Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A two-phase high step down coupled-inductor converter for next generation low voltage CPU

In this paper, a novel two-phase high step down coupled-inductor converter for next generation low voltage CPU is proposed. This converter has a very high step down characteristic as Vo/Vi = D/4. The switching loss and noise of all switching elements are sufficiently reduced because the drain-source voltages at switching periods are reduced to a quarter of the input source voltage. Low withstand voltage MOSFETs with low on resistance and low Qg(total gate charge) characteristics are possible to use for the all switching elements because the maximum voltage stresses of the main switches and the synchronous rectifier switches are reduced to a half and a quarter of the input source voltage respectively. Further, the branch currents flowed through the paralleled converters are automatically and mostly balanced without the current detection and balance control. The above fine characteristics are simply achieved with three additional capacitors.
Aerial image segmentation for flood risk analysis

This paper presents a technique for image segmentation. We demonstrate its efficacy for classsifying high-resolution aerial images. The application is peak water flow estimation in a river catchment in the city of Zurich and the data covers a large rural and urban setting. The output of the segmentation process is used as input to a hydrological model. We introduce a combined, probabilistic, segmentation approach based on colour (the LAB colour space is used), texture (using entropy) and image features (gradients). Classification rates for natural land surfaces and man-made structures are up to 90% and 85% respectively. When the automatic segmentation result is compared to the official land use data and reclassified for use in GIS we achieve an overall classification accuracy of 70%. This new classification is tested on the WetSpa hydrological model and the resulting flow estimate compares favourably with that computed from hand-classified land use data.
Multi-cell topology based on voltage-source converters with a reduced DC Capacitor by means of a predictive control scheme

Multi-cell topologies based on three-phase input/singlephase output power modules have the drawback of dealing with an important oscillatory power in the DC link. This requires the use of a large DC link capacitor in order to minimize the DC link voltage ripple. Instead, this paper proposes a control scheme based on predictive control aimed to compensate the oscillatory power that allows the design of the DC link capacitor without oversizing it. However, this is achieved at expense of much distorted AC supply currents and amplified modulating signals. Such effects of the proposed compensating technique based on predictive control are mathematically characterized. The results show that the multi-pulse transformer guarantees distortion free overall AC currents. Simulated results show the feasibility of the proposed scheme.
The pUL37 tegument protein guides alpha-herpesvirus retrograde axonal transport to promote neuroinvasion

A hallmark property of the neurotropic alpha-herpesvirinae is the dissemination of infection to sensory and autonomic ganglia of the peripheral nervous system following an initial exposure at mucosal surfaces. The peripheral ganglia serve as the latent virus reservoir and the source of recurrent infections such as cold sores (herpes simplex virus type I) and shingles (varicella zoster virus). However, the means by which these viruses routinely invade the nervous system is not fully understood. We report that an internal virion component, the pUL37 tegument protein, has a surface region that is an essential neuroinvasion effector. Mutation of this region rendered herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) and pseudorabies virus (PRV) incapable of spreading by retrograde axonal transport to peripheral ganglia both in culture and animals. By monitoring the axonal transport of individual viral particles by time-lapse fluorescence microscopy, the mutant viruses were determined to lack the characteristic sustained intracellular capsid motion along microtubules that normally traffics capsids to the neural soma. Consistent with the axonal transport deficit, the mutant viruses did not reach sites of latency in peripheral ganglia, and were avirulent. Despite this, viral propagation in peripheral tissues and in cultured epithelial cell lines remained robust. Selective elimination of retrograde delivery to the nervous system has long been sought after as a means to develop vaccines against these ubiquitous, and sometimes devastating viruses. In support of this potential, we find that HSV-1 and PRV mutated in the effector region of pUL37 evoked effective vaccination against subsequent nervous system challenges and encephalitic disease. These findings demonstrate that retrograde axonal transport of the herpesviruses occurs by a virus-directed mechanism that operates by coordinating opposing microtubule motors to favor sustained retrograde delivery of the virus to the peripheral ganglia. The ability to selectively eliminate the retrograde axonal transport mechanism from these viruses will be useful in trans-synaptic mapping studies of the mammalian nervous system, and affords a new vaccination paradigm for human and veterinary neurotropic herpesviruses.
Assessment of the Relative Reinforcing Strength of Cocaine in Socially Housed Monkeys Using a Choice Procedure

Position in the social hierarchy can influence brain dopamine function and cocaine reinforcement in nonhuman primates during early cocaine exposure. With prolonged exposure, however, initial differences in rates of cocaine self-administration between dominant and subordinate monkeys dissipate. The present studies used a choice procedure to assess the relative reinforcing strength of cocaine in group-housed male cynomolgus monkeys with extensive cocaine self-administration histories. Responding was maintained under a concurrent fixed-ratio 50 schedule of food and cocaine (0.003–0.1 mg/kg per injection) presentation. Responding on the cocaine-associated lever increased as a function of cocaine dose in all monkeys. Although response distribution was similar across social rank when saline or relatively low or high cocaine doses were the alternative to food, planned t tests indicated that cocaine choice was significantly greater in subordinate monkeys when choice was between an intermediate dose (0.01 mg/kg) and food. When a between-session progressive-ratio procedure was used to increase response requirements for the preferred reinforcer (either cocaine or food), choice of that reinforcer decreased in all monkeys. The average response requirement that produced a shift in response allocation from the cocaine-associated lever to the food-associated lever was higher in subordinates across cocaine doses, an effect that trended toward significance (p = 0.053). These data indicate that despite an extensive history of cocaine self-administration, most subordinate monkeys were more sensitive to the relative reinforcing strength of cocaine than dominant monkeys.
Dwarfism in Mice Lacking Collagen-binding Integrins α2β1 and α11β1 Is Caused by Severely Diminished IGF-1 Levels*

Background: Mice lacking integrins α2β1 and α11β1 are dwarfs. Results: Bones are shorter and less mineralized in absence of osteoblast-specific defects. Severely reduced IGF-1, GH, and GHRH levels result in proportional dwarfism. Conclusion: Integrins α2β1 and α11β1 crucially regulate IGF-1 levels. Significance: We present a novel concept for the role of integrins in growth control, thereby coupling ECM signaling to endocrine homeostasis. Mice with a combined deficiency in the α2β1 and α11β1 integrins lack the major receptors for collagen I. These mutants are born with inconspicuous differences in size but develop dwarfism within the first 4 weeks of life. Dwarfism correlates with shorter, less mineralized and functionally weaker bones that do not result from growth plate abnormalities or osteoblast dysfunction. Besides skeletal dwarfism, internal organs are correspondingly smaller, indicating proportional dwarfism and suggesting a systemic cause for the overall size reduction. In accordance with a critical role of insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-1 in growth control and bone mineralization, circulating IGF-1 levels in the sera of mice lacking either α2β1 or α11β1 or both integrins were sharply reduced by 39%, 64%, or 81% of normal levels, respectively. Low hepatic IGF-1 production resulted from diminished growth hormone-releasing hormone expression in the hypothalamus and, subsequently, reduced growth hormone expression in the pituitary glands of these mice. These findings point out a novel role of collagen-binding integrin receptors in the control of growth hormone/IGF-1-dependent biological activities. Thus, coupling hormone secretion to extracellular matrix signaling via integrins represents a novel concept in the control of endocrine homeostasis.
Comparisons of Commercial MIP Solvers and an Adaptive Memory (Tabu Search) Procedure for a Class of 0-1 Integer Programming Problems

The Boolean optimization problem (BOOP) is a highly useful formulation that embraces a variety of 0-1 integer programming problems, including weighted versions of covering, partitioning and maximum satisfiability problems. Several years ago Hvattum, Lokketangen and Glover (2006) introduced an adaptive memory (tabu search) method for BOOP which proved effective compared to competing approaches. However, in the intervening years, major advances have taken place in exact solvers for integer programming problems, leading to widely publicized successes by the leading commercial solvers XPRESS, CPLEX and GUROBI. The implicit message is that an alternative methodology for any broad class of IP problems such as Boolean Optimization Problems would now be dominated by the newer versions of these leading solvers.We test this hypothesis by performing new computational experiments comparing the tabu search method for the BOOP class against XPRESS, CPLEX and GUROBI, and documenting improvements provided by the exact codes. The outcomes are somewhat surprising.
A Gene Signature-Based Approach Identifies mTOR as a Regulator of p73

ABSTRACT Although genomic technologies have advanced the characterization of gene regulatory networks downstream of transcription factors, the identification of pathways upstream of these transcription factors has been more challenging. In this study we present a gene signature-based approach for connecting signaling pathways to transcription factors, as exemplified by p73. We generated a p73 gene signature by integrating whole-genome chromatin immunoprecipitation and expression profiling. The p73 signature was linked to corresponding signatures produced by drug candidates, using the in silico Connectivity Map resource, to identify drugs that would induce p73 activity. Of the pharmaceutical agents identified, there was enrichment for direct or indirect inhibitors of mammalian Target of Rapamycin (mTOR) signaling. Treatment of both primary cells and cancer cell lines with rapamycin, metformin, and pyrvinium resulted in an increase in p73 levels, as did RNA interference-mediated knockdown of mTOR. Further, a subset of genes associated with insulin response or autophagy exhibited mTOR-mediated, p73-dependent expression. Thus, downstream gene signatures can be used to identify upstream regulators of transcription factor activity, and in doing so, we identified a new link between mTOR, p73, and p73-regulated genes associated with autophagy and metabolic pathways.
Energy Conservation in Rural India: The Impact of Context and Attitudes on Behaviour

The energy conservation behaviour of people is a significant issue given the growing global concern about environmental issues. The current study is part of a larger intervention project aimed at changing the energy use behaviour of people living in rural households in Kerala, India. Preliminary activities of the project started in early 1997. The management and administration of the project spread over a period of 8 years. The study explores the extent of energy saved by these rural households when awareness, availability and training about the technologies are present, and thereby examines the impact of attitudinal variables and contextual factors on the energy-saving behaviour of people. This paper revisits the theories of behavioural change in the context of energy-saving behaviour and investigates whether Attitude, Behaviour, Context theory can be used to predict environmentally significant human behaviour. Findings revealed that traditional habits and beliefs influenced attitude formation in rural households and hence should be treated as an important consideration in changing energy conservation behaviours in the future.
Robustly Aligning a Shape Model and Its Application to Car Alignment of Unknown Pose

Precisely localizing in an image a set of feature points that form a shape of an object, such as car or face, is called alignment. Previous shape alignment methods attempted to fit a whole shape model to the observed data, based on the assumption of Gaussian observation noise and the associated regularization process. However, such an approach, though able to deal with Gaussian noise in feature detection, turns out not to be robust or precise because it is vulnerable to gross feature detection errors or outliers resulting from partial occlusions or spurious features from the background or neighboring objects. We address this problem by adopting a randomized hypothesis-and-test approach. First, a Bayesian inference algorithm is developed to generate a shape-and-pose hypothesis of the object from a partial shape or a subset of feature points. For alignment, a large number of hypotheses are generated by randomly sampling subsets of feature points, and then evaluated to find the one that minimizes the shape prediction error. This method of randomized subset-based matching can effectively handle outliers and recover the correct object shape. We apply this approach on a challenging data set of over 5,000 different-posed car images, spanning a wide variety of car types, lighting, background scenes, and partial occlusions. Experimental results demonstrate favorable improvements over previous methods on both accuracy and robustness.
Laban Movement Analysis Using Kinect

Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), developed in the dance community over the past seventy years, is an effective method for observing, describing, notating, and interpreting human movement to enhance communication and expression in everyday and professional life. Many applications that use motion capture data might be significantly leveraged if the Laban qualities will be recognized automatically. This paper presents an automated recognition method of Laban qualities from motion capture skeletal recordings and it is demonstrated on the output of Microsoft’s Kinect V2 sensor. Keywords—Laban Movement Analysis, Kinect, Machine Learning.
Artificial Creative Systems and the Evolution of Language

Most studies of human creativity have focused on individuals, assuming that creativity can be defined with respect to the characteristics, processes or activities of extraordinary people. Computational models of creativity have often inherited this assumption and emphasised generative processes to the exclusion of considering social or cultural aspects. This paper presents work to extend computational models of social creativity to support the evolution of domain specific languages. Artificial creative societies provide the opportunity for studying creativity-as-it-as in the context of creativity-as-itcould-be. The computational model of an artificial creative systems presented here extends previous computational models by introducing a linguistic component that supports the production and sharing of works with associated descriptions. This paper examines the potential for this extended model of social creativity to support the study of the roles that language plays in the formation, interaction and maintenance of creative do-
Geometrical Conditions Indispensable for Muscle Contraction

Computer simulation has uncovered the geometrical conditions under which the vertebrate striated muscle sarcomere can contract. First, all thick filaments should have identical structure, namely: three myosin cross-bridges, building a crown, should be aligned at angles of 0°, 120°, 180°, and the successive crowns and the two filament halves should be turned around 120°. Second, all thick filaments should act simultaneously. Third, coordination in action of the myosin cross-bridges should exist, namely: the three cross-bridges of a crown should act simultaneously and the cross-bridge crowns axially 43 and 14.333 nm apart should act, respectively, simultaneously and with a phase shift. Fifth, six thin filaments surrounding the thick filament should be turned around 180° to each other in each sarcomere half. Sixth, thin filaments should be oppositely oriented in relation to the sarcomere middle. Finally, the structure of each of the thin filaments should change in consequence of strong interaction with myosin heads, namely: the axial distance and the angular alignment between neighboring actin monomers should be, respectively, 2.867 nm and 168° instead of 2.75 nm and 166.15°. These conditions ensure the stereo-specific interaction between actin and myosin and good agreement with the data gathered by electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction methods. The results suggest that the force is generated not only by the myosin cross-bridges but also by the thin filaments; the former acts by cyclical unwrapping and wrapping the thick filament backbone, and the latter byelongation.
R4: Towards a holistic framework for designing and developing Social Web Applications

Social Web Application (SWA) design and development is a complex process that requires the understanding and coordination of several domains of knowledge. Yet there remain few if any holistic frameworks to manage this process. In this paper we present such a framework, R4. It coordinates and relates the different perspectives that inform the entire SWA design and development process. We base R4 on SWA design and development framework requirements derived from the literature. We formulate and relate four basic perspectives, the User, Culture, Technology and Business spheres and define stages, (Re)Design, Realization and Reformation (RRR), of the entire SWA design and development lifecycle. We then suggest basic SWA design and development guidelines derived from our R4 framework and develop an example methodology based on that framework.
Mobile Aleph: A System for Distributed Mobile Applications

My paper introduces Mobile Aleph, a distributed shared object system that addresses the needs of mobile group-oriented applications. These applications need to work when the mobile client is connected to an application server, when offline, or when combined with other clients in an ad hoc network. In addition, a distributed system for mobile applications must have a high degree of fault tolerance and must deal with the limitations of resource-poor clients. The system employs an optimistic concurrency model that combines the approaches of client/server and peer-to-peer architectures. The paper outlines the Mobile Aleph approach, the algorithms used for maintainance of global data, and the experimental results of simulations of the system.
Information and Power Transfer by Energy Harvesting Transmitters over a Fading Multiple Access Channel with Minimum Rate Constraints

We consider the problem of Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer (SWIPT) over a fading multiple access channel with additive Gaussian noise. The transmitters as well as the receiver harvest energy from ambient sources. We assume that the transmitters have two classes of data to send, viz. delay sensitive and delay tolerant data. Each transmitter sends the delay sensitive data at a certain minimum rate irrespective of the channel conditions (fading states). In addition, if the channel conditions are good, the delay tolerant data is sent. {Along with data, the transmitters also transfer power to aid the receiver in meeting its energy requirements. } In this setting, we characterize the \textit{minimum-rate capacity region} which provides the fundamental limit of transferring information and power simultaneously with minimum rate guarantees. Owing to the limitations of current technology, these limits might not be achievable in practice. Among the practical receiver structures proposed for SWIPT in literature, two popular architectures are the \textit{time switching} and \textit{power splitting} receivers. For each of these architectures, we derive the minimum-rate capacity regions. We show that power splitting receivers although more complex, provide a larger capacity region.
The use of high sensitivity GPS for initialisation of a foot mounted inertial navigation system

This work aims to optimise the use of GNSS for intialising a foot mounted pedestrian INS. The INS error model used in many navigation filters requires the input of an accurate, precise initial position and heading for stable filter performance. However such information is often not available at the start of a navigation session. Often a rough initialisation is performed and position updates are used to refine the INS state vector error estimates over time. This approach is often ineffective in the early portion of a navigation session and can lead to poor filter performance. In this work two innovative methods for using High Sensitivity GPS (HSGPS) observations are developed. In the first, position estimates from the receiver are used to determine rotation and translation parameters for an INS trajectory. This allows the INS to be initialised with an approximate initial position and arbitrary but precise heading. The INS then uses established methods for a foot mounted INS to minimise the relative position drift for a short period of navigation. When sufficient HSGPS positions have been obtained a weighted least squares approach is used to determine the parameters required to rotate and translate the INS trajectory. Once this has been successfully achieved, the INS may change to a traditional loosely coupled GNSS/INS format for longer term navigation. The second method investigates the use of GNSS to provide 'course over ground' measurements to the INS. These estimates can be used by the filter to directly address the problem of heading drift and can therefore be more effective than position updates in a foot mounted pedestrian INS. In this work we test the ability of course over ground measurements to control drift over time. However it is suggested that they can be directly used to determine rotation parameters for initialisation in the style proposed in the first method. To obtain course over ground observations we use the GNSS Kinematic Time Differencing method to difference GPS code pseudorange and carrier phase observations between measurement epochs. We develop an innovative approach to strengthen these estimates by utilising distance traveled information from the INS. It is suggested that in future, the INS information may be used to reduce the number of satellites required to obtain a course over ground estimate. Testing reveals that the course over ground measurement is an effective aiding measurement for a foot mounted INS. It is shown to be superior to HSGPS position aiding when sparse but precise course over ground estimates are available.