Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physics-based wideband predictive compact model for inductors with high amounts of dummy metal fill

A computationally efficient physics-based wideband predictive inductor compact model is presented that is capable of evaluating the impact on inductance and quality factor of dummy metal fill-cells. In a modern integrated-circuit process, high amounts of these fill-cells are required to meet metal density rules and guarantee adjacent circuit integrity. The predictions made with this model are shown to be in agreement with data measured on symmetrical octagonal inductors realized in a 90-nm CMOS process with varying amounts of dummy metal fill-cells. We further provide all inductance equations, list additional sources of eddy current losses, and discuss layout modifications, which would further improve the performance of the integrated inductors
Error protection for progressive image transmission over memoryless and fading channels

A product channel code is proposed to protect progressively compressed and packetized image data that is transmitted across noisy channels. Across packets, the product code is composed of Reed-Solomon codes. Within packets, the product code uses the concatenation of a rate compatible punctured convolutional code and an error detecting parity check code. The benefits include flexibility in terms of delay, the ability to easily adapt the level of protection based on importance (i.e., unequal error protection), and scalable decoding complexity. The system outperforms the best known image coders for memoryless channels and performs well on fading channels.
3D physics-based reconstruction of serially acquired slices

This paper presents an accurate, computationally efficient, fast and fully-automated algorithm for the alignment of 2D serially acquired sections forming a 3D volume. The method accounts for the main shortcomings of 3D image alignment: corrupted data (cuts and tears), dissimilarities or discontinuities between slices and missing slices. The approach relies on the determination of inter-slice correspondences. The features used for correspondence are extracted by a 2D physics-based deformable model parameterizing the object shape. Correspondence affinities and global constraints render the method efficient and reliable. The method has been evaluated on real images and the experimental results demonstrate its accuracy, as reconstruction errors are smaller than 1 degree in rotation and smaller than 1 pixel in translation.
Vesicourethral anastomosis using V-Loc™ barbed suture during robot-assisted radical prostatectomy

In Europe, localized prostate cancer (PCa) is increasingly treated by robot-assisted radical prostatectomy. This minimally invasive procedure is technically evolving, with benefits to both the patient and surgeon. One of the final steps of the operation is the formation of a watertight vesicourethral anastomosis (VUA). A suboptimal anastomosis can lead to serious consequences, including acute urinary leak, ileus, prolonged hospitalization and catheterization, urethral stricture, and urinary incontinence. It is therefore highly desirable to develop a simple, reproducible and dependable technique for VUA formation. We report a VUA formation technique using a unidirectional barbed suture (3-0 V-LocTM 180 absorbable suture, Covidien, Dublin, Ireland).
Parallel Join Algorithms based on Parallel B+-trees

Within the last several years, a number of parallel algorithms for the join operation have been proposed. However, almost all of the algorithms did not take advantage of the underlying parallel storage structures or data declustering methods of the operand relations. This paper introduces the concept of parallel storage structure or declustering aware parallel join algorithm. Two classes of parallel join algorithms, which take advantage of the underlying parallel B-tree index, are proposed and analyzed. One class is based on the rage-partition strategy. The other is based on the hash-partition strategy. The parallel execution times of the algorithms are linearly proportional to max{N/P, M/P}, where N and M are the numbers of tuples of the operand relations and P is the number of processing nodes. The proposed parallel join algorithms are compared with well known parallel join algorithms in practice. Theoretical and experimental results show that the proposed algorithms are more efficient than others in case of at least one operand relation having a parallel B-tree index on the join attributes.
A multi-configuration part-based person detector

People detection is a task that has generated a great interest in the computer vision and specially in the surveillance community. One of the main problems of this task in crowded scenarios is the high number of occlusions deriving from persons appearing in groups. In this paper, we address this problem by combining individual body part detectors in a statistical driven way in order to be able to detect persons even in case of failure of any detection of the body parts, i.e., we propose a generic scheme to deal with partial occlusions. We demonstrate the validity of our approach and compare it with other state of the art approaches on several public datasets. In our experiments we consider sequences with different complexities in terms of occupation and therefore with different number of people present in the scene, in order to highlight the benefits and difficulties of the approaches considered for evaluation. The results show that our approach improves the results provided by state of the art approaches specially in the case of crowded scenes.
Is Dna Damage Inducible and Functions in a Novel Error-free Postreplication Repair Mechanism

Damage-inducible mutagenesis in prokaryotes is largely dependent upon the activity of the UmuD'G like proteins. Since many DNA repair processes are structurally and/or functionally conserved between prokaryotes and eukaryotes, we investigated the role of RAD34 a previously uncharacterized Saccharomyces cereuisiue DNA repair gene related to the Escherichia coli dinB, umuC and S. cereuisiae REVl genes, in UV resistance and W-induced mutagenesis. Similar to its prokaryotic homologues, RAD30 was found to be damage inducible. Like many S. cereuisiae genes involved in error-prone DNA repair, epistasis analysis clearly places RAD30 in the RAD6 group and rad30 mutants display moderate W sensitivity reminiscent of reu mutants. However, unlike rev mutants, no defect in UV-induced reversion was seen in rad30 strains. While rad6 and rad18 are both epistatic to rad30, no epistasis was observed with reul, reu3, re717 or rad5, all of which are members of the RAD6 epistasis group. These findings suggest that RAD30 participates in a novel error-free repair pathway dependent on RAD6 and RADl8, but independent of REVl, REV3, " REV7 and M 5. V ARIOUS mechanisms exist for the recognition and repair of damaged DNA in order to maintain the integrity of the cell's genetic information. Unrepaired DNA lesions can, however, block the progression of DNA polymerase at a replication fork and as a consequence lead to single-stranded gaps in DNA (reviewed in FRIEDBERG et al. 1991, 1995). While cell division is transiently inhibited by DNA damage, eventually the cell needs to replicate the entire genome to complete division. At least two mechanisms have been described that allow the cell to make duplex DNA from a damaged template. The first is translesion DNA synthesis. In Esch-erichia coli, for example, translesion DNA synthesis is mediated by the UmuD'C proteins in conjunction with RecA. As part of the SOS response, the u m d C operon is derepressed (BAGG et aL 1981) and the UmuD protein is posttranslationally processed to its mutagenically active form, UmuD' (BURCKHARDT et al. 1988; NOHMI et aL 1988; SHINAGAWA et al. 1988). A dimer of UmuD' and a monomer of UmuC interact to form a UmuD;C complex (WOODGATE et aL 1989; BRUCK et aL 1996) that appears to be targeted to sites of DNA damage by associating with a RecA nucleoprotein filament (BAILONE et aL 1991; FRANK et aL 1993). It is believed that the UmuD4C complex together with RecA enable DNA polymerase I11 to replicate past …
Gender Differences in Emotional Responses to Hooking Up

The present research looked to explore the relationship between the emotional responses of college students to different hooking up behaviors. Seven hundred and nine undergraduates participated in a web-based survey that included a demographic questionnaire, SDS, PANAS, AUDIT, and a measure of hooking up. This measure examined the frequency with which they participated in eight different types of hooking up varying by degree of familiarity to their hook partner and whether or not the hook up was coital or non-coital, as well as their emotional responses to the behavior and their perception of the emotional responses of their partner. Results showed that both men and women experienced more positive emotional responses to hooking up behaviors than negative emotional responses. Men experienced significantly more positive emotional responses to hook up behaviors than did women. Women experienced significantly more negative emotional responses for hook ups that were coital with strangers than did men, while men experienced more positive emotional responses for hook ups that were coital with strangers, coital with acquaintances, and coital with partners that were previous romantic partners than did women. Men also experienced more positive emotional responses for hook ups that were non-coital with strangers and non-coital with acquaintances. Men tended to rate their partner’s positive emotional responses higher than what women reported experiencing, particularly for hook ups with less familiar partners. Women’s ratings of their partner’s negative emotional responses were lower than what men actually reported experiencing. The data collected provide several Gender Differences in Emotional Responses to Hooking Up !
Recurrence quantification analysis applied to spatiotemporal pattern analysis in high-density mapping of human atrial fibrillation

Spatiotemporal complexity of atrial fibrillation (AF) patterns is often quantified by annotated intracardiac contact mapping. We introduce a new approach that applies recurrence plot (RP) construction followed by recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) to epicardial atrial electrograms, recorded with a high-density grid of electrodes. In 32 patients with no history of AF (aAF, n=11), paroxysmal AF (PAF, n=12) and persistent AF (persAF, n=9), RPs were constructed using a phase space electrogram embedding dimension equal to the estimated AF cycle length. Spatial information was incorporated by 1) averaging the recurrence over all electrodes, and 2) by applying principal component analysis (PCA) to the matrix of embedded electrograms and selecting the first principal component as a representation of spatial diversity. Standard RQA parameters were computed on the constructed RPs and correlated to the number of fibrillation waves per AF cycle (NW). Averaged RP RQA parameters showed no correlation with NW. Correlations improved when applying PCA, with maximum correlation achieved between RP threshold and NW (RR1%, r=0.68, p <; 0.001) and RP determinism (DET, r=-0.64, p <; 0.001). All studied RQA parameters based on the PCA RP were able to discriminate between persAF and aAF/PAF (DET persAF 0.40 ± 0.11 vs. 0.59 ± 0.14/0.62 ± 0.16, p <; 0.01). RP construction and RQA combined with PCA provide a quick and reliable tool to visualize dynamical behaviour and to assess the complexity of contact mapping patterns in AF.
Waiting for certainty : young people, mobile phones and uncertain science

This dissertation is an empirical study of the scientific literacy of 28 young adults (aged 18-26 years) in the context of their decision making about the health risks of mobile phones. The issue of possible health effects is one of a number of socioscientific issues now confronting adults in the 'knowledge/risk' society where scientific knowledge plays an increasingly significant role in people's lives. The focus of interest is the young people's responses to the uncertain science of 'science in the making' (Latour, 1987) and their positioning of this scientific knowledge in their risk assessments. The study is based on an interactive model of the public understanding of science and applies a critical realist and moderate social constructionist methodology. Data construction included focus groups and semi-structured individual interviews. The stimulus for discussion in the focus groups was a recent television news report presenting contradictory scientific research findings about whether mobile phones pose significant health risks. In the individual interviews understanding of the nature of science and risk judgments were explored. Data analysis involved a coding of the discourse in terms of themes and issues and interpretation of these in terms of the theoretical framework of the thesis. A major finding was that these young people interpreted the uncertainty of the scientific knowledge mainly in social terms and with limited understanding of the role of theory in interpreting data. They talked spontaneously of risk but did not draw on scientific knowledge or risk estimates in their judgment about mobile phone safety. Findings have important implications for science education and suggest a broadened conception of scientific literacy which includes critical dimensions and risk literacy. It is argued that this functional scientific literacy is essential for effective citizenship in contemporary society.
Undergraduate Reflective Journaling in Work Integrated Learning: Is It Relevant to Professional Practice?.

This paper presents the research findings from a study reviewing graduates’ opinions on completing online reflective journaling tasks during work integrated learning as an undergraduate. The study was divided into two parts with an initial focus group conducted with six physiotherapy graduates seven months following graduation. Findings from the focus group guided the development of a questionnaire sent to graduates nine months after course completion. Results from both the focus group and questionnaire (n = 25) highlighted the benefits of online, structured, assessed reflective writing tasks. Graduates provided specific examples of their personal and professional development and perceived benefits from undertaking reflective journaling during work integrated learning. These findings may have application across a wide variety of tertiary courses of study with work integrated learning incorporated into curriculum. (AsiaPacific Journal of Cooperative Education, 2013 14(3), 147-156)
Second-Order Statistics of Selection Combining Systems with Cochannel Interference in Various Fading Channels

This paper provides exact closed-form expressions for the outage probability (OP), the average level crossing rate (LCR) and the average fade duration (AFD) of the selection combining (SC) systems exposed to the cochannel interference (CCI) in Nakagami and/or Rician fading channels. The SC is of an arbitrary diversity order and employs the signal-to- interference power (SIR) algorithm for branch selection, while all input signals are assumed independent. The analytical solution for the average LCR is quite general, applicable over arbitrary combinations of input signal statistics, and specializes to known expressions in absence of CCI and for non-diversity systems in Rayleigh fading. We also establish an important and yet simple relationship between the AFDs of SC systems and non-diversity systems.
Obatoclax in combination with fludarabine and rituximab is well-tolerated and shows promising clinical activity in relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Obatoclax is a small molecule mimetic of the BH3 domain of BCL-2 family proteins. This phase 1 study combining obatoclax with FR was undertaken in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients relapsed after at least one prior therapy. Obatoclax was given as a 3-h infusion on days 1 and 3 and escalated through three dose levels, with standard dose FR days 1–5. Thirteen patients were enrolled, with a median of two prior therapies. One dose-limiting toxicity (DLT) of a 2-week treatment delay for persistent grade 2–3 neutropenia was observed at the highest obatoclax dose (20 mg/m2), but no maximum tolerated dose (MTD) was reached. The overall response rate (ORR) was 85%, with 15% complete responses (CRs) by NCI-96 criteria and 54% by IWCLL 2008 criteria. Median time to progression was 20 months. It is concluded that obatoclax can be safely administered to relapsed CLL patients in combination with FR and shows promising clinical activity.
A Study on the Application of Data-driven Learning in Vocabulary Teaching and Leaning in China’s EFL Class

Data-driven learning (DDL) developed from corpus linguistics plays a pioneering role in the evolution of EFL teaching, allowing the learners to indentify and induce language rules by observing numerous real corpora concordances. With the guidance of new teaching notion advocated by College English Curriculum Requirements in China, DDL model has become the tendency for college English learners' efficient and autonomous learning. It becomes urgent to take advantage of this method and apply it to college vocabulary teaching. Compared with traditional foreign language teaching and learning method, data-driven learning is characterized by “autonomic learning”, “authentic language input”, “self-discovery”, and “bottom-up inductive learning”, which will conducive to the formation of the students' personalized learning abilities and the development of their autonomic learning abilities.
Simultaneous confirmation and differentiation of human T‐lymphotropic virus types I and II infection by modified western blot containing recombinant envelope glycoproteins

A modified Western blot (WB) that includes both shared (r21e) and unique recombinant envelope proteins from human T‐lymphotropic virus (HTLV) type I (rgp46I) and type II (rgp46II) was compared to conventional HTLV serologic tests in 379 United States blood donors and individuals residing in diverse geographic regions, and the specimens were categorized as positive (n = 158), indeterminate (n = 158), or negative (n = 63) for HTLV infection. Of the 158 HTLV‐I/II‐positive specimens (66 requiring radioimmunoprecipitation assay [RIPA] for confirmation), 156 reacted concordantly with r21e, gag, and either rgp46I or rgp46II, thus eliminating the need for RIPA in all but two specimens and yielding a test sensitivity of 98.7 percent. Of the 158 indeterminate and 63 negative specimens, none reacted with r21e and rgp46I or rgp46II, yielding a test specificity of 100 percent. Furthermore, analysis of an additional 184 consecutive specimens from a retrovirology reference laboratory demonstrated that the modified WB correctly identified 27 of 28 HTLV‐I specimens and all 13 HTLV‐II specimens, with a test sensitivity of 97.6 percent. None of specimens that were indeterminate or nonreactive in conventional WB and/or RIPA and none of the screening enzyme immunoassay‐negative specimens reacted with r21e and either rgp46I or rgp46II, for a test specificity of 100 percent. Thus, the modified WB appears to be highly sensitive and specific for simultaneous detection and discrimination of HTLV‐I from HTLV‐II and has the advantage of being a one‐step assay that is easily performed in all types of laboratory settings and allows rapid, reliable, and standardized testing for HTLV‐I/II infection.
Cost-Wait Trade-Offs in Client-Side Resource Provisioning with Elastic Clouds

Recent Infrastructure-as-a-Service offers, such as Amazon's EC2 cloud, provide virtualized on-demand computing resources on a pay-per-use model. From the user point of view, the cloud provides an inexhaustible supply of resources, which can be dynamically claimed and released. This drastically changes the problem of resource provisioning and job scheduling. This article presents how billing models can be exploited by provisioning strategies to find a trade-off between fast/expensive computations and slow/cheap ones for indepedent sequential jobs. We study a dozen strategies based on classic heuristics for online scheduling and bin-packing problems, with the double objective of minimizing the wait time (and hence the completion time) of jobs and the monetary cost of the rented resources. We simulate these strategies on real grid workloads in two cases. First, we use the workloads as a whole, which is representative of a large community of users sharing some common resources. Second, we use the workloads extracted for each individual user. These lighter workloads correspond to users submitting work independently from others and paying for their own resources. Our findings show that on large workloads, a little budget increase allows to achieve optimal wait time, while trade-off heuristics may be largely beneficial for individual users with lighter workloads.
Manifold algorithmic errors in quantum computers with static internal imperfections

The inevitable existence of static internal imperfections and residual interactions in some quantum computer architectures results in internal decoherence, dissipation and destructive unitary shifts of active algorithms. By exact numerical simulations, we determine the relative importance and origin of these errors for a Josephson charge-qubit quantum computer. In particular we determine that the dynamics of a CNOT gate interacting with its idle neighboring qubits via native residual coupling behaves much like a perturbed kicked top in the exponential decay regime, where fidelity decay is only weakly dependent on perturbation strength. This means that retroactive removal of gate errors (whether unitary or non-unitary) may not be possible, and that effective error correction schemes must operate concurrently with the implementation of subcomponents of the gate.
Indexing Medical Images based on Collaborative Experts Reports

A patient is often willing to quickly get, from his physician, reliable analysis and concise explanation according to provided linked medical images. The fact of making choices individually by the patient's physician may lead to malpractices and consequently generates unforeseeable damages. The Institute of Medicine of the National Sciences Academy(IMNAS) in USA published a study estimating that up to 98,000 hospital deathseach year can be attributed to medical malpractice [1]. Moreover, physician, in charge of medical image analysis, might be unavailable at the right time, which may complicate the patient's state. The goal of this paper is to provide to physicians and patients, a social network that permits to foster cooperation and to overcome the problem of unavailability of doctors on site any time. Therefore, patients can submit their medical images to be diagnosed and commented by several experts instantly. Consequently, the need to process opinions and to extract information automatically from the proposed social network became a necessity due to the huge number of comments expressing specialist's reviews. For this reason, we propose a kind of comments' summary keywords-based method which extracts the major current terms and relevant words existing on physicians' annotations. The extracted keywords will present a new and robust method for image indexation. In fact, significant extracted terms will be used later to index images in order to facilitate their discovery for any appropriate use. To overcome this challenge, we propose our Terminology Extraction of Annotation (TEA) mixed approach which focuses on algorithms mainly based on statistical methods and on external semantic resources.