Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Replica bit-line technique for embedded multilevel gain-cell DRAM

Multilevel gain-cell DRAMs are interesting to improve the area-efficiency of modern fault-tolerant systems-on-chip implemented in deep-submicron CMOS technologies. This paper addresses the problem of long access times in such multilevel gain-cell DRAMs, which are further aggravated by process parameter variations. A replica bit-line (BL) technique, previously proposed for SRAM, is adapted to speed up the multilevel read operation at a negligible area-increase. Moreover, the same replica column is used to improve the write access time. An 8-kb DRAM macro implemented in 90-nm CMOS technology shows that the replica column is able to successfully track die-to-die process, voltage, and temperature variations to generate control signals with optimum delay. Finally, Monte-Carlo simulations show that a small timing margin of 100 ps is sufficient to also cope with within-die process variations.
A Cross-National Study of Drug Treatment Decisions in Psychiatry

It is generally believed that American psychiatrists prescribe higher doses of psychoactive drugs than do European psychiatrists. This belief is based on cross-national studies that compared different groups of psychiatrists treating different patients, thus confounding patient and physician variables. An experimental approach derived from cognitive psychology was used to present identical patient material to a group of American psychiatrists and to two groups of Swiss psychiatrists. Cross-national differences were confirmed--the Americans prescribed much higher doses than the Swiss. Considerable differences in doses prescribed were also found between the two Swiss groups. Neither group was very consistent in prescribing. Agreement about choice of drug among psychiatrists in all three groups was low; agreement among the Americans was not above chance.
SELECTION OF CANDIDATES IN THE PROCESS OF RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION OF PERSONNEL BASED ON THE SWARA AND ARAS METHODS

At the time when employees nowdays represent an important resource in achieving business success, there is an increasing focus on the process of recruitment and selection of personnel, because every company seeks to fill a vacant position with the best candidates, ie. those who best meet the requirements of the job. Therefore, this paper will propose an MCDM approach to the recruitment and selection of personnel by applying methods for decision making, in this case, by applying SWARA and ARAS methods. In order to determine the effectiveness of the proposed model, in the paper will also be presented a numerical example.
Optimizing program locality through CMEs and GAs

Caches have become increasingly important with the widening gap between main memory and processor speeds. Small and fast cache memories are designed to bridge this discrepancy. However, they are only effective when programs exhibit sufficient data locality. Performance of memory hierarchy can be improved by means of data and loop transformations. Tiling is a loop transformation that aims at reducing capacity misses by exploiting reuse at the lower levels of cache. Padding is a data transformation targeted to reduce conflict misses. We present an accurate cost model which makes use of the cache miss equations (CMEs) to guide tiling and padding transformations. It describes misses across different hierarchy levels and considers the effects of other hardware components such as branch predictors. We combine the cost model with a genetic algorithm (GA) to select the tile and pad factors that enhance the program. Our results show that this scheme is useful to optimize programs' performance. When compared to previous works, we observe that with a reasonable compile-time overhead, our approach obtains significant performance improvements for all studied kernels on a variety of architectures.
Milk decreases urinary excretion but not plasma pharmacokinetics of cocoa flavan-3-ol metabolites in humans.

BACKGROUND Cocoa drinks containing flavan-3-ols are associated with many health benefits, and conflicting evidence exists as to whether milk adversely affects the bioavailability of flavan-3-ols. OBJECTIVE The objective was to determine the effect of milk on the bioavailability of cocoa flavan-3-ol metabolites. DESIGN Nine human volunteers followed a low-flavonoid diet for 2 d before drinking 250 mL of a cocoa beverage, made with water or milk, that contained 45 micromol (-)-epicatechin and (-)-catechin. Plasma and urine samples were collected for 24 h, and flavan-3-ol metabolites were analyzed by HPLC with photodiode array and mass spectrometric detection. RESULTS Milk affected neither gastric emptying nor the transit time through the small intestine. Two flavan-3-ol metabolites were detected in plasma and 4 in urine. Milk had only minor effects on the plasma pharmacokinetics of an (epi)catechin-O-sulfate and had no effect on an O-methyl-(epi)catechin-O-sulfate. However, milk significantly lowered the excretion of 4 urinary flavan-3-ol metabolites from 18.3% to 10.5% of the ingested dose (P = 0.016). Studies that showed protective effects of cocoa and those that showed no effect of milk on bioavailability used products that have a much higher flavan-3-ol content than does the commercial cocoa used in the present study. CONCLUSIONS Most studies of the protective effects of cocoa have used drinks with a very high flavan-3-ol content. Whether similar protective effects are associated with the consumption of many commercial chocolate and cocoa products containing substantially lower amounts of flavan-3-ols, especially when absorption at lower doses is obstructed by milk, remains to be determined.
The Effects of Memory-Rich Environments on File System Microbenchmarks

File system performance has been greatly influenced by disk caching mechanisms. As the size of memory increases, common workloads are more likely to run completely from memory, and the effects of L2 caching and underlying hardware are becoming more visible. This paper investigates performance anomalies observed when measuring and comparing the memory performance of various leading file systems. We discovered that without considering the effects of L2 caching policy, memory footprints of file systems, states of L2 cache, and memory page alignments, existing microbenchmarks could produce numbers that are significantly misleading and could result in poor designs and improper conclusions about relative file system performance. We recommend that the design of file system microbenchmarks for memory-rich environments should carefully consider the initial states of memory and L2 cache, subtle warm-up effects, the cache eviction policy, interactions between workload size and the memory and cache sizes, and the management granularity of memory and the L2 cache.
Smoking as a Risk Factor for Stroke in Women Compared With Men: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of 81 Cohorts, Including 3 980 359 Individuals and 42 401 Strokes

Background and Purpose— It is currently unknown whether the excess risk of stroke by smoking is the same for women and men. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate the effect of smoking on stroke in women compared with men. Methods— PubMed MEDLINE was systematically searched for prospective population-based cohort studies published between January 1, 1966, and January 26, 2013. Studies that presented sex-specific estimates of the relative risk of stroke comparing current smoking with nonsmoking and its associated variability were selected. The sex-specific relative risks and their ratio (RRR), comparing women with men, were pooled using random-effects meta-analysis with inverse variance weighting. Similarly, the RRR for former versus never smoking was pooled. Results— Data from 81 prospective cohort studies that included 3 980 359 individuals and 42 401 strokes were available. Smoking was an independent risk factor for stroke in both sexes. Overall, the pooled multiple-adjusted RRR indicated a similar risk of stroke associated with smoking in women compared with men (RRR, 1.06 [95% confidence interval, 0.99–1.13]). In a regional analysis, there was evidence of a more harmful effect of smoking in women than in men in Western (RRR, 1.10 [1.02–1.18)] but not in Asian (RRR, 0.97 [0.87–1.09]) populations. Compared with never-smokers, the beneficial effects of quitting smoking among former smokers on stroke risk were similar between the sexes (RRR, 1.10 [0.99–1.22]). Conclusions— Compared with nonsmokers, the excess risk of stroke is at least as great among women who smoke compared with men who smoke.
Sequencing batch reactor operation for treating wastewater with aerobic granular sludge

In this work, the performance of a sequencing batch reactor (SBR) on aerobic granular sludge was studied for urban wastewater treatment. The system was inoculated with aerobic activated sludge collected from a wastewater treatment plant and, after 30 days of operation, the first granules observed had an average diameter of 0.1 mm. The biomass concentration reached a maximum value around 4 g VSS L-1, and COD removal and nitrification efficiency achieved stable values of 90%. The predominant oxidizing ammonium bacteria in the granules were identified as Nitrosomonas spp.
The Hydrophilic Isoform of Glutamate Decarboxylase, GAD67, Is Targeted to Membranes and Nerve Terminals Independent of Dimerization with the Hydrophobic Membrane-anchored Isoform, GAD65*

GAD67, the larger isoform of the γ-aminobutyric acid-synthesizing enzyme glutamic acid decarboxylase, is a hydrophilic soluble molecule, postulated to localize at nerve terminals and membrane compartments by heterodimerization with the smaller membrane-anchored isoform GAD65. We here show that the dimerization region in GAD65 is distinct from the NH2-terminal membrane-anchoring region and that a membrane anchoring GAD65 subunit can indeed target a soluble subunit to membrane compartments by dimerization. However, only a fraction of membrane-bound GAD67 is engaged in a heterodimer with GAD65 in rat brain. Furthermore, in GAD65−/− mouse brain, GAD67, which no longer partitions into the Triton X-114 detergent phase, still anchors to membranes at similar levels as in wild-type mice. Similarly, in primary cultures of neurons derived from GAD65−/− mice, GAD67 is targeted to nerve terminals, where it co-localizes with the synaptic vesicle marker SV2. Thus, axonal targeting and membrane anchoring is an intrinsic property of GAD67 and does not require GAD65. The results suggest that three distinct moieties of glutamate decarboxylase localize to membrane compartments, an amphiphilic GAD65 homodimer, an amphiphilic GAD65/67 heterodimer, tethered to membranes via the GAD65 subunit, and a hydrophilic GAD67 homodimer, which associates with membranes by a distinct mechanism.
Efficient CCG Parsing: A* versus Adaptive Supertagging

We present a systematic comparison and combination of two orthogonal techniques for efficient parsing of Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG). First we consider adaptive supertagging, a widely used approximate search technique that prunes most lexical categories from the parser's search space using a separate sequence model. Next we consider several variants on A*, a classic exact search technique which to our knowledge has not been applied to more expressive grammar formalisms like CCG. In addition to standard hardware-independent measures of parser effort we also present what we believe is the first evaluation of A* parsing on the more realistic but more stringent metric of CPU time. By itself, A* substantially reduces parser effort as measured by the number of edges considered during parsing, but we show that for CCG this does not always correspond to improvements in CPU time over a CKY baseline. Combining A* with adaptive supertagging decreases CPU time by 15% for our best model.
A prototype document image analysis system for technical journals

Gobbledoc, a system providing remote access to stored documents, which is based on syntactic document analysis and optical character recognition (OCR), is discussed. In Gobbledoc, image processing, document analysis, and OCR operations take place in batch mode when the documents are acquired. The document image acquisition process and the knowledge base that must be entered into the system to process a family of page images are described. The process by which the X-Y tree data structure converts a 2-D page-segmentation problem into a series of 1-D string-parsing problems that can be tackled using conventional compiler tools is also described. Syntactic analysis is used in Gobbledoc to divide each page into labeled rectangular blocks. Blocks labeled text are converted by OCR to obtain a secondary (ASCII) document representation. Since such symbolic files are better suited for computerized search than for human access to the document content and because too many visual layout clues are lost in the OCR process (including some special characters), Gobbledoc preserves the original block images for human browsing. Storage, networking, and display issues specific to document images are also discussed. <<ETX>>
Fully Nonlinear Properties of Periodic Waves Shoaling over Slopes

Shoaling of finite amplitude periodic waves over a sloping bottom is calculated in a numerical wave tank which combines: (i) a Boundary Element Model to solve Fully Nonlinear Potential Flow (FNPF) equations; (ii) an exact generation of zero-mass-flux Streamfunction Waves at the deeper water extremity; and (iii) an Absorbing Beach (AB) at the far end of the tank, which features both free surface absorption (through applying an external pressure) and lateral active absorption (using a piston-like condition). A feedback mechanism adaptively calibrates the beach absorption coefficient, as a function of time, to absorb the period-averaged energy of incident waves. Shoaling of periodic waves of various heights and periods is modeled over 1:35,1:50, and 1:70 slopes (both plane and natural), up to very close to the breaking point. Due to the low reflection from both the slope and the AB, a quasi-steady state is soon reached in the tank for which local and integral properties of shoaling waves are calculated (K„ c, H/h, kH, rjm, Sxx,.). Comparisons are made with classical wave theories and observed differences are discussed. Parameters providing an almost one-to-one relationship with relative depth kh in the shoaling region are identified. These could be used to solve the so-called depth-inversion problem.
Basis for selective incorporation of glycoproteins into the influenza virus envelope

The ability of mutant or chimeric A/Japan hemagglutinins (HAs) to compete for space in the envelope of A/WSN influenza viruses was investigated with monkey kidney fibroblasts that were infected with recombinant simian virus 40 vectors expressing the Japan proteins and superinfected with A/WSN influenza virus. Wild-type Japan HA assembled into virions as well as WSN HA did. Japan HA lacking its cytoplasmic sequences, HAtail-, was incorporated into influenza virions at half the efficiency of wild-type Japan HA. Chimeric HAs containing the 11 cytoplasmic amino acids of the herpes simplex virus type 1gC glycoprotein or the 29 cytoplasmic amino acids of the vesicular stomatitis virus G protein were incorporated into virions at less than 1% the efficiency of HAtail-. Thus, the cytoplasmic domain of HA was not required for the selection process; however, foreign cytoplasmic sequences, even short ones, were excluded. A chimeric HA having the gC transmembrane domain and the HA cytoplasmic domain (HgCH) was incorporated at 4% the efficiency of HAtail-. When expressed from simian virus 40 recombinants in this system, vesicular stomatitis virus G protein with or without (Gtail-) its cytoplasmic domain was essentially excluded from influenza virions. Taken together, these data indicate that the HA transmembrane domain is required for incorporation of HA into influenza virions. The slightly more efficient incorporation of HgCH than G or Gtail- could indicate that the region important for assembling HA into virions extends into part of the cytoplasmic domain.
A General Power Model of Differential Power Analysis Attacks to Static Logic Circuits

This paper discusses a general model of differential power analysis (DPA) attacks to static logic circuits. Focusing on symmetric-key cryptographic algorithms, the proposed analysis provides a deeper insight into the vulnerability of cryptographic circuits. The main parameters that are of interest in practical DPA attacks are derived under suitable approximations, and a new figure of merit to measure the DPA effectiveness is proposed. Worst case conditions under which a cryptographic circuit should be tested to evaluate its robustness against DPA attacks are identified and analyzed. Several interesting properties of DPA attacks are also derived from the proposed model, whose fundamental expressions are compared with the counterparts of correlation power analysis attacks. The model was validated by means of DPA attacks on an FPGA implementation of the advanced encryption standard algorithm. Experimental results show that the model has a good accuracy, as its error is always lower than 2%.
Cytokinin overproducing ove mutants of Physcomitrella patens show increased riboside to base conversion.

Ove mutants in the moss Physcomitrella patens can arise from different recessive mutations. These mutants display a much larger number of buds than the wild type (wt) due to a dramatic overproduction of cytokinins (Cks), which are released into the culture medium (T.L. Wang, R. Horgan, D.J. Cove [1981] Plant Physiol 68: 735-738). The amounts of isopentenyladenine (iP) and isopentenyladenosine ([9R]iP) produced by chloronema of different ove mutants were measured. Levels of the major Ck iP in the culture medium of the mutants oveA78, oveA201, oveC200, and oveB300 (cultured at 21 degrees C) were 4-fold (oveA78) to 22-fold (oveB300) higher than for the wt. A new temperature-sensitive ove strain oveST25, which exhibits a strong ove phenotype at 25 degrees C, was also studied. It produced about 260 times more iP than the thiamine auxotrophic wt from which it was derived. To contribute to the physiological understanding of Ck overproduction, in vivo labeling experiments with (3)H-[9R]iP were performed. In all ove mutants analyzed, the rate of (3)H-[9R]iP conversion to (3)H-iP was higher as compared with the wt. In oveST25, the 3-fold increased riboside to base conversion was temperature inducible and correlated with the iP production. Analysis of Ck catabolism revealed no major differences between ove mutants and wt, thus indicating that ove mutants are unlikely to be degradation mutants. The data suggest that in ove mutants the increased riboside to base conversion is part of a generally up-regulated Ck biosynthetic pathway and may play an important role for the enhanced release of iP into the medium.
Study of Ti-Ni-Nb Shape Memory Alloys with a Wide Hysteresis

It has been shown that TiNiNb shape memory alloys exhibit a wide transformation hysteresis compared to TiNi binary alloys (about 145°C versus 30°C). This wide hysteresis has important engineering utility. The present paper was undertaken to review of the microstructure. mechanical behavior, deformation-induced martensitic transformation and the effect of deformation on the stability of martensite and its reverse transformation in TiNiNb alloys. Simultaneously, the strain recovery characteristic and interface structure of martensite were explained, and the mechanism for increasing martensite stability by deformation was discussed. In addition, the microstructure and interface structure inside the stress-induced martensite (SIM) variants were evaluated. It is found that the morphology and substructure of SIM depend on deformation condition. The tensile deformation at parent phase condition has great influence on the substructure and interface structure of SIM variants. The most distinctive substructural feature of the stress-induced martensite is the presence of the various secondary twins. Based on the analysis of the stability and shape memory effect of various kinds of martensite, the concept of stability of deformed stress-induced martensite was proposed and explained by the mechanism for the formation of several secondary deformation twins.
Rat visceral yolk sac cells: viability and expression of cell markers during maternal diabetes

The function of the visceral yolk sac (VYS) is critical for embryo organogenesis until final fetal development in rats, and can be affected by conditions such as diabetes. In view of the importance of diabetes during pregnancy for maternal and neonatal health, the objective of this study was to assess fetal weight, VYS cell markers, and viability in female Wistar rats (200-250 g) with induced diabetes (alloxan, 37 mg/kg) on the 8th gestational day (gd 8). At gd 15, rats from control (n=5) and diabetic (n=5) groups were anesthetized and laparotomized to remove the uterine horns for weighing of fetuses and collecting the VYS. Flow cytometry was used for characterizing VYS cells, and for determining mitochondrial activity, cell proliferation, DNA ploidy, cell cycle phases, and caspase-3 activity. Fetal weight was reduced in the diabetic group. Expression of the cell markers CD34, VEGFR1, CD115, CD117, CD14, CCR2, CD90, CD44, STRO-1, OCT3/4, and Nanog was detected in VYS cells in both groups. In the diabetic group, significantly decreased expression of CD34 (P<0.05), CCR2 (P<0.001), and OCT3/4 (P<0.01), and significantly increased expression of CD90 (P<0.05), CD117 (P<0.01), and CD14 (P<0.05) were observed. VYS cells with inactive mitochondria, activated caspase-3, and low proliferation were present in the rats with diabetes. Severe hyperglycemia caused by maternal diabetes had negative effects on pregnancy, VYS cell viability, and the expression of cell markers.
Lightweight code-based identification and signature

We revisit the code-based identification protocol proposed by Stern at Crypto'93, and give evidence that the size of public keys can be dramatically reduced while preserving a high and well-understood level of security. More precisely, the public keys can be made even shorter than RSA ones (typically 347 bits), while their size is around 150 Kbits in the original scheme. This is achieved by using matrices which are double circulant, rather than purely random. On the whole, this provides a very practical identification (and possibly signature) scheme which is mostly attractive for light-weight cryptography.
Organic Textures with Controlled Anisotropy and Directionality

Pseudo Voronoi Tessellation via Anisotropic Meshing Our tessellation technique to represent organic texture consists of three steps: (1) elliptic or rectangular particle packing; (2) anisotropic meshing by connecting the centers of the particles; and (3) Voronoi tessellation as a dual of the anisotropic mesh. Given preferred cell sizes and directionality within a geometric domain, the technique outputs Voronoi polygons compatible with the specified cell sizes, directionality, and anisotropy.
Robust audio fingerprinting for song identification

This paper presents a new algorithm for audio hashing. These kinds of techniques work analysing the signal taking into account its nature in order to extract distinguishing features robust to typical processing. These features describe in a compact way the signal and can be efficiently stored in a database. In our algorithm the features are analysed for short frames using a quantization approach. Moreover we propose a parameter for identification, which is also used to define a confidence. The confidence is used to identify the quality of the identification. The algorithm is tested under different processing operations: compression, cropping, noise addition, subsampling, stereo to mono conversion, etc. The results show that the identification can be performed also using a short excerpt of the song.