Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Non-volatile D-latch for sequential logic circuits using memristors

This work presents the circuit level design of a non-volatile D-latch (NVDL) using memristor that retains the stored data in the event of power interruption. The programming complexity of proposed NVDL, unlike previous NV latches, is simplified. The proposed NVDL is designed using 32nm node and results are compared with the volatile CMOS based D-latch. Simulation results show that the proposed NVDL is more energy efficient than the CMOS based volatile D-latch. The energy required by NVDL to store or retrieve the data is 1.5 times lesser than the CMOS based D-latch. In addition, the NVDL switching speed is increased by 1.54 times when compared with previous NV latches design.
MDL: a language and compiler for dynamic program instrumentation

We use a form of dynamic code generation, called dynamic instrumentation, to collect data about the execution of an application program. Dynamic instrumentation allows us to instrument running programs to collect performance and other types of information. The instrumentation code is generated incrementally and can be inserted and removed at any time. Our instrumentation currently runs on the SPARC, PA-RISC, Power 2, Alpha, and x86 architectures. Specification of what data to collect are written in a specialized language called the Metric Description Language, that is part of the Paradyn Parallel Performance Tools. This language allows platform independent descriptions of how to collect performance data. It also provides a concise way to specify, how to constrain performance data to particular resources such as modules, procedures, nodes, files, or message channels (or combinations of these resources). We also describe the details of how we weave instrumentation into a running program.
Block Based Fetch Engine for Superscalar Processors

The implementation of modern high performance computer is increasingly directed toward parallelism in the hardware. However, most of the current fetch units are limited to one branch prediction per cycle and therefore, can fetch no more than one basic block per cycle. While fetching a single basic block each cycle is sufficient for implementations that issue small number of instructions per cycle, it is not for processors with higher peak issue rates. In this paper we proposed a new architecture, which combine the enhanced branch target buffer with the block cache to fetch multiple blocks. The enhanced branch target buffer enhanced the capability of traditional branch target buffer to store multiple branch targets. Block cache keeps the instruction streams that collected at commit stage as blocks. These blocks are renamed and the renamed index is stored in the enhanced branch target buffer as the basic fetching unit. The proposed architecture has been simulated using SimpleScalar 2.0 simulator. The results show that the average instruction fetch pet cycle reaches 4.84 instructions, the average instruction issued per cycle is 3.44 instructions and the average IPC is 2.07. As compare to the baseline machine, we got 87%, 84%, and 56% increase respectively.
Variable-rate based relay selection scheme for decode-and-forward cooperative networks

In this paper, we propose a variable-rate based relay selection scheme for decode-and-forward cooperative networks. Adaptive modulation is used as a practical implementation of the variable-rate transmission. In specific, we exploit the variable rate transmission to choose the maximum rate, and select the best relay that has the best end-to-end path between the source and destination nodes. We derive a closed-form expression for the cumulative distribution function of the output signal-to-noise ratio, and a closed-form expressions for the average spectral efficiency and average bit error rate. Simulation results are given to verify the analytical ones, and demonstrate that the scheme can improve the average spectral efficiency in the low average SNR region, and achieve better average BER compared with the conventional direct transmission.
VolumeShop: an interactive system for direct volume illustration

Illustrations play a major role in the education process. Whether used to teach a surgical or radiologic procedure, to illustrate normal or aberrant anatomy, or to explain the functioning of a technical device, illustration significantly impacts learning. Although many specimens are readily available as volumetric data sets, particularly in medicine, illustrations are commonly produced manually as static images in a time-consuming process. Our goal is to create a fully dynamic three-dimensional illustration environment which directly operates on volume data. Single images have the aesthetic appeal of traditional illustrations, but can be interactively altered and explored. In this paper we present methods to realize such a system which combines artistic visual styles and expressive visualization techniques. We introduce a novel concept for direct multi-object volume visualization which allows control of the appearance of inter-penetrating objects via two-dimensional transfer functions. Furthermore, a unifying approach to efficiently integrate many non-photorealistic rendering models is presented. We discuss several illustrative concepts which can be realized by combining cutaways, ghosting, and selective deformation. Finally, we also propose a simple interface to specify objects of interest through three-dimensional volumetric painting. All presented methods are integrated into VolumeShop, an interactive hardware-accelerated application for direct volume illustration.
Corneal Stromal Cell Growth on Gelatin/Chondroitin Sulfate Scaffolds Modified at Different NHS/EDC Molar Ratios

A nanoscale modification strategy that can incorporate chondroitin sulfate (CS) into the cross-linked porous gelatin materials has previously been proposed to give superior performance for designed corneal keratocyte scaffolds. The purpose of this work was to further investigate the influence of carbodiimide chemistry on the characteristics and biofunctionalities of gelatin/CS scaffolds treated with varying N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS)/1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethyl aminopropyl) carbodiimide hydrochloride (EDC) molar ratios (0–1) at a constant EDC concentration of 10 mM. Results of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and dimethylmethylene blue assays consistently indicated that when the NHS to EDC molar ratio exceeds a critical level (i.e., 0.5), the efficiency of carbodiimide-mediated biomaterial modification is significantly reduced. With the optimum NHS/EDC molar ratio of 0.5, chemical treatment could achieve relatively high CS content in the gelatin scaffolds, thereby enhancing the water content, glucose permeation, and fibronectin adsorption. Live/Dead assays and interleukin-6 mRNA expression analyses demonstrated that all the test samples have good cytocompatibility without causing toxicity and inflammation. In the molar ratio range of NHS to EDC from 0 to 0.5, the cell adhesion ratio and proliferation activity on the chemically modified samples significantly increased, which is attributed to the increasing CS content. Additionally, the materials with highest CS content (0.143 ± 0.007 nmol/10 mg scaffold) showed the greatest stimulatory effect on the biosynthetic activity of cultivated keratocytes. These findings suggest that a positive correlation is noticed between the NHS to EDC molar ratio and the CS content in the biopolymer matrices, thereby greatly affecting the corneal stromal cell growth.
Attachment, personality, and psychopathology among adult inpatients: Self-reported romantic attachment style versus Adult Attachment Interview states of mind

The present study examined self-reported romantic attachment style and Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) states of mind regarding early attachment relationships, personality dimensions, and psychopathology in a psychiatric sample of trauma survivors. Inpatients (N = 80) admitted to a hospital trauma treatment program were administered the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale, AAI, Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory—III, Dissociative Experiences Scale, and Dissociative Disorder Interview Schedule. Self-report and AAI attachment classifications were not related, and different results emerged for the two measures. Self-reported romantic attachment style was significantly associated with personality dimensions, with fearful adults showing the most maladaptive personality profiles. Findings suggested that self-report dimensions of self and other independently contribute to different forms of psychological dysfunction. AAI unresolved trauma was uniquely associated with dissociation and posttraumatic stress disorder, whereas unresolved trauma and unresolved loss jointly contributed to schizotypal and borderline personality disorder scores. The differences in findings between the two measures are discussed with a view toward the developmental and clinical implications.This project was partially funded by the Department of Psychology and Philosophy at Texas Woman's University and the Ross Institute. We are grateful to the staff and patients of the Timberlawn Psychiatric Hospital Trauma Program for their time. In addition, we express our appreciation to Dante Cicchetti and the editorial reviewers, whose insightful suggestions substantially enhanced the manuscript.
Feature subset selection in a methodology for training and improving artificial neural network weights and connections

This paper investigates the problem of feature subset selection as part of a methodology that integrates heuristic tabu search, simulated annealing, genetic algorithms and backpropagation. This technique combines both global and local search strategies for the simultaneous optimization of the number of connections and connection values of multi-layer perceptron neural networks. We compare the performance of the proposed method for feature subset selection to five classical feature selection methods in three different classification problems.
Efficient Sequential Data Migration Scheme Considering Dying Data for HDD/SSD Hybrid Storage Systems

Because the solid-state drive (SSD) shows high access performance, it is usually integrated into existing hard disk drive (HDD)-based storage hierarchy to form HDD/SSD hybrid storage systems. To further improve the performance of HDD/SSD hybrid storage systems, data migration schemes have been put forward to migrate the sequential data between HDD and SSD. However, the existing schemes cannot be aware of dirty data in the buffer and then incur a large number of unnecessary page migrations. In this paper, we devise an efficient data migration scheme considering dying data for HDD/SSD hybrid storage systems. In this scheme, a new liveness state, called the dying state, is utilized to identify the live data, which will become dead shortly due to its corresponding dirty version in the buffer. To decrease the page migration count, this scheme uses the benefit-to-cost ratio to select a block for data migration and copies the up-to-date version of dying data into the free space instead of migrating the dying data. Our experimental results show that our proposed scheme can perform better than existing data migration schemes that are not aware of dying data under various benchmarks.
Starch-Related α-Glucan/Water Dikinase Is Involved in the Cold-Induced Development of Freezing Tolerance in Arabidopsis1

Cold-induced soluble sugar accumulation enhances the degree of freezing tolerance in various cold-hardy plants including Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), where soluble sugars accumulate in only a few hours at 2°C. Hence, along with photosynthesis, starch degradation might play a significant role in cold-induced sugar accumulation and enhanced freezing tolerance. Starch-related α-glucan/water dikinase (EC 2.7.9.4), encoded by Arabidopsis STARCH EXCESS 1 (SEX1), is hypothesized to regulate starch degradation in plastids by phosphorylating starch, thereby ensuring better accessibility by starch-degrading enzymes. Here, we show that Arabidopsis sex1 mutants, when incubated at 2°C for 1 d, were unable to accumulate maltooligosaccharides or normal glucose and fructose levels. In addition, they displayed impaired freezing tolerance. After 7 d at 2°C, sex1 mutants did not show any of the above abnormal phenotypes but displayed slightly higher leaf starch contents. The impaired freezing tolerance of sex1 mutants was restored by overexpression of wild-type SEX1 cDNA using the cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter. The results demonstrate a genetic link between the SEX1 locus and plant freezing tolerance, and show that starch degradation is important for enhanced freezing tolerance during an early phase of cold acclimation. However, induction of starch degradation was not accompanied by significant changes in α-glucan/water dikinase activity in leaf extracts and preceded cold-induced augmentation of SEX1 transcripts. Therefore, we conclude that augmentation of SEX1 transcripts might be a homeostatic response to low temperature, and that starch degradation during an early phase of cold acclimation could be regulated by a component(s) of a starch degradation pathway(s) downstream of SEX1.
Triangulating polygons without large angles

We show how to triangulate an <italic>n</italic>-vertex polygonal region—adding extra vertices as necessary—with triangles of guaranteed quality. Using only <italic>O</italic>(<italic>n</italic>) triangles, we can guarantee that the smallest height (shortest dimension) of a triangle is approximately as large as possible. Using <italic>O</italic>(<italic>n</italic> log <italic>n</italic>) triangles, we can also guarantee that the largest angle is no greater than 150<supscrpt>°</supscrpt>. Finally we give a nonobtuse triangulation algorithm for convex polygons that uses <italic>O</italic>(<italic>n</italic><supscrpt>1.85</supscrpt>) triangles.
Jet mass with a jet veto at two loops and the universality of nonglobal structure

We investigate the exclusive jet mass distribution in e+e- events, defined with a veto on the out-of-jet radiation, at two-loop order. In particular, we calculate the two-loop soft function, which is required to describe this distribution in the threshold region. When combined with other ingredients using soft-collinear effective theory, this generates the complete singular distribution for jet thrust, the sum of the jet masses, at two-loop order. The result is in excellent agreement with full QCD. The integrated jet thrust distribution is found to depend in an intricate way on both the finite jet cone size, R, and the jet veto scale. The result clarifies the structure of the potentially large logarithms (both global and non- global) which arise in jet observables for the first time at this order. Somewhat surprisingly, we find that, in the small R limit, there is a precise and simple correspondence between the non-global contribution to the integrated jet thrust distribution and the previously calculated non-global contribution to the integrated hemisphere soft function, including subleading terms. This suggests that the small R limit may provide a useful expansion for studying other exclusive jet substructure observables.
Distributed object tracking using a derivative free nonlinear information consensus filter

In this paper, we present a derivative free information consensus filter for distributed object tracking using camera network, which is based on the square-root cubature rules for linearization of nonlinear system models, and an novel consensus weighting scheme for faster convergence rate. Compared to the state of the art, our simulation shows that the proposed method can keep the consistence of local filters, and achieve faster convergence rate when only a limited number of consensus iterations is performed.
Optical properties of nanostructured gradient index vortex masks

We study optical properties of gradient index vortex masks based on an effective medium approach. We consider masks with single charge developed using two types of nanorods made of thermally matched low and high refractive index glasses. Optical performance of generated vortices are analyzed in terms of glass refractive index difference and spatial dimension of the components. A fabricated vortex mask has been combined with single mode optical fiber. Optical performance of the resulting fiber integrated vortex mask is characterized and discussed.
Design and Experimental Evaluation of a Route Optimization Solution for NEMO

An important requirement for Internet protocol (IP) networks to achieve the aim of ubiquitous connectivity is network mobility (NEMO). With NEMO support we can provide Internet access from mobile platforms, such as public transportation vehicles, to normal nodes that do not need to implement any special mobility protocol. The NEMO basic support protocol has been proposed in the IETF as a first solution to this problem, but this solution has severe performance limitations. This paper presents MIRON: Mobile IPv6 route optimization for NEMO, an approach to the problem of NEMO support that overcomes the limitations of the basic solution by combining two different modes of operation: a Proxy-MR and an address delegation with built-in routing mechanisms. This paper describes the design and rationale of the solution, with an experimental validation and performance evaluation based on an implementation
A block-based compressed sensing method for underdetermined blind speech separation incorporating binary mask

A block-based compressed sensing approach coupled with binary time-frequency masking is presented for the underdetermined speech separation problem. The proposed algorithm consists of multiple steps. First, the mixed signals are segmented to a number of blocks. For each block, the unknown mixing matrix is estimated in the transform domain by a clustering algorithm. Using the estimated mixing matrix, the sources are recovered by a compressed sensing approach. The coarsely separated sources are then used to estimate the time-frequency binary masks which are further applied to enhance the separation performance. The separated source components from all the blocks are concatenated to reconstruct the whole signal. Numerical experiments are provided to show the improved separation performance of the proposed algorithm, as compared with two recent approaches. The block-based operation has the advantage in improving considerably the computational efficiency of the compressed sensing algorithm without degrading its separation performance.
Adaptive 3-D object classification with reinforcement learning

We propose an adaptive approach to 3-D object classification. In this approach appropriate 3-D feature descriptor algorithms for 3-D point clouds are selected via reinforcement learning depending on properties of the objects to be classified. This approach is supposed to be able to learn strategies for an advantageous selection of 3-D point cloud descriptor algorithms in an autonomous and adaptive way, and thus is supposed to yield higher object classification rates in unfamiliar environments than any of the single algorithms alone. In addition, we expect our approach to be able to adapt to subsequently added 3-D feature descriptor algorithms as well as to autonomously learn new object categories when encountered in the environment without further user assistance. We describe the 3-D object classification pipeline based on local 3-D features and its integration into the reinforcement learning environment.
Robot Control by ERPs of Brain Waves I World

This paper presented the technique of robot control by event-related potentials (ERPs) of brain waves. Based on the proposed technique, severe physical disabilities can free browse outside world. A specific component of ERPs, N2P3, was found and used to control the movement of robot and the view of camera on the designed brain-computer interface (BCI). Users only required watching the stimuli of attended button on the BCI, the evoked potentials of brain waves of the target button, N2P3, had the greatest amplitude among all control buttons. An experimental scene had been constructed that the robot required walking to a specific position and move the view of camera to see the instruction of the mission, and then completed the task. Twelve volunteers participated in this experiment, and experimental results showed that the correct rate of BCI control achieved 80% and the average of execution time was 353 seconds for completing the mission. Four main contributions included in this research: (1) find an efficient component of ERPs, N2P3, for BCI control, (2) embed robot's viewpoint image into user interface for robot control, (3) design an experimental scene and conduct the experiment, and (4) evaluate the performance of the proposed system for assessing the practicability. Keywords—Brain-computer interface (BCI), event-related potentials (ERPs), robot control, severe physical disabilities.
Mobile payment in the smartphone age: extending the mobile payment reference model with non-traditional revenue streams

The smartphone age is changing the rules for mobile payments. While the longer value chain inhibits traditional payment schemes the potential for transaction-based revenues in the e- and m-commerce scenario is limited. Without adding substantial value, current business models have been commercially unsuccessful for more than a decade now. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the development of m-payment business models. While former papers merely stop at a methodical level, the idea of this paper is to evaluate and exploit the freedom degrees of the m-payment business model framework, with special regard to the new developments connected to the smartphone and app-economy age, in order to provide a concrete extension of the mobile payment reference model with new, non-traditional revenue streams. Therefore, we extend the mobile payment business model framework with three new roles: trusted service manager, mobile marketing service provider and mobile customer relationship management service provider.
Cardiac Arrhythmias in Adult Patients with Asthma

Objective. The pathogenesis of cardiac arrhythmias in asthma patients has not been fully elucidated. Adverse drug effects, particularly those of β2-mimetics, may play a role. The aim of this study was to determine whether asthma is associated with the risk of cardiac arrhythmias and electrocardiographic characteristics of arrhythmogenicity (ECG) and to explore the role of β2-mimetics. Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 158 adult patients with a diagnosis of asthma and 6303 participants without asthma from the cohort of the Utrecht Health Project—an ongoing, longitudinal, primary care-based study. All patients underwent extensive examinations, including resting 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) and pulmonary function tests. The primary outcome was “any arrhythmia on the ECG” (including tachycardia, bradycardia, premature ventricular contraction (PVC), and atrial fibrillation or flutter). Secondary outcomes were tachycardia, bradycardia, PVC, atrial fibrillation or flutter, mean heart rate, mean corrected QT (QTc) interval length, and prolonged QTc interval. Results. Tachycardia and PVCs were more prevalent in patients with asthma (3% and 4%, respectively) than those without asthma (0.6%, p < .001; 2%, p = .03, respectively). The prevalence of QTc interval prolongation was similar in participants with (2%) and without asthma (3%, odds ratio [OR]: 0.6 and 95% confidence interval [95% CI]: 0.2–2.0). In 74 asthma patients, who received β2-mimetics, tachycardia and PVCs were more common (OR: 12.4 [95% CI: 4.7–32.8] and 3.7 [95% CI: 1.3–10.5], respectively). Conclusions. The adult patients with asthma more commonly show tachycardia and PVCs on the ECG than those without asthma. The patients with asthma received β2-mimetics; the risk of tachycardia and PVCs is even more pronounced.