Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PECVD Silicon Nitride Surface Passivation for High-Efficiency N-Type Silicon Solar Cells

In this paper, we show that plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposited silicon nitride is particularly well suited for surface passivation of n-type silicon wafers and solar cells. The surface passivation quality provided by the silicon nitride on three different important surfaces for high-efficiency n-type solar cells is studied in this work: planar, textured, and boron-diffused surfaces. Exceptional passivation quality on these surfaces is demonstrated in this work. One-sun implied open-circuit voltages of 732 mV, 719 mV, and 683 mV were achieved on 1 ohm.cm planar, 1 ohm.cm textured, and moderately doped (135 ohm/sq) boron-diffused planar surfaces, respectively. A real open-circuit voltage of 719 mV was measured at approximately 1-Sun, 25 degC condition on a voltage test structure device passivated entirely with silicon nitride
Where are the ‘Asturian’ dwellings? An integrated survey programme on the Mesolithic of northern Spain

Abstract Mesolithic hunter-gatherer settlements generally leave ephemeral archaeological traces and are notoriously difficult to detect. Nowhere is this more so than on the northern coast of Spain, despite a long tradition of Mesolithic research. In this project, evidence of Mesolithic activity together with the geomorphological and topographical suitability of particular locations were used to select areas for large-scale geophysical survey. The results demonstrate the potential of the new methodology: magnetometry survey at El Alloru revealed the very first Asturian open-air settlement site to be discovered.
Knowledge gained following Neonatal Resuscitation Program courses.

BACKGROUND This study evaluated the knowledge gained and retained by family practice residents who participated in the Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP) course. METHODS Knowledge attainment and its retention was assessed by the administration of pre-, post-, and 6-month follow-up tests using the standard NRP written examination. Twenty-nine residents from the Department of Family Medicine at McGill University completed the pretests and posttests, and 10 of these completed the follow-up tests. The data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance and Student's t tests. RESULTS The average score was 60.6% (n = 29) for pretest, 90.7% (n = 29) for posttest, and 75.4% (n = 10) for the follow-up test. A significant improvement was shown in posttest examination scores when compared to pretest scores and in the follow-up test scores when compared to pretest scores. No significant difference existed between the posttest and follow-up test scores. However, small sample size may have prevented detection of significant differences. Further, follow-up scores for some subjects had fallen to below the level required to pass the course. CONCLUSIONS The results suggest that participation in an NRP course significantly increased knowledge of neonatal resuscitation by family practice residents, but that knowledge may decrease over time.
Etiology of specific molecular alterations in human malignancies

Cancer results from multiple genomic changes that affect DNA and its gene expression. The DNA sequences may be gained, lost or amplified, or translocated into different parts of the genome to form a fusion gene with oncogenic properties. The occurrence of specific chromosomal aberrations may be restricted to only one cancer type and it may be considered a primary carcinogenic event. Furthermore, the aberration profiles may be used to cluster tumors with similar origins. A variety of techniques exist for the detection of specific chromosomal and gene expression changes. However, the etiology of these molecular alterations remains unclear. Here we discuss the roles of Helicobacter pylori and asbestos burden as carcinogens that cause gastric cancer, mesothelioma and lung cancer.
An Automated Formal Process for Detecting Fault Injection Vulnerabilities in Binaries and Case Study on PRESENT

Recently fault injection has increasingly been used both to attack software applications, and to test system robustness. Detecting fault injection vulnerabilities has been approached with a variety of different but limited methods. This paper proposes a general process without these limitations that uses model checking to detect fault injection vulnerabilities in binaries. The efficacy of this process is demonstrated by detecting vulnerabilities in the PRESENT binary.
Characterization of Resistance to Non-obligate Chain-terminating Ribonucleoside Analogs That Inhibit Hepatitis C Virus Replication in Vitro*

The urgent need for efficacious drugs to treat chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection requires a concerted effort to develop inhibitors specific for virally encoded enzymes. We demonstrate that 2′-C-methyl ribonucleosides are efficient chain-terminating inhibitors of HCV genome replication. Characterization of drug-resistant HCV replicons defined a single S282T mutation within the active site of the viral polymerase that conferred loss of sensitivity to structurally related compounds in both replicon and isolated polymerase assays. Biochemical analyses demonstrated that resistance at the level of the enzyme results from a combination of reduced affinity of the mutant polymerase for the drug and an increased ability to extend the incorporated nucleoside analog. Importantly, the combination of these agents with interferon-α results in synergistic inhibition of HCV genome replication in cell culture. Furthermore, 2′-C-methyl-substituted ribonucleosides also inhibited replication of genetically related viruses such as bovine diarrhea virus, yellow fever, and West African Nile viruses. These observations, together with the finding that 2′-C-methyl-guanosine in particular has a favorable pharmacological profile, suggest that this class of compounds may have broad utility in the treatment of HCV and other flavivirus infections.
Nonlinear Eye Gaze Mapping Function Estimation via Support Vector Regression

We propose a novel method for tracking eye gaze that allows natural head movement. Most existing remote eye gaze trackers cannot work under natural head movement due to the difficulty of building a gaze mapping function that can incorporate head motion information. Therefore, the user is required to hold his/her head unnaturally still, possibly with the use of chin-rest. In addition, before each usage of the tracking system, a cumbersome calibration procedure must be performed to obtain a gaze mapping function. Our proposed method significantly improves the conventional pupil center corneal reflection (PCCR) technique to permit natural head movement and to minimize calibration. Support vector regression (SVR) is used to construct a highly nonlinear generalized gaze mapping function that accounts for head movement. As the head moves naturally in front of the camera, the associated gaze mapping function with each new head position is obtained automatically by the learned generalized gaze mapping function. Once learned, the generalized gaze mapping function can be used by other users via a simple personal adaptation without retraining. Experiments for multiple users show that eye gaze can be estimated accurately under natural head movement via the proposed technique
How fast can you reconfigure your partially deployed SDN network?

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) enables fast reconfiguration of the network based on the decisions of a logically centralized controller. While SDN is in transition from laboratories and greenfield data-centers to enterprise networks, the need for managing partial SDN deployments arises. This incremental deployment of SDN has its own set of challenges, for example the design of the mixed control plane or the integration in existing network management systems. In this paper we focus on the different speed of reconfiguration between legacy and SDN devices and how those differences constrain the overall reconfig-urability of the network. At first we present measurement results highlighting the differences between SDN and legacy devices in terms of reconfiguration speed. The measurements show an up to hundredfold difference of reconfiguration times between SDN and legacy devices. Second, we introduce a methodology which allows to evaluate the impact of these differences on the maximum reconfiguration rate of the whole network for different SDN deployment stages. Third, we investigate a large number of real world topologies and the gain in terms of reconfigurability that can be achieved by deploying SDN incrementally. The results show that even a small number of slow devices can severely constrain the maximum reconfiguration rate. Furthermore, even with the majority of the network nodes being replaced by SDN devices, the maximum reconfiguration rate increases in the best case only up to 5 times compared to the all-legacy network. Based on the findings we conclude that research has to focus more on the management of partial SDN deployments w.r. t. potentially large differences in reconfiguration times of the devices. Otherwise the potential of SDN lies dormant until the whole network is migrated to SDN-enabled devices.
Thermal flexible foil-fingerprint sensor

At the Institute of Microsystem Technology of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat, Freiburg, a foil-fingerprint sensor (FFPS) was developed for application in the broad biometric field. The sensor principle is patented and contains new know-how, which is based on knowledge of microsystem technology (Patent WO03/098535). It possesses, in this form, a world-wide unique position. These new flexible and foil-based sensors are primarily conceived for installation on smartcards. The flexible fingerprint sensor has crucial advantages compared to sensors at present on the market. It can replace today's expensive silicon fingerprint sensors and amend the possible application area.
From niche to mainstream

Migration, Integration und ethnische Diversitat sind zu zentralen Konfliktthemen in zeitgenossischen westlichen Demokratien geworden. Politische Parteien agieren in diesem Zusammenhang sowohl als Vertreter wie auch als Initiatoren spezifischer Interessen und beteiligen sich an der offentlichen Auseinandersetzung aus unterschiedlichen strategischen Erwagungen. Unter diesem Gesichtspunkt setzt sich die vorliegende Dissertation mit der Politisierung von Migration, Integration und Diversitat innerhalb des osterreichischen Parteienwettbewerbes auseinander und zielt dabei auf eine Integration der drei Forschungsbereiche Parteipolitik, Politische Kommunikation sowie Migrations-/Integrationsforschung ab. Auf Basis einer Inhaltsanalyse osterreicher Nationalratswahlkampfe von 1971 bis 2008 liefert die Dissertation drei wesentliche Beitrage: Sie entwickelt ein Konzept zur Analyse der Politisierung von Migration/Integration/ Diversitat, aufbauend auf Salienz-, Themen- und Frame-Analyse des elektoralen Diskurses; sie schlagt ein Erklarungsframework fur elektorale Politisierung vor, in dem sozio-strukturelle Rahmenbedingungen mit strategischen Wettbewerbserwagungen von Parteien verbunden werden; und sie vergleicht unterschiedliche Ebenen der Wahlkampfkommunikation hinsichtlich der Frage, ob und in welchem Mase politische Parteien zu konsistenter Kampagnenkommunikation in der Lage sind. Wie die empirischen Ergebnisse zu dem seit 1990 markant an Salienz gewinnenden Themenkomplex verdeutlichen, bilden sozio-strukturelle Bedingungen – etwa der Zuwanderung bzw. der Asylentwicklung – einen augenfalligen Impuls fur die Politisierung dieser Themen durch Parteien im Querschnitt. Individuelles Parteiverhalten hingegen, so zeigt die Untersuchung, lasst sich uber den Zeitverlauf nur in Verbindung mehrer erklarender Faktoren erfassen. Politische Konfliktlinien (Cleavages) und ideologischer Hintergrund pragen das Politisierungsverhalten durchgehend, insbesondere jenes von niche parties, die ihre Framing-Strategien relativ konstant halten und lediglich die Intensitat ihrer Politisierung verandern. Mainstream parties hingegen verandern ihre Politisierungsstrategien merklich wahrend der letzten beiden Dekaden (sowohl in puncto Intensitat als auch Richtung), im Lichte wachsenden Drucks der politischen Rechten sowie sich verandernder Koalitions-perspektiven. Diese Politisierungsmuster variieren allerdings im Vergleich unterschiedlicher Kampagnenebenen, da programmatische Kommunikation strategische Parteierwagungen wesentlich deutlicher zum Vorschein bringt als tagespolitische Kommunikation, die in starkerem Mase kurzfristigen Dynamiken innerhalb einzelner Wahlkampfe unterworfen ist. In Summe vermag die Dissertation zu verdeutlichen, dass, wie und weshalb Migration, Integration und ethnische Diversitat zu zentralen Bestandteilen parteipolitischer Konfliktlinien geworden sind, die den zeitgenossischen Parteienwettbewerb in Osterreich strukturieren und dabei wechselnden Parteimotiven bei sich verandernden Mehrheits-verhaltnissen unterworfen sind.
Reliability and Validity of a New Maximal Anaerobic Shuttle Running Test

Abstract The purpose of this study was twofold: first to assess the relative and absolute reliability of a new Maximal Anaerobic Shuttle Running Test (MASRT), and second to evaluate the criterion validity of the MASRT. 16 team sport players participated in this study. The velocity (VMASRT) and the number of shuttles achieved at volitional exhaustion were measured. To assess the reliability of the MASRT, each player performed the MASRT twice, on separate days. The criterion validity of the MASRT was determined by examining the relationship between MASRT indices and the Wingate test (WingT) performances. Results showed no difference between test–retest MASRT scores for VMASRT and the number of shuttles (P>0.05). The intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) values for VMASRT and Shuttle number were 0.84 and 0.80, respectively. The coefficients of variation (CV) and the mean difference (bias)±the 95% limits of agreement for the same variables were 3.6 and 12.9%, and 0.02±0.37m·s−1 and 0.3±6.7, respectively. The strongest correlation was found between mean power output relative to body mass (MPO) measured during the WingT and VMASRT (r=0.77, P<0.001). The MASRT constitutes a reliable and valid field tool for assessing short term repeated running capacity of team sport players.
Complex eye movement pattern biometrics: Analyzing fixations and saccades

This paper presents an objective evaluation of previously unexplored biometric techniques utilizing patterns identifiable in human eye movements to distinguish individuals. The distribution of primitive eye movement features are compared between eye movement recordings using algorithms based on the following statistical tests: the Ansari-Bradley test, the Mann-Whitney U-test, the two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, the two-sample t-test, and the two-sample Cramer-von Mises test. Score-level information fusion is applied and evaluated by: weighted mean, support vector machine, random forest, and likelihood ratio. The accuracy of each comparison/jusion algorithm is evaluated, with results suggesting that, on high resolution eye tracking equipment, it is possible to obtain equal error rates of 16.5% and rank-1 identification rates of 82.6% using the two-sample Cramér-von Mises test and score-level information fusion by random forest, the highest accuracy results on the considered dataset.
Thorax: low-dose contrast-enhanced three-dimensional MR angiography with subsecond temporal resolution--initial results.

The purpose of the study was to implement a three-dimensional (3D) magnetic resonance (MR) angiographic technique with acquisition times on the order of 800 msec with use of a spoiled gradient-echo pulse sequence (repetition time, 1.60 msec; echo time, 0.65 msec) and bolus intravenous injection of contrast material doses as small as 6 mL. High-spatial-resolution conventional MR angiography performed with 30 mL of gadopentetate dimeglumine was the reference standard. As implemented, subsecond 3D MR angiography allowed temporal sampling that was rapid enough to depict short-lived processes, as illustrated in patients with shunts and dissections. With small contrast material doses and subsecond frame rates, it is also possible to measure pulmonary arteriovenous circulation times with this 3D MR angiographic technique.
Machine Vision in Food Recognition: Attempts to Enhance CBVIR Tools

Visual identification of complex images (e.g. images of food) remains a challenging problem. In particular, contentbased visual information retrieval (CBVIR) methods, which seem a natural choice for such tasks, are often constrained by specific characteristics of the images of interest and (possibly) other practical requirements. In this paper, a novel CBVIR approach to automatic food identification is proposed, taking into account characteristics of solutions currently existing in this area. Based on limitations of those solutions, we present a scheme in which a co-occurrence of MSER features extracted from three color channels is employed to build a bag-of-words histogram. Subsequently, food images are matched by detecting similarities between those histograms. Preliminary tests on a recently published benchmark dataset UNICT-FD889 reveal certain advantages of the scheme and highlight its limitations. In particular, a need of a novel methodology for segmentation of food images has been identified.
EDMOS in ultrathin FDSOI: Effect of doping and layout of the drift region

We have already demonstrated the fabrication of a Dual-Ground Plane Extended Drain MOSFET with 28nm FDSOI technology. The detrimental consequences of ultrathin SOI film were mitigated by back-biasing the ground planes. In this paper, we explore for the first time the device optimization in 28 nm FDSOI node by doping the drift region. This solution requires additional and dedicated process steps but is free from back-biasing schemes. Following TCAD simulations, devices have been designed and fabricated with UTBB-FDSOI technology. DC measurements indicate that even in ultrathin film (7 nm) the doping of drift region is still a lever for achieving high-voltage (5V) MOSFET with promising performance.
A joystick car drive system with seating in a wheelchair

This paper presents a joystick car drive system for a handicapped person. The joystick drive system enables handicapped person to drive a car by his/her single hand with seating in an electric wheelchair. The joystick operation in back and force direction controls acceleration or deceleration of a car while that in left and right direction turns a steering wheel. Therefore a person, who has disabilities such as no enough force nor limited movable area of their arms together with disabilities in legs, can drive a car by oneself. Additionally, a wheelchair driver does not have to change seat from a wheelchair to a car seat. Since a developed van equips with a lift on the back, a wheelchair user can access to the driver's position with propelling a wheelchair inside of a van. For maintaining driving safety of a van in case of system fault, gas and brake pedals are physically moved by a mechanical linkage which is connected to a joystick lever. Therefore a van can be stopped by manual operation in any case. A steering wheel is turned by an electric motor which is controlled by a micro-computer system. A steering angle is PID controlled to track the reference angle given by a joystick. To realize the joystick drive system with seating a wheelchair, we design a steering drive mechanism which includes a DC motor, a magnetic clutch, and a potentiometer for steering angle detection, and transmission gears. Most of cars manufactured in these days equip with power steering systems which reduce steering operation power of human drivers. Therefore the system can utilize the power steering system for realizing the joystick car drive system with minimum capacity of a motor. The prototype mechanism is mounted on a car cockpit of a real van and tested the realizability of the proposed joystick controlled car-wheelchair mobile system.
Lifting methods for quasi-cyclic LDPC codes

In this paper, we present two simple methods to construct a quasi-cyclic LDPC (QC-LDPC) code of larger length by lifting a given QC-LDPC code. We show that its girth is always larger than or equal to that of the given QC-LDPC code. Applying the methods recursively, it is possible to construct a sequence of QC-LDPC codes generated from a single exponent matrix by proper floor or modulo operations. Simulation results show that they have no serious performance degradation, as compared with randomly constructed LDPC codes
An Efficient Emergency Message Broadcasting Scheme in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Broadcasting of emergency message (EM) in the vehicular Ad hoc networks (VANETs) plays a significant role in safety applications, which require immediate broadcasting of EM to the relevant vehicles located in the risk zone (RZ). This paper proposes an efficient emergency message broadcasting (EEMB) scheme in VANETs. This scheme aims at avoiding multiple accidents and reducing traffic jams by broadcasting EM at high speed and with low overhead. When an accident takes place, the crashed vehicle (CV) will choose the best relayer(s) and broadcast the EM. The relayer will also choose the best next relayer(s) and rebroadcast the EM further. This process continues until the EM covers the whole RZ. The EEMB scheme reduces the overhead caused by beacons by using the prediction method. Our proposed scheme also overcomes the network fragmentation problem either by choosing the vehicles moving in the opposite direction as the relayer(s) if there are no vehicles in the same direction or by using the store-carry-forward (SCF) mechanism when there are no vehicles moving in both directions. The simulation results have shown that the proposed scheme has better performance in terms of the risk zone latency (RZL) and the beacons overhead (BCO).
A general framework for Bitcoin analytics

Modern cryptocurrencies exploit decentralised ledgers - the so-called blockchains - to record a public and unalterable history of transactions. These ledgers represent a rich, and increasingly growing, source of information, in part of difficult interpretation and undisclosed meaning. Many analytics, mostly based on ad-hoc engineered solutions, are being developed to discover relevant knowledge from these data. We introduce a framework for the development of custom analytics on Bitcoin - the most preeminent cryptocurrency - which also allows to integrate data within the blockchain with data retrieved form external sources. We illustrate the flexibility and effectiveness of our analytics framework by means of paradigmatic use cases.