Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A micromachined V-band CMOS bandpass filter with 2-dB insertion-loss

A low-insertion-loss V-band CMOS bandpass filter is demonstrated. The proposed filter architecture has the following feature: the low-frequency transmission-zero (ωz1) and the high-frequency transmission-zero (ωz2) can be tuned by the series-feedback capacitor Cs and the parallel-feedback capacitor Cp, respectively. To reduce the substrate loss, the CMOS process compatible backside inductively-coupledplasma (ICP) deep trench technology is used to selectively remove the silicon underneath the filter. After the ICP etching, this filter achieved insertion-loss (1/S21) lower than 3 dB over the frequency range of 52.5–76.8 GHz. The minimum insertion-loss was 2 dB at 63.5 GHz. To the authors' knowledge, this is the best result ever reported for a V-band CMOS bandpass filter in the literature.
Scheduling task parallel applications for rapid turnaround on desktop grids

Since the early 1990's, the largest distributed computing systems in the world have been desktop grids, which use the idle cycles of mainly desktop PC's to support large scale computation. Despite the enormous computing power offered by such systems, the range of supportable applications is largely limited to task parallel, compute-bound, and high-throughput applications. This limitation is mainly because of the heterogeneity and volatility of the underlying resources, which are shared with the desktop users. Our work focuses on broadening the applications supportable by desktop grids, and in particular, we focus on the development of scheduling heuristics to enable rapid turnaround for short-lived applications. To that end, the contributions of this dissertation are as follows. First, we measure and characterize four real enterprise desktop grid systems; such characterization is essential for accurate modelling and simulation. Second, using the characterization, we design scheduling heuristics that enable rapid application turnaround. These heuristics are based on three scheduling techniques, namely resource prioritization, resource exclusion, and task replication. We find that our best heuristic uses relatively static resource information for prioritization and exclusion, and reactive task replication to achieve performance within a factor of 1.7 of optimal. Third, we implement our best heuristic in a real desktop grid system to demonstrate its feasibility.
The Scientific Nature of Postprocessualism

The compatibility of processual and postprocessual archaeology has been heavily debated. This discussion is frequently phrased in terms of scientific vs. nonscientific/humanistic archaeology. We suggest that the "postprocessual debate" is based on a mischaracterization of science that is pervasive in archaeology, and is largely unnecessary when a more reasonable view of the nature of science is considered. To demonstrate this point, we begin our discussion by identifying several commonalities within most postprocessual approaches to provide a foundation for our discussion. We then consider the two classic criteria used to differentiate science and nonscience, Baconian inductivism and falsification, and demonstrate why these views lead to an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of science. We next examine seven attributes that are commonly accepted as characteristics of science in order to provide a more accurate view of the nature and workings of science. Based on this discussion, we argue that much postprocessual research is in fact scientific, and we ultimately conclude that postprocessual approaches as currently applied can contribute to a scientific understanding of the archaeological record.
Region-based segmentation of color images: application to aerial image cartography

A process for performing cartography of aerial color images by region-based segmentation is presented. Such cartographies are desired, for example, in ecological applications. Previous works have shown that edge detection is not satisfactory for cartography. The efficiency of the region-based approaches is discussed in a comparative study between various methods which are commonly used in image analysis. The comparison is performed in terms of a dissimilarity measure.
Conformational stability and thermodynamic characterization of homotetrameric Plasmodium falciparum β‐ketoacyl‐ACP reductase

The conformational stability of the homotetrameric Plasmodium falciparumβ‐ketoacyl‐ACP reductase (FabG) was determined by guanidinium chloride‐induced isothermal and thermal denaturation. The reversible unfolding transitions were monitored by intrinsic fluorescence, circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy and by measuring the enzyme activity of FabG. The denaturation profiles were analyzed to obtain the thermodynamic parameters associated with unfolding of the protein. The data confirm the simple A4 ↔ 4A model of unfolding, based on the corroboration of CD data by fluorescence transition and similar ΔG estimation for denaturation curves obtained at four different concentration of the FabG. Denaturation is well described by the linear extrapolation model for denaturant‐protein interactions. In addition, the conformational stability (ΔGs) as well as the ΔCp for the protein unfolding is quite high, 22.68 kcal/mole and 5.83 kcal/(mole K), respectively, which may be a reflection of the relatively large size of the tetrameric molecule (Mr 120, 000) and a large buried hydrophobic core in the folded protein. This study provides a prototype for determining conformational stability of other members of the short‐chain alcohol dehydrogenase/reductase superfamily of proteins to which PfFabG belongs. iubmb Life, 59: 441‐449, 2007
29 Communication Impairment in ALS Patients Assessment and Treatment

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also called Lou Gehrig's disease, is a rapidly progressive neuromuscular disease that attacks the neurons responsible for controlling voluntary muscles. It belongs to a group of disorders known as Motor neuron diseases (MND): all these syndromes share a common molecular and cellular pathology comprising degeneration of motor neurons (MNs) in cortex, brainstem and/or spinal cord, and the presence of characteristic ubiquitin and TDP-43-immunoreactive intraneuronal inclusions. ALS prevalence in Western countries ranges from 2.7 to 7.4 per 100,000 (Worms, 2001). In 90 to 95 percent of all patients with ALS (PALS), the disease occurs sporadically (sporadic ALS, sALS); in 5 to 10 percent there is a family history of ALS (familial ALS, fALS). Most people developing ALS are between the ages of 40 and 70 years (Haverkamp et al., 1995). The disease is 20% more common in men than in women, although more recent data suggest that the gender ratio may be approaching equality (Logroscino et al., 2008). The cause of ALS is not known, and it is not clear why ALS strikes some people and not others, but both genetic (Ticozzi et al., 2011) and environmental factors (Callaghan et al., 2011; Calvo et al., 2010; Ferrante et al., 1997) may play a role. In PALS, both the brain upper MNs (UMNs) and the brainstem or spinal cord lower MNs (LMNs) degenerate or die: unable to function, the muscles gradually weaken, waste away, and twitch, leading to a wide range of disabilities. Patients lose their strength and the ability to move their body, but usually maintain control of eye muscles. Approximately 70% of PALS have a spinal form of the disease: they present with symptoms which may start either distally or proximally in the upper or lower limbs. Some patients see the effects of the disease on a hand or arm, as they experience difficulty with simple tasks requiring manual dexterity, such as buttoning a shirt, writing, or turning a key in a lock; in other cases, symptoms initially affect one of the legs, and patients experience awkwardness when walking or running, or they notice that they are tripping or stumbling more often. Patients with bulbar-onset ALS usually present with dysarthria leading to slow slurred speech or a nasal quality; they may also develop dysphagia for solid or liquids after noticing speech problems; almost all patients with bulbar symptoms complain of sialorrhoea with excessive drooling due to difficulty of swallowing saliva and UMN-type facial weakness, which affects the lower part of the face, causing difficulty with lip seal and blowing cheeks.
DDHCS: Distributed Denial-of-service Threat to YARN Clusters based on Health Check Service

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack continues to grow as a threat to organizations worldwide. This attack is used to consume the resources of the target machine and prevent the legitimate users from accessing them. This paper studies the vulnerabilities of Health Check Service in Hadoop/YARN and the threat of denial-of-service to a YARN cluster with multi-tenancy. We use theoretical analysis and numerical simulations to demonstrate the effectiveness of this DDoS attack based on health check service (DDHCS). Our experiments show that DDHCS is capable of causing significant impacts on the performance of a YARN cluster in terms of high attack broadness (averagely 85.6%), high attack strength (more than 80%) and obviously resource utilization degradation. In addition, some novel schemes are proposed to prevent DDHCS attack efficiently by improving the YARN security.
Genetic and biochemical determinants of serum concentrations of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1, a potential neural tube defect risk factor.

BACKGROUND Women with the AA genotype at the (-2518)A>G promoter polymorphism of CCL-2, which encodes the potent pro-inflammatory chemokine monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1), may be at increased risk for having offspring affected by spina bifida. As the A allele at this locus has been associated with decreased transcription of MCP-1 mRNA relative to the G allele, the observed genetic association suggests that the risk of spina bifida may be increased in the offspring of women with low MCP-1 levels. The present study was undertaken to identify potential determinants of MCP-1 levels in women of reproductive age. METHODS A small cohort of Caucasian and African-American women of reproductive age was recruited to participate in an exploratory investigation of the determinants of several disease-related, biochemical phenotypes, including MCP-1. Subjects completed a brief questionnaire and provided a fasting blood sample for biochemical and genetic studies. Potential biochemical, genetic, and lifestyle factors were assessed for their association with MCP-1 levels using linear regression analyses. RESULTS In this cohort, MCP-1 levels were significantly higher in Caucasians as compared to African-Americans. Further, among women of both races, there was evidence that MCP-1 levels were associated with smoking status, MTHFR 677C>T genotype, and red blood cell tetrahydrofolate levels. CONCLUSIONS The results of these analyses indicate that, if maternal CCL-2 genotype is related to the risk of spina bifida, this relationship is likely to be more complex than initially hypothesized, perhaps depending upon folate intake, MTHFR 677C>T genotype, the distribution of folate derivatives, and immune/inflammatory activity.
Influence of Negative Cognition on the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) in Patients With Major Depression

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of negative cognition on PBI score before and after treatment for depression. Forty major depressive disorder outpatients were assessed with the PBI scale and Structured Interview Guide for Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (SIGH-D) at the time of the first medical examination (baseline) and 8 weeks later. The SIGH-D scores decreased by about 50% from baseline to 8 weeks, but there was no significant change in the PBI scores of the depressed outpatients from baseline to 8 weeks. Analysis of covariance with the SIGH-D scores as covariate was conducted for PBI scores between baseline and 8 weeks to remove effects of MDD. No significant differences were found on any of the PBI scales. Even though the therapeutic values on the SIGH-D of the depressed patients indicated that depressive symptoms were reduced by about 50%, depression level did not influence the PBI scores. This study provides evidence for the stability of parental representations throughout treatment, as measured by the PBI.
Clasificación de Páginas Web con Anotaciones Sociales

User-generated annotations on social bookmarking sites can provide interesting and promising metadata for web page classiﬁcation. These annotations include diverse types of information, such as tags and comments. Nonetheless, each kind of annotation has a diﬀerent nature and popularity level. In this work, we analyze and evaluate the usefulness of each of these social annotations to classify web pages over a taxonomy like that by the Open Directory Project. We compare them separately to the content-based classiﬁcation, and also combine the diﬀerent types of data. Our experiments show encouraging results with the use of social annotations for this purpose, and we found that combining these metadata with web page content improves even more the classiﬁer’s performance.
Therapeutic trial of sodium antimony gluconate alone and in combination with ketoconazole in post-kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis.

BACKGROUND Drugs used in PKDL include parenteral sodium antimony gluconate (SAG), amphotericin-B, pentamidine, and ketoconazole (KTZ). SAG is the most effective one. Given alone, SAG has to be given for a long duration, leading to poor patient compliance and treatment failure. This study was carried out to compare the effectiveness of SAG alone and a combination of SAG and KTZ for sixty days. METHODS Ten patients of PKDL were included in the study. Five patients (Group A) were given SAG intravenously, in the dose of 20 mg/kg per day and five (Group B) were given SAG (intravenously 20 mg/kg per day) and KTZ (200 mg twice daily orally). Both treatment regimens were given for sixty days. RESULTS In Group A, the nodules and/or plaques showed approximate 80-85% clinical improvement, and macules showed 25-30% improvement. In group B (SAG + KTZ), there was 90-95% clinical improvement in the nodules and/or plaques and 25-30% in macules. CONCLUSION This study suggests the therapeutic superiority of the combination treatment regimen in a shorter duration but is not conclusive as the number of patients was low. Further trials are recommended.
The mating-specific G(alpha) protein of Saccharomyces cerevisiae downregulates the mating signal by a mechanism that is dependent on pheromone and independent of G(beta)(gamma) sequestration

It has been inferred from compelling genetic evidence that the pheromone-responsive G(alpha) protein of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Gpa1, directly inhibits the mating signal by binding to its own beta(gamma) subunit. Gpa1 has also been implicated in a distinct but as yet uncharacterized negative regulatory mechanism. We have used three mutant alleles of GPA1, each of which confers resistance to otherwise lethal doses of pheromone, to explore this possibility. Our results indicate that although the G322E allele of GPA1 completely blocks the pheromone response, the E364K allele promotes recovery from pheromone treatment rather than insensitivity to it. This observation suggests that Gpa1, like other G(alpha) proteins, interacts with an effector molecule and stimulates a positive signal--in this case, an adaptive signal. Moreover, the Gpa1-mediated adaptive signal is itself induced by pheromone, is delayed relative to the mating signal, and does not involve sequestration of G(beta)(gamma). The behavior of N388D, a mutant form of Gpa1 predicted to be activated, strongly supports these conclusions. Although N388D cannot sequester beta(gamma), as evidenced by two-hybrid analysis and its inability to complement a Gpa1 null allele under normal growth conditions, it can stimulate adaptation and rescue a gpa1(delta) strain when cells are exposed to pheromone. Considered as a whole, our data suggest that the pheromone-responsive heterotrimeric G protein of S. cerevisiae has a self-regulatory signaling function. Upon activation, the heterotrimer dissociates into its two subunits, one of which stimulates the pheromone response, while the other slowly induces a negative regulatory mechanism that ultimately shuts off the mating signal downstream of the receptor.
Accurate CPU Proportional Share and Predictable I/O Responsiveness for Virtual Machine Monitor: A Case Study in Xen

In cloud computing, the performance of applications is heavily dependent on resource services provided by the virtualized environment. However, in some virtualized environment, such as Xen, the accuracy of CPU proportional share and the responsiveness of I/O processing are heavily dependent on the proportion of the allocated CPU resource. In this paper, we study how inaccurate share ratio of CPU proportional share and proportion dependent responsiveness of I/O affect the performance of Xen, and discover that they lead to unstable performance and is thus not able to conform service-level agreements (SLA). We conclude that the scheduling scheme and the coarse grained time-slice are the major negative impacts on this issue. Therefore, we propose a novel scheduling scheme, named Predictable Resource Guarantee Scheduler (PRGS), that achieves accurate CPU proportional share and predictable I/O responsiveness. We implement a PRGS prototype on Xen virtualization platform and carry out a thorough evaluation via experimentation. The experimental results show that PRGS achieves accurate CPU proportional share and predictable I/O responsiveness. Also, with only slight overhead, PRGS controls PING packet delay to a specified fixed time threshold (e.g. 30 ms in our experiments).
Large neighborhood search for the pickup and delivery traveling salesman problem with multiple stacks

This article studies a single vehicle pickup and delivery problem with loading constraints. In this problem, the vehicle contains a number of (horizontal) stacks of finite capacity for loading items from the rear of the vehicle. Each stack must satisfy a last‐in‐first‐out constraint where any new item must be loaded on top of a stack and any unloaded item must be on top of its stack. A large neighborhood search is proposed for solving this problem. Computational results are reported on different types of randomly generated instances. Results are also reported on benchmark instances for two special cases of our problem and a comparison is provided with state‐of‐the‐art methods. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, 2012
High altitude impairs in vivo immunity in humans.

The aim was to assess the effect of high altitude on the development of new immune memory (induction) using a contact sensitization model of in vivo immunity. We hypothesized that high-altitude exposure would impair induction of the in vivo immune response to a novel antigen, diphenylcyclopropenone (DPCP). DPCP was applied (sensitization) to the lower back of 27 rested controls at sea level and to ten rested mountaineers 28 hours after passive ascent to 3777 m. After sensitization, mountaineers avoided strenuous exercise for a further 24 hours, after which they completed alpine activities for 11-18 days. Exactly 4 weeks after sensitization, the strength of immune memory induction was quantified in rested mountaineers and controls at sea level, by measuring the response to a low, dose-series DPCP challenge, read at 48 hours as skin measures of edema (skinfold thickness) and redness (erythema). Compared with control responses, skinfold thickness and erythema were reduced in the mountaineers (skinfold thickness,-52%, p=0.01, d=0.86; erythema, -36%, p=0.02, d=0.77). These changes in skinfold thickness and erythema were related to arterial oxygen saturation (r=0.7, p=0.04), but not cortisol (r<0.1, p>0.79), at sensitization. In conclusion, this is the first study to show, using a contact sensitization model of in vivo immunity, that high altitude exposure impairs the development of new immunity in humans.
Optimal motion control for image-based visual servoing by decoupling translation and rotation

Image-based visual servoing interprets image change directly to camera motion, and control the position and pose of a robot mounting a camera to reach the goal, where the camera obtains just the same image as a given goal image. Because its strategy is to simply minimize the differences between the goal image and the currently obtained image, trajectory of the robot motion cannot be estimated beforehand, and sometimes it results in largely inefficient motion. This paper points out that this inefficient motion is caused by interferences of translation and rotation of images. Then, we propose two algorithms to decouple them by using the homography and the epipolar condition held between the goal image and the current image, and to generate the optimal trajectory of the robot motion to reach the goal straightforwardly.
EFPA: Efficient and flexible privacy-preserving mining of association rule in cloud

With the explosive growth of data and the advance of cloud computing, data mining technology has attracted considerable interest recently. However, the flourish of data mining technology still faces many challenges in big data era, and one of the main security issues is to prevent privacy disclosure when running data mining in cloud. In this paper, we propose an efficient and flexible protocol, called EFPA, for privacy-preserving association rule mining in cloud. With the protocol, plenty of participants can provide their data and mine the association rules in cloud together without privacy leakage. Detailed security analysis shows that the proposed EFPA protocol can achieve privacy-preserving mining of association rules in cloud. In addition, performance evaluations via extensive simulations also demonstrate the EFPA's effectiveness in term of low computational costs.
New periodic-loaded electromagnetic bandgap coplanar waveguide with complete spurious passband suppression

In this work, coplanar waveguides (CPW) periodically loaded with shunt capacitances and periodically perturbed by varying the distance between the central strip (of constant width) and ground planes are studied. It is demonstrated that the multiple spurious passbands above the Bragg frequency, inherent to the presence of the reactive elements, can be completely and efficiently rejected by means of very simple geometry perturbation. This result is in contrast to previous works, where the rejection of multiple frequencies requires complex layout patterns and reveals that the elimination of spurious frequency bands in periodic loaded CPWs cannot be merely estimated from the Fourier transform of the perturbation geometry.
Initial development and validation of the checklist of risk behaviours for youth (CORBY)

The purpose of this study was to develop and begin to validate a brief self-report measure, the checklist of risk behaviours for youth (CORBY). This 15-item measure was designed to assess, over a 30-day period, multiple youth risk behaviours associated with mental health and well-being concerns. Early research provides initial support for the reliability and validity of the CORBY, but further research is warranted. The present study is the first to describe a brief survey addressing multiple youth risk behaviours, examining both the severity of health risk and number of behaviours in which youth are engaged. Such a measure may have important implications for both research and clinical applications.
Subtraction hybridization in microplates: an improved method to generate strain-specific PCR primers.

An improved subtraction hybridization technique was developed and evaluated. The hybridization is performed in a microplate with the subtractor-DNA immobilized in the plate while the probe-DNA is in solution. After hybridization the probe-specific DNA can easily be removed from the microwell and submitted to further analysis. This new technique has been successfully applied to generate several strain-specific PCR-primers for Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis, Pediococcus spec. , Saccharomyces spec. and Listeria monocytogenes.