Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Yield and routing objectives in floorplanning

Traditionally the floorplan of a chip has been determined so as to minimize the total chip area and reduce the routing costs. Recently, it has been shown that the floorplan also affects the yield of the chip. Consequently, it becomes desirable to consider the expected yield, in addition to the cost of routing, when selecting a floorplan. The goal of this paper is to study the two seemingly disjoint objectives of yield enhancement and routing complexity minimization, and find out whether they lead to different optimal floorplans, resulting in a need for a tradeoff analysis.
DOA estimation in noisy environment with unknown noise power using the EM algorithm

A direction of arrival (DOA) estimator for concurrent speakers in a noisy environment with unknown noise power is presented. Spatially colored noise, if not properly addressed, is known to degrade the performance of DOA estimators. In our contribution, the DOA estimation task is formulated as a maximum likelihood (ML) problem, which is solved using the expectation-maximization (EM) procedure. The received microphone signals are modelled as a sum of the speech and noise components. The noise power spectral density (PSD) matrix is modelled by a time-invariant full-rank coherence matrix multiplied by the noise power. The PSDs of the speech and noise components are estimated as part of the EM procedure. The benefit of the presented algorithm in a simulated noisy environment using measured room impulse responses is demonstrated.
Understanding long‐term protection of human papillomavirus vaccination against cervical carcinoma: Cancer registry‐based follow‐up

Phase III clinical trials of human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination have shown ≥95% efficacy against HPV16/18 associated cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) Grade 2/3. Long‐term surveillance is, however, needed to determine the overall vaccine efficacy (VE) against CIN3 and invasive cervical carcinoma (ICC). During population‐based recruitment between September 2002 and March 2003, 1,749 16− to 17‐year old Finns participated in a multi‐national randomized Phase III HPV6/11/16/18 vaccine (FUTURE II) trial for the determination of VE against HPV16/18 positive CIN2/3. The passive follow‐up started at the country‐wide, population‐based Finnish Cancer Registry (FCR) six months after the active follow‐up and voluntary cross‐vaccination in April 2007. A cluster randomized, population‐based reference cohort of 15,744 unvaccinated, originally 18–19 year old Finns was established in two phases in 2003 and 2005 after the FUTURE II recruitment. We linked these cohorts with the FCR in 2007–2011 (HPV vaccine and placebo cohorts) and 2006–2010 and 2008–2012 (unvaccinated reference cohorts 1 and 2) to compare their incidences of CIN3 and ICC. The four years passive follow‐up resulted in 3,464, 3,444 and 62,876 person years for the HPV6/11/16/18, original placebo and reference cohorts, after excluding cases discovered during the clinical follow‐up and individuals not at risk. The numbers of CIN3 and ICC cases identified were 0 and 0, 3 and 0, 59 and 3 for the HPV6/11/16/18, placebo and the unvaccinated reference cohorts. The corresponding CIN3 incidence rates were 0/100,000 (95% confidence interval 0.0–106.5), 87.1/100,000 (95% CI 17.9–254.5) and 93.8/100,000 (95% CI 71.4–121), respectively. Long‐term surveillance up to 8 years (and longer) post vaccination of the HPV6/11/16/18 vaccine and placebo cohorts, and the unvaccinated reference cohort (not exposed to interventions) for the most stringent efficacy end‐points by passive cancer registry‐based follow‐up is feasible.
Effects of a national indicated preventive intervention program

As there have been few science-based evaluations of secondary prevention programs, the Federal Office of Public Health in Switzerland carried out a national program evaluation at 12 sites in the French- and German-speaking parts of Switzerland to study the question, “What works in secondary prevention? ” These 12 centers offer different forms of assistance for young people aged 11 to 20 years old. The five types of center are distinguished according to their structure and the amount of time spent with each youth. The design of the study is quasi-experimental with intervention and comparison groups. Up to now, 1,400 youth have been involved in the 12 centers. The intervention lasts about 6 months. Data are collected on entry, at program completion, and at 12- and 24-months post intervention. One of the main findings is that even “hard to reach” youths have a chance to be integrated in school, undertake vocational training, or to secure employment. More than 70% of all youths were integrated or re-integrated. The results of the study are presented in effect sizes (ES). Effects on mental health and substance use outcomes are contradictory and vary by age and gender of client, and by type of center. In general, effects on mental health outcomes are greater than for other variables such as substance use and self-concept, and they are greater for more symptomatic youths and for boys rather than girls. The authors conclude with proposals for ways to enhance program effectiveness and targeted assessment. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comm Psychol 33: 705–725, 2005.
Dense Image Labeling Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

We consider the problem of dense image labeling. In recent work, many state-of-the-art techniques make use of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN) for dense image labeling tasks (e.g. multi-class semantic segmentation) given their capacity to learn rich features. In this paper, we propose a dense image labeling approach based on DCNNs coupled with a support vector classifier. We employ the classifier based on DCNNs outputs while leveraging features corresponding to a variety of different labels drawn from a number of different datasets with distinct objectives for prediction. The principal motivation for using a support vector classifier is to explorethe strength of leveraging different types of representations for predicting class labels, that are not directly related to the target task (e.g. predicted scene geometry may help assigning object labels). This is the first approach where DCNNs with predictions tied to different objectives are combined to produce better segmentation results. We evaluate our model on the Stanford background (semantic, geometric) and PASCAL VOC 2012 datasets. Compared to other state-of-the-art techniques, our approach produces state-of-the-art results for the Stanford background dataset, and also demonstrates the utility of making use of intelligence tied to different sources of labeling in improving upon baseline PASCAL VOC 2012 results.
A constant-factor approximation algorithm for the k MST problem (extended abstract)

Given an undirected graph with nonnegative edge costs and an integerk, thek-MST problem is that of finding a tree of minimum cost onknodes. This problem is known to be NP-hard. We present a simple approximation algorithm that finds a solution whose cost is less than 17 times the cost of the optimum. This improves upon previous performance ratios for this problem ? O(k) due to Raviet al.,O(log2k) due to Awerbuchet al., and the previous best bound ofO(logk) due to Rajagopalan and Vazirani. Given any 0<? <1, we first present a bicriteria approximation algorithm that outputs a tree onp? kvertices of total cost at most 2pL/(1? )k, whereLis the cost of the optimalk-MST. The running time of the algorithm isO(n2log2n) on ann-node graph. We then show how to use this algorithm to derive a constant factor approximation algorithm for thek-MST problem. The main subroutine in our algorithm is an approximation algorithm of Goemans and Williamson for the prize-collecting Steiner tree problem.
Exploiting Non-Uniform Memory Access Patterns Through Bitline Segmentation

On chip caches in modern processors account for a sizable fraction of the dynamic and leakage power. Much of this power is wasted, required only because the memory cells farthest from the sense amplifiers in the cache must discharge a large capacitance on the bitlines. We reduce this capacitance by segmenting the memory cells along the bitlines, and turning off the segmenters to reduce the overall bitline capacitance. The success of this cache relies on accessing segments near the sense-amps much more often than remote segments. We show that the access pattern to the first level data and instruction cache is extremely skewed. Only a small set of cache lines are accessed frequently. We exploit this nonuniform cache access pattern by mapping the frequently accessed cache lines closer to the sense amp. These lines are isolated by segmenting circuits on the bitlines and hence dissipate lesser power when accessed. Modifications to the address decoder enable a dynamic re-mapping of cache lines to segments. In this paper, we explore the design-space of segmenting the level one data and instruction caches.
An integrative model of the intrinsic hippocampal theta rhythm

Hippocampal theta oscillations (4–12 Hz) are consistently recorded during memory tasks and spatial navigation. Despite several known circuits and structures that generate hippocampal theta locally in vitro, none of them were found to be critical in vivo, and the hippocampal theta rhythm is severely attenuated by disruption of external input from medial septum or entorhinal cortex. We investigated these discrepancies that question the sufficiency and robustness of hippocampal theta generation using a biophysical spiking network model of the CA3 region of the hippocampus that included an interconnected network of pyramidal cells, inhibitory basket cells (BC) and oriens-lacunosum moleculare (OLM) cells. The model was developed by matching biological data characterizing neuronal firing patterns, synaptic dynamics, short-term synaptic plasticity, neuromodulatory inputs, and the three-dimensional organization of the hippocampus. The model generated theta power robustly through five cooperating generators: spiking oscillations of pyramidal cells, recurrent connections between them, slow-firing interneurons and pyramidal cells subnetwork, the fast-spiking interneurons and pyramidal cells subnetwork, and non-rhythmic structured external input from entorhinal cortex to CA3. We used the modeling framework to quantify the relative contributions of each of these generators to theta power, across different cholinergic states. The largest contribution to theta power was that of the divergent input from the entorhinal cortex to CA3, despite being constrained to random Poisson activity. We found that the low cholinergic states engaged the recurrent connections in generating theta activity, whereas high cholinergic states utilized the OLM-pyramidal subnetwork. These findings revealed that theta might be generated differently across cholinergic states, and demonstrated a direct link between specific theta generators and neuromodulatory states.
Cell cycle-dependent transcription from the gid and mioC promoters of Escherichia coli

Transcription from the gid and mioC promoters, which neighbor the origin of replication of the Escherichia coli chromosome (oriC), has been implicated in the control of initiation of replication of minichromosomes. The amounts of transcripts from these two promoters on the chromosome were quantified at various times in a synchronized culture of a temperature-sensitive dnaC mutant strain. Transcription from the gid promoter was most active before the initiation of replication and was inhibited after initiation, during the time corresponding to the period of sequestration of the oriC region from the dam methyltransferase. On the other hand, transcription from the mioC promoter was inhibited before initiation and the inhibition was relieved after initiation prior to the recovery of gid transcription. The strict regulation of transcription from the gid and mioC promoters may be involved in positive and negative control of chromosomal replication, respectively, as has been suggested for minichromosome replication. The DnaA protein was involved in repression of mioC transcription, indicating that the activity of the DnaA protein changes during the cell cycle.
On Tyrant Property Turned Ritual Object: Political Power and Sacred Symbols in Ancient Greece and in Social Anthropology

This article explores the conceptualization of religious symbols in both classical scholarship on ancient Greek religion and social anthropology as indicative of where the two disciplines currently stand in relation to each other. Rather than addressing the much debated concept of "thick description," the article focuses on Geertz's considerably less explored notion of "religion as a response to chaos. " The article ultimately promotes an approach that sees religious symbols as intrinsic to socio-political power. A look at the cultural practice of the "recycling" of symbolic capital at Athens after the restoration of democracy in 403 B.C.E. exemplifies the explanatory power of this approach for the study of ancient Greek religion.
Exploring innovative and creative ways of teaching

With the intention of providing a starting point to reflect on both aspects in which the subject Teaching Innovation and Introduction to Educational Research in Arts of the master’s degree in Teaching in Secondary School breaks up and merges, we created a situation, understood as a learning environment, that seeks to show us how we react before a situation different from the expected one. For this reason, we played with the idea of something in construction, something that is still wrapped up in white paper: tables badly placed, chairs on tables, papers covering chairs and tables, or parts of the classroom. And in this setting some videos were projected that talked about classrooms, of the present and the past, of diverse artistic experiences. Confusion, surprise, but slowly a discussion starts. And from the reflections raised, the exchange of opinions and relating the assignment to other subjects of the master’s degree, in particular with Learning and Teaching of Art, we began to go more deeply into the meaning of various concepts related to teaching and research by means of projects carried out in groups and from different approaches. The purpose was to offer a space to experience through action, to get to know our previous ideas and how to approach the different research paradigms.
Seeking Our Place in the Web of Life: Animals and Human Spirituality

Interest in the impact of animals on human spirituality has grown in recent decades. At the same time, however, the exploitation of animals persists throughout society. A definition of spirituality as “the process of taking our rightful place in the web of life” can guide efforts to develop a type of spirituality that enhances the well‐being of the earth and all living beings. Animals make two important contributions to human spiritual development. First, relationships with animals help people to recognize the interconnectedness of all life; this awareness is the foundation of compassion. Second, experiences with animals offer lessons for living in right relationship with others. Spiritual practices based on the human‐animal bond can be used by social workers and clients to foster an awareness of the kinship of life and to nurture compassion for all living beings.
Spread of Excitation and Channel Interaction in Single- and Dual-Electrode Cochlear Implant Stimulation

Objectives: To determine how simultaneous dual-electrode stimulation (DES) can be optimized for the individual patient to deliver better sound quality and speech recognition. DES was compared with single-electrode stimulation (SES) with respect to the site of stimulation (X) in the cochlea, the spread of excitation (SOE), and channel interaction. Second, it was investigated whether the number of intermediate pitches created with DES can be predicted from SOE, channel interaction measures, current distribution in the cochlea, or distance of the electrode to the medial wall. Design: Twelve users of the HiRes90K cochlear implant with HiFocus1J electrode were randomly selected to participate in this study. Electrode contacts were selected based on their location in the cochlea as determined by multislice computed tomography, viz. 120 degrees (basal), 240 degrees (middle), and 360 degrees (apical) from the round window. The number of intermediate pitches with simultaneous DES was assessed with a three-alternative forced choice pitch discrimination experiment. The channel interactions between two single-electrode contacts and two DES pairs were determined with a threshold detection experiment (three-alternative forced choice). The eCAP-based SOE method with fixed probe and variable masker was used to determine the location of the neurons responding to a single-electrode contact or dual-electrode contact stimulus. Furthermore, the intracochlear electrical fields were determined with the Electrical Field Imaging tool kit. Results: DES was not different from SES in terms of channel interaction and SOE. The X of DES was 0.54 electrode contacts more basal compared with SES stimulation, which was not different from the predicted shift of 0.5. SOE and current distribution were significantly different for the three locations in the cochlea but showed no correlation with the number of perceivable pitches. A correlation was found between channel interaction and the number of intermediate pitches along the array within a patient, not between patients. Conclusion: SES and DES are equivalent with regard to SOE and channel interaction. The excitation site of DES has the predicted displacement compared with the excitation region induced by the neighboring single-electrode contact. Unfortunately, no predictor for the number of intermediate pitches was found.
Antimalarial Therapy Selection for Quinolone Resistance among Escherichia coli in the Absence of Quinolone Exposure, in Tropical South America

Background Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is thought to develop only in the presence of antibiotic pressure. Here we show evidence to suggest that fluoroquinolone resistance in Escherichia coli has developed in the absence of fluoroquinolone use. Methods Over 4 years, outreach clinic attendees in one moderately remote and five very remote villages in rural Guyana were surveyed for the presence of rectal carriage of ciprofloxacin-resistant Gram-negative bacilli (GNB). Drinking water was tested for the presence of resistant GNB by culture, and the presence of antibacterial agents and chloroquine by HPLC. The development of ciprofloxacin resistance in E. coli was examined after serial exposure to chloroquine. Patient and laboratory isolates of E. coli resistant to ciprofloxacin were assessed by PCR-sequencing for quinolone-resistance-determining-region (QRDR) mutations. Results In the very remote villages, 4.8% of patients carried ciprofloxacin-resistant E. coli with QRDR mutations despite no local availability of quinolones. However, there had been extensive local use of chloroquine, with higher prevalence of resistance seen in the villages shortly after a Plasmodium vivax epidemic (p<0.01). Antibacterial agents were not found in the drinking water, but chloroquine was demonstrated to be present. Chloroquine was found to inhibit the growth of E. coli in vitro. Replica plating demonstrated that 2-step QRDR mutations could be induced in E. coli in response to chloroquine. Conclusions In these remote communities, the heavy use of chloroquine to treat malaria likely selected for ciprofloxacin resistance in E. coli. This may be an important public health problem in malarious areas.
Semi-supervised discriminative language modeling for Turkish ASR

We present our work on semi-supervised learning of discriminative language models where the negative examples for sentences in a text corpus are generated using confusion models for Turkish at various granularities, specifically, word, sub-word, syllable and phone levels. We experiment with different language models and various sampling strategies to select competing hypotheses for training with a variant of the perceptron algorithm. We find that morph-based confusion models with a sample selection strategy aiming to match the error distribution of the baseline ASR system gives the best performance. We also observe that substituting half of the supervised training examples with those obtained in a semi-supervised manner gives similar results.
Exemplar-Based Colour Constancy

Exemplar-based learning or, equally, nearest neighbour methods have recently gained interest from researchers in a variety of computer science domains because of the prevalence of large amounts of accessible data and storage capacity. In computer vision, these types of technique have been successful in several problems such as scene recognition, shape matching, image parsing, character recognition and object detection. Applying the concept of exemplar-based learning to the problem of colour constancy seems odd at first glance since, in the first place, similar nearest neighbour images are not usually affected by precisely similar illuminants and, in the second place, gathering a dataset consisting of all possible real-world images, including indoor and outdoor scenes and for all possible illuminant colours and intensities, is indeed impossible. In this paper we instead focus on surfaces in the image and address the colour constancy problem by unsupervised learning of an appropriate model for each training surface in training images. We find nearest neighbour models for each surface in a test image and estimate its illumination based on comparing the statistics of pixels belonging to nearest neighbour surfaces and the target surface. The final illumination estimation results from combining these estimated illuminants over surfaces to generate a unique estimate. The proposed method has the advantage of overcoming multi-illuminant situations, which is not possible for most current methods. The concept proposed here is a completely new approach to the colour constancy problem. We show that it performs very well, for standard datasets, compared to current colour constancy algorithms.
Setting up of a self-organised multi-agent system for the creation of sound and visual virtual environments within the framework of a collective interactivity

The interactive installation Quorum Sensing will be presented as an example of the development of this type of system. This device is designed to metaphorically reconstitute an ecosystem by means of synthesised sounds and images. The future of the micro-organisms of this virtual universe evolves in accordance with its own particular rhythms but also in accordance with the movements of the public, which also plays a part in the destiny of the work. We will try to elucidate the rich potential of these models in terms of artistic expression, and will also explain the principal difficulties associated with this research, which impose epistemological reflection concerning the concept of its evolution.
A Finite State Modelling of AFDX Frame Management using Spin

Data exchange with strong data transmission time guarantees is necessary in the internal communication of an aircraft. The Avionics Full Duplex Switched Ethernet (AFDX) has been developed for this purpose. Its design is based on the principle of a switched network with physically redundant links to support availability. It should also be tolerant to transmission and link failures in the network. Recent research on an industrial case study by Anand et. al. reveals that AFDX frame management design is vulnerable to faults such as network errors, network babbling etc. Their proposed modiﬁcations, though are able to solve these problems, degrades the performance of network in terms of delay at receiving end and delay before the receiving end-system gets reset. They also do not present any performance analysis. We propose new solutions to alleviate these problems in AFDX frame management design, formally model it in Spin incorporating our proposed solution, thus also showing a ﬁnite state modeling of the above is possible. We also verify some of its relevant properties and carry out a performance analysis of the same.