Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Switched-capacitor pulse-width programmable gain integrating amplifier

With the purpose of realizing an integrated circuit and knowing that the capacitors generally use less space than resistors in the integration process, we propose an architecture of a pulse-width programmable linear amplifier that uses a switched capacitor instead of resistors. This architecture was obtained from modifications of a programmable gain amplifier developed in previous work. The proposed circuit is composed of switches, capacitors and an operational amplifier, and use three groups of signals for activating the switches, which among other functions, allows the amplifier's gain selection. The circuit also allow the selection of operating modes that can be a single-ended mode, a differential mode, and calibration mode. Simulation and experimental results with a prototype created from the proposed architecture are presented and compared with the previous work.
Effect of Hydrogen Peroxide and Superoxide Anions on Cytosolic Ca2+: Comparison of Endothelial Cells from Large-Sized and Small-Sized Arteries

We compared the Ca2+ responses to reactive oxygen species (ROS) between mouse endothelial cells derived from large-sized arteries, aortas (aortic ECs), and small-sized arteries, mesenteric arteries (MAECs). Application of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) caused an increase in cytosolic Ca2+ levels ([Ca2+]i) in both cell types. The [Ca2+]i rises diminished in the presence of U73122, a phospholipase C inhibitor, or Xestospongin C (XeC), an inhibitor for inositol-1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3) receptors. Removal of Ca2+ from the bath also decreased the [Ca2+]i rises in response to H2O2. In addition, treatment of endothelial cells with H2O2 reduced the [Ca2+]i responses to subsequent challenge of ATP. The decreased [Ca2+]i responses to ATP were resulted from a pre-depletion of intracellular Ca2+ stores by H2O2. Interestingly, we also found that Ca2+ store depletion was more sensitive to H2O2 treatment in endothelial cells of mesenteric arteries than those of aortas. Hypoxanthine-xanthine oxidase (HX-XO) was also found to induce [Ca2+]i rises in both types of endothelial cells, the effect of which was mediated by superoxide anions and H2O2 but not by hydroxyl radical. H2O2 contribution in HX-XO-induced [Ca2+]i rises were more significant in endothelial cells from mesenteric arteries than those from aortas. In summary, H2O2 could induce store Ca2+ release via phospholipase C-IP3 pathway in endothelial cells. Resultant emptying of intracellular Ca2+ stores contributed to the reduced [Ca2+]i responses to subsequent ATP challenge. The [Ca2+]i responses were more sensitive to H2O2 in endothelial cells of small-sized arteries than those of large-sized arteries.
Formation of the Black Hole in Nova Scorpii

Israelian and coworkers showed that the stellar companion of the black hole binary Nova Sco is polluted with material ejected in the supernova that accompanied the formation of the black hole primary. Here we systematically investigate the implications of these observations for the black hole formation process. Using a variety of supernova models, including standard as well as hypernova models (for different helium star masses, explosion energies, and explosion geometries) and a simple model for the evolution of the binary and the pollution of the secondary, we show that most of the observed abundance anomalies can be explained for a large range of model parameters (apart from the abundance of Ti). The best models are obtained for He star masses of 10-16M☉, where spherical hypernova models are generally favored over standard supernova ones. Aspherical hypernova models also produce acceptable fits, provided there is extensive lateral mixing. All models require substantial fallback and that the fallback material either reached the orbit of the secondary or was mixed efficiently with material that escaped. The black hole therefore formed in a two-step process, where the initial mass of the collapsed remnant was increased substantially by matter that fell back after the initial collapse. This may help to explain the high observed space velocity of Nova Sco either because of a neutrino-induced kick (if a neutron star was formed first) or by asymmetric mass ejection in an asymmetric supernova explosion.
Patient Selection and Current Practice Strategy for Off-pump Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery

Objective—Previous studies comparing off-pump coronary artery bypass surgery (OPCABG) to conventional techniques utilizing cardiopulmonary bypass (CABG-CPB) have failed to provide patient selection guidelines. We sought to determine guidelines, attempting to rectify the limitations of previous studies. Methods and Results—A retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons National Database, from January 1999 through December 2000, identified 204 602 multivessel coronary artery bypass (CABG) patients. Unadjusted and risk-adjusted odds ratios (OR) were calculated to compare OPCABG and CABG-CPB morbidity and mortality. A propensity model was developed to identify factors associated with selection for OPCABG. All off-pump patients were pair-matched with on-pump patients based on their propensity to receive an off-pump procedure. Off-pump patients, 8.8% of the total, had significantly different patient characteristics than the on-pump group. Characteristics associated with OPCABG selection included fewer diseased vessels, absence of left main disease, fewer bypass grafts, no previous CABG, older age, chronic lung disease, and renal failure. Unadjusted and risk-adjusted odds ratios indicate a significant off-pump survival benefit and decreased morbidity including stroke and renal failure in the overall group. Propensity matching also showed a significant OPCABG survival benefit [OR (95% CI) 0.83 (0.72, 0.96)]. Subgroup analysis of propensity-matched groups identified off-pump survival benefits in patients with previous CABG (OR=0.53), diabetics (OR=0.66), LVEF between 30% to 50% (OR=0.75), females (OR=0.79), and age 66 to 75 years (OR=0.80). Conclusion—OPCABG imparts some survival benefit to most patient subgroups. Higher risk patients including those undergoing reoperative CABG, diabetics, and the elderly may gain the most benefit.
A Novel Bacterial Artificial Chromosome-Transgenic Podoplanin–Cre Mouse Targets Lymphoid Organ Stromal Cells in vivo

Stromal cells provide the structural foundation of secondary lymphoid organs (SLOs), and regulate leukocyte access and cell migration within the different compartments of spleen and lymph nodes (LNs). Furthermore, several stromal cell subsets have been implied in shaping of T cell responses through direct presentation of antigen. Despite significant gain of knowledge on the biology of different SLO-resident stromal cell subsets, their molecular and functional characterization has remained incomplete. To address this need, we have generated a bacterial artificial chromosome-transgenic mouse model that utilizes the podoplanin (pdpn) promoter to express the Cre-recombinase exclusively in stromal cells of SLOs. The characterization of the Pdpn–Cre mouse revealed transgene expression in subsets of fibroblastic reticular cells and lymphatic endothelial cells in LNs. Furthermore, the transgene facilitated the identification of a novel splenic perivascular stromal cell subpopulation that forms web-like structures around central arterioles. Assessment of the in vivo antigen expression in the genetically tagged stromal cells in Pdpn–Cre mice revealed activation of both MHC I and II-restricted TCR transgenic T cells. Taken together, stromal pdpn–Cre expression is well-suited to characterize the phenotype and to dissect the function of lymphoid organ stromal cells.
A Bayesian nonparametric multimodal data modeling framework for video emotion recognition

Video emotion recognition as an emerging research field has been attracting more and more focus in recent years. However, such work is quite challenging, since human emotions are hard to differentiate precisely due to its complexity and diversity, moreover, the expressions of sentiment in a content-rich video are sparse. Previous studies presented a number of approaches to try to learn human emotions on video level by exploiting various video features. However, most of works just used simple low-level video features such as hand-crafted image features, and they also did not consider the further latent connections among different multimodal data within a video. To tackle these problems, we develop a novel Bayesian non-parametric multimodal data modeling framework to learn the emotions from video, where the adopted image data are deep features extracted from key frames of video via convolutional neural networks (CNNs), and the adopted audio data are Mel-frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC) features. In this framework, we then use a symmetric correspondence hierarchical Dirichlet processes (Sym-cHDP) model to mine their latent emotional events (topics) between image features and audio features. Finally, the effectiveness of our framework is demonstrated via comprehensive experimentations.
Indefinite Parzen Window for Spectral Clustering

Kernel functions used to compute pairwise similarities in spectral clustering and kernel methods are almost exclusively positive semidefinite. We show that for a recent information theoretic spectral clustering algorithm, the theoretically optimal kernel is given by the indefinite Epanechnikov function via Parzen windowing for density estimation. We perform clustering using this indefinite kernel, and report results which show improved performance. Finally, we briefly indicate some properties of the negative spectrum of the corresponding indefinite kernel matrix.
SYNTHESIS AND STUDIES ROOM TEMPERATURE CONDUCTIVITY, DIELECTRIC ANALYSIS OF LaF 3 NANOCRYSTALS

Lanthanum fluoride (LaF3) was synthesized using LaCl3 and NH4F as starting materials in de-ionized water as solvent via a microwave-assisted technique. The structure of LaF3 nanocrystals, analyzed by XRD and TEM, was found to be hexagonal with an average crystalline particle size of 20 nm (JCPDS standard card (32-0483) of pure hexagonal LaF3 crystals). The resistivity and conductivity at room temperature for LaF3 was verified and found to depend on the applied DC field. At an applied voltage of 20 V/cm ‐ 30 V/cm, the resistivity and conductivity changes rapidly due to the liberation of extra fluoride (F ) ions, whereas the conductivity of LaF3 nanocrystals depends upon temperature. The variation of dielectric constant (" 0 ) and dielectric loss (" 00 ) with applied frequency shows normal dielectric behavior, attributable to the space charge formation. The observed peak in the plot of tangent loss (tan ) vs. logF around 2.6 KHz can be attributed to interface charge relaxation at the grain boundaries.
Attributes for Causal Inference in Longitudinal Observational Databases

The pharmaceutical industry is plagued by the problem of side effects that can occur anytime a prescribed medication is ingested. There has been a recent interest in using the vast quantities of medical data available in longitudinal observational databases to identify causal relationships between drugs and medical events. Unfortunately the majority of existing post marketing surveillance algorithms measure how dependant or associated an event is on the presence of a drug rather than measuring causality. In this paper we investigate potential attributes that can be used in causal inference to identify side effects based on the Bradford-Hill causality criteria. Potential attributes are developed by considering five of the causality criteria and feature selection is applied to identify the most suitable of these attributes for detecting side effects. We found that attributes based on the specificity criterion may improve side effect signalling algorithms but the experiment and dosage criteria attributes investigated in this paper did not offer sufficient additional information.
The Impact of Security and Identity Management Issues in Grid: The Business Perspective

Security and identity management related issues indisputably constitute a major role in the adoption of new technologies in the Information Technology sector. Grid could not be an exception to that. This paper investigates another perspective apart from the technical one for dealing with such issues, the business one. It evaluates and discusses through real case examples, the risks associated with these issues in various heterogeneous industrial sectors, the impact of those in defining a successful business plan for a Grid product and the associated challenges. The aim is to provide a set of business guidelines and paradigms for early adopters not only for the Grid area but that can be also applied to associated, emerging and very promising technologies that Grid can be applied or integrated with such as Cloud Computing and Service Oriented Architectures.
Corner sequence - a P-admissible floorplan representation with a worst case linear-time packing scheme

Floorplanning/placement allocates a set of modules into a chip so that no two modules overlap and some specified objective is optimized. To facilitate floorplanning/placement, we need to develop an efficient and effective representation to model the geometric relationship among modules. In this paper, we present a P-admissible representation, called corner sequence (CS), for nonslicing floorplans. CS consists of two tuples that denote the packing sequence of modules and the corners to which the modules are placed. CS is very effective and simple for implementation. Also, it supports incremental update during packing. In particular, it induces a generic worst case linear-time packing scheme that can also be applied to other representations. Experimental results show that CS achieves very promising results for a set of commonly used MCNC benchmark circuits.
Demand Side Factors Affecting the Inflow of Foreign Direct Investment to African Countries: Does Capital Market Matter?

This paper aims at providing empirical analysis of the demand side determinants of the inflow of Foreign DirectInvestment to African nations, with particular emphasis on stock market availability. Due to data heterogeneity,non-continuity and because the Hausman test favors it, cross section fixed effect Least Square Dummy Variable(LSDV) estimation technique is used. Natural resource, labor quality, trade openness, market accession andinfrastructure condition are found to have positive and significant effect. Availability of stock market has theexpected positive but insignificant effect. In search of possible explanation governments’ expenditure andprivate domestic investment are added to the regression equation and are found to have positive effect, ruling outthe possibility of crowding out effect. Stock markets in Africa are not structured in such a way that they cancontribute to attract FDI and hence policy makers should restructure capital markets to get the most out of them.The bottom line is, policy makers of those countries have a lot of demand side instruments under their discretionto attract FDI inflow.
Milbeaut Image Signal Processing LSI Chip for Mobile Phones

The camera function of mobile phones has progressed in the last few years, as typified by the rapid spread of high pixel count, high resolution, and full high-definition video recording and playback features in smartphones. Although it is possible to implement camera functions such as rapid imaging and browsing from personal computers and mobile terminals into the application processor in a mobile phone, many customers prefer dedicated image signal processors (ISPs) as they offer image quality and performance comparable to those of compact high-end digital cameras. This paper describes the development and performance of the Milbeaut Mobile image processing LSI chip developed by Fujitsu for mobile phones.
Three-dimensional bio-printing: A new frontier in oncology research

Current research in oncology deploys methods that rely principally on two-dimensional (2D) mono-cell cultures and animal models. Although these methodologies have led to significant advancement in the development of novel experimental therapeutic agents with promising anticancer activity in the laboratory, clinicians still struggle to manage cancer in the clinical setting. The disappointing translational success is attributable mainly to poor representation and recreation of the cancer microenvironment present in human neoplasia. Three-dimensional (3D) bio-printed models could help to simulate this micro-environment, with recent bio-printing of live human cells demonstrating that effective in vitro replication is achievable. This literature review outlines up-to-date advancements and developments in the use of 3D bio-printed models currently being used in oncology research. These innovative advancements in 3D bio-printing open up a new frontier for oncology research and could herald an era of progressive clinical cancer therapeutics.
Using the Juliet Test Suite to compare static security scanners

Security issues arise permanently in different software products. Making software secure is a challenging endeavour. Static analysis of the source code can help eliminate various security bugs. The better a scanner is, the more bugs can be found and eliminated. The quality of security scanners can be determined by letting them scan code with known vulnerabilities. Thus, it is easy to see how much they have (not) found. We have used the Juliet Test Suite to test various scanners. This test suite contains test cases with a set of security bugs that should be found by security scanners. We have automated the process of scanning the test suite and of comparing the generated results. With one exception, we have only used freely available source code scanners. These scanners were not primarily targeted at security, yielding disappointing results at first sight. We will report on the findings, on the barriers for automatic scanning and comparing, as well as on the detailed results.
Saliency identified by absence of background structure

Visual attention is commonly modelled by attempting to characterise objects using features that make them special or in some way distinctive in a scene. These approaches have the disadvantage that it is never certain what features will be relevant in an object that has not been seen before. This paper provides a brief outline of the approaches to modeling human visual attention together with some of the problems that they face. A graphical representation for image similarity is described that relies on the size of maximally associative structures (cliques) that are found to be reflected in pairs of images. While comparing an image with itself, the similarity mechanism is shown to model pop-out effects when constraints are placed on the physical separation of pixels that correspond to nodes in the maximal cliques. Background regions are found to contain structure in common that is not present in the salient regions which are thereby identified by its absence. The approach is illustrated with figures that exemplify asymmetry in pop-out, the conjunction of features, orientation disturbances and the application to natural images.
Quantitative Ultrasound Imaging for Monitoring In Situ High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound Exposure

Quantitative ultrasound (QUS) imaging is hypothesized to map temperature elevations induced in tissue with high spatial and temporal resolution. To test this hypothesis, QUS techniques were examined to monitor high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) exposure of tissue. In situ experiments were conducted on mammary adenocarcinoma tumors grown in rats and lesions were formed using a HIFU system. A thermocouple was inserted into the tumor to provide estimates of temperature at one location. Backscattered time-domain waveforms from the tissue during exposure were recorded using a clinical ultrasonic imaging system. Backscatter coefficients were estimated using a reference phantom technique. Two parameters were estimated from the backscatter coefficient (effective scatterer diameter (ESD) and effective acoustic concentration (EAC). The changes in the average parameters in the regions corresponding to the HIFU focus over time were correlated to the temperature readings from the thermocouple. The changes in the EAC parameter were consistently correlated to temperature during both heating and cooling of the tumors. The changes in the ESD did not have a consistent trend with temperature. The mean ESD and EAC before exposure were 120 ± 16 μm and 32 ± 3 dB/cm3, respectively, and changed to 144 ± 9 μm and 51 ± 7 dB/cm3, respectively, just before the last HIFU pulse was delivered to the tissue. After the tissue cooled down to 37°C, the mean ESD and EAC were 126 ± 8 μm and 35 ± 4 dB/cm3, respectively. Peak temperature in the range of 50-60°C was recorded by a thermocouple placed just behind the tumor. These results suggest that QUS techniques have the potential to be used for non-invasive monitoring of HIFU exposure.
Seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii Infection in Dogs in Tehran, Iran

Background Toxoplasma gondii infects a wide range of animals; felines are definitive hosts and other animals including the dogs are intermediate hosts. The aim of this study was to determine the seroprevalence of T. gondii infection in dogs in Tehran, capital of Iran and to investigate possible associated risk factors. Methods Three hundreds ninety six serum samples were collected during 2007–8 from the dogs. Collected samples were tested using an indirect fluorescent antibody test (IFAT) in dilutions of 1:16 and more. All procedures were carried out in Shahrekord University, Iran. All the data were analyzed using SPSS software, qui square test with confidence interval of 0.95. Results From evaluated samples, 89 (22.47%) were positive in titers of at least 1:16. further evaluations in other dilutions showed positive results in dilutions of maximum 1:16, 1:32, 1:64, 1:128 and 1:256 in 38, 29, 15, 2 and 5 dogs respectively. Investigation of the role of risk factors showed no sex predisposition while infection rate was significantly higher in dogs older than one year old. Living places were of significant importance; infection rate was significantly higher in stray or guard dogs in compare with household dogs (P<0.05). Conclusion Relatively high seroprevalence of T. gondii infection in dogs in Tehran shows high environmental contamination. It is recommended that the dogs with suspected clinical signs be tested for T. gondii infection.