Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hybrid CMOS / Magnetic Process Design Kit and application to the design of reliable and low-power non-volatile logic circuits

Spintronics is a continuously expending area of research and development at the merge between magnetism and electronics. It aims at taking advantage of the quantum characteristic of the electrons, i.e. its spin, to create new functionalities and new devices. Spintronic devices typically rely on the Magneto Resistive (MR) effects, which consists in a dependence of the electrical resistance upon the magnetic configuration. These devices can be used to conceive innovative nonvolatile memories, high-perfomance logic circuits, RF oscillators or field/current sensors. We present here how these hybrid CMOS/Magnetic logic circuits can help circumventing some of the limits of CMOS-only microelectronics in terms of reliability or power consumption as well as the tools required to design such circuits.
Where the Future Goes: What do we Need to Know in the ARDS and how Lung Imaging Can Deal with this?

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) remains a clinical challenge for intensivists, despite extensive experimental and clinical research over the past thirty years. Meanwhile, lung imaging techniques have emerged as invaluable non-invasive tools and have considerably modified and improved management of many lung pathologies. The purpose of this review is to list major unanswered questions in ARDS and to speculate on how lung imaging may provide answers in the near future.
Homogenous 96-Plex PEA Immunoassay Exhibiting High Sensitivity, Specificity, and Excellent Scalability

Medical research is developing an ever greater need for comprehensive high-quality data generation to realize the promises of personalized health care based on molecular biomarkers. The nucleic acid proximity-based methods proximity ligation and proximity extension assays have, with their dual reporters, shown potential to relieve the shortcomings of antibodies and their inherent cross-reactivity in multiplex protein quantification applications. The aim of the present study was to develop a robust 96-plex immunoassay based on the proximity extension assay (PEA) for improved high throughput detection of protein biomarkers. This was enabled by: (1) a modified design leading to a reduced number of pipetting steps compared to the existing PEA protocol, as well as improved intra-assay precision; (2) a new enzymatic system that uses a hyper-thermostabile enzyme, Pwo, for uniting the two probes allowing for room temperature addition of all reagents and improved the sensitivity; (3) introduction of an inter-plate control and a new normalization procedure leading to improved inter-assay precision (reproducibility). The multiplex proximity extension assay was found to perform well in complex samples, such as serum and plasma, and also in xenografted mice and resuspended dried blood spots, consuming only 1 µL sample per test. All-in-all, the development of the current multiplex technique is a step toward robust high throughput protein marker discovery and research.
Germinal Center Kinases SmKIN3 and SmKIN24 Are Associated with the Sordaria macrospora Striatin-Interacting Phosphatase and Kinase (STRIPAK) Complex

The striatin-interacting phosphatase and kinase (STRIPAK) complex is composed of striatin, protein phosphatase PP2A and protein kinases that regulate development in animals and fungi. In the filamentous ascomycete Sordaria macrospora, it is required for fruiting-body development and cell fusion. Here, we report on the presence and function of STRIPAK-associated kinases in ascomycetes. Using the mammalian germinal center kinases (GCKs) MST4, STK24, STK25 and MINK1 as query, we identified the two putative homologs SmKIN3 and SmKIN24 in S. macrospora. A BLASTP search revealed that both kinases are conserved among filamentous ascomycetes. The physical interaction of the striatin homolog PRO11 with SmKIN3 and SmKIN24 were verified by yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) interaction studies and for SmKIN3 by co-Immunoprecipitation (co-IP). In vivo localization found that both kinases were present at the septa and deletion of both Smkin3 and Smkin24 led to abnormal septum distribution. While deletion of Smkin3 caused larger distances between adjacent septa and increased aerial hyphae, deletion of Smkin24 led to closer spacing of septa and to sterility. Although phenotypically distinct, both kinases appear to function independently because the double-knockout strain ΔSmkin3/ΔSmkin24 displayed the combined phenotypes of each single-deletion strain.
Dissent in Parliament as Reputation Building

Dissenting votes in parliamentary systems are overt displays of defiance by individual Members of Parliament (MPs) vis-a-vis their parties. Dissension is particularly surprising as in the vast majority of situations voting against one's party yields no change in legislative outcomes while still generating costs for MPs. This study examines the decisions of elected representatives who face conflicting incentives. A model is developed where MPs choose to dissent in an effort to build reputations with their local constituents. Using all 32,216 observations at MP-bill-vote level for the 39th Parliament of Canada, a reputation building hypothesis is specified and tested. I provide evidence that MPs whose previous election was competitive are 13 percent more likely to cast any dissenting vote and, for a one standard deviation decrease in expected margin of victory, 2.3 percent more likely to defect on any given vote, results which suggest that MPs are actively attempting to build reputations with their local constituents
School, Peers, and Delinquency: An Interactional Theory Approach to Examining Racial Differences

Title of thesis: SCHOOL PEERS AND DELINQUENCY: AN INTERACTIONAL THEORY APPROACH TO EXAMINING RACIAL DIFFERENCES Daniel Wonho Jang, Master of Arts, 2015 Thesis directed by: Professor Terence P. Thornberry Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice Using an approach based on Thornberry’s interactional theory, this paper focuses on testing whether or not the theory is valid in explaining racial differences. This paper focuses on two variables of the theory, which previous studies indicate are more likely to explain race differences in delinquency than the others: commitment to school and peer delinquency. In accordance with interactional theory, this paper intends to examine the relationship between each set of variables and how they influence one another over time, whether or not these relationships are similar across racial groups, expanding on findings that use general theories such as social control and social learning to explain racial differences in offending, and, ultimately, implications regarding the application of theories to explain racial differences in offending. This paper will utilize structural equation modeling to conduct a multi-wave analysis using data from the Rochester Youth
A kernel principal component analysis algorithm based on sample selection according to pseudo-eigenvalue contribution

When kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) is applied for pattern classification problems such as face recognition, the more training samples are not leading to the easier way to get the useful principal components for classification. The reason is there are some samples containing lots of redundant information which is not conducive to classification and must be excluded from the training samples. Recent documents proposed an idea of electing points (samples) based on pseudo-eigenvalue method, deciding which point should remain in the training set according to their representation of the population. But the specific process and corresponding parameters of selecting points need to be further studied and improved. This article first discusses the specific process of selecting points and the rule of selecting parameters, and then applies the pseudo-eigenvalue method to KPCA to form a new PKPCA method. The experimental results based on ORL and YALE facial databases show that the proposed PKPCA algorithm has high efficiency and reliability.
To what extent does the Alberta Energy Resource Conservation Board’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Program affect the capacity, opportunity and volition of landowners and the oil and gas industry to resolve conflict?

This research examines the capacity, opportunity and volition of participants of a landowneroil and gas industry conflict in Alberta and the effect of the Alberta Energy Resource Conservation Board (ERCB) Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) program. It explores whether the model used by the ERCB ADR program exists in a setting where Tidwell’s (1998) elements for conflict resolution are present. Using Tidwell’s (1998) theory and case study methodology (Yin, 1994) the participants discuss their experiences of the conflict and the program. The findings illustrate participants did not each possess the capacity, opportunity and volition to resolve. Despite legal confines, the program aided in improving the capacity, opportunity and volition of participants, built relationships and created resolution. The study resulted in recommendations to improve the program and suggestions for industry to minimize conflict with landowners. These findings may be applied to other industries where parties have limited rights.
An R*-Tree Based Semi-Dynamic Clustering Method for the Efficient Processing of Spatial Join in a Shared-Nothing Parallel Database System

The spatial join is a computationally expensive operator to implement. The efficient implementation of the spatial join operator is, thus, desirable. This paper discusses a new parallel algorithm that implements the spatial join in an efficient manner. The proposed algorithm is compared to an existing parallel spatial join algorithm, the clone join. Both algorithms have been implemented on a Beowulf cluster and compared using real datasets. An extensive experimental analysis reveals that the proposed algorithm exhibits superior performance both in declustering time as well as in the execution time of the spatial Join query.
Dual Clock Scheme for over 200MHz Synchronous DRAM System

Dual clock scheme, where master clock (CLKM) and output clock (CLKO) are applied to a SDRAM with different phase, is proposed to achieve very fast access time without area / power penalty. A circuit technique to adjust the different phase between dual clocks is described. This scheme in conjunction with 2-bit prefetch architecture enhances operating clock frequency over 200MHz without PLL/DLL on chip. An experimental dual clock 16Mbit SDRAM demonstrates the clock access time of 2.5ns.
Estimating the Chilean Natural Rate of Interest

In this paper we use a set of methods to estimate the neutral interest rate for Chile (NRIR). We group the methods into three categories: methods derived from pure economic theory, the NRIR implicit in the price of financial assets, and the rate estimated from a statistical model using macroeconomic data. We learnt that the neutral interest rate is not a time invariant variable. It is closely related to the potential growth of the economy (but it is not equal to the growth rate of the trended output). The application of all methods yields very similar results. The NRIR would be in a range between 2% and 3.6%, with a median equal to 2.8% with data up to the fourth quarter of 2006
Effects of work burden, job strain and support on depressive symptoms and burnout among Japanese physicians

ObjectivesDays off, on call, night duty, working hours and job stress can affect physicians’ mental health, and support from supervisors and co-workers may have a buffering effect. This study elucidates whether job strain and job factors affect physicians’ mental health, and whether support from supervisors and co-workers has a protective effect on their mental health.Material and MethodsThe subjects included 494 physicians. The Brief Job Stress Questionnaire (BJSQ) was used to evaluate job demand, job control and support. High job strain was defined as a combination of high job demand and low job control. Depressive symptoms were assessed using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9. The Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey was used to evaluate burnout. Possible confounder adjusted logistic regression analyses were performed to obtain odds ratios for depressive symptoms and burnout.ResultsAs per the analysis, high job strain had significantly higher odds ratios, and support from co-workers had significant protective odds ratios for depressive symptoms. High job strain and having only 2–4 days off per month (compared to > 8 days off per month) had significantly higher odds ratios, and support from co-workers had significant protective odds ratios for burnout.ConclusionsHigh job strain was related to depressive symptoms and burnout, and support from co-workers had a buffering effect on depressive symptoms and burnout. An inadequate number of days off was related to burnout. Assessment of job strain may be a good tool to measure physicians’ mental health, and a sufficient number of days off may be needed to prevent burnout.
An Embodied Dialogue System with Personality and Emotions

An enduring challenge in human-computer interaction (HCI) research is the creation of natural and intuitive interfaces. Besides the obvious requirement that such interfaces communicate over modalities such as natural language (especially spoken) and gesturing that are more natural for humans, exhibiting affect and adaptivity have also been identified as important factors to the interface's acceptance by the user. In the work presented here, we propose a novel architecture for affective and multimodal dialogue systems that allows explicit control over the personality traits that we want the system to exhibit. More specifically, we approach personality as a means of synthesising different, and possibly conflicting, adaptivity models into an overall model to be used to drive the interaction components of the system. Furthermore, this synthesis is performed in the presence of domain knowledge, so that domain structure and relations influence the results of the calculation.
Hierarchical clustering and linguistic mediation rules for multiagent negotiation

We propose a framework based on Hierarchical Clustering (HC) to perform multiagent negotiations where we can specify the type of agreements needed in terms of utility sharing among the agents. The proposed multi-round mediation process is based on the analysis of the agents' offers at each negotiation round and the generation of a social contract at each round as a feedback to the agents, which explore the negotiation space to generate new offers. This mechanism efficiently manages negotiations following predefined consensus policies avoiding zones of no agreement.
IR-based traceability recovery as a plugin: an industrial case study

Large-scale software development is a complex undertaking and generates an ever-increasing amount of information. To be able to work efficiently under such circumstances, navigation in all available data needs support. Maintaining traceability links between software artefacts is one approach to structure the information space and support this challenge. Several researchers have proposed traceability recovery by applying IR methods, based on textual similarities between artefacts. Early studies have shown promising results, but no large-scale in vivo evaluations have been made. Currently, there is a trend among our industrial partners to collect artefacts in a specific new software engineering tool. Our goal is to develop an IR-based traceability recovery plugin to this tool. From this position, in the environment of possible future users, the usefulness of supported findability in a software engineering context could be explored with an industrial validity.
Towards intensional answers to OLAP queries for analytical sessions

One of the problems in analyzing large multidimensional databases through OLAP sessions is that decision makers can be overwhelmed by the size of query answers, while they need a concise summary of data. Intensional query answering can help by providing a concise description of extensional answers (i.e., the sets of retrieved facts), generally relying on knowledge like integrity constraints, taxonomies, or patterns discovered from data. This paper proposes a framework for computing an intensional answer to an OLAP query by leveraging on the previous queries in the current session. Such intensional answer is concise and semantically rich, and allows the size of the extensional answers returned to be reduced, so as to achieve an effective trade-off between conciseness and informational content. After describing the general framework, we propose a specific instantiation that relies on previous contributions in cube modeling and intensional query answering.
Deconvolutional Feature Stacking for Weakly-Supervised Semantic Segmentation

A weakly-supervised semantic segmentation framework with a tied deconvolutional neural network is presented. Each deconvolution layer in the framework consists of unpooling and deconvolution operations. 'Unpooling' upsamples the input feature map based on unpooling switches defined by corresponding convolution layer's pooling operation. 'Deconvolution' convolves the input unpooled features by using convolutional weights tied with the corresponding convolution layer's convolution operation. The unpooling-deconvolution combination helps to eliminate less discriminative features in a feature extraction stage, since output features of the deconvolution layer are reconstructed from the most discriminative unpooled features instead of the raw one. This results in reduction of false positives in a pixel-level inference stage. All the feature maps restored from the entire deconvolution layers can constitute a rich discriminative feature set according to different abstraction levels. Those features are stacked to be selectively used for generating class-specific activation maps. Under the weak supervision (image-level labels), the proposed framework shows promising results on lesion segmentation in medical images (chest X-rays) and achieves state-of-the-art performance on the PASCAL VOC segmentation dataset in the same experimental condition.
Lack of Association between Bax Promoter (-248G>A) Single Nucleotide Polymorphism and Susceptibility towards Cancer: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis

Background The Bcl-2-associated X protein (Bax) is a proapoptotic member of the Bcl-2 family known to be activated and upregulated during apoptosis. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in Bax promoter may participate in the process of carcinogenesis by altering its own expression and the cancer related genes. Bax-248G>A polymorphism has been implicated to alter the risk of cancer, but the listed results are inconsistent and inconclusive. In the present study, we performed a meta-analysis to systematically summarize the possible association of this polymorphism with the risk of cancer. Methodology We conducted a search of case-control studies on the associations of Bax-248G>A polymorphism with susceptibility to cancer in Pub Med, Science Direct, Wiley Online Library and hand search. Data from all eligible studies based on some key search terms, inclusion and exclusion criteria were extracted for this meta-analysis. Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) in controls, power calculation, heterogeneity analysis, Begg’s funnel plot, Egger’s linear regression test, forest plot and sensitivity analysis were performed in the present study. Results Cancer risk associated with Bax-248G>A polymorphism was estimated by pooled odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs). The pooled ORs were calculated in allele contrast, homozygous comparison, heterozygous comparison, dominant and recessive model. Statistical significance was checked through Z and p-value in forest plot. A total of seven independent studies including 1772 cases and 1708 controls were included in our meta-analysis. Our results showed that neither allele frequency nor genotype distributions of this polymorphism were associated with risk for cancer in any of the genetic model. Furthermore, Egger’s test did not show any substantial evidence of publication bias. Conclusions/Significance This meta-analysis suggests that the Bax-248G>A polymorphism is not an important cancer risk factor. Nevertheless, additional well-designed studies with larger sample size focusing on different ethnicities and cancer types are required to further validate the results.
Newborn's ear recognition: Can it be done?

Abduction, swapping and mix ups are the unfortunate events that could happen to infants while in hospital premises and medical personnel are finding it difficult to curb this unfortunate incidents. Existing biometric and non biometric methods fail to provide enough level of security and research done to solve this problem is minimal. This paper introduces the concept of using ear recognition for identification of newborn and presents automatic ear recognition algorithm. The main contribution of this research is (i) preparation of a new born ear database of 210 individuals with slight variations in illumination and pose (ii) testing of different ear matching algorithms. On an ear biometric database of 210 infants it is concluded that ear can be used as biometric feature to identify the newborn.
A design oriented model for timing jitter/skew of Voltage-to-Time Converter (VTC) circuits

Time-based ADC is an essential block in designing software radio receivers because it exhibits higher speed and lower power compared to the conventional ADC, especially, at scaled CMOS technologies. In time-based ADCs, the input voltage is first converted to a pulse delay time by using a Voltage-to-Time Converter (VTC) circuit, and then the pulse delay time is converted to a digital word by using a Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) circuit. In this paper, an analytical model for the timing jitter and skew due to noise and process variations, respectively, is proposed for the VTC circuit. The derived model is verified and compared to Monte Carlo simulations and Eldo transient noise simulations by using industrial 65-nm CMOS technology. This paper shows how the timing jitter/skew can be reduced by using circuit design knobs such as the supply voltage and the load capacitance.
Prediction of Scattered Field from Linearly Loaded Dipole Antenna Using Fuzzy Inference

In this paper, our fuzzy-based approach is used to predict scattered field from linearly loaded dipole antenna. At first, knowledge bases of diameter for unloaded scattering dipole antenna and impedance loading for thin scattering dipole antenna are separately extracted as very simple curves. In extracting these knowledge bases, the behavior of scattering dipole antenna is well approximated to the behavior of single transmitting dipole antenna. Then using concept of special membership functions, two knowledge bases are combined so that the spatial knowledge base of scattering dipole antenna including diameter and impedance loading effects is extracted. Finally, comparing fuzzy modeling results with method of moments, MoM shows an excellent agreement. Moreover, the execution time is considerably reduced.