Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modeling of polysilicide gate resistance effect on inverter delay and power consumption using distributed RC method and branching technique

Two parameters that contribute significantly in a CMOS inverter delay are the output load and propagation of the control signal across the gates of its transistors. The latter one which is due to the polysilicide gate resistance (PGR) is proportional to the gate width, W. The PGR effect causes the inverter transistors remain simultaneously on, for further time in the saturation region during transient instants, so that the short circuit power consumption increases largely. In this paper, we model the PGR resistance effect using the distributed RC approach based on a new proposed technique. Additionally, in order to reduce its negative impact on the circuit performance, we utilize a relevant optimized branching method. The results obtained from our model compared to the HSPICE simulation results verify a good agreement. Furthermore, our modeling technique can be implemented as a CAD tool for a primary estimation of the delay and the power consumption in complex circuits while retains an acceptable accuracy.
Big Data in the Cloud: A Survey

Big Data has become a hot topic across several business areas requiring the storage and processing of huge volumes of data. Cloud computing leverages Big Data by providing high storage and processing capabilities and enables corporations to consume resources in a pay-as-you-go model making clouds the optimal environment for storing and processing huge quantities of data. By using virtualized resources, Cloud can scale very easily, be highly available and provide massive storage capacity and processing power. This paper surveys existing databases models to store and process Big Data within a Cloud environment. Particularly, we detail the following traditional NoSQL databases: BigTable, Cassandra, DynamoDB, HBase, Hypertable, and MongoDB. The MapReduce framework and its developments Apache Spark, HaLoop, Twister, and other alternatives such as Apache Giraph, GraphLab, Pregel and MapD - a novel platform that uses GPU processing to accelerate Big Data processing - are also analyzed. Finally, we present two case studies that demonstrate the successful use of Big Data within Cloud environments and the challenges that must be addressed in the future.
Transport optics design and multi-particle tracking for the ilc positron source

Undulator-based positron source is adopted as the International Linear Collider baseline design. Complete optics to transport the positron beam having large angular divergence and large energy spread from a thin Ti target to the entrance of the 5 GeV damping ring injection line is developed. Start-to-end multi-particle tracking through the beamline is performed including the optical matching device, capture accelerator system, transport system, superconducting booster linac, spin rotators, and energy compressor. Positron capture efficiency of different schemes (immersed vs shielded target, and flux concentrator vs quarter wave transformation for the optics matching system) is compared. For the scheme of a shielded target and quarter wave transformation, the simulation shows that 15.1% of the positrons from the target are captured within the damping ring 6-D acceptance of A x + A y les 0.09 m and DeltaE times Deltaz les (plusmn25 MeV) times (plusmn3.46 cm), at the entrance of the damping ring injection line.
the long-term strength of continental lithosphere: "jelly sandwich" or "crème brûlée"?

There has been much debate recently concern ing the long-term (i.e., >1 m.y.) strength of continen tal lithosphere. In one model, dubbed jelly sandwich, the strength resides in the crust and mantle, while in another, dubbed creme brulee, the mantle is weak and the strength is limited to the crust. The different models have arisen because of conflicting results from elastic thickness and earthquake data. We address the problem here by first reviewing elastic thickness estimates and their relationship to the seismogenic layer thickness. We then explore, by numerical thermomechanical model ing, the implications of a weak and strong mantle for structural styles. We argue that, irrespective of the actual crustal strength, the creme-brulee model is unable to explain either the persistence of mountain ranges or the integrity of the downgoing slab in collisional systems. We conclude that while the creme-brulee model may apply in some tectonic settings, a more widely applica ble model is the jelly sandwich.
Real-Time Detection of Selfish Behavior in IEEE 802 . 11 Wireless Networks Invited Paper

The open and distributed nature of the IEEE 802.11 based wireless network makes it easy for selfish nodes to gain unfair share on the networks by manipulating the protocol parameters. In this paper, we address the detection of such selfish behavior. The two main challenges associated with the detection problem are the unknown selfish behavior strategy and real-time detection of the behavior. While the two challenges are correlated for efficient detection, existing solutions can not address both of them well at the same time. In our work, we propose a new observation method monitoring the number of successful transmissions of the tagged node. This enables us to capture the short-term traffic dynamics which is crucial for real-time detection. Integrating our observation method with the CUSUM test, we develop a detection scheme to deal with both the challenges without any modification to the existing protocols. Moreover, we utilize a discrete Markov chain based model to characterize the behavior of the CUSUM test statistic, which enables us to quantitatively analyze the tunable parameters in the scheme for guaranteed detection performance. The performance of the proposed scheme is validated through ns-2 simulation. We show that the scheme is capable of quickly and accurately detecting the selfish behavior without knowledge of the selfish strategy.
An Ontology of Data Modeling Languages: A Study Using a Common-Sense Realistic Ontology

Data modelling languages are used in todayâ€™s information systems engineering environments. Many have a degree of hype surrounding their quality and applicability with narrow and specific justification often given in support of one over another. We want to more deeply understand the fundamental nature of data modelling languages. We thus propose a theory, based on ontology, that should allow us to understand, compare, evaluate, and strengthen data modelling languages. In this paper we present a method (conceptual evaluation) and its extension (conceptual comparison), as part of our theory. Our methods are largely independent of a specific ontology. We introduce Chisholmâ€™s ontology and apply our methods to analyse some data modelling languages using it. We find a good degree of overlap between all of the data modelling languages analysed and the core concepts of Chisholmâ€™s ontology, and conclude that the data modelling languages investigated reflect an ontology of commonsense-realism.
A call admission control algorithm for long-lived and short-lived streaming media

Call admission control (CAC) is one important QoS mechanism for maintaining performance of streaming media services. In this paper, we propose a novel CAC algorithm, which handles long-lived and short-lived streams differently to satisfy their different QoS requirements. Under such mechanism, we show that not only one can guarantee the quality of each stream, but also improve the system utilization.
A 192MHz differential XO based frequency quadrupler with sub-picosecond jitter in 28nm CMOS

A low jitter 192MHz crystal reference quadrupler leverages a new active inductor based 48MHz differential XO, two skewed inverters, a new duty cycle correction circuit, and a frequency doubler. The 192MHz quadrupler can serve as a fast, low jitter reference for a low phase noise PLL and requires far less power and area than reference multiplying PLL or MDLL circuits. The measured RMS jitter is 168fs for the XO, and 184fs for 96MHz output (192MHz divide by 2). The entire circuit, including the XO, draws 5.5mA from a 1V supply and occupies 0.045mm2. To our best knowledge, this is the first reference frequency quadrupler with sub-picosecond jitter.
1 High Performance Computing on GPU Clusters

Commodity graphics cards have recently proven to be an inexpensive and effective way to accelerate some scientific computations. Acceleration using multiple GPUs is more challenging, because the type of algorithm/parallelism needed to couple many GPUs is very different from the algorithm/parallelism used to efficiently utilize a single GPU. In this work, four very different applications are evaluated in both the single and multiple GPU contexts. The algorithms are memory bound, like almost all scientific computing algorithms. But the memory use differs considerably allowing us to isolate which types of scientific computing algorithms are likely to benefit from GPU acceleration, and which problems are more easily solved on traditional CPU clusters.
A CONVERGENCE OF NOSQL STORAGE SYSTEMS FROM CLOUDS TO SUPERCOMPUTERS

This work presents a convergence of distributed NoSQL storage systems in clouds and supercomputers. It specifically presents ZHT, a zero-hop distributed keyvalue store system, which has been tuned for the requirements of high-end computing systems. ZHT aims to be a building block for future distributed systems, such as parallel and distributed file systems, distributed job management systems, and parallel programming systems. The goals of ZHT are delivering high availability, good fault tolerance, high throughput, and low latencies, at extreme scales (millions of nodes). ZHT has some important properties, such as being light-weight, dynamically allowing nodes join and leave, fault tolerant through replication, persistent, scalable, and supporting unconventional operations such as append, compare and swap, callback in addition to the traditional insert/lookup/remove. We have evaluated ZHT’s performance under a variety of systems, ranging from a Linux cluster with 64-nodes, an Amazon EC2 virtual cluster up to 96-nodes, to an IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer with 8K-nodes. Using synthetic benchmarks, we scaled ZHT up to 32K-cores with latencies of only 1.1ms and 18M operations/sec throughput on Blue Gene/P. On Amazon EC2 cloud, on 96-node scale it offers 0.8ms latency and 1.2M ops/s throughput. We compared ZHT against other key/value stores (e.g. Casandra, Memcached, DynamoDB) and found it offers superior performance for the features and portability it supports. This work also presents several real systems that have adopted ZHT as well as other NoSQL systems, namely FusionFS (distributed metadata management and data provenance capture/query), IStore (data chunk metadata management), MATRIX (distributed scheduling), Slurm++ (distributed HPC job launch), ZDMQ (distributed message queue management), FREIDA-State (state management for scientific applications on cloud), and WaggleDB (a Cloud-based interactive data infras-
Photoelectric effect on dust grains across the L1721 cloud in the rho Ophiuchi molecular complex

We present ISO-LWS measurements of the main gas cooling lines, (C + ) 158 ma nd (O 0 )6 3m towards a moderate opacity molecular cloud (Av 3), L1721, illuminated by the B2 star Sco ( =5 10). These data are combined with an extinction map and IRAS dust emission images to test our understanding of gas heating and cooling in photodissociation regions (PDRs). This nearby PDR is spatially resolved in the IRAS images; variations in the IRAS colors across the cloud indicate an enhanced abundance of small dust grains within the PDR. A spatial correlation between the gas cooling lines and the infrared emission from small dust grains illustrates the dominant role of small dust grains in the gas heating through the photoelectric eect. The photoelectric eciency, determined from the observations by ratioing the power radiated by gas and small dust grains, is in the range 2 to 3%, in close agreement with recent theoretical estimates (Bakes & Tielens 1994; Weingartner & Draine 2001). The brightness proles across the PDR in the (C + ) 158 ma nd (O 0 )6 3 ml ines are compared with model calculations where the density prole is constrained by the extinction data and where the gas chemical and thermal balances are solved at each position. We show that abundance variations of small dust grains across the PDR must be considered to account for the LWS observations.
Design Approach of Biologically-Inspired Musculoskeletal Humanoids

In order to realize more natural and various motions like humans, humanlike musculoskeletal tendon-driven humanoids have been studied. Especially, it is very challenging to design musculoskeletal body structure which consists of complicated bones, redundant powerful and flexible muscles, and large number of distributed sensors. In addition, it is very challenging to reveal humanlike intelligence to manage these complicated musculoskeletal body structure. This paper sums up life-sized musculoskeletal humanoids Kenta, Kotaro, Kenzoh and Kenshiro which we have developed so far, and describes key technologies to develop and control these robots.
Bandwidth-efficient OFDM transmission with iterative cyclic prefix reconstruction

For orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), cyclic prefix (CP) should be longer than the length of channel impulse response, resulting in a loss of bandwidth efficiency. In this paper, we describe a new technique to restore the cyclicity of the received signal when the CP is not sufficient for OFDM systems. The proposed technique efficiently restores the cyclicity of the current received symbol by adding the weighted next received symbol to the current received symbol. Iterative CP reconstruction (CPR) procedure, based on the residual intersymbol interference cancellation (RISIC) algorithm, is analyzed and compared to the RISIC. In addition, we apply the CPR method to Alamouti space-time block coded (STBC) OFDM system. It is shown that in the STBC OFDM, tail cancellation as well as cyclic reconstruction of the CPR procedure should be repeated. The computational complexities of the RISIC, the proposed CPR, the RISIC with STBC, and the proposed CPR with STBC are analyzed and their performances are evaluated in multipath fading environments. We also propose an iterative channel estimation (CE) method for OFDM with insufficient CP. Further, we discuss the CE method for the STBC OFDM system with the CPR. It is shown that the CPR technique with the proposed CE method minimizes the loss of bandwidth efficiency due to the use of CP, without sacrificing the diversity gain of the STBC OFDM system.
Gangbare landbouwkundige praktijk en recente ontwikkelingen voor vier akkerbouwgewassen in Nederland

In dit rapport wordt gangbare landbouwpraktijk in Nederland beschreven voor aardappelen, suikerbieten, snijmais en winterkoolzaad, de gewassen waarvoor nu vergunning voor veldproeven met genetisch gemodificereerde - rassen openstaat. In hoofdstuk 5 een globale lijst met aandachtspunten voor de vergunningverlening, en wordt kort ingegaan op de isolatieafstanden tussen biologische en gangbare teelten.
Planar $β$-skeletons via point location in monotone subdivisions of subset of lunes

We present a new algorithm for lune-based $\beta$-skeletons for sets of $n$ points in the plane, for $\beta \in (2,\infty]$, the only case when optimal algorithms are not known. The running time of the algorithm is $O(n^{3/2} \log^{1/2} n)$, which is the best known and is an improvement of Rao and Mukhopadhyay \cite{rm97} result. The method is based on point location in monotonic subdivisions of arrangements of curve segments.
Analysis of an ID-based proxy signature scheme without trusted PKG and a proxy blind multi-signature scheme

This paper analyzes two proxy signature schemes' security, and proves that they exist loopholes. Xu's ID-based proxy signature scheme without trusted PKG is not safe, because there exists a security attack which original signer can tamper with the proxy warrant allayed with PKG.Hu's proxy blind multi-signature scheme also exists a security attack that the signature requester can tamper with the proxy warrant.
On the Supply of Superior Order-1 Building Blocks for a Class of Periodical Fitness Functions

In addition to GA-deception, the lack of fitness differences among low-order schemata can also degrade GA’s search. Therefore, a coding should present adequate superior low-order building blocks at the early stage of search. This paper aims to reveal the inherent periodicity in the search process of a genetic algorithm, and to show how to make use of this periodicity in the design of representation for fitness functions with periods of the reciprocals of positive integers so as to ensure the effective supply of superior order-1 building blocks. Finally, simulations are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
A no-reference objective image sharpness metric based on a filter bank of Gaussian derivative wavelets

The quality of an image depends on various attributes such as sharpness (or blurriness), naturalness, colorfulness, and contrast, etc. To develop a so-called no-reference objective image quality metric by incorporating all attributes of images without referring to the original ones is a difficult task. Hence, the purpose of this paper focuses on the development of a no-reference objective image sharpness metric. A high-frequency component preserving the full information of a given input image is extracted first and then applied to a multi-channel filter bank. The proposed method measures image sharpness based on the output of this filter bank. A snug frame composed of the Gaussian derivative wavelets is applied to construct the filter bank. The output of the filter bank not only contains the complete information of the input but also manifests prominent image features. Experimental results show that the metric predicts well in isotropic and uniform blur case. Validated by the high correlation between the metric values and the subjective test scores, the performance of the proposed metric is comparable to that of human subjects.
Structure of human farnesyl pyrophosphate synthase in complex with an aminopyridine bisphosphonate and two molecules of inorganic phosphate

A co-crystal structure of human farnesyl pyrophosphate synthase in complex with an aminopyridine bisphosphonate, YS0470, and two molecules of inorganic phosphate has been determined. The identity of the phosphate ligands was confirmed by anomalous diffraction data.
Strong connectivity hypothesis and generative power in tag.

Dynamic grammars are relevant for psycholinguistic modelling and speech processing. However, formal treatments of dynamic grammars are rare, and there are few studies that examine the relationship between dynamic and phrase structure grammars. This paper introduces a TAG related dynamic grammar (DVTAG) together with a study of its expressive power. We also shed a new perspective on the wrapping operation in TAG.
Ubiquitous tele-embodiment: applications and implications

In the rush into cyberspace we leave our physical presence and our real-world environment behind. The internet, undoubtedly a remarkable modern communications tool, still does not empower us to enter the office of the person at the other end of the connection. We cannot look out of their window, admire their furniture, talk to their office-mates, tour their laboratory or walk outside. We lack the equivalent of a body at the other end with which we can move around in, communicate through and observe with. However, by combining elements of the internet and tele-robotics it is possible to transparently immerse users into navigable real remote worlds filled with rich spatial sensorium and to make such systems accessible from any networked computer in the world, in essence: tele-embodiment. In this article we describe the evolution and development of one such inexpensive, simple, networked tele-operated mobile robot (tele-mobot) designed to provide this ability. We also discuss several social implications and philosophical questions raised by this research.
Cell surface proteoglycans are not essential for infection by pseudorabies virus

Cell surface proteoglycans, in particular those carrying heparan sulfate glycosaminoglycans, play a major role in primary attachment of herpesviruses to target cells. In pseudorabies virus (PrV), glycoprotein gC has been shown to represent the major heparan sulfate-binding virion envelope protein (T. C. Mettenleiter, L. Zsak, F. Zuckermann, N. Sugg, H. Kern, and T. Ben-Porat, J. Virol. 64:278-286, 1990). Since PrV gC is nonessential for viral infectivity in vitro and in vivo, either the interaction between virion envelope and cellular heparan sulfate is not necessary to mediate infection or other virion envelope proteins can substitute as heparan sulfate-binding components in the absence of gC. To answer these questions, we analyzed the infectivity of isogenic gC+ and gC- PrV on mouse L-cell derivatives with defects in glycosaminoglycan biosynthesis, using a rapid and sensitive fluorescence-based beta-galactosidase assay and single-cell counting in a fluorescence-activated cell sorter. Our data show that (i) in the virion, glycoprotein gC represents the only proteoglycan-binding envelope protein, and (ii) cellular proteoglycans are not essential for infectivity of PrV. Attachment studies using radiolabeled virions lacking either gC or the essential gD confirmed these results and demonstrated that PrV gD mainly contributes to binding of Pr virions to cell surface components other than proteoglycans. These data demonstrate the presence of a proteoglycan-independent mode of attachment for Pr virions leading to infectious entry into target cells.
Effects on plasma insulin of intermittent infusions of propionic acid, glucose or casein into the alimentary tract of non-lactating cows maintained on a liquid diet

1. An experiment was conducted using three non-lactating cows completely maintained by infusions of volatile fatty acids into the rumen, and casein into the abomasum. Plasma insulin responses to propionic acid, glucose or casein were recorded. Further information was obtained using protein-free infusions. 2. When part of the propionic acid was infused into the rumen in a twice-daily 3 h dose and the remainder infused continuously with acetic and butyric acids and casein, there were large increases in the concentrations of propionic acid and insulin in the jugular blood. When glucose, corresponding in energy to that supplied by the intermittent propionic acid infusions was similarly infused, the plasma levels of glucose and insulin were increased. Glucose appeared to stimulate a greater increase in insulin than did propionic acid. Casein infused into the abomasum in intermittent doses produced a rise in plasma insulin, but smaller than that observed with propionic acid or with glucose. 3. The protein-free infusion was characterized by a lower concentration of insulin in the blood plasma, a reduction in plasma urea and free amino nitrogen and unchanged plasma glucose.
Synthesis and E/Z Configuration Determination of Novel Derivatives of 3-Aryl-2-(benzothiazol-2'-ylthio) Acrylonitrile, 3-(Benzothiazol-2'-ylthio)-4-(furan-2''-yl)-3-buten-2-one and 2-(1-(Furan-2''-yl)-3'-oxobut-1''-en-2-ylthio)-3-phenylquinazolin-4(3H)-one

Knoevenagel condensation of 2-(benzothiazol-2-ylthio) acetonitrile (2) with either furan-2-carbaldehyde or thiophene-2-carbaldehydes leads to E-isomers 4a–b exclusively, while the condensation of the compound 2 with benzaldehyde or para-substituted benzaldehydes with an electron-donating group afforded E/Z mixtures 4c–e with preferentially formation of the E-isomer. Condensation of furan-2-carbaldehyde (3a) with either 1-(benzothiazol-2'-ylthio) propan-2-one (5) or 2-(2'-oxo propylthio)-3-phenyl-quinazolin-4(3H)-one (9) leads exclusively to the Z-isomers of 6 and 10, respectively. The structures of the newly synthesized compounds were elucidated by elemental analyses, 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR spectra, COSY, HSQC, HMBC, NOE, MS and X-ray crystallographic investigations.