Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A temperature-to-digital converter for a MEMS-based programmable oscillator with better than ±0.5ppm frequency stability

MEMS-based programmable oscillators have emerged as a promising alternative to crystal-based frequency references, with previously reported work demonstrating sub-ps integrated jitter [1]. Here we show frequency stability better than ±0.5ppm from -40 to 85°C, along with Allan Deviation (i.e., long term jitter) better than 0.005 ppm for 0.1, 1, and 10 second strides. Since the MEMS resonator has a well-defined temperature dependence, the key to this performance is a stable and low-noise temperature-to-digital converter (TDC) that utilizes a thermistor on the same die as the MEMS resonator.
Anti-Inflammatory Effect of Lactobacillus casei on Shigella-Infected Human Intestinal Epithelial Cells1

Shigella invades the human intestinal mucosa, thus causing bacillary dysentery, an acute recto-colitis responsible for lethal complications, mostly in infants and toddlers. Conversely, commensal bacteria live in a mutualistic relationship with the intestinal mucosa that is characterized by homeostatic control of innate responses, thereby contributing to tolerance to the flora. Cross-talk established between commensals and the intestinal epithelium mediate this active process, the mechanisms of which remain largely uncharacterized. Probiotics such as Lactobacillus casei belong to a subclass of these commensals that modulate mucosal innate responses and possibly display anti-inflammatory properties. We analyzed whether L. casei could attenuate the pro-inflammatory signaling induced by Shigella flexneri after invasion of the epithelial lining. Cultured epithelial cells were infected with L. casei, followed by a challenge with S. flexneri. Using macroarray DNA chips, we observed that L. casei down-regulated the transcription of a number of genes encoding pro-inflammatory effectors such as cytokines and chemokines and adherence molecules induced by invasive S. flexneri. This resulted in an anti-inflammatory effect that appeared mediated by the inhibition of the NF-κB pathway, particularly through stabilization of I-κBα. In a time-course experiment using GeneChip hybridization analysis, the expression of many genes involved in ubiquitination and proteasome processes were modulated during L. casei treatment. Thus, L. casei has developed a sophisticated means to maintain intestinal homeostasis through a process that involves manipulation of the ubiquitin/proteasome pathway upstream of I-κBα.
QUANTUM LOGIC, QUANTUM COMPUTING AND PERSPECTIVES

In this paper we present the basic concepts of Quantum Computing and of Quantum Circuits (QC), based on previously done work and experiments. A detailed transition from Quantum Mechanics of elementary particles to Quantum Computing is presented. Basic well-known types of Quantum Gates (QG) and computing on them is presented and illustrated on explained results so as the Quantum logic synthesis is introduced.
Empirically testing the impact of ICT on business performances within SME's

Even though the influence of information and communication technologies (ICT) on business performance has been widely investigated, researchers have come to contradictory results. There is no unanimity about a positive relationship between ICT use and company results, and it is also unclear which factors influence or determine this contribution. Moreover, as it often happens within management science, most of the available literature refers to large companies. On the contrary, this work has a specific focus on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and concentrates the investigation of the IS/business performance relationship on the issue of strategic alignment. The paper presents the results of a survey carried out on a sample of 174 Italian SMEs. Data were collected through a questionnaire filled-in through direct interviews to Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). The empirical work shows that information systems are developed coherently with SME strategic imperatives. Moreover, research results provide evidence that such alignment positively affect the overall business performance.
The Semantic Searching Algorithm Driven by Ecommerce Information Model

To make ECommerce information searching across Internet more efficient, ECommerce information searching becomes more and more important. In this paper, ECommerce information model (EIM) and a novel EIM-based semantic similarity algorithm are presented. This semantic similarity algorithm takes advantage of ECommerce-based information content and edge-based distance in calculating conceptual similarity. According to EIM, a semantic eigenvector, which consists of the semantic similarity values of a given document, is used to represent the semantic content of the document. The semantic eigenvectors and EIM-based similarity function can be applied to ECommerce information retrieval. Experimental results show that the performance of the proposed method is much improved when compared with that of the traditional information retrieval techniques
A Source-Current-Detected Shunt Active Power Filter Control Scheme Based on Vector Resonant Controller

A shunt active power filter (APF) with current detection at the source side is considered as a closed-loop system from the view of the whole power distribution system, which is expected with better harmonics filtering performance compared with the one with load current detection. The conventional source current detection control scheme can be mainly grouped into two types: 1) current-source-based (CS) scheme and 2) power-balance-based (PB) scheme. As introduced in this paper, the CS scheme has good dc-voltage regulation, but it bears inevitable conflict between filtering performance and system stability, whereas the PB scheme has excellent stable filtering performance, but it bears great influence on the dc voltage in the transient state. In this paper, a novel source current detection control scheme is proposed, which reserves the advantages of conventional schemes and, meanwhile, avoids their limitations. The proposed scheme employs a vector resonant controller, with which the shunt APF performs as an equivalent multiband rejection filter that series between nonlinear loads and the grid source, blocking selected harmonics components from the load side flowing into the source side. The proposed scheme is simple in structure, is needless of a harmonics extraction algorithm, and shows good stable and transient performance. Finally, the conclusions obtained in this paper are validated through experiments on the laboratory prototype.
HyPER: A Flexible and Extensible Probabilistic Framework for Hybrid Recommender Systems

As the amount of recorded digital information increases, there is a growing need for flexible recommender systems which can incorporate richly structured data sources to improve recommendations. In this paper, we show how a recently introduced statistical relational learning framework can be used to develop a generic and extensible hybrid recommender system. Our hybrid approach, HyPER (HYbrid Probabilistic Extensible Recommender), incorporates and reasons over a wide range of information sources. Such sources include multiple user-user and item-item similarity measures, content, and social information. HyPER automatically learns to balance these different information signals when making predictions. We build our system using a powerful and intuitive probabilistic programming language called probabilistic soft logic, which enables efficient and accurate prediction by formulating our custom recommender systems with a scalable class of graphical models known as hinge-loss Markov random fields. We experimentally evaluate our approach on two popular recommendation datasets, showing that HyPER can effectively combine multiple information types for improved performance, and can significantly outperform existing state-of-the-art approaches.
Hardware-Assisted Monitoring for Code Security in Embedded System

This paper presents a novel hardware-assisted monitoring architecture for code protection. Program code can be considered as a number of basic code blocks, each with jump and return addresses. It records all possible positions and the function called address to extract the monitoring model of program. The compiler extracts the control flow and static code integrity validation information using lightweight hash and integrity algorithms at compile time. During the execution of the program security module reads from the specialized division of hardware such information, which is compared with the program generated in the process of real-time operation. If inconsistent with the description of the program was found, the security module will abort the CPU run. This design effectively improves the security of embedded systems, while the whole system costs less resource consumption and obtains high efficiency.
On Decidability and Tractability of Querying in Temporal EL

We study access to temporal data with TEL, a temporal extension of the tractable description logic EL. Our aim is to establish a clear computational complexity landscape for the atomic query answering problem, in terms of both data and combined complexity. Atomic queries in full TEL turn out to be undecidable even in data complexity. Motivated by the negative result, we identify well-behaved yet expressive fragments of TEL. Our main contributions are a semantic and sufficient syntactic conditions for decidability and three orthogonal tractable fragments, which are based on restricted use of rigid roles, temporal operators, and novel acyclicity conditions on the ontologies.
The development of associative word learning in monolingual and bilingual infants*

Children growing up bilingual face a unique linguistic environment. The current study investigated whether early bilingual experience influences the developmental trajectory of associative word learning, a foundational mechanism for lexical acquisition. Monolingual and bilingual infants (N = 98) were tested on their ability to learn dissimilar-sounding words (lif and neem) in the Switch task. Twelve-month-olds from both language backgrounds failed to detect a violation of a previously taught word–object pairing. However, both monolinguals and bilinguals succeeded at 14 months, and their performance did not differ. The results indicate that early bilingual experience does not interfere with the development of the fundamental ability to form word–object associations, suggesting that this mechanism is robust across different early language environments.
Prenatal magnesium sulfate exposure and the risk for cerebral palsy or mental retardation among very low-birth-weight children aged 3 to 5 years.

OBJECTIVE To examine the relationship between prenatal magnesium sulfate exposure and the risk for cerebral palsy (CP) or mental retardation (MR) among very low-birth-weight (VLBW; <1500 g) children. Secondarily, to investigate the effect of prenatal magnesium sulfate exposure on VLBW infant mortality. DESIGN Cohort study with follow-up to 1 year of age; a subset followed up to 3 to 5 years. SETTING Twenty-nine Georgia counties, including the 5-county Atlanta metropolitan area. PARTICIPANTS All VLBW births (N=1097) occurring during 2 years (1986-1988); all metropolitan Atlanta VLBW neonates who survived infancy (N=519). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Infant mortality as determined from vital statistics records. Development of CP or MR by 3 to 5 years of age among metropolitan Atlanta VLBW survivors as determined from the Metropolitan Atlanta Developmental Disabilities Surveillance Program. RESULTS For the entire cohort, there was no association between prenatal magnesium sulfate exposure and infant mortality (adjusted rate ratio, 1.02; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.83-1.25). Among Atlanta-born survivors, those exposed to magnesium sulfate had a lower prevalence of CP or MR than those not exposed (CP: magnesium sulfate, 0.9%, no magnesium sulfate, 7.7%, crude odds ratio [OR], 0.11, 95% CI, 0.02-0.81; MR: magnesium sulfate, 1.8%, no magnesium sulfate, 5.8%, crude OR, 0.30, 95% CI, 0.07-1.29). Multivariable adjustment had no appreciable effect on the ORs for CP or MR, but the CIs included 1.0. CONCLUSIONS A reduced risk for CP, and possibly MR, among VLBW children is associated with prenatal magnesium sulfate exposure. The reduced risk for childhood CP or MR does not appear to be due to selective mortality of magnesium sulfate-exposed infants.
Development of magnetic adhesion based climbing robot for non-destructive testing

This paper investigates the effect of key design parameters involved in optimizing the adhesion force achieved from rare earth neodymium magnets. In order to generate high adhesion force by using minimum number of permanent magnets, criteria such as distance between multiple magnets, thickness of flux concentrator have been evaluated by implementing Finite Element Analysis (FEA). Results show that adhesion force increases with increased distance between magnets and by using thick magnetic flux concentrator. A prototype robot has been designed to validate the simulation results. Experiment vs simulation study presents similar results. The robot is controlled remotely via Bluetooth communication protocol and provides umbilical free access to the robot operator.
Narrative and Discursive Approaches in Entrepreneurship: A Second Movements in Entrepreneurship Book

This book is part of a series that seeks to promoteentrepreneurship by exploring new ideas and research practices. Thevolumetakes up and applies ideas from anthropology and literary studies,new theoretical stances such as poststructuralism, postmodernism, and feminism,and especially new explorations of the "linguistic turn" found innarrative and discursive approaches. Three key questions are addressed: (1) How do narrative and discursivepractices work in entrepreneurship studies? (2) What are the consequences forentrepreneurship of adopting new language-based approaches? and (3) How canscholars be inspired and motivated by these approaches? These questions reflectan interest in metaphor and the cultural and social context of organizing.Entrepreneurship is seen as a social rather thana business process; it isembodied in stories and self-narratives. The anthology concludes with threeresponse-essays to the book as a whole. (TNM) Table of Contents Introduction, Daniel Hjorth and Chris Steyaert The Prosaics of Entrepreneurship, Chris Steyaert A Moment in Time, Sami Boutaiba Driven Entrepreneurs: A Case Study of Taxi Owners in Caracas, MonicaLindh de Montoya 'Going Against the Grain. ' Construction of Entrepreneurial Identitythrough Narratives, Lene Foss Storytelling to be Real: Narrative, Legitimacy Building and Venturing,Ellen O’Connor The Devil is in the e-tale: Forms and Structures in theEntrepreneurial Narratives, Robert Smith and Alistair R. Anderson Crime and Assumptions in Entrepreneurship, Alf Rehn and SaaraTaalas The Dramas of Consulting and Counselling the Entrepreneur, TorbenDamgaard, Jesper Piihl and Kim Klyver Masculine Entrepreneurship — the Gnosjo Discourse in a Feminist Perspective,Katarina Pettersson Quilting a Feminist Map to Guide the Study of Women Entrepreneurs,Kathryn Campbell Towards Genealogic Storytelling in Entrepreneurship, DanielHjorth Readings Reading the Storybook of Life: Telling the Right Story Versus Telling theStory Rightly, Jerome Katz The Edge Defines the (W)hole: Saying What Entrepreneurship is (Not),William B. Gartner Relational Constructionism and Entrepreneurship: Some Key Notes,Dian-Marie Hosking in Dialogue with Daniel Hjorth
Correction for Schweitzer et al., Soft tissue and cellular preservation in vertebrate skeletal elements from the Cretaceous to the present

Correction for ‘Soft tissue and cellular preservation in vertebrate skeletal elements from the Cretaceous to the present’ by Mary Higby Schweitzer, Jennifer L. Wittmeyer and John R. Horner (Proc. R. Soc. B 274, 183–197. (doi: 10.1098/rspb.2006.3705)). The funding acknowledgement in the acknowledgement section was incorrect, and should read as follows: Funding for this work was provided by National Science Foundation (EAR-0541744), Discovery Channel and North Carolina State University.
Novel approach to search for individual signal complexes in complex fractionated atrial electrograms using wavelet transform

Complex fractionated atrial electrograms (CFAEs) represent the electrophysiologic substrate for atrial fibrillation (AF). Progress in signal processing algorithms to identify CFAEs sites is crucial for the development of AF ablation strategies. Individual signal complexes in CFAEs reflect electrical activity of electrophysiologic substrate at given time. We developed a novel algorithm for automated search of individual signal complexes in CFAEs. This algorithm based on wavelet transform enables to describe CFAEs in a novel way and helps to classify CFAEs level of complexity (degree of fractionation). The method was tested using a representative set of 1.5s A-EGMs (n = 113) ranked by an expert into 4 categories: 1 -organized atrial activity; 2 -mild; 3 -intermediate; 4 -high degree of fractionation. Individual signal complexes were marked by an expert in every A-EGM in the dataset. This ranking was used as gold standard for comparison with the novel automatic search method. Following hit rates were achieved by performed automatic search on representative set of data: category 1: 100%, category 2: 98.2%, category 3: 92.06%, category 4: 63.89%. These results indicate that wavelet signal decomposition could carry high level of predictive information about the state of electrophysiologic substrate for AF.
Visual Stability Prediction and Its Application to Manipulation

Understanding physical phenomena is a key competence that enables humans and animals to act and interact under uncertain perception in previously unseen environments containing novel objects and their configurations. Developmental psychology has shown that such skills are acquired by infants from observations at a very early stage. In this paper, we contrast a more traditional approach of taking a model-based route with explicit 3D representations and physical simulation by an {\em end-to-end} approach that directly predicts stability from appearance. We ask the question if and to what extent and quality such a skill can directly be acquired in a data-driven way---bypassing the need for an explicit simulation at run-time. We present a learning-based approach based on simulated data that predicts stability of towers comprised of wooden blocks under different conditions and quantities related to the potential fall of the towers. We first evaluate the approach on synthetic data and compared the results to human judgments on the same stimuli. Further, we extend this approach to reason about future states of such towers that in turn enables successful stacking.
Optimal control of two-level quantum systems based on the geometrical parametrization

This paper presents an approach based on constructing control Hamiltonians to steer qubit states. When three tunable control Hamiltonians are available, we can adjust the controls to transform two-level quantum systems from an arbitrary initial pure state to another arbitrary target pure state along the unique geodesic curve on Block sphere. In terms of a kind of time-energy performance J = ∫tƒ [λ + (1 − λ)E(u(t))]dt, we discuss how to design control magnitude to minimize this performance. An example indicates the feasibility and efficiency of this approach on optimal control of two-level quantum systems.
JADE, an adaptive differential evolution algorithm, benchmarked on the BBOB noiseless testbed

JADE, an adaptive version of the differential evolution (DE) algorithm, is benchmarked on the testbed of 24 noiseless functions chosen for the Black-Box Optimization Benchmarking workshop. The results of full-featured JADE are then compared with the results of 3 other DE variants ("downgraded" JADE variants) to reveal the contributions of the algorithm components. Another adaptive DE variant benchmarked during BBOB 2010 is used as a reference algorithm. The results confirm that the original JADE outperforms the other (JA)DE versions, while the comparison with the other adaptive DE shows that the different sources of adaptivity make the algorithms suitable for different functions.
Enhanced Immunogenicity, Mortality Protection, and Reduced Viral Brain Invasion by Alum Adjuvant with an H5N1 Split-Virion Vaccine in the Ferret

Background Pre-pandemic development of an inactivated, split-virion avian influenza vaccine is challenged by the lack of pre-existing immunity and the reduced immunogenicity of some H5 hemagglutinins compared to that of seasonal influenza vaccines. Identification of an acceptable effective adjuvant is needed to improve immunogenicity of a split-virion avian influenza vaccine. Methods and Findings Ferrets (N = 118) were vaccinated twice with a split-virion vaccine preparation of A/Vietnam/1203/2004 or saline either 21 days apart (unadjuvanted: 1.9 µg, 7.5 µg, 30 µg, or saline), or 28 days apart (unadjuvanted: 22.5 µg, or alum-adjuvanted: 22.5 or 7.5 µg). Vaccinated animals were challenged intranasally 21 or 28 days later with 106 EID50 of the homologous strain. Immunogenicity was measured by hemagglutination inhibition and neutralization assays. Morbidity was assessed by observed behavior, weight loss, temperature, cytopenias, histopathology, and viral load. No serum antibodies were detected after vaccination with unadjuvanted vaccine, whereas alum-adjuvanted vaccination induced a robust antibody response. Survival after unadjuvanted dose regimens of 30 µg, 7.5 µg and 1.9 µg (21-day intervals) was 64%, 43%, and 43%, respectively, yet survivors experienced weight loss, fever and thrombocytopenia. Survival after unadjuvanted dose regimen of 22.5 µg (28-day intervals) was 0%, suggesting important differences in intervals in this model. In contrast to unadjuvanted survivors, either dose of alum-adjuvanted vaccine resulted in 93% survival with minimal morbidity and without fever or weight loss. The rarity of brain inflammation in alum-adjuvanted survivors, compared to high levels in unadjuvanted vaccine survivors, suggested that improved protection associated with the alum adjuvant was due to markedly reduced early viral invasion of the ferret brain. Conclusion Alum adjuvant significantly improves efficacy of an H5N1 split-virion vaccine in the ferret model as measured by immunogenicity, mortality, morbidity, and brain invasion.
Efficiency Evaluation of Laser Diode in Different Driving Modes for Wireless Power Transmission

The high-intensity laser power beaming (HILPB) system is one of the most promising system in the field of long-range wireless power transfer. In HILPB system, the high-power laser diode (LD) is employed for its excellent character of high efficiency, high reliability, and small size. Normally, LD can operate in two different driving modes: the continuous mode and the pulse mode. The injected current has a direct effect on the electro-optical conversion efficiency of LD. This paper centers around LD model and its current source driver. The conversion efficiencies of the two driving modes are evaluated by means of simulations and experiments. The experimental results are shown to verify the theoretical analysis.