Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Study on Organic Thin-Film Transistors Using Hf–La Oxides With Different La Contents as Gate Dielectrics

The effects of La content in HfLaO gate dielectric on the performance of pentacene organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) fabricated on Si have been studied. The OTFT with Hf<sub>0.103</sub>La<sub>0.897</sub>O<sub><italic>y</italic></sub> gate dielectric shows high performance such as high carrier mobility of 3.45 cm<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{\textsf {2}}\cdot \textsf {V}^{-\textsf {1}}\cdot \textsf {s}^{-\textsf {1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> (132 times and 40 times higher than those of devices using Hf oxide and La oxide, respectively), small threshold voltage of −2.09 V, and negligible hysteresis of −0.029 V. Binding-energy shift of Hf 4f peak in the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy spectrum indicates that La incorporation can passivate the oxygen vacancies in HfO<sub>2</sub>. Atomic force microscope reveals that the La incorporation can reduce the surface roughness of the gate dielectric by suppressing the crystallization of HfO<sub>2</sub>. Therefore, by using Hf<sub>0.103</sub>La<sub>0.897</sub>O<sub><italic>y</italic></sub> as gate dielectric, OTFT with high carrier mobility and small threshold voltage can be obtained.
Determination of reactive wetting properties of Sn, Sn–Cu, Sn–Ag, and Sn–Pb alloys using a wetting balance technique

Wetting properties of lead-free solders, Sn–0.7 wt. % Cu and Sn–3.5 wt. % Ag, pure Sn, and conventional Sn–40 w.t% Pb on Ni, Cu, and Ag substrates at 250 and 240 °C were determined by using a wetting balance technique. Wetting times and wetting forces were determined directly from the wetting curves, and surface tensions of molten solders were calculated from the wetting force measurements. A statistic tool, analysis of variance (ANOVA), was used to analyze the experimental results. By using the wetting time as an indication, it was found that Sn–Pb exhibited the best wetting followed by Sn–Ag, Sn–Cu, and Sn, in that order. A very significant but frequently ignored issue is that most solders react with substrates, and the molten solders are not in contact with the original substrates but rather with intermetallic compounds. On the basis of theoretical analysis and experimental observations, it was concluded that the withdrawing forces and the surface tensions of the molten solders determined by the present technique are not significantly affected by the interfacial reactions if the interfacial reactions are not too excessive. However, wetting times are strong functions of both solders and substrates and the interfacial reactions between them.
Joint extraction of argument components and relations

Argumentation mining (AM) aims at automatically extracting argument structures in documents. AM consists of three sub-tasks: argument identification, argument component classification and relation prediction. Some recent end-to-end AM works produce promising results, but their performances on the latter two AM sub-tasks are not satisfactory. To tackle this problem, in this work, we propose a framework that solves these two sub-tasks at the same time. We approach the problem by selecting linguistic features between sentence pairs, and training supervised learning models to label the argument component types and the relations at the same time. Our experiments on the persuasive essay corpus show that our system can achieve competitive labelling accuracy compared with the state-of-the-art AM techniques.
A Scheme to Entangle Nanomechanical Resonators and Microwave Cavities

A scheme able to entangle at the steady state a nanomechanical resonator with a microwave cavity mode of a driven superconducting coplanar waveguide is proposed. The nanomechanical resonator is capacitively coupled with the central conductor of the waveguide and stationary entanglement is achievable up to temperatures of tens of milliKelvin. Although not easy to reach experimentally it would provide a viable way to entangling many nano resonators via a common cavity field.
A Radically New Theory of how the Brain Represents and Computes with Probabilities

Many believe that the brain implements probabilistic reasoning and that it represents information via some form of population (distributed) code. Most prior probabilistic population coding (PPC) theories share basic properties: 1) continuous-valued units; 2) fully/densely distributed codes; 3) graded synap-ses; 4) rate coding; 5) units have innate low-complexity, usually unimodal, tuning functions (TFs); and 6) units are intrinsically noisy and noise is generally considered harmful. I describe a radically different theory that assumes: 1) binary units; 2) sparse distributed codes (SDC); 3) functionally binary synapses; 4) a novel, atemporal, combinatorial spike code; 5) units initially have flat TFs (all weights zero); and 6) noise is a resource generated/used, normatively, to cause similar inputs to map to similar codes. The theory, Sparsey, was introduced 25+ years ago as: a) an explanation of the physical/computational relationship of episodic and semantic memory for the spatiotemporal (sequential) pattern domain; and b) a canonical, mesoscale cortical probabilistic circuit/algorithm possessing fixed-time, unsupervised, single-trial, non-optimization-based, unsupervised learning and fixed-time best-match (approximate) retrieval; but was not described as an alternative to PPC-type theories. Here, we show that: a) the active SDC in a Sparsey coding field (CF) simultaneously represents not only the likelihood of the single most likely input but the likelihoods of all hypotheses stored in the CF; and b) the whole explicit distribution can be sent, e.g., to a downstream CF, via a set of simultaneous single spikes from the neurons comprising the active SDC.
Characterization of 26 MiniSTR Loci for Improved Analysis of Degraded DNA Samples

Abstract: An additional 20 novel mini‐short tandem repeat (miniSTR) loci have been developed and characterized beyond the six previously developed by our laboratory for a total of 26 non‐CODIS miniSTR markers. These new markers produce short PCR products in the target range of 50–150 base pairs (bp) by moving the primer sequences as close as possible—often directly next to the identified repeat region. These candidate loci were initially screened based on their small amplicon sizes and locations on chromosomes currently unoccupied by the 13 CODIS STR loci or at least 50 Mb away from them on the same chromosome. They were sequenced and evaluated across more than 600 samples, and their population statistics were determined. The heterozygosities of the new loci were compared with those of the 13 CODIS loci and all were found to be comparable. Only five of the new loci had lower values than the CODIS loci; however, all of these were much smaller in size. This data suggests that these 26 miniSTR loci will serve as useful complements to the CODIS loci to aid in the forensic analysis of degraded DNA, as well as missing persons work and parentage testing with limited next‐of‐kin reference samples.
State Estimation Based on the Concept of Continuous Symmetry and Observability Analysis: The Case of Calibration

This paper considers the problem of state estimation in autonomous navigation from a theoretical perspective. In particular, the investigation concerns problems where the information provided by the sensor data is not sufficient to carry out the state estimation (i.e., the state is not observable). For these systems, the concept of continuous symmetry is introduced. Detection of the continuous symmetries of a given system has a very practical importance. It allows the detection of an observable state whose components are nonlinear functions of the original nonobservable state. So far, this theoretical and very general concept has been applied to deal with two distinct fundamental estimation problems in the framework of mobile robotics. The former is in the framework of self-calibration, and the latter is in the framework of the fusion of the data provided by inertial sensors and vision sensors. For reasons of length, only the former is discussed. In particular, the theoretical machinery is used to address a specific calibration problem. The solution constrains the robot to move along specific trajectories in order to be able to apply the calibration algorithm. This paper provides two distinct contributions. The first is the introduction of this concept of continuous symmetry. The second is the introduction of a simple and efficient strategy to extrinsically calibrate a bearing sensor (e.g., a vision sensor) mounted on a vehicle and, simultaneously, estimate the parameters describing the systematic error of its odometry system. Many accurate simulations and real experiments show the robustness, the efficiency, and the accuracy of the proposed strategy.
A Neuro-Fuzzy Visual Servoing Controller for an Articulated Manipulator

The challenges of selecting appropriate image features, optimizing complex nonlinear computations, and minimizing the approximation errors always exist in visual servoing. A fuzzy neural network controller is developed for a six-degrees-of-freedom robot manipulator to perform visual servoing is proposed to tackle these problems. To increase the accuracy of the image preprocesses, a synthetic image process performs feature extraction for the controller. The method combines a support vector machine contour recognition algorithm and a color-based feature recognition algorithm. For visual servoing, a control method based on the fuzzy cerebellar model articulation controller with the Takagi–Sugeno framework is proposed to directly map an image feature error vector to a desired robot end-effector velocity. This approach achieves visual servoing control without the need of computing the inverse interaction matrix. The control variables are learned and updated by the T–S fuzzy inference. This simplifies the implementation of visual servoing in real-time applications. The proposed control method is used to control an articulated manipulator with an eye-in-hand configuration. The results of simulations and experiments demonstrate that the proposed visual servoing controller has good performance, in terms of stability and convergence.
A PCC Architecture based on Certified Abstract Interpretation

Proof Carrying Code (PCC) is a technique for downloading mobile code on a host machine while ensuring that the code adheres to the host's security policy. We show how certified abstract interpretation can be used to build a PCC architecture where the code producer can produce program certificates automatically. Code consumers use proof checkers derived from certified analysers to check certificates. Proof checkers carry their own correctness proofs and accepting a new proof checker amounts to type checking the checker in Coq. The checking of certificates is accelerated by a technique for (post-)fixpoint compression. The PCC architecture has been evaluated experimentally on a byte code language for which we have designed an interval analysis that allows to generate certificates ascertaining that no array-out-of-bounds accesses will occur. \\ Le Proof Carrying Code (PCC) est une technique pour telecharger du code sur une machine hote tout en assurant que ce code adhere a la polique de securite de cette machine. Nous montrons comment l'interpretation abstraite certifiee peut etre utilisee pour construire une architecture PCC pour laquelle la production de certificat est automatique pour le producteur de code. Pour verifier les certificats, les consommateurs de code utilisent les verificateurs de preuves produits a partir d'analyseurs statiques certifies. Les verificateurs de preuves sont eux-memes accompagnes de leur preuve de correction et accepter un nouveau verificateur se ramene a verifier son bon typage Coq. La verification de certificats est acceleree par une technique de compression de (post-)points fixes. L'architecture PCC a ete evaluee experimentalement sur un langage abytecode pour lequel nous avons concu une analyse d'intervalles qui genere des certificats que assurent l'absence d'acces hors des bornes des tableaux.
Male Brown Fat–Specific Double Knockout of IGFIR/IR: Atrophy, Mitochondrial Fission Failure, Impaired Thermogenesis, and Obesity

It is unknown how the lack of insulin receptor (IR)/insulinlike growth factor I receptor (IGFIR) in a tissue-specific manner affects brown fat development and mitochondrial integrity and function, as well as its effect on the redistribution of the adipose organ and the metabolic status. To address this important issue, we developed IR/IGFIR double-knockout (DKO) in a brown adipose tissue-specific manner. Lack of those receptors caused severe brown fat atrophy, enhanced beige cell clusters in inguinal fat; loss of mitochondrial mass; mitochondrial damage related to cristae disruption; and the loss of proteins involved in autophagosome formation, mitophagy, mitochondrial quality control, and dynamics and thermogenesis. More important, DKO mice showed an impaired thermogenesis upon cold exposure, based on a failure in the mitochondrial fission mechanisms and a much lower uncoupling protein 1 transcription rate and content. As a result, DKO mice under normal conditions showed an obesity susceptibility, revealed by increased body fat mass and insulin resistance. Upon consumption of a high-fat diet, DKO mice displayed frank obesity, as shown by increased body weight, increased adiposity, insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, and hypertriglyceridemia, all consistent with a metabolic syndrome. Collectively, our data suggest a cause-and-effect relationship between failure in brown fat thermogenesis and increased adiposity and obesity.
Will you still need me – when I’m 64? ∗

For various reasons the relationship between age and productivity is a matter of policy concern. I present new empirical research showing how productivity is aﬀected by age. I study age effects at the individual level by analyzing data on running and publishing in economic journals. Furthermore I present empirical evidence at the ﬁrm level on the relationship between age, wage and productivity. In particular I address the potential wage-productivity gap that might occur at higher ages. I conclude that the productivity of older workers indeed decreases with their age. Nevertheless, the decline is limited. Furthermore, I ﬁnd no evidence of a pay-productivity at higher ages.
Hybrid rendering - a new integration of photogrammetry and laser scanning for image based rendering

Constructing accurate architectural models of interiors is a nontrivial task. Photogrammetry can be used to recover the large-scale features but has difficulty in modelling sufficient detail. Laser scanning on the other hand produces highly detailed depth data but is difficult to turn into a globally consistent model. We present a hybrid system for the creation of photorealistic and geometrically efficient and accurate models through the integration of photogrammetric modelling techniques with laser acquired range data. Our hybrid rendering software builds on the foundation of the Facade photogrammetric modelling system, but improves the degree of complexity of this representation by incorporating range data for those parts of the scene that are unmodelled. The salient planar features in the scan are extracted and used to align the models via a two-stage quaternion-based and ICP-based registration. The process allows for straightforward integration of multiple range scans. Rendering of novel views is achieved using view-dependent texture mapping techniques combined with point-based rendering
Whole-exome sequencing identified mutational profiles of high-grade colon adenomas

Although gene-to-gene analyses identified genetic alterations such as APC, KRAS and TP53 mutations in colon adenomas, it is largely unknown whether there are any others in them. Mutational profiling of high-grade colon adenoma (HGCA) that just precedes colon carcinoma might identify not only novel adenoma-specific genes but also critical genes for its progression to carcinoma. For this, we performed whole-exome sequencing (WES) of 12 HGCAs and identified 11 non-hypermutated and one hypermutated (POLE-mutated) cases. We identified 22 genes including APC, KRAS, TP53, GNAS, NRAS, SMAD4, ARID2, and PIK3CA with non-silent mutations in the cancer Census Genes. Bi-allelic and mono-allelic APC alterations were found in nine and one HGCAs, respectively, while the other two harbored wild-type APC. Five HGCAs harbored either mono-allelic (four HGCAs) or bi-allelic (one HGCA) SMAD4 mutation or 18q loss that had been known as early carcinoma-specific changes. We identified MTOR, ACVR1B, GNAQ, ATM, CNOT1, EP300, ARID2, RET and MAP2K4 mutations for the first time in colon adenomas. Our WES data is largely matched with the earlier ‘adenoma-carcinoma model’ (APC, KRAS, NRAS and GNAS mutations), but there are newly identified SMAD4, MTOR, ACVR1B, GNAQ, ATM, CNOT1, EP300, ARID2, RET and MAP2K4 mutations in this study. Our findings provide resource for understanding colon premalignant lesions and for identifying genomic clues for differential diagnosis and therapy options for colon adenomas and carcinomas.
An Open Framework for Distributed Context Management in Ubiquitous Environment

In this paper, we aim to propose an open framework for ubiquitous environment. In this framework, a distributed context management architecture and a communication model based on standard protocols are proposed. With this framework, a smart device is able to join to the ubiquitous environment and search for context-aware services based on standard protocols, such as UPnP and DNS. A service is also easily deployed into the system through standard protocols and distributed context managers. A prototype of the framework has been implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of the framework. The major contribution of this paper is to propose an open, efficient, and distributed framework for ubiquitous computing environment which provides digital devices an open interface to access any kind of services and context.
A BSP/CGM algorithm for the all-substrings longest common subsequence problem

Given two strings X and Y of lengths m and n, respectively, the all-substrings longest common subsequence (ALCS) problem obtains the lengths of the subsequences common to X and any substring of Y. The sequential algorithm takes O(mn) time and O(n) space. We present a parallel algorithm for ALCS on a coarse-grained multicomputer (BSP/CGM) model with p < /spl radic/m processors that takes O(mn/p) time and O(n/spl radic/m) space per processor, with O(log p) communication rounds. The proposed parallel algorithm also solves the well-known LCS problem. To our knowledge this is the best BSP/CGM algorithm for the ALCS problem in the literature.
Outcome of cognitive-behavioral therapy for relatives of people with severe mental disorders.

BACKGROUND Over the past 20 years, research shows that families of people affected by severe mental illness (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and addiction) may suffer emotional distress and lack of self-esteem. AIMS In this study, long-term effectiveness of a cognitive-behavioral treatment designed for relatives of people with severe mental illness was evaluated. METHOD A total of 30 relatives living with a person affected by a severe mental disorder received 10 sessions of tailored cognitive-behavioral therapy. RESULTS The study shows that the treatment was effective for the reduction of depression-anxiety symptoms, as well as for negative emotions and psychological distress. CONCLUSIONS This psychological support program has shown to be effective as a treatment for the relatives of people with serious mental health problems both in the posttreatment and in the 12-month follow-up.
An approach to localization for ensemble-based data assimilation

Localization techniques are commonly used in ensemble-based data assimilation (e.g., the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) method) because of insufficient ensemble samples. They can effectively ameliorate the spurious long-range correlations between the background and observations. However, localization is very expensive when the problem to be solved is of high dimension (say 106 or higher) for assimilating observations simultaneously. To reduce the cost of localization for high-dimension problems, an approach is proposed in this paper, which approximately expands the correlation function of the localization matrix using a limited number of principal eigenvectors so that the Schür product between the localization matrix and a high-dimension covariance matrix is reduced to the sum of a series of Schür products between two simple vectors. These eigenvectors are actually the sine functions with different periods and phases. Numerical experiments show that when the number of principal eigenvectors used reaches 20, the approximate expansion of the correlation function is very close to the exact one in the one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) cases. The new approach is then applied to localization in the EnKF method, and its performance is evaluated in assimilation-cycle experiments with the Lorenz-96 model and single assimilation experiments using a barotropic shallow water model. The results suggest that the approach is feasible in providing comparable assimilation analysis with far less cost.
Cytokine Induced Killer cells kill chemo-surviving melanoma cancer stem cells Running title: CIK cells kill autologous chemo-surviving melanoma CSCs

Cytokine Induced Killer cells kill chemo-surviving melanoma cancer stem cells / Gammaitoni L; Giraudo L ; Macagno M; Leuci V; Mesiano G; Rotolo R; Sassi F; Sanlorenzo M; Zaccagna A; Pisacane A; Senetta R; Cangemi M; Cattaneo G; Martin V; Coha V; Gallo S; Pignochino Y; Sapino A; Grignani G; Carnevale-Schianca F; Aglietta M; Sangiolo D. In: CLINICAL CANCER RESEARCH. ISSN 1078-0432. May 1;23:(9)(2017), pp. 2277-2288. Original Citation: Cytokine Induced Killer cells kill chemo-surviving melanoma cancer stem cells
Holo-lipocalin-2–derived siderophores increase mitochondrial ROS and impair oxidative phosphorylation in rat cardiomyocytes

Significance Metabolic dysfunction associated with decreased mitochondrial oxidative capacity is a major underlying cause of heart failure. Our study sheds new light on the potential role of bacteria-derived or endogenous siderophores as direct regulators of cardiomyocyte mitochondrial function. Furthermore, we demonstrate that lipocalin-2, a key feature of the innate immune response, facilitates the transport of siderophore–iron complexes into cells. This mechanism may have important physiological implications because elevated lipocalin-2 levels correlate positively with heart failure in humans, and mice lacking lipocalin-2 are protected from stress-induced mitochondrial dysfunction and heart failure. Lipocalin-2 (Lcn2), a critical component of the innate immune response which binds siderophores and limits bacterial iron acquisition, can elicit spillover adverse proinflammatory effects. Here we show that holo-Lcn2 (Lcn2–siderophore–iron, 1:3:1) increases mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation and attenuates mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation in adult rat primary cardiomyocytes in a manner blocked by N-acetyl-cysteine or the mitochondria-specific antioxidant SkQ1. We further demonstrate using siderophores 2,3-DHBA (2,3-dihydroxybenzoic acid) and 2,5-DHBA that increased ROS and reduction in oxidative phosphorylation are direct effects of the siderophore component of holo-Lcn2 and not due to apo-Lcn2 alone. Extracellular apo-Lcn2 enhanced the potency of 2,3-DHBA and 2,5-DHBA to increase ROS production and decrease mitochondrial respiratory capacity, whereas intracellular apo-Lcn2 attenuated these effects. These actions of holo-Lcn2 required an intact plasma membrane and were decreased by inhibition of endocytosis. The hearts, but not serum, of Lcn2 knockout (LKO) mice contained lower levels of 2,5-DHBA compared with wild-type hearts. Furthermore, LKO mice were protected from ischemia/reperfusion-induced cardiac mitochondrial dysfunction. Our study identifies the siderophore moiety of holo-Lcn2 as a regulator of cardiomyocyte mitochondrial bioenergetics.