Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Millimeter-wave HBT MMIC synthesizers using subharmonically injection-locked oscillators

A subharmonically injection-locked MMIC harmonic VCO for use as a synthesized local oscillator in the 60 GHz band has been experimentally investigated. The designs using HBT MMICs are based on the use of 2nd subharmonic injection locking of the harmonic VCOs to upconvert to millimeter-wave frequency and broaden the locking range. The use of the 4th harmonic signal from the VCOs allows a factor of eight increase in the locking range. The transmission type injection-locked MMIC VCO with the refractive type load circuit increases not only the locking range, but also the high-order harmonic output power in the locked VCO output.
The Role of Semiconductor Inputs in it Hardware Price Decline: Computers Vs. Communications

Sharp declines in semiconductor prices are largely responsible for observed declines in computer prices. Although communications equipment also has a large semiconductor content, communications equipment prices do not fall nearly as fast as computer prices. This paper partly resolves the puzzle - first noted by Flamm(1989) - by demonstrating that prices for chips used in communications equipment do not fall nearly as fast as prices for those chips used in computers, and those differences are large enough to potentially explain all of the output price differences.
Session-wise private data exchange in eHealth peer-to-peer database management systems

In a peer-to-peer database management system(P2PDBMS) system, peers exchange data in a pair-wise fashion on-the-fly in response to a query without any centralized control. Generally, peers create a temporary session during data exchange. The data might be trapped and disclosed by the intruders while exchanged over an insecure communication network. As there is no centralized control for data exchange among peers, we cannot assume any central third party security infrastructure (e.g. PKI) to protect confidential data of an eHealth P2PDBMS. So far, there is currently no available/existing security protocol for secured data exchange in eHealth P2PDBMS. In this paper we propose a security protocol for data exchange in eHealth P2PDBMSs based on pairing-based cryptography and data exchange policy. The proposed protocol allows the peers to compute their secret session keys dynamically by computing pairing on elliptic curve based on the policies between them during data exchange. Our proposed protocol is robust against the man-in-the middle attack, the masquerade attack and the replay attack.
Contour Detection of Labelled Cellular Structures from Serial Ultrathin Electron Microscopy Sections using GAC and Prior Analysis

In this paper we discuss how the classical geodesic active contours (GAC) model is enhanced by incorporating `prior' information into the scheme. The modified model is applied to biomedical imagery, specifically serial ultrathin electron microscopy sections. The approach used is to apply prior analysis on a training set of data and provide geometric information about the target object during the process of curve evolution. The experimental results and analysis for both synthetic and real images show that the approach performs better than our previous method. It can be implemented semi-automated fashion giving significant improvements compared to a manual approach.
Involvement of the Lateral Hypothalamic Peptide Orexin in Morphine Dependence and Withdrawal

The lateral hypothalamus (LH) is implicated in the behavioral actions of drugs of abuse, but the cellular and molecular basis of this role is unclear. Recent identification of neuropeptides localized in LH neurons has allowed for more specific studies of LH function. The LH-specific peptide orexin (hypocretin) has been shown to be important in arousal and sleep regulation. However, orexin cells of the LH project broadly throughout the brain such that orexin may influence other behaviors as well. In this study, we show that orexin neurons, and not nearby LH neurons expressing melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH), have μ-opioid receptors and respond to chronic morphine administration and opiate antagonist-precipitated morphine withdrawal. cAMP response element-mediated transcription is induced in a subset of orexin cells, but not MCH cells, after exposure to chronic morphine or induction of withdrawal. Additionally, c-Fos and the orexin gene itself are induced in orexin cells in the LH during morphine withdrawal. Finally, we show that orexin knock-out mice develop attenuated morphine dependence, as indicated by a less severe antagonist-precipitated withdrawal syndrome. Together, these studies support a role for the orexin system in molecular adaptations to morphine, and demonstrate dramatic differences in molecular responses among different populations of LH neurons.
Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms and Markers of Oxidative Stress in Healthy Women

Purpose There is accumulating evidence that oxidative stress is an important contributor to carcinogenesis. We hypothesized that genetic variation in genes involved in maintaining antioxidant/oxidant balance would be associated with overall oxidative stress. Methods We examined associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in MnSOD, GSTP1, GSTM1, GPX1, GPX3, and CAT genes and thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances (TBARS), a blood biomarker of oxidative damage, in healthy white women randomly selected from Western New York (n = 1402). We used general linear models to calculate age-adjusted geometric means of TBARS across the variants. We also examined the associations within strata of menopausal status. Results For MnSOD, being heterozygous was associated with lower geometric means of TBARS (less oxidative stress), 1.28 mg/dL, compared to homozygous T-allele or homozygous C-allele,1.35 mg/dL, and 1.31 mg/dL correspondingly (p for trend = 0.01). This difference remained among postmenopausal women, 1.40 mg/dL for TT, 1.32 mg/dL for TC, and 1.34mg/dL for CC (p for trend 0.015); it was attenuated among premenopausal women. SNPs in the other genes examined (GSTP1, GSTM1, GPX1, GPX3, and CAT) were not associated with TBARS. Conclusions Our findings suggest that genetic variation in MnSOD gene may be associated with oxidative status, particularly among postmenopausal women.
Hydrostatic pressure improves in-vitro maturation of oocytes derived from vitrified-warmed mouse ovaries

Background: Cryopreservation has limited successes and in-vitro maturation is used to improve its results. Hydrostatic pressure (HP) plays an important role in follicular development. Objective: This study was designed to examine the effects of HP on in-vitro maturation of oocytes and cell death in cumulus cells derived from vitrified-warmed mouse ovaries. Materials and Methods: Preovulatory follicles were harvested from non-vitrified and vitrified-warmed 6-8 week-old female NMRI mouse ovaries and randomly assigned to following groups: non-vitrified (control), non-vitrified with HP exposure (treatment I), vitrified-warmed (treatment II) and vitrified-warmed with HP exposure (treatment III). The follicles of treatments I and III were subjected to HP (20 mmHg) for 30 min and after that all groups were cultured for 24h and assessed for in-vitro maturation of oocytes. The viability and apoptosis of cumulus cells and oocytes were assessed using supravital nuclear staining and TUNEL assay, respectively. Results: Oocytes harvested follicles in both control and treatment II had a significantly lower percentage of metaphase II oocytes (MII) than the treatment I and III (23.5±3.1, 15.03±4.6 and 32.7±3.2, 25.5±4.6; respectively) (p<0.05). Viability of the cumulus cells reduced in treatment I, II and III (83.4, 83.3 and 77.7%) compared to control (86.9%), (p<0.05). The apoptotic index in cumulus and oocyte complexes in treatments I and III (10.7±0.8 and 15.3±0.8) was higher than in control and treatment II (6.7±0.5 and 9.7±0.5) (p<0.05). Conclusion: These results demonstrate that HP had a mild effect on cell death incidence in cumulus cells without any effect on oocyte. However, it can be used as a mechanical force to improve in-vitro maturation of oocytes derived from vitrified-warmed mouse ovaries.
Reliability modeling of MEMS devices on CUDA based HPC setup

In this paper we have reviewed the development in CUDA and the implementation of various distribution that exists in the reliability for MEMS based devices on a CUDA setup. The various distributions can be highly optimized so that the system can be simulated highly on CUDA. We have shown the type of distribution may vary from exponential to binomial to other that are being proposed recently. The Reliability modeling codes to calculate reliability function, failure rate function, Mean time to failure (MTTF) and Mean Residual time (MRT) are proposed for MEMS technology for these specific calculations needs to be performed for which CUDA plays a very important role. It is observed that High Performance Computing (HPC) can be used to optimize reliability calculation and help to accelerate research in reliability of MEMS. The three key abstractions of CUDA i.e. hierarchy of thread groups, shared memories, and barrier synchronization are exposed as a set of extensions to C language, which provides fine-grained data parallelism and thread parallelism, nested within coarse-grained data parallelism and task parallelism. The key is division of the computations of Reliability analysis into crude sub-problems that can be solved parallely in isolation independently, and then into finer pieces that can be executed in parallel with mutual cooperation among them. Allowing threads to solve each sub-problem cooperatively, this division of problem preserves expressivity of language. Each sub-problem is thus scheduled to be solved on any of the available processor cores allowing transparent scalability. Thus computations of Reliability analysis can be performed by using a compiled CUDA program that can execute on any number of GPU cores. During the programming we need not know the exact configuration and thus only the runtime system needs to know the physical processor count.
Simulation of a recurrent neurointerface with sparse electrical connections

With the technical development of multi-electrode arrays, the monitoring of many individual neurons has become feasible. However, for practical use of those arrays as bidirectional neurointerfaces, feedback signals have to be generated in real-time to integrate the electrodes into the existing spatio-temporal context as a new information source. In this modeling study we will introduce a recurrent neurointerface, which uses a biologically plausible articial neural network to pre-process electrode signals and generate adequate feedback signals to the biological network. The articial network is more transparent for advanced methods to ana- lyze synchronous ring patterns and reacts more stably to external input signals.
Longitudinal evidence on financial expectations in Albania : Do remittances matter ? #

This paper focuses on the role of remittances on financial expectations in Albania using longitudinal data covering the period 2002-2004. To study the dynamics of income satisfaction at the household level, we use subjective data on past, current and future financial situations and estimate random and fixed effect ordered Probit models. We find that households are more optimistic about the future when they have experienced an improvement in their financial situation in the past and when they have received private transfers from foreign countries. JEL Classification: D10, I32, 015
Ex Vivo and In Vivo Neuroprotection Induced by Argon When Given after an Excitotoxic or Ischemic Insult

In vitro studies have well established the neuroprotective action of the noble gas argon. However, only limited data from in vivo models are available, and particularly whether postexcitotoxic or postischemic argon can provide neuroprotection in vivo still remains to be demonstrated. Here, we investigated the possible neuroprotective effect of postexcitotoxic-postischemic argon both ex vivo in acute brain slices subjected to ischemia in the form of oxygen and glucose deprivation (OGD), and in vivo in rats subjected to an intrastriatal injection of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) or to the occlusion of middle-cerebral artery (MCAO). We show that postexcitotoxic-postischemic argon reduces OGD-induced cell injury in brain slices, and further reduces NMDA-induced brain damage and MCAO-induced cortical brain damage in rats. Contrasting with its beneficial effect at the cortical level, we show that postischemic argon increases MCAO-induced subcortical brain damage and provides no improvement of neurologic outcome as compared to control animals. These results extend previous data on the neuroprotective action of argon. Particularly, taken together with previous in vivo data that have shown that intraischemic argon has neuroprotective action at both the cortical and subcortical level, our findings on postischemic argon suggest that this noble gas could be administered during but not after ischemia, i.e. before but not after reperfusion has occurred, in order to provide cortical neuroprotection and to avoid increasing subcortical brain damage. Also, the effects of argon are discussed as regards to the oxygen-like chemical, pharmacological, and physical properties of argon.
Exploit detection techniques for STP using distributed IDS

Spanning tree protocol (STP) is a link layer protocol used for link management, prevention of loop formation etc. in the network. Although STP is widely used, it is still prone to many kinds of attacks that exploit the lack of security features both in basic working process and STP packet format. By exploiting STP control packet an attacker can pretend to be the new root in STP domain and perform unauthorized activities that lead to root take-over attack, STP control packet flooding, traffic redirection and so on. In this paper, a coverage based distributed intrusion detection system (DIDS) has been introduced, for the detection of attacks on STP. The proposed scheme computes a set of switches in the network that can cover the STP network completely; where every switch belongs to that set is installed with a small module of IDS. This set of IDSs logically divides the STP network into a set of local zones. All the switches in a zone is directly connected to one switch installed with IDS and thus covered by at least one IDS in STP domain. Each IDS can detect and verify any exploit inside its local zone. Additionally IDSs communicate with each other so that any exploit outside the local zone of a particular IDS can also be detected and verified. The results show that the proposed DIDS approach can detect all the STP based attacks.
LooCI: The Loosely-coupled Component Infrastructure

Creating and managing applications for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is complicated by large scale, resource constraints and network dynamics. Reconfigurable component models minimize these complexities throughout the application lifecycle. However, contemporary component based middleware for WSNs is limited by its poor support for distribution. This paper introduces the Loosely-coupled Component Infrastructure (LooCI), a middleware for building distributed component-based WSN applications. LooCI advances the state-of-the-art by cleanly separating distributed concerns from component implementation, supporting application-level interoperability between heterogeneous WSN platforms and providing compatibility testing of bindings at runtime. Together, these features promote the safe and efficient composition and reconfiguration of distributed WSN applications. We evaluate the performance of LooCI on three classes of sensor nodes and demonstrate that these features can be provided with minimal overhead in terms of computation, memory and message passing.
Micro-coaxial lines for active hybrid-monolithic circuits

This paper discusses fundamental properties of rectangular micro-coaxial lines fabricated in the PolyStrata™ process for broadband applications from 2–20 GHz. The possible impedance ranges for coaxial lines implemented with both five and eleven Cu layers are discussed and compared with measured results for the lowest impedance (8Ω) line. Power handling and thermal properties of these miniature lines are analyzed and measured. A 50Ω line with outer conductor cross-section of 600µm by 400µm is experimentally shown to handle 53W at 2:5GHz with a 10% duty cycle. Integration with active components is investigated and a 1–10GHz measurement of a GaN 50 MMIC amplifier shows minimal performance degradation relative to on-wafer measurements.
Multiport Scattering Matrix Determination From One-Port Measurements

This paper describes the approach to reconstruct the scattering matrix ( S-matrix) of a multiport network from a set of one-port measurements. Formulation of reconstruction including the use of auxiliary circuits is given to solve the S-matrix of a two-port network. The results are then used with the port reduction method for the reconstruction of an S-matrix of an n-port network. Two experimental examples of three-port reciprocal and nonreciprocal circuits are presented. Reconstructed results are shown in close agreement with the directly measured results.
Long‐term Intrinsic Rhythm Evaluation in Dogs with Atrioventricular Block

Background Atrioventricular block (AVB) is a conduction abnormality along the atrioventricular node that, depending on etiology, may lead to different outcomes. Objectives To evaluate variations of intrinsic rhythm (IR) in dogs that underwent pacemaker implantation (PMI). Animals Medical records of 92 dogs affected by 3rd degree atrioventricular block (3AVB), advanced 2nd degree AVB (2AVB), paroxysmal 3AVB, 2:1 2AVB, or 3AVB with atrial fibrillation (AF) were retrospectively reviewed. Method The patient IR was documented with telemetry on the day of 1 – (95% CI, 1–2), 33 – (95% CI, 28–35), 105 – (95%CI, 98–156), and 275 days (95%CI, 221–380) after PMI. According to AVB grade at different examinations, AVB was defined as progressed, regressed, or unchanged. Results In 48 dogs, 3AVB remained unchanged, whereas in 7 it regressed. Eight cases of 2AVB progressed, 3 regressed and 2 remained unchanged. Eight cases of paroxysmal 3AVB progressed and 3 remained unchanged. Four dogs affected by 2:1 2AVB progressed, 2 regressed, and 1 remained unchanged. All cases with 3AVB with AF remained unchanged. Regression occurred within 30 days after PMI, whereas progression was documented at any time. Variations in IR were associated with type of AVB (P < .03) and time of follow‐up (P < .0001). Conclusions and clinical importance The degree of AVB assessed at the time of PMI should not be considered definitive because more than one‐third of the cases in this study either progressed or regressed. Additional studies would be necessary to elucidate possible causes for transient AVB in dogs.
Objective speech intelligibility assessment through comparison of phoneme class conditional probability sequences

Assessment of speech intelligibility is important for the development of speech systems, such as telephony systems and text-to-speech (TTS) systems. Existing approaches to the automatic assessment of intelligibility in telephony typically compare a reference speech signal to a degraded copy, which requires that both signals be from the same speaker. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that does not have such a requirement, making it possible to also evaluate TTS systems and recent very low bit rate codecs that may modify speaker characteristics. More specifically, our approach is based on comparing sequences of phoneme class conditional probabilities. We show the potential of our approach on low bit rate telephony conditions, and compare it against subjective TTS intelligibility scores from the 2011 Blizzard Challenge.
Toric Calabi-Yau four-folds dual to Chern-Simons-matter theories

We propose a new method to find gravity duals to a large class of three-dimensional Chern-Simons-matter theories, using techniques from dimer models. The gravity dual is given by M-theory on AdS4 × Y7, where Y7 is an arbitrary seven-dimensional toric Sasaki-Einstein manifold. The cone of Y7 is a toric Calabi-Yau 4-fold, which coincides with a branch of the vacuum moduli space of Chern-Simons-matter theories.
Evaluation of human stress using EEG Power Spectrum

This paper presents an evaluation conducted between human stress questionnaires with EEG Power Spectrum of Beta and Alpha band. Cohen's Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) was used as stress questionnaires to evaluate human stress. The EEG recording of 13 volunteers were carried out immediately after them answering the stress questionnaires. The scores from the stress questionnaires were calculated and used to figure out its relationship with the ratio of EEG Beta and Alpha band power. The results of the study showed the PSS was negatively correlated with the ratio of EEG Power Spectrum. Besides, the study suggested that it was feasible to use PSS and the ratio of EEG Power Spectrum to determine human stress.
Performance evaluation of ACK-based and NAK-based flow control schemes for reliable multicast

In this paper, we evaluate the performance of flow control schemes for reliable multicast under several retransmission approaches in terms of scalability. The schemes examined are a window-based flow control scheme for ACK-based retransmission approaches and a rate-based flow control scheme for NAK-based retransmission approaches. Our simulation results show that the NAK-based flow control scheme has better scalability and higher throughput than the ACK-based flow control scheme, and the delay incurred by a NAK-suppression mechanism does not affect the performance of multicast flow control.
Avoiding "...too late!" - Expressing and Detecting Opportunity with EveWorks and EveXL

Adaptability is a desirable feature for context-aware applications to support the deployment of meaningful interactions on mobile devices. As such, flexible enough architectures are necessary to provide direct answers to applications requiring changes in their reactive behavior at runtime. To address this challenge, we present EveWorks, an Android application running on mobile devices, offering context-aware reactive services to other applications. Contrary to the norm found on the literature, EveWorks relies on definition of events of interest through expressions written in EveXL (EveWorks Expression Language), an original scripting language interpreted at runtime, thereby granting the desired adaptability to client context-aware applications. We evaluated the viability of EveWorks and EveXL and obtained evidence that EveXL is legible and straightforward, and is an adequate tool to express events. On the other hand, the results support EveWorks as a valid approach to facilitate development of reactive applications.
Scalable video multicast in multi-carrier wireless data systems

Future 4G cellular networks are featured with high data rate and improved coverage, which will enable realtime video multicast and broadcast services. Scalable video coding is very appropriate for wireless multicast service because it allows to choose different modulation and coding schemes (MCSs) for different video layers and can provide good video quality to users in good channel conditions while still maintaining reasonable video quality for other users. In order to apply scalable video coding to wireless multicast streaming, it is important to choose appropriate MCS for each video layer and to determine the right resource allocation among multiple video sessions. In this paper we propose a two-step dynamic programming algorithm that finds the optimal total system utility of all users where the system utility can be a generic non-negative, non-decreasing function of received rate. Our algorithm supports variable layer size and thus allows flexibility during the video encoding process. Simulation results show that our algorithm offers significant improvement on the video quality over a naive algorithm and an adapted greedy algorithm, especially in the scenarios with multiple real video sequences and limited radio resources.