and FT4 than those of controls. None of the asphyxiated newborns with FT4 ≥2.0 ng/dl died; 6 out of the 11 asphyxiated newborns with FT4 < 2.0 ng/dl died.
Galvanic Coupling Enabling Wireless Implant Communications

Galvanic coupling has been shown to be the best method for low-power on-body data transmission. This approach has been extended toward wireless communication between implanted devices, building a real intrabody sensor network. To show the feasibility, a test system has been developed and implemented. The measurements are compared with the numerical simulations. The prototype offers four concurrent channels with a throughput of 4.8 kb/s. The main focus is the future implantability of such a miniaturized system for the medical long-term surveillance of patients. To achieve this goal, small circuit size, low power consumption, and electrical safety have to carefully be considered.
Low-cost assertion-based fault tolerance in hardware and software

In the recent past, there has been an increasing demand for low-cost safety critical applications. Custom-off-the-shelf (COTS) processors are preferred for usage in these applications due to their low cost. The reliability provided by these processors, however, is not sufficient to meet the safety requirements of these applications. Furthermore, due to the trends followed by the processor industry to enhance the performance of processors, the reliability provided by these processors is projected to decrease in the future. Traditional techniques for enhancing the reliability of computer systems are not viable for these applications due to the high overheads (and hence cost) incurred by them. This thesis describes fault tolerance techniques tailored for these applications, adhering to the tight overhead constraints in the area, memory, and performance dimensions. Techniques at both the hardware level (to be used by the processor manufacturers) and the software level (to be used by the application developers) are presented. At the hardware level, this thesis presents a technique for detecting faults in the processor control logic, for which techniques proposed previously incur very high overheads. Rather than detect all modeled faults, the technique protects against a subset of faults such that the best possible overall protection is achieved while incurring only permissible overheads. This subset of faults is selected depending on the probability of each individual fault causing damage to the architectural state of the processor and the overhead incurred in protecting against the fault. The technique is validated on control logic modules of an industrial processor. At the software level, this thesis concentrates on a category of errors called control flow errors. We describe an error detection technique which incurs lower overheads than any of the previously proposed techniques while at the same time detecting more errors than all of them. Even these low overheads may be too restrictive for some applications. For such applications, we present a technique for providing the best error detection capability possible at the overheads allowed. Once an error is detected, error recovery actions need to be performed. In this thesis, we present an error correction technique which automatically performs error recovery with a very low latency. The technique reuses the information available from the error detection technique to perform the recovery and hence, does not incur any additional performance penalty. All the techniques proposed at the software level have been integrated with GCC, a commonly used software compiler. This permits the fault tolerance to be incorporated into the application automatically as part of the compilation process itself. Evaluations are performed on SPEC and MiBench benchmark programs using an in-house software error injection framework.
Strategies for supporting application portability

A range of system-design strategies that can be used to support portability and the ways in which these strategies have been employed by past and present systems are examined. The strategies are grouped into three categories: (1) strategies that maintain identical execution-time interfaces by porting system components that form the interface, (2) strategies that maintain identical or nearly identical interfaces for different system components by adhering to appropriate standards, and (3) strategies that assist in the adaptation of programs to a target environment. The principal emphasis is on operating-system issues. User interface portability, dynamic portability in a network, and international exchange of programs are briefly considered. <<ETX>>
The Learning Organization: And the Need for Directors Who Think

Bob Garratt proposes a theory of organizations as "learning systems" in which success depends on two key skills - learning continuously and giving direction. As well as considering the work of other theoreticians, Garratt employs a wide range of experimental models and graphic illustrations to demonstrate both the stagnation resulting form an absence of these skills, and the dramatic effects of their positive implementation.
A microstrip LPF with attenuation poles using hairpin structural and inter-digital capacitor

In this paper, a microstrip lowpass filter (LPF) with attenuation poles which consists of quasi-lumped elements and hairpin structural resonator is proposed. The resonator consists of a hairpin type inductor, coupled lines, and the inter-digital type capacitor and its performances has two attenuation poles. The LPF is briegly designed and optimized with LC prototype structure. Firstly, the performances of the 5-element LPF is investigated by changing the capacitances of the inter-digital capacitor. As results, the proposed LPF illustrates the sharp attenuation characteristics near the cut-off frequency. In order to improve the stopband performance, two-hairpin LPF is studied. By optimizing its design the attenuation is improved by 30 dB. Its measured results show the good agreement with the simulated ones giving the broad stopband performance.
A comprehensive study of Convergent and Commutative Replicated Data Types

Eventual consistency aims to ensure that replicas of some mutable shared object converge without foreground synchronisation. Previous approaches to eventual consistency are ad-hoc and error-prone. We study a principled approach: to base the design of shared data types on some simple formal conditions that are sufficient to guarantee eventual consistency. We call these types Convergent or Commutative Replicated Data Types (CRDTs). This paper formalises asynchronous object replication, either state based or operation based, and provides a sufficient condition appropriate for each case. It describes several useful CRDTs, including container data types supporting both \add and \remove operations with clean semantics, and more complex types such as graphs, montonic DAGs, and sequences. It discusses some properties needed to implement non-trivial CRDTs.
Enhanced natriuretic response to intrarenal infusion of atrial natriuretic factor during ovine pregnancy.

Volume-loading and intravenous infusion studies have suggested that the natriuretic response of atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) is blunted or unaltered during pregnancy, but these findings may be influenced by changes in peripheral metabolism or clearance. To better define the direct renal actions of ANF, three doses (0.3, 1.5, and 3.0 pmol.kg-1.min-1) of ANF were infused directly into the renal artery of nonpregnant (n = 7) and 115- to 135-day pregnant (n = 6) unilaterally nephrectomized conscious sheep. Each dose was administered on a separate day according to a protocol that consisted of two 20-min control periods, two 20-min ANF infusions, and three 30-min recovery periods. The levels of basal mean arterial pressure averaged 86 +/- 25 mmHg and were similar and constant throughout all protocols in nonpregnant and pregnant ewes. Glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and renal blood flow (RBF) were increased during pregnancy, but GFR, RBF, and fractional proximal tubular reabsorption were not significantly altered by infusion of ANF. Nonpregnant sheep exhibited a selective renal response that was limited to an increase in urinary sodium excretion (UNaV). Pregnant sheep exhibited a selective renal response that included increases in UNaV and urine flow rate produced by suppression of distal sodium and, presumably, fluid reabsorption. The natriuretic and diuretic response of pregnant sheep was much greater than that of nonpregnant sheep despite a smaller proportional increment in intrarenal ANF concentration. These data suggest that the ovine renal response to ANF is limited to actions on the distal tubule that are enhanced during pregnancy.